DEARNESs] THE ORGANIZATION OF NATURE-STUDY 353 



longer and fuller and more detailed a nature-study course is, the 

 more useful and satisfactory it will be to a teacher who under- 

 stands it as a list of suggestions to aid him in choosing his work. 

 If it is all that it ought to be it will sometimes guide him to the 

 selection of lessons thac are not even named in this list. 



Granted that the nature-study course cannot be overloaded for 

 the teacher who comes to pick and choose what is suited to his 

 class and circumstances, — the keynote for the individual teacher^ 

 the county committee or the state board is touched by Dr. Otis 

 W. Caldwell, ' see page 358 et. seq. of the December, 1Q14 Nature- 

 Study Review. The natural response of the child is the test of 

 the fitness of a study. But it should not be forgotten for a minute 

 that the fitness is an outcome of the method of treatment even 

 more than of the matter appropriate to the topic. Grown-ups are 

 prone to impose their own responses and interests, partictdarly 

 their economic ones, upon the child instead ot seeking the child's 

 natural line of inquiry. The formula of teaching-experience that 

 would be most helpful to an officer engaged in constructing a 

 nature-study course would be something like this : — I have found 

 that children of m years of age have maintained educative Interest 

 in investigations of ... . (the topics to be named) .... pursued along 

 the lines indicated under each. 



To judge the work of a nature-study teacher I should not ask 

 him what topics he had taken and what ones as printed in a course 

 of study he had omitted. I should prefer to see him at work with 

 his class. Could he then say, "I employ a half -hour daily with 

 these children in work of this quality." I should know better the 

 satisfactoriness of: his nature teaching than by the application of 

 any other test that I know of. Bear in mind that children's 

 interest and teachers' method are the factors of dominating 

 importance in nature-study teaching. 



London, Ont. 



