EDITORIAL 



It is the glory of nature study that it deals with commonplace 

 things ; the plants of the dooryard, the animals of the wayside, the 

 weeds of the waste places arc its appropriate subject matter. 



Nature is not the only school subject which is turning out- 

 attention to the commonplace things ; elementary agriculture, 

 sewing, cooking, gardening, shop work and commercial branches 

 are taking their places as proper school subjects. They deal with 

 objects that are in our everyday environment, the things of the 

 workaday world. It is well for the nature teacher — indeed for 

 every teacher, to realize the significance of this introduction of 

 such commonplace things into the school curriculum. It is a 

 relatively new move in education. 



A century since the children of the masses were toilers. 

 Child labor was everywhere prevalent; it was a necessity. It 

 took the combined efforts of the whole family among all but the 

 aristocracy to keep starvation from the door. Then the giant 

 powers of the universe were harnessed to aid human weakness ; 

 mighty steam and deft electricity supplanted human brawn and 

 tired muscles, freeing the little laborers from the slavery of pre- 

 mature toil. It is this industrial emancipation that has produced 

 the revolution in the school curriculum. Now the schools are for 

 the children of the masses, not for the favored few. 



These common people demand an education that shall be 

 based on the elements of their everyday tasks and their usual 

 environment. The schools must serve this new constituency and 

 the educator faces an herculean task — to replace the old course 

 of study, the product of centuries of pedagogical experience with 

 a course composed largely of subjects that have a distinct wage 

 earning value and yet that shall have much cultural value as 

 well. 



We as educators must see to it that in the hurried demand 

 for practical things, for elements in the school course of study 

 that shall have commercial values, we do not lose sight of the fact 

 that it is imperative to still pass on to the new generation, that 

 vast social heritage of the past. Nature study must do more for 

 the farmer lad than show him how to successfully win a few more 

 bushels of grain from a reluctant soil. That is eminently worth 

 while, and yet that is not alone worth while. Humanity in its 

 evolution has spent long ages in close contact with nature laying, 

 in the nervous system, those essential foundations of sensory 

 development which have made possible the intellectual and moral 

 achievements of the race. It is well for the individual to retrace 



