2 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [8:1— Jan., 1912 



The meeting was called to order by President Davis at the 

 Business High School Dec. 27, at 3 :30 p. m. . There were about 

 forty in attendance at the meetings. Nearly every one on the 

 program printed in the December number was present to take 

 part. Only a brief statement of some of the more important 

 points brought out can be mentioned, omitting entirely the re- 

 marks of some of the speakers who have promised for early 

 issues an article along the same line. 



Mr. C. H. Robison (N. J.) said: "I very much favor Pro- 

 fessor Bigelow's suggestion that the Review come out as a quar- 

 terly or bi-monthly. I also favor placing it on the same plane as 

 the Elementary School Teacher, School Review, Journal of Edu- 

 cational Psychology and similar journals. 



'T would favor also the experiment of issuing supplements 

 for as many of the intervening months as convenient which 

 should be purely informational and popular. This would furnish 

 enough matter to please the rank and file and leave the main 

 issue for such discussions of the problems of nature study as 

 marked the first two years of the magazine. 



'T also suggest having a number, say the December issue, 

 preceding the annual meeting contain carefully prepared papers 

 in the nature of these to be argued or discussed at the forthcom- 

 ing meeting. The June number, preceding the N. E. A. meeting 

 might do the same thing." 



Dr. Stanley Coulter (Indiana) : "Any organization is ef- 

 fective as it does work. The Nature-Study Society should in 

 my mind have for its first work the reaching of as large a num- 

 ber of teachers as possible. Until this is done the society is 

 merely moving in a circle. 



"There should also be an organization of suggestive courses 

 which shall be adapted to the stage of the development of the 

 pupil, which shall be logical and progressive, which shall de- 

 mand more first hand contact with nature on the part of the child 

 and much less talking on the part of the teacher. Such courses 

 should contain an amount of work which could be performed by 

 the child in the grade for which it is prepared in the time as- 

 signed to the subject. This means that the volume of existing 

 courses must be very greatly reduced. There should also be a 

 determination as to what constitutes the real center of the work ; 

 whether it is the material used or the intellectual result sought. 

 If the former is the idea, the subject is worthless from an edu- 

 cational standpoint. If the latter, it is one of the best educa- 

 tional tools that we have. 



