EDAGOGICAL 



A Real Nature Study School. 



I have observed nature study in a 

 wide range of schools both public and 

 private, and I find every gradation of 

 interest in the subject and of efficiency 

 in its presentation. It may be com- 

 mendable to pin a butterfly on the 

 wall or keep tadpoles in a fruit jar, 

 provided the butterfly has been well 

 chloroformed and the water kept well 

 aerated. But in my opinion nature 

 study of that type does not go quite far 

 enough. I believe it is a good thing 

 to correlate nature with the school 

 studies and have nature study as an 

 aid, but I believe that, especially with 

 young children, it is better to correlate 

 the school studies with nature study. 



I have felt for many years that nature 

 study is too often the tail of the kite, 

 sometimes only a small part of the 

 tip of the tail. But even that is com- 

 mendable. Think of the loss if it were 

 not for that tip found in so many 

 schools. There are schools, in the 

 country or near to the country and not 

 a thousand miles from where I am dic- 

 tating this article, that are, pitiful as 

 it incty seem, as barren of nature study 

 as the sands of the Sahara are of gar- 

 den vegetables, and one may travel 

 among them for months and not find 

 a cheering oasis. But turn from these 

 dismal pictures of the pitifully small 

 or the completely absent and contem- 

 plate a light that is set on a hill, on a 

 high hill in unobstructed view from 

 horizon to horizon, where the aim of 

 the principal and the owners of the 

 school is not merely to provide nature 

 study for their own school but to show 

 others how to provide it. 



I believe that Mrs. Charles Tarbell 

 Dudley of the Wabanaki School, 

 Greenwich, Connecticut, is a pioneer 

 that has blazed a trail that other pri- 

 vate schools might well follow. She 



has done for the private school what 

 Dr. Elliot R. Downing of the Chicago 

 Board of Education has been doing 

 all his life for the public school. I once 

 spent a week in Dr. Downing's Normal 

 School when he was the nature and 

 science man at Marquette. Michigan, 

 and not a single thing was lacking to 

 meet the ideal of perfect and complete 

 nature study. He did what others 

 talked about doing or longed to do, or 

 what they talked about doing and per- 

 haps did not really want to do. Their 

 only wish, I sometimes think, is to hear 

 the sound of their own words. But 

 Dr. Downing has put nature study into 

 the public schools in a thoroughly effi- 

 cient manner, and he has taught teach- 

 ers how to teach it. Unquestionably 

 he is the great man in normal schools 

 of this country and in this connection 

 it should be understood that I must 

 also speak of the remarkable work 

 done by Dr. Liberty H. Bailey and 

 ^Irs. Anna Botsford Comstock at Cor- 

 nell University. They have labored in 

 season and out of season and success- 

 fully to show teachers how to put na- 

 ture study into the public schools. 

 Where the teachers that have been 

 trained by Dr. Downing, by Dr. Bailey 

 or by Mrs. Comstock have secured the 

 active support of the school officers 

 the work has progressed effectively. 

 But, aye, there's the rub. Many a 

 school likes to imagine that it has na- 

 ture study and some of them do have 

 it, but these are not so plentiful as 

 those. Some clubs of Camp Fire Girls 

 go into the woods and think they are 

 then in nature, that because there is 

 wild nature around them they are go- 

 ihg to imbibe it with the air they 

 breathe, as the Infusoria imbibe nour- 

 ishment from the thin sap of a decay- 

 ing infusion. It is not enough to be in 

 nature or to talk about it, if one builds 



