814 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



requisites, and aggravates the harmful influences present in many cottage homes. 

 But the advantages of open-air work are not mainly hygienic, but educational. It 

 is impossible in the classroom to use as we ought the child's natural love of move- 

 ment and his instinctive restlessness. Outside this characteristic natural activity 

 may be used and the evils of wrong desk-posture, and vitiated atmosphere avoided. 



There are difficulties of organisation connected with school journeys and objec- 

 tions to technical instruction in horticulture as a school subject. Whether these 

 are or are not overcome, there is a large amount of work which can and ought to 

 be done outside. The adoption of the asphalted playground has increased facilities 

 in this direction, whilst the provision of school gardens would enormously widen 

 the possibilities of work in the open air in immediate proximity to the school. 



There is much work of high educational value which can only be done outside. 

 There are educational methods which can be adopted in the playground and not 

 in the classroom. There is abundance of work which can be more efficiently done 

 in the open air. 



Photographs were shown of classes engaged in such work. Children were 

 shown during lessons in arithmetic, mensuration, and geometry on the playground 

 floor, and it was noticed that the larger available space makes co-operative work 

 possible to the class. This form of work was recently urged upon rural teachers 

 by the President of the Board of Education. 



Other illustrations showed children taking first lessons in heat and light. 

 Such teaching surely should always be taken outside, the sun being employed 

 rather than a lamp. The biological importance of light and heat can be shown by 

 continued observation and experiment with living, growing things in the garden. 

 Other illustrations showed the practicability on the school premises of outdoor 

 lessons on direction, the sundial, shadows, seasons, &c. 



But it is with work included under the term ' nature study ' that the adoption 

 of outdoor methods is most urgent. It is surely wrong to confine children within 

 doors to discuss snow, rain, wind, dew, sunshine, and plant life. ' Blackboard 

 Nature study ' is surely an absurdity. 



There is a crying need for the multiplication of school gardens, not for technical 

 instruction in horticulture, but for the conduct of real Nature Study. The 

 garden should not merely provide the material for, but should be the scene of the 

 lessons. Illustrations of classes doing such work were shown. Much of this work 

 cannot be done on an excursion. In the garden scholars may carry on prolonged 

 investigations — e.g., into rate of growth. The Nature instinct born in a child 

 can be satisfied and developed instead of being obliterated by work in school with 

 a dried or torn-up specimen. The garden offers unlimited scope for teaching the 

 child through his own observation and inference. 



Comenius in the seventeenth century urged that every school should have 

 its garden and use it in this way. England is exceedingly backward in this 

 respect as compared with some other countries. 



If is not impossible to meet the difficulty of providing gardens for schools in 

 the congested parts of cities. Plots of ground might be laid out in the suburbs 

 and classes conveyed to these garden schools for a half-day each week for outdoor 

 work of various kinds. No plans should be passed for new suburban or rural 

 schools unless a garden is provided, and H.M. Inspectors could do much by urging 

 the importance of making playgrounds and gardens the scene of lessons. 



The physical and educational value of such work is perhaps exceeded by its 

 aesthetic and moral advantages. 



2. The School Journey : its Practice and Educational Value. 

 By G. G. Lewis. 



Actual objects are better teaching tools than the most vivid description, better 

 even than pictures, lantern slides, or models. Big things like trees, hills and 

 rivers, castles and cathedrals, cannot be brought into the class-room, and smaller 

 objects are best studied in their own natural environment. Hence the need for 

 school journeys. Four kinds of school journey are attempted at Kentish Town 

 Road School. 



1. The Open-air Lesson. — Each class spends one half-day on Hampstead 



