176 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [i, 5, sept. 1905 



the years pass the subject is viewed in its wider relations, it be- 

 comes better defined and its purposes more consciously in view. 

 There is just as much difference in method and object between the 

 geography of the primary school and that of the university as 

 there is between nature-study and science.^ 



What is Nature-Study 



Educational leaders have voiced for three hundred years the 

 importance of going directly to nature for our knowledge of her, 

 rather than to books. This thought has been partly expressed 

 in geography teaching in the growing attention paid to the study 

 of the home. It also appeared in object teaching which was so 

 prominent in the schools a generation ago. The influence of the 

 older natural history and the expansion of science in recent years 

 in the college and high school has also had a very important effect 

 upon the attention paid to the study of nature in the elementary 

 school. 



Although object teaching was too often formal and lifeless, yet 

 it seems to have furnished the fundamental conceptions of the 

 nature-study of today, and that is the placing of emphasis upon 

 the general culture of the pupil rather than upon the acquisition 

 of facts. The influence of the science teaching of the higher 

 schools was however in the opposite direction. It frequently intro- 

 duced quantitative and analytic methods of mature minds be- 

 lieving that nature could be profitably studied only in this man- 

 ner. It tried to bend the children toward its own methods, rather 

 than to adapt them to the children ; so that the latter have often 

 been set at the study of natural phenomena from a standpoint 

 which was far beyond their understanding. The consequence 

 was that interest disappeared and the study lost all its value. 



In the place of the formal methods of object teaching, and the 

 more precise and exact methods of science, there has grown up 

 the conceptions covered by the modern term nature-study. This, 

 although in practice still ill-defined and often poorly worked 

 out, contains some fundamental truths which place it far in ad- 

 vance of the earlier efforts. 



Although discarding the ways of science, nature-study does not 



thereby become unscientific. It merely adapts its methods to the 



needs of children. If we would develop in them an intelligent 



^ See discussion in this journal, No. i, January, 1905. — Managing Editor. 



