132 THE NATURE-STUDY IDEA 



ing by the confession, for he is honest. People 

 lose standing by pretending to know what they do 

 not know and by being caught at it. The child is 

 relieved to know that there is something yet to 

 be discovered. Verily, the subjects of which the 

 teacher does not know are useful in the teaching; 

 and then, they are so common ! 



But if the child choose the material, the subject will 

 lack continuity: what then? 



Nature is not consecutive except in her periods. 

 She puts things together in a mosaic. She has a 

 brook and plants and toads and bugs and the 

 weather all together. Because we have put the 

 plants in one book, the brooks in another, and 

 the bugs in another, we have come to think that 

 this divorce is the logical and necessary order. 

 I wonder ! 



Then would you give no heed to continuity ? 



How much or how little continuity will depend 

 on the teacher and the circumstance. With 

 children, the temptation is to have too much 

 rather than too little continuity. "First of all, we 

 must develop the child's experience. The higher 

 the grade, the more the topics may be correlated 

 and coordinated. I doubt whether a closely graded 

 nature-study is really nature-study at all. For 

 children, I believe in that continuity and consecu- 

 tiveness which relate the subject to its place and 

 season. In April, correlate the work with the 

 opening of the spring; in October, with the 

 coming of winter. Compare the nature-study of 

 June with that of May. With living things, 



