THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



DEVOTED PRIMARILY TO ALL SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF NATURE I.V 



ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 



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Editorial 



NATURE-STUDY OR ELEMENTARY SCIENCE 



We have been trj-ing to teach Nature-study for lo ! these many- 

 years ; in many schools we have been successful and it has become a 

 vital part of the child's thought and expression ; in many, on the 

 contrary, it has proven so dull and tminteresting that it has been 

 abandoned. Why? Because the teachers lacked knowledge of 

 subject matter or else had the cut-and-dried habit of mind, both 

 fatal to vital teaching. Now many of these teachers are cheering 

 up and saying, "Let us teach Elementary' Science instead of 

 Nature-study for it will prove far more interesting." Never was a 

 greater mistake ! A teacher who fails in one will fail in the other 

 for the same reasons, — through lack of knowledge of where science 

 impinges upon the child's interests and experience, — and book- 

 teaching rather than teaching with the object itself. 



Nature-study and Elementary Science are one and the same and 

 the name given to either makes no difference as to the underlying 

 facts; both deal with the world of matter with which the child 

 comes constantly in contact; both should teach him to know his 

 environment, to think about it, and to make it a part of his mental 

 equipment with which he is to meet the problems of his future life. 

 Whether it be a knowledge of the birds, the insects, the plants, the 

 trees, the soil, the minerals, or the thousand and one processes as to 

 which elemental-}' physics makes such wonderftil revelation, it is all 

 the same. The work must be concrete and not abstract ; it must 

 make the child think, question, and know; it must take hold of his 

 interests and make them more interesting; it must illtmiinate his 

 daily life. 



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