112 NATUEE STUDY. 



with little children, the more we get into sympathy 

 with them and look through their eyes, the more fully 

 we realize that there are higher aims in education than 

 the development of power. When we get into the 

 primary school or kindergarten, such an aim seems in- 

 congruous, utterly out of place. We see instinctively, 

 if we love and understand children, that such an aim is 

 beneath them. Why? 



As the primary teacher studies with her children, and 

 studies her children, she discovers the necessity in all 

 their work of interest, and of that highest form of inter- 

 est, sympathy. With perfect sympathy between her- 

 self and her children she has almost unlimited power 

 over them. With the little folks in thorough sympathy 

 with the bird or cat or plant they are studying, their 

 power to see and think and tell is wonderfully in- 

 creased. 



This sympathy is peculiarly necessary in nature study. 

 Without sympathy with nature, nature study may be 

 even detrimental to the child, and disastrous in its 

 effects on the child's environment. 



If we merely aim to interest the children in nature, 

 develop their powers of observation, expression, and 

 thought, and give them a better knowledge of their 

 physical environment, and stop there, the ultimate re- 

 sults may be of doubtful value. Our wild-flowers 

 will be pulled up, our birds destroyed, our shade-trees 

 mutilated (" sacrificed to the cause of science "), in the 

 search for material. Our boys and girls may become, 

 like many of their older, brothers and sisters in the 



