336 NA TURE-STUD Y RE VIEW [10:9— Dec, 1914 



clearly that nature-study is essentially different from all the other 

 book work of the schools and that it, along with manual training, 

 domestic science and industrial instruction generally, to which 

 nature-study is so closely allied, supplies a vitalizing leaven of 

 reality and that this real, active problem-solving is absolutely 

 essential to the best moral and educational life of the child in 

 every school grade from kindergarten up to and, most certainly, 

 through the high school. This sentiment finds strong expression 

 in the recent Portland School Survey as follows: 



"A practical, concrete course in nature-study, based not on 

 books, but on the phenomena of nature themselves, ought to form a 

 part of every elementary school curriculum, from the lowest to the 

 highest grade. Such a course, correlated with language, literature, 

 physiology and geography, and efficiently carried out, would do 

 something to modify Portland's present predominantly abstract 

 and bookish courses." 



The Portland schools do not stand alone in this lack of a prac- 

 tical, concrete course of nature-study — to relieve from bookishness, 

 to develop powers of reasoning, thinking and observing to discover 

 natural aptitudes of the child and bring him into harmony with the 

 laws and forces of nature and enable the schools to meet the charge 

 of general apartness from life and futility so persistently urged 

 against them. 



''A course in nature-study?" What school has worked out a 

 "practical, concrete course in nature-study"? What does such a 

 course do for the pupils and teachers, for the parents and the com- 

 munity? Is not the time ripe, and can the Review do better 

 service than by stressing during the year the matter of a consistent, 

 orderly, a ** practical, concrete course in nature-study," a course 

 that shall grip all the pupils, inspire all the teachers and enthuse all 

 the parents with the idea that it is worth while to send their 

 children to school to study and learn it ? Who will come forward 

 with such a course, give us complete outlines, describe it and tell 

 us all about it ? While I confess that I have never seen anything 

 very closely approximating such a course in operation throughout 

 a town or city I still have faith enough in the resources of nature 

 to satisfy the needs of the growing child so that I believe such a 

 course is possible. The mere effort to organize and reasonably 

 order the course will help us to winnow off the chaff from the wheat, 

 save the educationally vital and throw out the trifling in the great 

 mass of suggestions and ''lessons" that have been brought before 



