1 50 THE NATURE-STUDY IDEA 



ject is worthy of an honorable place in the course 

 of study of our common schools, of which the 

 Whittier School is only a type." 



Why should this nature-study be confined to the 

 schools ? 



It should not be confined to schools. Too often 

 it is so limited because we are in the habit of 

 delegating the training of our children to a 

 professional class of teachers. The home should 

 be the most perfect school, and the parents should 

 be the ideal teachers. In the increasing complica- 

 tion of our lives, however, the division of labor 

 forces the children more and more from the 

 home-training into the school-training; therefore 

 it is increasingly important that we give good heed 

 to the maintenance of good schools. But even 

 yet the home-training should afford an auxiliary to 

 the school-training. There should be more than 

 one common bond of method and purpose. One 

 of these bonds should certainly be the desire to put 

 the child into sympathetic relation with its own 

 necessities : this is nature-study, for, to a very great 

 degree, the child is the creature of its environments. 



I believe in the value of education by means of 

 literature and history and science and art ; but if I 

 were confined to one means I should choose that 

 education that would lead me to love the things 

 that I see and the work that I do day by day. This 

 outlook I should want to impress on my children ; 

 but I could not impress it by any mere intellectual 

 means. It is an affair of the heart; and if I do not 

 live it I cannot teach it. 



