Winter Meeting:. 339 



"ti 



by the use of elementary science and the opening of the avenues to the 

 souls of the children the real fundamentals are used as a basis for the 

 conventional and favorable results are obtained. I can cite schools ex- 

 emplifying the new education whose second grade children do as difficult 

 work in arithmetic as the fifth grade children do under the old regime; 

 where the children are not hurt by such work and do no home studying ; 

 where the sixth grade children do as difficult work in literature as we 

 find high school students doing under the old regime. The new educa- 

 tion reserves in large part the enormous energy hitherto consumed in 

 conducting examinations and grading papers and it devotes this energy 

 to preparation for the labor of real teaching. I think the battle for science 

 in elementary schools, i. e., for organized Nature Study, is almost won. 

 There will doubtless be mismanagement. FooHsh people will make a 

 sorry mess of Nature Study. Ignorant people will butcher it. People 

 unused to the Biological and Agricultural laboratories had better let 

 Nature Study alone. Greek is in good repute because reckless novices 

 seldom get at it. Nature Study may need to be protected from its friends 

 but it will not die with them. 



Dr. Woodward of Washington University says : "Well equipped 

 laboratories and well planned courses of laboratory work in physics for 

 secondary schools are scarcely twenty years old, but they form a most 

 striking feature in secondary school work at the present time. Still 

 more recent than either chemical or physical laboratories are laboratories 

 for the study of botany and zoology^ in secondary schools." He says, 

 "It was felt that many boys have such a dislike for grammars and dic- 

 tionaries involving great memory work and such a strong taste for 

 physical activity which calls into play both mental and physical functions 

 that they prefer to be called stupid, dull and ignorant rather than endure 

 the restraints and ennui of the ordinary school." Hence Manual Train- 

 ing came for the relief of the boys. He further says : "It was feared 

 that such mean and vulgar matters as carpentry, forging, metal fitting, 

 etc., would lower the pupils' tastes and make them sordid. Parents gave 

 utterance to a suspicion that Manual Training would lead a boy to seek 

 associates among carpenters and blacksmiths. These fears, suspicions 

 and predictions provoke a smile today, for every teacher of experience 

 knows that the fears were groundles and the predictions false. Nowhere 

 does one find young men of higher character, of nobler aims, of more 

 refined tastes than he finds among those who have taken a thorough 

 course of ]\Ianual Training as part of their educational work." Speak- 

 ing further Dr. Woodward says, "Domestic Science as well as Manual 

 Training has secured permanent footing in grammar grades. No longer 

 will any city school system be considered complete which does not fur- 



