wager] TRAINING TEACHERS OF NATURE-STUDY 51 



inherits a tremendous racial impetus for the open ; for fields and 

 woods and streams ; for birds and flowers and trees ; for trail and 

 tracks ; for play and sport, learning betimes, much which may later 

 furnish a basis for, and give meaning to the generalizations and 

 principles taught in school. Learning by living through play, 

 through activity and contact, under the impulse of deep-seated 

 interests, is the open sesame to childhood education of the future. 

 In that Nature-Study must play a conspicuous part, "We must 

 teach Nature, although the very name is ominous" says Hall. 

 "But we must not in so doing, wean still more from, but perpetually 

 incite to visit field, forest, hill, shore, the water, flowers, animals, 

 the true homes of childhood in the wild, undomesticated stage 

 from which modern conditions have kidnapped and transported 

 him. Books and reading are distasteful, for the very soul and body 

 cry out for a more active, objective life, and to know Nature and 

 man at first-hand." The first great need, is, then that the teacher 

 should understand the child himself; in him are found the most 

 insistent arguments for the work in Nature-Study. Such knowledge 

 lends assurance and confidence. That such instruction should be 

 given is then most evident. 



"But" you say, "how could this sort of study and instruction be 

 included in a course already overcrowded?" Easily, it seems. 

 The courses in psychology and pedagogy, quite generally offered 

 and required in normal schools, training schools, and institutes, 

 might be modified along the lines of the child study idea, and 

 with profit. The formal psychology deals with the adult mind, 

 and with abstractions but feebly related to the interpretation and 

 understanding of the instincts and interests and manner of develop- 

 ment of the child, and consequently, are of relatively small value 

 in determining methods based upon instinctive interests. We 

 must turn to the study of the child himself, so that we shall no 

 longer attempt to interpret him in the light of adult experiences 

 and interests. This study of the child furnishes the materials for 

 our theory, or the why of Nature-Study, for it has to do with the 

 biological and psychological significance of Nature contact in the 

 life and development of the child. This surely should be a part 

 of the training of the teacher. 



We may now turn to the other element of the problem, namely, 

 the need for a first-hand knowledge of Nature. Not that kind 

 of information secured through books, though they of course must 



