1904J Nature Study — No. 11. 223 



tion ? I fear not. It is certainly gratifying to know that the 

 educational authorities in most of the provinces have recognized 

 the necessity of doing something to improve it. Never before in 

 the history ot Canada have the prospects looked so bright for an 

 honest effort on the part of the best educators to solve this prob- 

 lem. The solution lies, it seems to me, in the proper presentation 

 of Nature Study, or rather that phase of Nature Study that will 

 tend towards agriculture. This can be presented to the best ad- 

 vantage by establishing a school garden in connection with each 

 school. Nature Study and the School Garden are inseparable if 

 we wish the best results. This does not mean that technical 

 agriculture is to be taught, far from it. Nothing would be more 

 disastrous to the cause of rural education than to attempt to 

 teach technical agriculture or technical science in the public 

 school. We have agricultural colleges and high schools for that 

 purpose. Nature Study in our public schools would interest the 

 children in the common everyday things about them ; in things 

 they have been seeing all their lives, yet not perceiving ; in the 

 songs of birds and insects they have been hearing, yet not appre- 

 ciating. They would find themselves in a new world, or rather 

 in their old world made new, by a living, loving sympathy and 

 interest in everything about them. Their eyes would be trained 

 to observe, iheir ears to hear, and their minds to seek the truth 

 for the truth's sake, and in seeing, in hearing, and in seeking for 

 truth, they would be trained to draw right conclusions from what 

 they see and hear. 



During the first five or six years of a child's existence he has 

 created for himself a little world. He has attempted to solve 

 many knotty problems. In fact, he has been on a tour of original 

 research, as truly as the best investigator along the line of science, 

 and no one will deny that in many cases he has been more original. 

 He has started out along the right line to make himself " the 

 good citizen and the honest neighbor," and to acquire those 

 things that go to makeup a "successful life." Why not con- 

 tinue these experiences in the school ? Why not begin to build on 

 what he already knows, rather than thrust him, as is too fre- 

 quently the case, into a new and stran5;.;e world^the school — a 

 world in which he searches in vain to find something to link with 

 his past ? Alas! he finds himself as totally amidst new surround- 

 ings as if he had been suddenly set down in a foreign land. There 

 is nothing in the school life that he can associate with his own 

 little world — his past experiences. He has, as it were, to start 

 life again and create another world totally different from the first. 

 There is little wonder that teachers find such great difliculty with 

 their primary classes, with the beginners in this new life. 



