needham] NATURE-STUDY PROGRAM 3 



V. Control by the educational over-lords. Superintendents as 

 a rule are sadly lacking in knowledge of nature, yet they have not 

 hesitated to set metes and bounds to the nature-study work done 

 in their schools, even by thoroughly competent teachers. Adminis- 

 tration tends to uniformity — and to mediocrity. 



It is neither surprising nor regrettable, therefore, that nature- 

 study teachers are not all using the same things in the same way 

 the country over. It is sufficient that they are working toward a 

 common end, and that end, the education of the children in the 

 love of nature and in acquaintance with and ability to use their 

 own environment. When used to these ends real nature-study is 

 never found wanting. 



There are fashion-mongers in pedagogy as elsewhere; and they 

 like to set us to cutting the cloth just a little different each season, 

 and they like to get us to using new names for things. Thus they 

 make quite a show of doing something original. Just now they 

 are juggling with the "Junior High Schools" and with "general 

 science." The content of general science courses, in so far as it has 

 any value in primary education, is purely and solely nature-study 

 renamed. And it must be so; for the primary educational need 

 of human kind will ever be knowledge of mother nature, the source 

 and sustenance of all human affairs — the great primal educator, 

 who sets all our fundamental tasks for us, and offers all our 

 permanent rewards. And at all stages of our progress, whatever 

 we name our tasks, we shall only get on by the first hand study of 

 nature, using the two old methods that have wrought achievement 

 in the past — observation and experiment. 



The report of the New York Meeting of the American 

 Nature-Study Society will appear in the February issue. 



The Index for Volume 12 of the Review will also be 

 mailed with the February issue. 



