10 THE NATURE STUDY COURSE. 



the pupils, but see that they do observe real things and draw 

 their inferences from what they observe. 



The term observation is used in a restricted sense, as 

 attention to experience in which we are able to note causes 

 and effects, or in some cases effects only, but are unable to 

 control either. The experiences in which we control causes 

 and study the effects which they produce are called experiments. 

 In the former case circumstances are the master of the 

 observer, in the latter they are his servant. A student, for 

 example, observes that cloudiness is associated with absence 

 of dew. In reasoning on the relation he reaches an 

 hypothesis. He may test his hypothesis by continued 

 observation, or more promptly and usually more satisfactorily 

 by an experiment. 



From the Nature Study point of view the time to introduce 

 an experiment is when the pupil's conscious need of it arises 

 either with or without the teacher's suggestion ; and he should 

 feel at least a partnership in devising the means of carrying it 

 out. The performance of an experiment immediately from the 

 teacher's dictation or the specifications in a text-book, with 

 the pupil's interest centered rather on the mechanics of the 

 experiment than on its outcome, is a mark of poor teaching 

 in either elementary science or nature study. President Eliot, 

 of Harvard, in a recent address as reported in the N. Y. Schoot 

 Journal, said in effect that in spite of his former very different 

 opinion he had come to see " that most laboratory operations 

 are as fruitless in cultivating thinking as learning by heart 

 words from a dictionary." Engagement in experiments for 

 the mere purpose of making them has some value for manual 

 training but very little for thought training, whether it be 

 called science or Nature Study. Experiments are "questions 

 put to nature," but questions are, or should be, prompted 

 by the desire to know the answers. 



