A Reading of the Nature-Study Barometer 



Louise Connolly 



Of the Newark, N. J. Museum 

 An address delivcrcti Ijefore the x\merican Nature-Study »Society, Dec. 27, 191 6 



When I was young, I knew an old farmer in Virginia, who was a 

 very poor fanner, but who struck all the city folks who heard him 

 talk as "extremely intelligent for a farmer." 



There were three reasons for his being a farmer. First, his 

 father had been a farmer. That will be accepted by all those 

 advocates of vocational education who want to teach the principles 

 of metallurgy to the children of a mining region, and the applica- 

 tions of trade discount into the public schools near Wall Street. 

 Second, he owned a farm. That will appeal to those who give 

 their children music lessons because they own a piano. And 

 third, he fell in love the year before his father died. We all 

 know about that. If you fall seriously in love in your sophomore 

 year, you decide that you don't need a college education, and you 

 go into your uncle's commission house. If in your senior year, 

 you forego the law and accept a position as principal of a country 

 school. 



This farmer one day drove a sorrel mare of thirteen summers 

 that he had raised from a colt to the county court house and put 

 up the mare at a livery. And he had to wait that night until 

 everyone else had gone, and take the horse that was left, because 

 he couldn't identify his own mare. 



Once I taught across the hall from a graduate of Yincevard 

 and when he went off to be married I took his class for a week, and 

 put a substitute into mine. That young A.B. had had his mental 

 arithmetic taken apart and rebound with interleaves containing 

 all the problems worked out by his college chum, because he 

 couldn't do them himself. 



These are not irrelevant, fancy sketches; they bear directly 

 on our subject. 



Within the schools there are three foes of nature-study^the 

 school officials, the teachers, and the janitors. 



The janitors are justified; nature-study is the natural foe of 

 tidiness — not to say cleanliness. 



The teachers have more than one reason for their enmity. 

 Many of them were asked in the high school their goal in life, 



97 



