Science and Nature-Study 



S. C. SCHMUCKER 

 Department of Biological Sciences, State Normal School, West Chester, Pa. 



There seems to be room for almost perennial misunderstanding 

 between the teacher of nature-study and the scientist. But there 

 has come an interesting alteration in recent years in the attitude 

 of the scientist to the teacher of nature-study. At first the 

 scientist looked upon the nature teacher, when he thought of him 

 at all, as just within the range of his contempt, and when a certain 

 noted public man of very versatile mind and considerable experience 

 coined the term "nature fakir" to apply to the author of a series of 

 stories, the purport of which he had not really caught, the scientific 

 world backed up the cry and anyone who studied animals without 

 using the microscope and without chasing them through analytical 

 keys, and tacking the Latin names to them, became from that time 

 on a nature fakir. Even so good a student of nature as John 

 Burroughs fell into the same error, and did not realize that anyone 

 whose aims and methods were not his own could have honest or 

 honorable purpose in the work he did. 



Of recent years the attitude of the scientist has had a distinct 

 change. If he pays any attention to the nature teacher it is a very- 

 patronizing attention, and he shows his entire willingness to rob 

 himself of a portion of his leisure in order that he may uplift this 

 poor nature teacher, and bring him into proper connection with 

 the scientific world. It is this latter attitude which is the one 

 fraught with danger for nature-study. Until the scientist is broad 

 enough to realize the aims and purposes of nature-study and ceases 

 to look upon it as the first step towards university training, he 

 never will be a good guide to the teacher of nature. He may be 

 an entirely good source of scientific information, and on this 

 account be valuable, but the mind of the teacher must transmute 

 the material gained from the scientist, and often eliminate the 

 major portion of it completely, transforming the rest before it will 

 at all serve as material for nature teaching, though it may form a 

 splendid background in the mind of the teacher who knows how 

 to transmute it. Dean Bailey got the distinction marvelously 

 many years ago when he said in substance that when we are think- 

 ing particularly of the subject we are studying, and are organizing 



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