Graphic Methods in Teaching. 



The Chautauqua Town and Country Club was started 

 in 1885 as a branch of the Chautauqua Literary and 

 Scientific Circle and continued in active operation till 

 1889. During that time about two thousand pupils were 

 connected with the school. Owing to the very great 

 expense attending the instruction given in the Club it 

 was discontinued in 1889 after Jiaving shown that the 

 study of nature can be made of great interest to young 

 people who are rightly trained to see and repeat the 

 simple facts of nature that may come under their obser- 

 vation. The methods used in the school have been copied 

 both in public and private schools, and under able teachers 

 have been greatly extended and improved. The school 

 thus served, in a small way, to point to what seems to be 

 a direct and simple method of training young people to 

 observe and to inspire in them the scientific spirit of 

 research. In this sense, the Club may not have been 

 wholly useless. The writer, having devised the system of 

 instruction used in the school and having observed its 

 results in many hundreds of pupils, may perhaps be in a 

 position to offer a few suggestions to teachers and others 

 interested in the scientific training of young people. 



The objects sought in the schools were the collecting 

 of facts by direct observation of nature and the making of 

 systematic records of the observed facts. Indirectly, the 

 further object sought was to train the child in habits of 

 precision, carefulness, punctuality and that spirit of abso- 

 lute truthfulness that forms the basis of the scientific spirit. 

 The aim was to make the child absolutely sure of his facts, 

 to get the real facts and to record things precisely as he 



