PREPARATION" OF THE TEACHER. 5 



paratively easy to humor a child's interest in a familiar subject 

 or to excite a flash of interest in a new one ; but it is quite 

 another thing, and that the truly educative, to maintain the 

 interest. Prof. James in his " Talks to Teachers " has shown 

 how interest in one portion may be shed over to another part 

 natively uninteresting. Here is the chance for exercising 

 the volitional direction of attention which a high authority 

 declares should be the first object of mental discipline. 

 Interest starts the investigator on the path; Will assists 

 him to complete the journey. " The man," says Dr. Hinsdale, 

 " who cannot do anything but what interests him is only half 

 a man." But remember it is the exercise of the child's own 

 will, not the "you must" of the teacher, that is educative. 



Preparation of the Teacher. — In teaching science — 



botany or chemistry, for example — it is indispensable that the 

 teacher should know the science, botany or chemistry as the 

 case may be. In teaching Nature Study it is helpful to know 

 something of all the sciences, but the essential thing is to know 

 the child, to know how to guide the child into and through 

 the profitable activity of all its powers, in short, to know child- 

 nature and nature's method of training the child. No matter 

 how much knowledge of science the teacher possesses, if he 

 lacks skill in discovering or arousing the child's interests, if he 

 lacks skill and energy to sustain these interests and to guide 

 the activities which they call forth to educative issues, he will 

 not be a successful teacher of Nature Study. 



The need to emphasize the last statement is not out of date. 

 A writer in a nature periodical recently stated that in a 

 certain training-school the teachers maintain that knowledge 

 of " other nature " must have precedence over knowledge of 

 child-nature, and that for those whose years at school are 

 limited the knowledge of the menaces to agricultural success 

 is more valuable than the development of the sense-activity 



