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question or problem, such as 



a 



w 



r 



can a duck live in water 



when a hen can not ? " or " How does a rabbit secure food ? " 

 We must drop forever such directions as " What can you tell me 

 about the butterfly ? " or " Tell all you can about the fish." The 

 work should be directed by thought-producing questions, and the 

 child's answers must be more than mere observations ; they must 

 involve comparison and discrimination, as well as exact expres- 

 sion. 



Second, we must adapt our material not only to the age of the 

 child, but to the local conditions. Caring for an ordinary school 

 garden with its mechanical routine of weeding and cuhivating 

 may be the very last thing the farmer's child wants to do — ■ 

 and the very last thing we should allow him to do. His home 

 duties give more than he needs of the routine part, and what 

 he wants is something that adds interest to the familiar routine, 

 or develops an inquiring attitude toward the possibilities of what 

 is apparently a monotonous life. For example, laboratory work, 

 explaining why things are as they are, would be much more inter- 

 esting to him — at the time and ever afterward— if it included ex- 

 periments demonstrating air in soils, the presence of moisture in 

 even the driest of soils, the effect of lime on texture and acidity, 

 or " dry farming " principles, showing why we " cultivate " crops 

 even in dry weather. Such things give a different and a richer 

 viewpoint; to a farmer's boy so taught, hoeing beans or culti- 

 vating corn can never be so boring again. 



. This second point merges into my third — we must emphasize 

 the enriching values of nature study — its peculiar contributions 

 to life's background. It is quite possible to avoid sentimentality 

 and yet color more richly one's whole life. 



One farmer's wife — or one city shop girl-^catches a red flush 

 in the sky and thinks vaguely, "a pretty sunset" or " That's the 

 reddest sunset I ever saw," and that is all it means to her. An- 

 other woman, on the adjoining farm — or on the next telephone 

 stool — has read' that dust particles Interfere with the passage of 



light 



ravs, 



and realizes that the great amount of dust in sus- 



pension this hot summer day has interfered unequally with the 

 light rays that make up our ordinary daylight — holding back the 



