354. REPORT—1904. 
Interest and Discipline. 
Any novelty will arouse an evanescent curiosity in a school. We seek 
a permanent interest. Only on condition that their best efforts are 
expected can we hope to command the respect of our scholars and to 
maintain their keen interest. The teacher must know what he wants his 
pupils to do, and must find out whether they do it. 
With new work it may be difficult to gauge their capacity, but every 
effort should be made to set definite work and to check it. There should 
be plenty for everyone to do, and plenty of interest in reserve. This 
means, for instance, that the supply of botanical material must be 
liberal. 
The dictation of notes and the copying of diagrams from books or 
from the blackboard we condemn. We think that a good deal of time 
is now being wasted on dictation and copying, to the great prejudice of 
the name and fame of Nature study. The children should be asked 
questions ; not told things ; and their verbal answers may be used to 
draw up a description of the object before them. Afterwards they may 
try to do the like for themselves. 
Drawing from natural objects is an admirable exercise in observation. 
If the first attempts of the class are disappointing the teacher may put 
his drawing on the blackboard before them, then rub it off, and ask them 
to try again from the specimen. 
In training a class to manipulate experiments it is a good plan to ask 
children in turn to come up and try to do things before the class. In 
this way interest is stimulated, attention is drawn to probable mistakes, 
and the teacher feels when the class is ready to start individual work. 
The Object-lesson to be Developed. 
Any development of Nature teaching in the schools finds an easy 
starting-point in the object-lesson. But the object must be present if the 
lesson is to be real. If the elephant can only be represented by a picture, 
that is a reason for giving lessons about something else until it is possible 
to adjourn to a menagerie. Where flowers or stones are required let them 
be provided in sufficient quantity to give every child a specimen. Let 
these be distributed at once, so that the children may start with their 
own observations. This will require training, and the teacher will spend 
much time in discussing what is seen with the children. 
A good way of ensuring that children do really observe is to ask them 
to make drawings from the specimens in front of them. Drawings can 
be more rapidly corrected by the teacher than written accounts: but 
written accounts should also be asked for. Whilst the drawing is being 
done there ought not to be any sketch on the blackboard which would 
serve as a guide. 
Syllabus. 
We have no syllabus to offer: there is no old syllabus to which we 
wish to adhere, nor any new one which we wish to put in its place. Any 
teacher who wishes for a syllabus will find that plenty of good ones have 
been published already by the Board of Education, and any teacher who 
has found the spirit in which to study Nature will be able to make a 
better syllabus for himself new every year. 
