1 78 THE NA TURR-STUD V RE VIE W [3 : 6-sept., ,907 



a sponge or luffa gourd, in a glass of sand or coal, cannot but be 

 helpful aids to the school-garden work and work in elementary 

 agriculture so often combined with nature-study work. 



I feel very strongly that much of the most valuable material 

 for nature-study lies in the realm of physical science, and that 

 phvsics and chemistry abound in subject-matter which is often 

 much more available and at smaller cost than the materials so 

 frequently called for along the line of botany and zoology which 

 have filled the nature-study manuals. 



My point is that the true nature-study idea iS for the teacher to 

 use in the fullest way all science so long as the experiments and 

 apparatus will awaken the interest of the child in the world 

 around him. I believe that the science curriculum in the normal 

 schools embracing as it does botany, zoology, geology, chem- 

 istry and physics, for the most part taught from the view of 

 interest, will solve in the next decade the relation of nature-study 

 to natural science. The trained teachers who graduate each year 

 from these schools will go to the elementary schools prepared 

 to do original work in the nature-study period and will not 

 be tied down to the absurdities too often found in nature-study 

 outlines, supplied to the schools by enterprising publishers. 



I have been astonished at the reaction against science, as it has 

 been taught in our elementary and high schools for a term of 

 years, as is shown by the new crop of text-books in chemistry, 

 physics, botany and zoology. Subject-matter, illustrations, 

 press-work and binding all appeal to nature-study methods of 

 interest. 



Now I confess that, personally, it went against the grain for me 

 to accept the fact that my strictly scientific training, my techni- 

 cal physics, chemistry and botany would have to be somewhat 

 discounted in my classroom if I wished to do what was really best 

 for my pupils ; but I am now thoroughly converted to the idea 

 that if I get my pupils interested in these subjects in the spirit of 

 nature-study they will teach much better in the elementary 

 schools than if I harass them with the — to most pupils — abso- 

 lutely detestable laws of physics, chemical formulas and botanical 

 definitions. There is so much in these subjects of intense interest 

 that I do not think it right to make too much of the principles 

 which, though of great value to the professional physicist, chemist 

 and botanist, have no real value to the average teacher or pupil. 



