Agreement as to the Nature-Study Program 



By James G. Needham 



Are we not agreed as to the fundamentals of a nature-study 

 program? Professor Trafton raises this question in the October 

 number of The Nature-Study Review, and I want to go on 

 record as believing that we are agreed quite as far as we should be. 



The essentials of our agreement may be grouped under these 

 •three heads: - 



I. The nature-study course should be general — as general as 

 the child's principal interests in the things and in the processes of 

 nature. 



II. It should be organized from the child's standpoint, pro- 

 ceeding from what he knows to what he can find out, and following 

 the natural order of his developing aptitudes, putting wholes before 

 parts, large things before small ones, attractive things before the 

 less attractive. 



III. It should fit the environment and be adapted to season, 

 locality and conditions. • 



What certain critics have mistaken for disagreement among 

 nature-study teachers is merely lack of uniformity, and is generally 

 wholesome and desirable. Among the causes of this lack of uni- 

 formity are the following : 



I. The infinity of nature. Her offerings are innumerable. No 

 one can know or use them all, and with so much from which to 

 choose not all teachers will choose the same things, though all may 

 use what they choose to meet the same good ends. 



II. The difference of locality, in accordance with which nature's 

 offerings differ. Good natiire-study teachers use things that are 

 common and near at hand. They should not be expected to use 

 the same things in the same manner all the way from Maine to 

 California, any more than fishermen should be expected to do their 

 fishing by the same methods. 



III. Personal knowledge of nature possessed by the teacher. 

 Each teacher should use what she can use best ; what she knows 

 best, likes best, and succeeds with best. 



IV. Shifts of emphasis that grow out of increase to scientific 

 knowledge. Such work with mosquitoes, with flies, or with bac- 

 teria as is often stressed now-a-days would not have been tolerated 

 a generation ago, before the sanitary importance of these pests was 

 known. 



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