Nature-Study 



J. A. Churchill, State Superintendent 

 (From the Course of Study for the Elementary Schools of Oregon) 



Mottoes: ''Teach the child, not the subject." {Churchill). ''Study nature^ 

 not books.'' {Agassi>). "In nature-study, telling is not teaching." (Trafton). 



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

 phenomena of nature themselves, ought to from a part of every elementary school 

 curriculum, from Ihe lowest to the highest grade." (Report of the Portland School 

 Survey, p. iii). 



Teachers and parents should unite in working out the best 

 possible courses in nature-study for the particular school district. 

 No attempt should be made to develop uniform, cut and dried 

 courses in this infinitely varied subject. Teach the child what 

 he most needs to learn about the nature immediately surrounding 

 his own home. The subject matter of such a course of nature- 

 study as is indicated in the above quotation from the Portland 

 Survey, is therefore, not the lions and elephants of Africa, nor the 

 stars and comets, but first of all the pets and domestic animals 

 belonging to the home, the birds, frogs and toads, gophers, moles, 

 rats and mice, the insects, injurious and beneficial common in the 

 neighborhood, then the common plants, the garden vegetables and 

 flowers, weeds and wild flowers, fruits, nut, ornamental and forest 

 trees, vines and shrubs: the things that make for the beauty, 

 comfort and proflt of home-life and for the love of home. 



The bane and distress of so much of our school life is the foolish 

 and impossible notion that a teacher ought to ''know it all", 

 ought to be able to answer every question about everything. In 

 nature-study we have a subject that instantly shatters this deaden- 

 ing fallacy and gives us comfortable, vital honesty between teacher 

 and pupil. That is, as long as a teacher is afraid to say, "I do 

 not know," he will be afraid to even try to teach nature; because 

 nature is infinite in every direction and man is finite. The first 

 question a child may ask — outside the limits of a book lesson — is 

 likely to be one, the answer to which no man on earth knows. 



Louis Agassiz is often called the greatest nature teacher this 

 country has ever known. "His magic," we are told, "was not 

 far to seek, he was so human." He never "stuffed" his pupils. 

 His secret of success consisted in telling them something he did 

 not know and in asking them to go to work and find out and tell 

 him. This is the finest inspiration any teacher can give to his 



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