BiGELOw] NATURE-STUDY IN HIGH SCHOOLS jg 



already pointed out in Chapter IV, pp. 320-327, of " The Teaching 

 of Zoology in the Secondary School " (N. Y., Longsmans, Green 

 & Co., 1904), that this nature-study work in the biology of high 

 schools is probably a temporary compromise made necessary 

 because of the undeveloped nature-study in lower schools ; and 

 that with the advance of nature-study the larger part of the natural 

 history for the sake of general acquaintance with common living 

 things will be taught in the elementary school, leaving the high 

 school free to devote its time to more serious study of biology as a 

 science, with incidental instead of primary emphasis on natural 

 history. 



But no matter what may be the future developments, the fact 

 remains that the high-school work in natural history or biological 

 nature-study presents no peculiar problems. It is in all essentials 

 the same study of living animals and plants which in many schools 

 is conducted in the upper grammar grades. Much of it is study 

 of living things out of doors, usually for the sake of identification 

 and general acquaintance ; but this, too, is well accomplished in 

 elementary schools. I have seen fifth-grade classes do field work 

 in study of birds and trees which would be highly creditable to 

 the first year of high school. We must conclude that the high- 

 school study of natural history is so similar to the nature-study 

 of the lower schools that in dealing primarily with nature-study 

 for elementary education this journal will most directly approach 

 the problems, and at the same time the materials will be just as 

 useful to the high-school teacher who has occasion to present 

 nature-studies either as an incidental or as a prominent part of 

 science, especially biology. 



Finally, in addition to the present reasons wh}^ high-school 

 teachers of biology are directly interested in nature-study as a 

 part of their teaching and the indirect interest which the best 

 teachers of any grade of our educational system have in the low^er 

 work upon which they must build, there is still another important 

 stimulus for interest in nature- study in that more and more the 

 elementary-school teachers are looking to the science specialists 

 in the high school for directions, thus leading high-school teachers 

 to get acquainted with the problems of the lower school. 



