Sylvester] NATURE-STUDY IN CITY DISTRICTS 203 



object of the study is defeated if we force the child to study things 

 in which he has no interest. 



The great purpose of nature-study is to give the child a simple, 

 observational knowledge of the objects by which he is surrounded, 

 so as to place him in harmony and in sympathy with his environ- 

 ment, and with the forces at work about him. In our elementary 

 work in the lower grades, we should not aim to arrange these 

 facts with reference to any special branch of science, but we 

 should seek to adapt the work to the needs and capacities of 

 our pupils. 



What then, is nature-study? "It is not science, not knowledge, 

 not fact — it is attitude, spirit, a point of view, a means of contact 

 with things about us." The difference is largely one of spirit 

 toward the work, in other words, rather than of subject-matter. 

 When teachers fully appreciate and understand this, our work 

 will gain a hundred fold in value. 



Every educational problem presents certain difficulties peculiar 

 to itself. There is, perhaps, no subject in the whole curriculum 

 which offers so many sorts of difficulties as nature-study does — 

 and especially is this true in congested districts. 



At the very outset, a number of serious obstacles present them- 

 selves: (1) Lack of material ; (2) Difficulty of securing suitable 

 material at the proper time; (3) Lack of time to care properly 

 for material provided ; (4) Lack of specific directions concerning 

 the work — lack of detail as to what should be taught under each 

 head; (5) How to manage a class of forty or fifty pupils, so that 

 each may get the maximum benefit from individual study of the 

 material provided; (6) Lack of proper correlation of nature- 

 study with the other subjects of the course. Much of the work 

 fails because it is still aimless, unrelated and unorganized. (7) 

 Lack of the "proper apperceptive basis on the part of the pupils. 

 This is perhaps the greatest obstacle with which we have to con- 

 tend in our work in congested city districts. It is difficult to 

 realize the extreme narrowness of view concerning nature sub- 

 jects — of many of our pupils in crowded districts. The perspec- 

 tive is very different from that of children in suburban districts. 

 To the city child every flower is a rose or a daisy. His acquain- 

 tance with animals often embraces merely the horse, dog, cat, 

 mouse; his range as to birds is covered by the chicken, goose, 

 duck and perhaps the turkey, as seen in the markets; also the 



