EDITORIAL 279 



The biological view in education will be recognized as a 

 prominent factor in the impending redirection of the elementary 

 school curriculum. The animality of the human 

 The Parent and infant demands consideration as truly as — even 

 Nature-Study more than — his spirituality. Physical needs are 

 at first uppermost, and, contrary to common 

 educational practice, they do not vanish with the introduction of 

 the child to the schoolroom. His ante-academic days are essen- 

 tially — save for the unfortunate denizens of congested cities — a 

 six years' course in nature-study. Little brother to the birds and 

 bees, playmate with flower and tree, romping with canine chum, 

 his instincts find their setting most largely in the natural world.. 

 Kis attitudes are modified by contact with human companions 

 and in these formative experiences the parent, directly and indi- 

 rectly, exerts tremendous influence. Race-old native interest in 

 following the activities of a harmless insect may give way to 

 lite-long fear through the suggestion of a companion child whose 

 misguided parent has instilled a horror of those innocent crea- 

 tures which do not figure in a classical education. Response to 

 aesthetic forms is either encouraged or impaired before the age 

 of formal schooling. Educative opportunities, without number, 

 that make for future scientific attitude or attainment, present 

 themselves to observing parents both before and after the school 

 assumes its part in shaping development. 



It should be apparent that the home can in no wise cooperate 

 \rith the school to greater advantage than in promoting the foun- 

 dations of nature-study. In its forthcoming volume the Nature- 

 Study Review will present a series of articles which will assume, 

 although not formally, the nature of a parents' department. Sci- 

 entific elements in home activities and the nature inter- 

 ests of infancy and childhood will be considered from the point 

 of view of elementary education. If we succeed in stimulating or 

 guiding any educative eflfort in conservation of these precious 

 early years the reward will be sufficient. 



While entrance into this field has been under advisement for 

 some time, we are prompted in part by the passing of one whose 

 nature love and mother love combined to determine the activities 

 and mold the career of another. Lives in which self is least in 

 service can never die, and when the life finds its setting in the 

 handiwork of the Creator the uplift is incalculable. 



