NATURE STUDY 



4082 



NATURE STUDY 



magazines for many years published articles 

 and discussions of the new study. Gradually, 

 because it was championed so stanchly by 

 prominent educators, it began to gain ground. 

 To-day it is an accepted part of regular work 

 in most public schools. 



The Value of Nature Study. Above every- 

 thing else, nature study should give a child a 

 n of companionship with all out-of-doors, 

 and with all living things. From these he will 

 learn to appreciate color and form and sound. 

 The thundercloud piled in the western sky, the 

 flash of the robin's red breast, the down on the 

 wing of a moth, the bird songs, the sound of 

 rain on the roof and of the wind in the tree 

 tops, the murmur of the brook all these will 

 be a real part of his world, for him to inquire 

 into. For a child who acquires this sensitive- 

 ness to beauty, such stanzas as those from Jean 

 Ingelow, printed on page 3319, will take on new 

 meaning. 



This sense of kinship with all living things 

 should inevitably follow the study of nature. 

 If it does not, then the study might better.be 

 abandoned. However, if there is in the teacher's 

 heart a real love of nature, such results are not 

 likely to occur. 



The outdoor expeditions which form so im- 

 portant a part of nature study not only keep 

 the child in the open air but also teach him how 

 to occupy his time when he is in the open. 

 Children who form a genuine interest in the 

 subject are not likely to get into mischief. All 

 children have a little of the vandal in them. 

 A love for and interest in growing and living 

 things will check this impulse to mutilate or to 

 destroy. 



Dr. Hall of Clark University once said: "Na- 

 ture in its broad conception includes the funda- 

 mental subject matter of all education." Fran- 

 cis Parker expressed the same idea in other 

 words. Both these highly-educated and intel- 

 ligent men had a broad and noble conception of 

 the value and purpose of education. They 

 realized that in the immediate world about the 

 child were all the materials for accomplishing 

 this purpose. And it is true that nature study 

 can be correlated with every other study the 

 child takes up with language and reading, with 

 arithmetic, geography and history. 



For instance, consider language work. Boys 

 and girls dislike language exercises, as a rule, 

 simply because they are not interested in the 

 subject matter about which they write. If they 

 are interested and can feel at the same time 

 that anything they may have to say will be of 



interest to some one else, the language lesson 

 will be robbed of its tedium. In their nature 

 lessons they will have an unlimited source of 

 interesting subject matter. A field notebook 

 will furnish numberless language exercises with- 

 out the pupil's being conscious of it. This 

 notebook should be the pupil's exclusive pos- 

 session and need not be shown to the teacher 

 unless the child so desires. The observations 

 put down in this notebook should not be cor- 

 rected. Pointing out errors of grammar, punc- 

 tuation and spelling would tend to check the 

 pupil's freedom of expression. 



If excursions are frequent (and they should 

 be), it is probable that all the boys and girls 

 will have a vivid interest in putting down an 

 account of what they see and hear, but this 

 account will lose most of its charm if the child 

 becomes self-conscious. However, since pupils 

 learn to write by actually writing, the exercise 

 will be of sufficient value, even though mistakes 

 are frequent and they are bound to become 

 less and less frequent as time goes on. Older 

 pupils will get helpful suggestions from such 

 writers as Ernest Thompson Seton, Thoreau 

 and John Burroughs. Thompson Seton's books 

 are embellished with marginal notes and illus- 

 trations which are particularly interesting and 

 helpful. 



The correlation of nature study and drawing 

 is also inevitable. All boys and girls love to 

 draw. For the very young pupil, drawing is a 

 natural, though very crude, means of expres- 

 sion. As soon as this drawing is done under 

 direction it loses a part of its value. The for- 

 mal study of drawing must, of course, be done 

 under direction, but it is not unlikely that the 

 drawing done in notebooks or in nature study 

 classes is of even greater value. Each pupil 

 should be permitted to choose his medium for 

 the work pencil or pen and ink or water colors 

 or colored crayons and be allowed to draw 

 anything that appeals to him as the subject for 

 a picture. Most of the pictures produced will 

 be poor, of course, but on the other hand, be- 

 cause the pupil is intensely interested, some 

 will be surprisingly good. It is probable that 

 with some pupils this spontaneous drawing will 

 compare very favorably with that done in the 

 formal drawing class. 



In beginning work, geography and nature 

 study are very closely interrelated. All geog- 

 raphy study should begin with the home en- 

 vironment of the pupil, the outdoor world 

 which he knows. Francis Parker in his book 

 called Talks on Teaching explains fully his con- 



