I OO THE NA TURE-S TUB Y RE VIE W [su-ap»., 1909 



rod, the gall of the golden-rod, the crawfish. Why must 

 we go to the relatively unimportant and useless for our lesson 

 when the vitally important give the same lesson with a ready 

 created interest, with facts of more real value and concerning 

 which we as teachers have a much larger fund of knowledge from 

 which to teach. My whole point is this, let the subject-matter of 

 country nature-study be largely agricultural. Such nature- 

 study may then be regarded as elementary agriculture; partly 

 so, not entirely, for I would leave room for some non-agricultural 

 nature-study. Yet elementary agriculture is not nature-study. 

 Elementary agriculture is much more, and such nature-study as 

 this would serve to pave the way admirably to the elementary 

 agriculture to follow, having laid the foundation with some 

 facts and quickened and enlarged interest. With the transition 

 to elementary agriculture proper, there will be a change of 

 method, a more intensive study, a definite and premeditated, 

 rather than merely an incidental, accumulation of facts and 

 principles. The nature-study of the lower grades will lead up to 

 and gradually develop into the elementary agriculture of the 

 higher grades. 



THE RELATION OF NATURE-STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 

 IN ELEMENTARY RURAL SCHOOLS 



By E. DAVENPORT 

 Dean of the College of Agriculture, University of Illinois 



[Read for the author at meeting of the American Nature-Study Society, 

 Baltimore, Dec. 29, 1908.] 



Agriculture in the high school, like agriculture in the college, in 

 my opinion, should be considered as a strictly technical subject 

 taught primarily for vocational purposes. Aside from this, 

 however, it has a distinctly educational value of its own and is 

 worth teaching for pedagogic reasons. In the grades, I take it, 

 there is little opportunity to teach agriculture primarily for 

 vocational purposes, so that in the elementary schools whatever 

 we may be able to do along agricultural lines is largely of the 

 order of nature-study. 



Agriculture, however, even in the grades, is something more 

 than ordinary nature-study. It is nature-study plus utility. 

 It is nature-study with an economic significance. It is nature- 

 study which articulates with the affairs of real men in real life. 



