528 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



schools, those which have outdoor education programs, children 

 (and I have asked them in many States) do not realize that some of 

 our national monuments are being threatened, do not know anything 

 about sanctuaries for wildlife, and so on. How can we expect the 

 others to know? 



So I suggest that we think a little bit about elementary curriculum 

 and how we can get the work done there, where I think it is most 

 important. 



MAURICE BARBASH. I would like to address my remarks to the spe- 

 cific problem of depicting natural beauty to the urban child. We 

 could all do this tomorrow morning, simply. Just last week, in our 

 own Bay Shore schools on a test basis, we organized a group of junior 

 high school students and sent them out to the not yet formally estab- 

 lished Fire Island Natural Seashore. We are having established a 

 whole group of new national conservation-recreational facilities in 

 the East, where they have been most lacking. Formerly, a trip to a 

 natural facility of this type, involved a trip to the Yellowstone of 

 the West. 



Well, I watched these kids come back. They were guided 

 around the seashore by the local ranger, and they came back 

 with a whole bunch of feathers, rocks and everything they could 

 pick up over there, and they had the most fantastic time of their 

 lives, and many of them for the first time saw what we are try- 

 ing to describe here as natural beauty. I think we could use these 

 new facilities being established in our country to advantage. We 

 don't overcrowd them when we visit them during the school day. 

 Here is a living classroom for experience in the areas of natural 

 beauty for our children. 



Mr. Ronald Lee, who is sitting here, is a regional director for 

 national parks. He would agree there are vast opportunities to 

 be tapped here on a limited and practical basis. 



E. GENEVIEVE GILLETTE. I have in my hand here a little manual 

 that sells for $2.40 in our bookstore. It is called Integrating Con- 

 servation and Out-of-Door Education Into the Curriculum of the 

 Public Schools. We do this in our schools now. We have about 

 11,000 children a year, who are taken into the out-of-doors, the 

 smaller children, of course, studying the more elementary things. 

 About the sixth grade, they begin to study the resources and what use 

 is made of them. 



