VALUES OF NATURE STUDY 



27 



teacher who sincerely desires to learn will be glad to say 

 it, glad to have something brought in that affords him an 

 opportunity to learn, and not only that, but at the same 

 time the best possible opportunity to teach. Such teach- 

 ing and learning will transform education from a deadly 

 mechanical grind to a living process. 



But after all, childhood, — active, fresh, spontaneous 

 childhood, — and its need of the normal environment for 

 growth and vigor, supplies the imperative demand for a 

 natural and active nature study. Truly *' trailing clouds 

 of glory do we come " ; and when we discover the right 

 way, there shall be no '* shades of the prison-house " to 

 " close upon the growing boy." In rare cases now we 

 find the charm of childlikeness, the open interest and 

 rapid growth, extending on through boyhood and to the 

 end of old age. When we learn how to educate normally, 

 this may become the rule rather than the exception. 



The term is being much abused at present, but I hope 

 I may be rightly understood when I say that the key to 

 the solution of this problem is original research. The 

 mind seeks for truth as the body for food. Search is a 

 primordial element in all life, in all education. Cut this 

 out and you have parasitism and degeneration of the 

 higher functions. Everything that lives, from the amoeba 

 seeking for food to the artist or the scientist in search of 

 beauty and truth, spends the best effort of life in just this 

 thing, — searcJi. Witness the way the infant learns during 

 the first years of life, the incessant activity and infinite 

 delight and wonderful rapidity with which it reaches out 

 into the unknown of nature around it. Let us study how 

 we may continue this splendid process of growth through 



