Children's Interest in Nature Material 



Elliot R. Downing. 



The native interest of the child in the materials used for in- 

 struction is one important criterion in the selection of subject 

 matter. If the end to be accomplished by the school can be 

 achieved through the use of inherently attractive material, surely. 

 it is an economy of effort to use such. Moreover, recent studies 

 (Thorndyke, Popular Science Monthly, November 1912, etc.) 

 seem to show that interest is prophetic of achievement and is 

 a much more permanent thing than was earlier supposed. 



In the last number of the Review, Miss Mau gave some 

 interesting results of schoolroom studies of children's interest in 

 nature material. Mr. Chas. W. Finley carried out a similar in- 

 vestigation the previous year while a student in the School of 

 Education here. It seemed to the writer worth while to under- 

 take, as a check on these results, the classification of the ques- 

 tions asked by children regarding nature phenomena in the pages 

 of St. Nicholas, under the department headed "We Will Ask St. 

 Nicholas About It" or "Because We Want to Know." The ques- 

 tions are purely voluntary on the part of children. They are not 

 stimulated by any questionaire and so represent the normal in- 

 terests of the child somewhat better perhaps than schoolroom 

 experiments which are ponducted necessarily under somewhat 

 artificial conditions. This department began in St. Nicholas, in 

 November, 1899, Volume 27, and has continued to the present. 

 The material of this study includes all of these questions and ob- 

 servations up to the end of April of the present year. These let- 

 ters represent only a fraction of those that have been received by 

 St. Nicholas, as the following extract from a letter from Edward 

 F. Bigelow, who edits the department indicates. 



Arcadia, Sound Beach, Conn., Oct. 10. 1912. 

 ?Vly Dear Mr. Downing : 



In reply to your inquiry of the fifth, will state that only a 

 very small percentage of letters received from children are pub- 

 lished in my department, "Nature and Science," of St. Nicholas. 

 It varies greatly from month to month. We publish only as we 

 have room, which is only a very few each month — a selection 

 from those that seem of greatest general interest and remotest 

 from those we have already published. 

 Yours very truly. 



Edward F. Bioelow. 



334 



