THE CRITERIA OF SELECTION OF MATERIAL FOR THE 

 TEACHING OF NATURE-STUDY AND GEOGRAPHY 



By OTIS W. CALDWELL 



The University of Chicago 



[Read at meeting of Northern Illinois Teachers' Association, Nov. 2, 1907.] 



The form of statement of the topic of this discussion may be 

 presumed to suggest either that the fields of nature-study and geog- 

 raphy are essentially one and have the same criteria when used 

 in education, or that between the fields and criteria of these 

 subjects there should be recognized more sharply defined dis- 

 tinctions. In approaching this topic, therefore, it becomes 

 necessary first to consider the question of the unity of nature- 

 study and geography. It is also necessary that this consideration 

 be from the point of view of the instrumentality in educational 

 processes of nature-study and geography, and not from the point 

 of view of the special sciences that are involved. 



I. Unity of Nature-Study and Geography 



The nature experiences of the younger children — those^ below 

 school age and to the end of the third or even the fourth regular 

 school year — are those that have to do almost entirely with the 

 immediate environment. These earlier immediate nature experi- 

 ences are somewhat isolated and unorganized in the child's 

 mind. Such relationships as exist are of the position or associa- 

 tions of things when observed or experienced, not of their position 

 in any scheme of scientific arrangement. The interest of younger 

 children in natural phenomena is an interest in things, not an 

 interest in systems of arrangement of things. They ask many 

 specific and but few general questions about any one or a number 

 of the natural phenomena with which they are associated. ' 'What 

 is it?" "What is it for?" "How does it do it?" and"Isn't it 

 beautiful?" include the questions almost universally asked by 

 children when they face a new object. These fundamental 

 questions are the ones with which the human race doubtless 

 began its process of a more accurate adaptation to its natural 

 environment and are the ones with which that process has been 



