

THE GUIDE T( » X VTURE 



EDAGOGICAL 





Stop "Teaching" Nature Study. 



[Reprinted from the Nature Study Depart- 

 ment of the "Pennsylvania School Journal," 

 Report of the Convention of School Superin- 

 tendent at Erie, Pennsylvania.] 



I )r. Edward F. Bigelow, the inter- 

 national president of The Agassiz As- 

 iation and editor of the nature and 

 science department of "St. Nicholas 

 Magazine," followed in a good-natured 

 but serious denunciation of the general 

 methods of nature study. Elementary 

 science stands for something quite dis- 

 tinct and apart from nature study. Na- 

 ture cannot be harnessed to the dry, 

 hard lines of text-books. "One fact 

 discovered by the pupils working with 

 the teacher is worth a thousand that 

 are pumped into them. A little girl 

 nine years old was the first to discover 

 that the limbs of trees are constantly 

 moving; another little girl discovered 

 that caterpillars are partial to certain 

 colors." 



DISCONTINUE TEACHING "NATURE 

 STUDY." 



The learned gentleman who has pre- 

 ceded me spoke enthusiastically in the 

 interest of promoting nature study 

 teaching in the schools, but in his eager 

 desire to have nature well taught he 

 has unconsciously spoken more 

 than I think he intended. He tells you 

 that it is some twenty years since effort 

 was first made to teach nature study in 

 the schools and he frankly admits that 

 these efforts have not been successful 

 except in a very few isolated cases, and 

 even these only a partial success. He 

 goes on to urge you and the few teach- 

 ers present to help remedy all of these 

 failures of the past two decades. He 

 means all right; he feels the import- 

 ance of the subject and does not give 

 up evidently a particle of hope that it 

 may yet be done rightly. Let us turn 

 aside for a moment from what he has 



said and search in your own experi- 

 ences for schools wherein nature study 

 is taught as it should be. You and I 

 know of a few exceptional cases where 

 the work has been a perfect success, 

 but we also know that the greater the 

 success of teaching nature study in 

 these schools has been the more the 

 teacher has expected the pupils to do 

 original work for themselves. Let us 

 profit by this key to the whole situa- 

 tion, and let us frankly admit that 

 most teachers have made a failure 

 whenever they have depended unon 

 their colossal knowledge and their 

 ability to impart it to the pupil. So 

 the moral of the whole thing is, sit 

 down and give the pupils a show. The 

 teachers' nature study has doubtless 

 been a success in some places and a 

 failure in many for twenty years. 



But nature study by the boys and 

 girls always has been and always will 

 be a success. The child is a born nat- 

 uralist; he has just the right exploring 

 instinct and the inquisitive eyes to 

 make him the ideal student. Woe be 

 to the teacher who attempts to teach 

 him, for he knows more than she does 

 in most cases ; and even if he does not 

 know more he has the greater activity 

 and the keener eyes to find out about 

 things. Therefore, the logical conclu- 

 sion is that if we are to have more and 

 better nature study in the schools it 

 must be by putting more unon the 

 child and less upon the teacher. Ex- 

 perience has taught that the best 

 method of nutting such nature study 

 unon the child is through young peo- 

 ple's organizations. The oldest and 

 most successful of these is The Agassiz 

 Association, founded by Mr. H. H. 

 Ballard, of Pittsfield, Mass., in 1875. 

 For some thirty-five years this organi- 

 zation has been successful, and under 



