Field Work Records 



James G. Needham 



When a class goes out to do field work what kind of a report of 

 the work shall be required at the hands of the student ? I take it 

 that no teacher will question the need of record-making, if the trip 

 afield is to be for more than an airing. I take it all will agree that 

 a good field work program will require from the student resiilts 

 just as definite as those of a laboratory-work program. For such a 

 record serves the same ends. It facilitates the accumulation and 

 comparison of data. It concentrates attention on specific points 

 and gives purpose to observation and insures results. Teacher and 

 pupil alike need to have something to show for the experience 

 gained. 



Field work is not merely laboratory work done out-of-doors — at 

 least, it should not be this, if its chief values are to be realized. 

 Field work especially facilitates seeing things in the large. Its 

 program should be different; its emphasis is different; its tools 

 are different. An axe is a much better field-work tool than is a 

 scalpel. Field work should give an appetite for the smaller details 

 that are properly sought in the laboratory. For working out 

 details the laboratory has certain great and perfectly obvious 

 advantages. It has a roof and a floor and heating and ventilation 

 systems which provide uniform working conditions and eliminate 

 the vicissitudes of the weather. It has walls that shut out distrac- 

 tions. It has chairs and tables for the convenient bestowal of our- 

 selves, our apparatus, and our specimens. It brings light and water 

 and liquid fuels, and sometimes even specimens to us. What 

 wonder if with all these advantages it should be-times seem suffi- 

 cient unto itself. Certainly, laboratory work should be done in the 

 laboratory. To attempt to do it out-of-doors is a great waste of 

 time, as well as a failure to grasp another sort of opportunity. 



The other is the opportunity for learning the qualities of things 

 in nature; their fitness as measiired by the standards of the com- 

 petition of life ; what things are good for, and how they get on in 

 the world. This is fundamental education. The boy who roams 

 the woods and does the mixed chores of the farm, must get some of 

 it. He may lack discrimination ; he will overlook most interesting 

 and important details; but he learns of necessity the qualities of 

 things that make them factors in the struggle for a place in the 



