260 NATUliE STUDY. 



a half-truth, a species of untruth, and allow or encour- 

 age un truthfulness. 



If you correct the answer yourself, you miss an op* 

 portunity to help your pupils to be more truthful. It 

 will often add much to the interest of the lesson, and 

 sharpen the pupils' powers, if you encourage members 

 of the class to watch for and correct statements which 

 are not true or not clear. 



Encourage in every way exact statements. Have 

 the children count and measure. Discourage guess- 

 ing and indefinite forms of statement, such as " about " 

 and "I think." Any absolute misstatements should, of 

 course, never pass unnoticed. 



It must be remembered that language is a very diffi- 

 cult and inexact way of expressing many ideas, such as 

 those of form, size, and relative position. Drawing, 

 painting, and modelling are often much more natural, 

 simple, and exact forms of expressing truth than is lan- 

 guage. Any child can tell the truth about the form of 

 a seed or fruit much better with clay than in words. 

 Furthermore, even the youngest child can recognize 

 errors in drawing, when he cannot see wherein his word 

 picture is wrong. Hence children can correct their own 

 drawings. 



As teachers, we may attach so much importance to 

 sympathy and interest and an appreciation of the les- 

 sons and beauties of nature, that we neglect the care- 

 ful individual work which is of the greatest value in 

 the development of the powers of our pupils. On the 

 other hand, we may emphasize exactness in detail so 



