1903 Place of " Nature Study" in Education 197 



his pupils appropriate opportunities and conditions for the 

 exercise of their activities naturewards. If this be accepted, 

 the question still remains, How is the teacher to be induced 

 to do this ? Sir John Gorst, in his address to the Educa- 

 tional Section of the British Association, told teachers 

 that — 



" If children in village schools spent less of their early youth in 

 learning mechanically to read, write, and cipher, and more in 

 searching hedgerows and ditch-bottoms for flowers, insects, or 

 other natural objects, their intelligence would be developed by 

 active research, and they would better learn to read, write, and 

 cipher in the end." 



There are many, no doubt, who will agree with Sir 

 John Gorst, but the majority of teachers, we are informed, 

 regard the statement quoted above as nothing more and no 

 better than the irresponsible rhetoric of an irrepressible 

 politician, and as a venture quite outside the pale of 

 pedagogical recognition. 



A teacher, from his professional training, is more or less 

 a teaching machine. Unless, therefore, teachers can be 

 shown that a subject, even though indirectly, will still in 

 the end assist in mind training, which is their professional 

 work, there is little hope of converting the rank and file 

 and getting them to assist the movement. The task that 

 naturalists and nature lovers have therefore to set themselves 

 to accomplish, is first of all to make loving nature lore 

 attractive to children, and at the same time they must 

 so present the matter to teachers that they will also be 

 interested and become sources or centres of encouragement 

 for the children, otherwise non-sympathetic teachers have 

 the power to suppress and practically to extinguish a child's 

 natural instincts natureward. Nature study exhibitions and 

 reports, also nature study manuals and text-books, all address 

 themselves to the teacher. We do not know of any true 

 nature study work that is addressed to children, at any- 

 rate all such books that we are aware of are intended to 

 circulate among their elders. Of course, there are various 

 readers — " countryside readers," " nature knowledge readers," 

 etc. — that deal with natural phenomena, and to these no 

 objection can be made, for, as their name indicates, they 



