JOHNSON] THE A' A TURK- S TUD Y EXCURSIOX 1 5 i 



she should. One of the great benefits of nature-study teaching is 

 that by it superstition and needless fear are removed from the 

 child's mind and he is thus given a saner and more intelligent view 

 of nature. What an enviable opportunity is mine when I can 

 demonstrate to the child the fact that the dragon-fly is not a 

 "stinger," that he cannot "sew people's ears up," and that he is 

 altogether a harmless, yea, more than that, a defenceless creature; 

 when I can induce the child to prove it to his own satisfaction. 

 What an opportunity lost, if, through timidity or fear, I fail to 

 dispel his groundless fear and superstition. I believe it to be 

 entirely possible for any teacher who has sufficient interest 

 in the subject so to accustom herself to all forms of animal life 

 that she shall be able to give the nature-study lesson in school- 

 room or field without the least show of fear. She must do so if 

 she is to succeed in imparting to her pupils one of the most 

 valuable lessons from the work. 



Another problem which every teacher in conducting field 

 work must meet is that of class discipline. One of the objections 

 most strongly urged against the field trip is that it weakens 

 and sometimes destroys discipline. Whether it does so or not, 

 all depends upon the teacher. It is without doubt true that the 

 teacher's power in that line is either greatly weakened or greatly 

 strengthened by the class excursion. In no other line of school 

 work is there so great need for ingenuity in maintaining dis- 

 cipline as in the field trip and nowhere else has the teacher so 

 great an opportunity for becoming strong in government, for 

 new problems are constantly arising and some of them require 

 unique solutions. To illustrate: On one of our excursions in 

 the Chicago Vacation Schools in which three hundred and fifty 

 children from the slums participated, a number of boys dis- 

 regarding the customary regulation went bathing in the creek. 

 When discovered and spoken to by a teacher for the first and 

 second times they made not the least show of obedience, but when 

 the teacher quietly stooped and gathered a few stones of a 

 proper size for throwing (the teacher in this instance was a man) 

 there was not a boy among the bathers who did not make all 

 reasonable effort to get to the bank for his clothing. Now, of 

 course, these boys felt almost certain that the teacher would not 

 have thrown the stones, but they also knew that he could have 

 done so if he had wanted to, and knowing that he had a way of 

 enforcing obedience they readily yielded. 



