The Possibilities and Limitations of Nature Study in the 

 Public Schools^ 



Howard H. Cleaves 



Naturally the conditions conducive to nature study are least 

 favorable in the city schools, considerably more agreeable in the 

 suburban ones, and most satisfactory in those in the country. 



Often the only impression that the average city youngster has 

 of bird life, for instance, has been gained through meeting the 

 English or house sparrow in the streets, by watching or listening 

 to the European starling about the church steeples, by seeing the 

 domesticated pigeons which are so often raised on the roofs of 

 city tenements, or by observing the herring or harbor gulls at the 

 water front or from the ferryboats. To be sure, if the youth 

 cares enough about the birds to spend his time in the larger parks 

 he may see numbers of semidomesticated ducks, swans, geese, 

 etc., and not a few truly wild birds, which stop for a time in spring 

 and fall or even remain during the summer to nest. Or he may 

 go to some zoological park or private aviar}-, both of which, how- 

 ever, are objectionable to a certain degree, and do not furnish 

 the material most desired for the furtherance of the work now 

 under consideration. At the zoological park the majority of 

 beasts and birds, having been brought from distant localities, 

 anywhere from the tropics to the arctic regions, are of great in- 

 terest, but do not instruct the child in the customs and manners 

 of those creatures which he might expect to find in his immediate 

 vicinity. Again, we must always remember that although much 

 may be learned by watching the birds in the zoological park, so 

 far as plumage and general appearance are concerned, they are 

 existing under unnatural conditions which lead to habits so at 

 variance with their normal activities that these same birds if 



^Presented January 21, 1911. 



123 



