LATTA] NATURE-STUDY IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 45 



over our fair state farmers are asking that the education of the chil- 

 dren be made more helpful in solving the every-day problems of life. 

 This attitude is rapidly crystallizing into a demand for revision of the 

 school curriculum, in order that agriculture may have its rightful place 

 in the course of study. 



(4) The subject often appeals strongly to the apparently dull or 

 plodding, or supposedly incorrigible pupil, who takes little interest in 

 the purely academic studies and who knows more of brooks than 

 books, more of the parts of a fly than of the parts of speech. 



There are many examples of persons whose intellectual faculties 

 have been stimulated to normal activity, and whose interest has 

 been aroused by natural history subjects outside the school cur- 

 riculum. 



(5) The subjects of nature-study and elementary agriculture 

 appeal strongly to the aesthetic, the imaginative and the spiritual in 

 the child, lifting him above the brain racking problems of cube root 

 and complex fractions, above the mercenary level of percentage and 

 profit and loss, and above the wearisome definitions of subjunctives 

 and infinitives into the diviner atmosphere, throbbing with impulses 

 and wooings and suggestions which both nourish and gratify the finer 

 instincts and sensibilities and aspirations of the mind. 



(6) Another reason for making elementary agricultural science a 

 part of the course of study is the interest it generally awakens in 

 mathematics and language, or the opportunity it affords for training in 

 these lines. The problems of natural science require a knowledge of 

 both arithmetic and language to compute and define. Thus the 

 student will come to find the real value and use of figures of notation 

 and figures of speech in the solution of problems nearest to his heart 

 and life. 



(7) Another reason which applies particularly to the rural schools 

 is the right of the country children to a school training w^hich will 

 specially prepare them for life on the farm. 



The great majority of these children do not get beyond the eighth 

 grade. If special instruction in the elements of agriculture is denied 

 them, they must be greatly handicapped in their efforts to wdn success 

 and become useful citizens. 



(8) Another excellent reason, and the last to be mentioned, for plac- 

 ing the subjects of nature-study and agriculture in the public schools 

 is that they call for and make possible a truly pedagogic order of pro- 

 cedure. These subjects are of vital interest to the pupil; they appeal 



