MEANING OF NATURE-STUDY 15 



part of the curriculum; and thereby it is not 

 perfunctory. And herein lies much of its value 

 — in the fact that it cannot be reduced to a system, 

 is not cut and dried, cannot become a part of rigid 

 school methods. Its very essence is spirit. It is 

 as free as its subject-matter, as far removed from 

 the museum and the cabinet as the skeleton is 

 from the living animal. 



It thus transpires that there is much confusion 

 as to what nature-study is, because of the different 

 attitudes of its various exponents ; but these differ- 

 ent attitudes are largely the reflections of different 

 personalities and the v^orking out of different 

 methods. There may be twenty best ways of 

 teaching nature-study. It is essentially the ex- 

 pression of one's outlook on the world. We 

 must define nature-study in terms of its purpose, 

 not in terms of its methods. It is not doing this 

 or that. It is putting the child into intimate and 

 essential contact with the things of the external 

 world. Whatever the method, the final result of 

 nature-study teaching is the development of a keen 

 personal interest in every natural object and 

 phenomenon. 



There are two or three fundamental miscon- 

 ceptions of what nature-study is or should be ; 

 and to these we may now give attention. 



Fundamentally, nature-study is seeing what one 

 looks at and drawing proper conclusions from 

 what one sees ; and thereby the learner comes into 

 personal relation and sympathy with the object. 

 It is not the teaching of science — not the sys- 



