Inquiries and Answers 203 



things out-of-doors be fostered by means of 

 informal and yet careful instruction during the 

 earlier school years without special reference to 

 the utilitarian phases of nature?"] 



Your questions are easy for me to answer 

 because they are framed in such a way that I 

 need only to say "yes" to every one of them. 



Nature-study teaching is not specialized teach- 

 ing. It is a fundamental educational process 

 which should put the child right toward the 

 world and toward life. If every child should 

 have a close connection with his environment, 

 so, also, should every grown-up; and it follows 

 that if the grown-up is a teacher, he will carry 

 this spirit into the schoolroom. 



The child who has the proper point of view 

 toward the world in which he lives, and proper 

 sympathy toward the objects and affairs about 

 him, will be better prepared for any kind of 

 study that comes later, whether that study is 

 Latin, mathematics, engineering, agriculture, or 

 other subject. I should leave the technical 

 agriculture for the high-school, and preferably 

 for the upper grades of the high-school. It is 



