DEARNi-ss] ' FACTS IN NATURE-STUDY 153 



Think of a lot of public-school children at their nature-study lesson 

 — a lesson that is supposed to train their powers to observe and to 

 reason about what they observe. What good or what harm will 

 come from their learning, as book statements, that the bee ' laps up 

 the nectar,' and carries a ' load twice its own weight,' nine-tenths of 

 which is water. If these are facts, but facts which cannot be 

 learned by the children's own investigation, then they are not suited 

 to the nature-study lesson. If they can be discovered in a reasonable 

 time by self-active investigation, then the training thus derived vastly 

 outweighs the facts reached. Had the " Story of the Bees " shown the 

 teacher and pupils how to discover these facts with the means at 

 hand in a public school, it might have legitimately been labelled 

 ' nature-study.' The proper point of view is the effect that the 

 lesson has, not in diminishing the mountain of scientific knowledge 

 lying outside of the child's memory, but the effect it has upon the 

 development of the child's power to observe, to reason about what he 

 observes, and to sympathize with the sentient world around him. 



'' The hive-bee may be made a capital nature-study lesson in a 

 school where an observatory hive, suited to receive one Langstroth 

 frame, is set against a slightly-opened window, guarded at the side so 

 that a bee cannot escape into the schoolroom. Such a hive may 

 be made or bought ready-made from some dealer. Instead of a 

 story of the bees, even the most faultless one, what the nature-study 

 teacher needs is explicit direction how to make or where to obtain 

 such a hive, how to set it up and ventilate it, how to manage the 

 light, etc., and a series of questions that will guide himself first, and 

 then his pupils in their observations, the answers to be sought, not 

 from a book, but from the bees themselves. The bees will tell no 

 fictions. 



" As a nature-study teacher, of nothing else do I feel more certain 

 than that the harmonious development of the child in heart, as well 

 as head and hand, either for the future farmer or town-dw^eller, is 

 vastly more important than all the collections and knowledge of 

 weeds and insects that he can possibly get at the public school. In 

 other words, that the hozv these facts of nature are learned is far 

 more important than the what. If my position is wrong, I hope 

 some one will show the reason whv." 



