34 The Nature-Study Idea 



It relates schooling to living. It is a practical 

 working out of the extension idea that has been 

 so much a part of our time. More than any 

 other recent movement, it will reach the masses 

 and revive them. 



Nature-study should not be unrelated to the 

 child's life and circumstances. It stands for di- 

 rectness and naturalness. It is astonishing, when 

 one comes to think of it, how indirect and how 

 remote from the lives of pupils much of our edu- 

 cation has been. Geography still often begins 

 with the universe, and finally, perhaps, comes 

 down to some concrete and familiar object or 

 scene that the pupil can understand. Arith- 

 metic has to do with brokerage and partnerships 

 and partial paiyments and other things that 

 mean nothing to the child. Botany begins with 

 cells and protoplasm and cryptogams. History 

 deals with political and military affairs, and 

 only rarely comes down to physical facts and 

 to those events that express the real lives of the 

 people; and yet political and social affairs are 

 only the results or expressions of the way in 

 which people live. Readers begin with mere 



