50 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [12:2— Feb., 1916 



Accepting these facts, one is driven to the conclusion that the 

 training of the teacher is the most fundamental element of the 

 problem with which we are dealing. Upon it depends the establish- 

 ment of the subject upon a sure foundation. To this then atten- 

 tion may now be directed. I shall point out, necessarily but 

 briefly, some of the necessary elements in that training. To point 

 our m'nds definitely toward it, let us make the inquiry: 



Of what then, ought this training to consist? 



Of the reply I would make a division into two large topics. Such 

 training should consist, first, of a study of the theory, or the 

 "why" of the thing; and, secondly, of the practise, or the "how" 

 thereof. By the first I mean the discovery in the nature of the 

 child of the reasons for bringing him into contact with Nature; 

 and by the second, the study of Nature, in order better to under- 

 stand the world in which we live, and of the methods and devices 

 best adapted to stimulate children to do the same. There is need 

 to enlarge upon these points, and we may attack them in order. 



That the most convincing argument for the introduction of the 

 subject is found in the instinctive interests, and the mental needs 

 of the child for multisensory training, has already been suggested. 

 Since Rousseau pled for the restoration of the first twelve years of 

 life to contact with Nature, to be taught by her, and to learn her 

 laws first-hand, many others have followed in the same avenue of 

 thought, tho with different ends, and have insisted that our early 

 school life is too formal, too uninteresting, too deadening of the 

 child's mental keenness, too confining. Too little appeal is made to 

 the instinctive interests, and too much emphasis laid upon the 

 acquisition of adult ideas. These conditions have evolved out of 

 the acceptance* of the doctrine of formal discipline, now, fortunately 

 slowly losing its hold upon us. Then too, as our modes of life 

 have increased in complexity, and our cultures have expanded, it 

 has seemed necessary to insert into the curricula now one, then more 

 of the various studies which have imposed themselves as being 

 essential to the fitting of a child eventually to take his place in 

 society. As the pressure has increased these increments have been 

 forced lower and lower in the grades, and instruction has become 

 more and more formal and exacting. All of this has caused us to 

 overlook the age-long accumulation of a mental and physical 

 momentum back of the evolution of the child, and against which 

 this formalization of the curriculum certainly operates. Child life 



