296 NATURE'STUDY REVIEW [10:8— Nov., 1914 



with the wholesome comforts and beauties of the garden; and 

 what a teacher she may be in a few years. 



All this progress has meant change in subject matter, growth in 

 ideas and advance in methods on the part of teachers. A 

 whole new field, the whole out-of-doors, has been thrust upon 

 them to teach. It is one thing to teach the easy little lessons in 

 the easy little printed books and quite another matter to study 

 and learn together with the children and try to teach the big book 

 of nature. Far too little thought has been given to this phase of 

 our problem — teachers expected to teach children to garden who 

 have themselves never so much as thought of planting a seed of 

 any kind; to lead their pupils in bird study, who have never learn- 

 ed to tell a crow from a crocus or a hawk from a handsaw ; to teach 

 the trees, who have never been taught rightly a single common 

 oak or maple ; and to teach insects, who have never dared to look 

 a single bug in the face. All this infinite wealth of nature dumped 

 on them to teach, on the one side; on the other, courses and equip- 

 ment, gardens and other facilities and opportunities for study at 

 first hand in the normal schools of ten years ago, in which most of 

 the teachers in the harness to-day received their preparation, utter- 

 ly inadequate or even absolutely nil. The public is making these 

 demands on the teachers, and nothing can be plainer than the sim- 

 ple, common-sense proposition that the public must supply ade- 

 quate instruction and equipment for their preparation to teach. 



Two propositions thus become clear at the outset. We must 

 adequately reorganize and equip our normal schools with labora- 

 tory, greenhouse and garden facilities, properly to fit teachers of 

 the present and future; and, of even more moment just at present, 

 we must offer every possible help and encouragement to the teach- 

 ers already out in the work. This may be done through educa- 

 tional journals. State nature-study and biology leaflets, and really 

 helpful, practical and inspiring lectures in institutes and the siun- 

 mer schools. Wisconsin has already set the pace in its Arbor and 

 Bird Day Annual, a model of both inspiration and instruction; a 

 happy union of art and science. Be liberal, the subject is well 

 worth all we can possibly afford to spend on it, even in money, and 

 much more in life. To require bricks without straw was an out- 

 worn policy five or six thousand years ago. 



Teachers cannot be prepared to teach nature-study by unkindly 

 criticism. The first thing one is likely to hear when instruction 



