NATURE-STUDY AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 



BY GEO. P. SINGER 

 State Normal School, Lock Haven, Pa. 



[Editor's Note. — The following is an abstract of an address by- 

 Professor Singer before the Pennsylvania State Educational Association. 

 More of the address is published in Penn. School Journal.] 



"Now what I want is facts. Teach ' these boys and girls 

 nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing 

 else and root out everything else. You can only form the 

 minds of reasoning animals upon facts. Nothing else will ever 

 be of any service to them. This is the principle upon which I 

 bring up my own children and this is the principle upon which I 

 bring up these children. Stick to facts, sir." So Dickens, the 

 master of pedagogy, introduces Thomas Gradgrind, " A man of 

 realities, a man of facts and calculations," the chief personage in 

 "Hard Times," which was written as Dickens' earnest protest 

 against the science then taught in English schools. 



I fear the story of Sissy Jupe, the jocky's daughter, and her 

 experiences in Gradgrind's school has far too man}^ parallels in 

 our own schools today where the nature-study period is too often 

 used for instruction in elemental y science which the teacher has 

 read from a so-called nature-study book and which she demands 

 to be reproduced in an oral or written lesson. 



How shocking that Sissy could not form a definition for a 

 horse when the master called upon her the first day she was a 

 pupil in the school! What appalling ignorance! And how 

 scientific the answer of Bitzer, the bright boy: "Quadruped, 

 graminivorous, forty teeth, namely: twenty-four grinders, four 

 eye-teeth and twelve incisors, etc., etc. Hoofs hard but requir- 

 ing to be shod with iron; age known by marks in the teeth." 

 Siss}^ Jtipe not know what a horse is ? Why she knew everything 

 about their habits and dispositions; loved them dearly, as they 

 had been her daily companions for years. Well might Grad- 

 grind, Bitzer and M'Choakumchild sit at her feet and be instruc- 

 ted by her on this subject from the standpoint of nature-study, 

 than to hold her up as an ignoramus in the facts of natural science. 



[Here Professor Singer quoted and discussed paragraphs by 



