The Opportunity for Research in the Problems of 

 Teaching Nature-Study 



Elliot R. Downing 



We are in the midst of a rapid reorganization of the school 

 curriculum — a reorganization based on a newly acquired body of 

 facts regarding the essential elements in primary school subjects. 

 The educator interested in the elementary school situation is 

 investigating in a scientific way what knowledge of spelling, reading 

 and arithmetic is needed by the average pupil. He is securing the 

 necessary facts on which to base his conclusions by listing the most 

 frequently used words in commercial letters, by a careful study of 

 the literature the child naturally reads at a given age, by determin- 

 ing the various commercial processes that involve skill in the use of 

 numbers. There is universal insistence that subject matter which 

 serves no definite need of the child shall be eliminated from the 

 course. 



When it has been determined that a given list of words is needed, 

 a certain reading vacabulary, some definite skill in number work, 

 then the educator of this new scientific type, is undertaking studies 

 to enable him to grade this material according to difficulty, basing 

 his conclusions, not on casual opinion, but on carefully conducted 

 experiment. So there are being developed "scales of hardness" for 

 spelling, reading, writing, etc. We know by careful trial what, 

 children of a given grade, may be expected to do with certain 

 materials, what problems in arithmetic, what exercises in language 

 belong in the upper grades, what in the lower ; even more definitely, 

 the scales distinguish second grade capacity from third grade, fourth 

 from fifth. 



Furthermore, the modern educator is testing out various methods 

 of presentation of subject matter to determine which is the most 

 effective and is only content when he can measure the comparative 

 results in mathematical terms that carry conviction not to himself 

 alone but to the fraternity at large. Do spelling lessons with 

 words in columns better facilitate learning than those in which words 

 are underscored in the context ? Do written or oral problems most 

 promptly give ability to add with accuracy? What unnecessary 

 movements are made in learning to write and how may they best 

 be eliminated? These are types of the problems that are being 



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