MEANING OF NATURE-STUDY 19 



pupils much of our education has been. Geogra- 

 phies begin with the earth, and finally, perhaps, 

 come down to some concrete and familiar object 

 or scene that the pupil can understand. Arithmetic 

 has to do with brokerage and partnerships and 

 partial payments and other things that mean nothing 

 to the child. Botany has to do with cells and 

 protoplasm and cryptogams. History deals with 

 political affairs, and only rarely comes down to 

 physical facts and to those events that have to do 

 with the real lives of the people ; and yet political 

 and social affairs are only the results or expressions 

 of the way in which people live. Readers begin 

 with mere literature or with stories of things that 

 the child will never see or do. Of course these 

 statements are meant to be only general, as illus- 

 trating what is even yet a great fault in educational 

 methods. There are many exceptions, and these 

 are becoming commoner. Surely, the best 

 education is that which begins with the materials at 

 hand. A child asks what a stone is before it asks 

 what the earth is. 



How nature-study may be taught. 



There are two ways of interpreting nature — 

 by way of fact and by way of fancy. To the 

 scientist and to the average man the interpretation 

 by fact is often the only admissible one. He 

 may not be open to argument or conviction that 

 there can be any other truthful way of knowing 

 the external world. Yet, the artist and the poet 

 know this world, and they do not know it by 



