156 Second Conference 



Perhaps everyone here will remember the stress 

 that Sir James Paget is said, in his Life, to have laid 

 on the value of the early taste for botany which had 

 been given him by his mother, and to which he con- 

 sidered most of his subsequent success was due. I 

 venture, too, to think that in several cases the excel- 

 lence exhibited by some of the collections here is due 

 as much to early home influence as to the teaching at 

 the schools. 



THE TEACHING OF NATURE-KNOW- 

 LEDGE IN URBAN SCHOOLS 



By Mr. H. MAJOR, Inspector to the Leicester 

 School Board 



I shall probably best meet the views of those who 

 have promoted the installation of this exhibition of 

 Nature-study objects if I confine my necessarily brief 

 remarks to the subject as already carried out into 

 practice in the schools under my supervision, and as 

 illustrated by the exhibits sent up from Leicester. I 

 would make a further limitation by confining my re- 

 marks to work done in the standard departments, 

 leaving some more expert hand to deal with infant 

 schools. The exhibition shows that it is in the direc- 

 tion of these standard classes that the greatest weak- 

 ness exists. 



Nearly twenty years ago I was thoroughly per- 

 suaded that the education given in elementary schools 

 was too oral, too aural, and too little visual. Names of 

 things, rather than their properties and mutual rela- 

 tions, were the be-all and end-all; ears rather than 



