174 HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 



have no speaking acquaintance. You must have, 

 in justice to the little folks, the nature-study 

 faculty, even if you do call it the teaching of 

 science. 



Call it what you will. If you are contending 

 for class instruction, with a mass of facts presented 

 according to schedule, and are ignoring individual 

 interests, then out on such teaching. There is 

 plenty of time in high school and college for 

 facts, facts, facts, and science, science, science; 

 banish them from the young folks' schools. 



As Professor Hodge so truly puts it : 



Recent developments of the sciences have completely 

 dazzled our modern education with their bewildering 

 array of newly-discovered facts, and the temptation has 

 proved irresistible to introduce their technicalities into 

 the elementary curriculum. But the childhood of the 

 race was very long, and we should not wish to force its per- 

 iod, brief at best, in the life of the individual. The weath- 

 ering of rock and the formation of soil afford interesting 

 lessons in modern geology ; but men dug and planted, and 

 established fruitful relations with Mother Earth thousands 

 of years before geology was even dreamed of. So with 

 combustion and the various forms of water : why not let 

 children wonder about them for a few years, and then come 

 with interest keen and fresh to their study in the chemistry 

 and physics of the high school and college. 



I heartily agree with this. Do not introduce 

 technicalities into the elementary curriculum. 



