BROWN A NATURE-STUDY PROJECT 363 



A Nature-Study Project for the Grades and 

 High-School 



H. Clark Brown 



Charles City, Iowa 



No sane person of to-day would claim that the introduction 

 of Nature Study into the school curriculum has been a wrong 

 movement. Yet it seems to me that Nature Study as such is 

 flat. What good does it do a child to know the niimber of suc- 

 cessive moults of any given species of insect if the mathematical 

 calculation is the extent of his use of that knowledge? Nature 

 Study is following the beaten paths of traditional subjects and is 

 most certainly going in the way of its own ruin. A Nature 

 Study background is not merely a good thing for a child to have 

 acquired in the schools, but it is quite essential, I believe, if he is 

 to understand his environment, his social obligations, his instincts, 

 his emotions, his play and his work. But as soon as Nature Study 

 does not succeed in bringing forth these values, it fails in its 

 most vital significance. Literature has failed and is failing 

 in retaining the children's interest m.erely because there is no 

 connection with life, with necessity, with humanity. It is time 

 that we got away from that old standard of English teaching 

 and that we adopted a more real, more valuable sort of method 

 for teaching literature. One method whereby we can break 

 away from the old rut of conservative English teaching, is in 

 insisting upon American literature in our schools. A country 

 which does not teach its own literature is not worthy of lia\'ing 

 a literature which it might teach. We may help increase interest 

 in our literature by fostering it first and above all others. Tlie 

 child may get the world literature, later. He can understand 

 American literature because it came from the same conditions 

 from which he came. He knows that literature because ]ic knows 

 that life which it portrays. There is a certain deliglitful i)loasurc 

 when one happens upon something which he already has thought 

 about or seen. To have an author exi)ress your inexi)rcssed 

 motive gives one a sense of familiarity, wliich is ver>- i)loasing. 

 And the child in his world is much quicker to take u]) rescmblnnces 

 and ideas of this sort than we are usually ready to acknowledge. 



