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have only just appeared. So long as the sun shines and the fields 

 are green, we shall need to go to nature for our inspiration and our 

 respite ; and our need is the greater with every increasing complex- 

 it v of our lives. 



What is Nature-Study? 



It is a point of view. It is the acquirement of sympathy with 

 nature, which means sympathy with what is. 



As a pedagogical ideal, luitu re study is teaching the youth to see 

 and to know the thing nearest at hand, to the end that his life may 

 be fuller and richer. Primarily, nalure-study, as the writer con- 

 ceives it, is not knowledge. He would avofd the leaHet that gives 

 nothing but information. Nature study is not method. Of neces- 

 sity each teacher will develop a method ; but this method is the 

 need of the teacher, not of the subject. 



Nature-study is not to be taught for the purpose of making the 

 youth a specialist or a scientist. Now and then, a pupil will desire 

 to pursue a science for the sake of the science, and he should be 

 encouraged. But every pupil may be taught to be interested in 

 plants and l)irds and insects and running brooks, and thereby his life 

 wall be the stronger. The crop of scientists will take care of itself. 



It is said that nature-study teaching is not thorough and therefore 

 is undesirable. Much that is good in teaching has been sacritied 

 for what we call " thoroughness," — which in many cases only 

 means a perfunctory drill in mere facts. One cannot teach a pupil 

 to be really interested in any natural object or phenomenon until 

 the pupil sees accurately and reasons correctly. Accuracy is a 

 prime requisite in any good nature-study teaching, for accuracy is 

 truth and it develops power. It is better that a pupil see twenty 

 things accurately, and see them liimself, than that he be confined to 

 one thing so long that he hates it. Different subjects demand 

 different methods of teacliing. The method of mathematics 

 cannot be applied to dandelions and polliwogs. 



The first essential in nature-study is to see what one looks at. It 



is positive, direct, discriminating, accurate observation. The second 



essential is to understand why the thing is so, or what it means. 



The third essential is the desire to know more, — and this comes of 



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