2 NATURE STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 



and school gardens " must be got out of the schools before 

 elementary agriculture can be got in. 



Such an idea is as unfortunate as it is. erroneous. It 

 appears to be based on the assertion that nature study is not 

 "near to life," not " practical," as elementary agriculture is. 

 Elementary agriculture can get no nearer to life than nature 

 study should, and nature study aims to get near to a broader 

 if not higher aspect of life than pertains to agriculture alone. 

 These two things are one subject; they have a common 

 educational value, or else none sufficient to make them 

 worthy of a place in the schools. It is a case of " united 

 they stand, divided they fall." If nature study fails to 

 consider economic values and the best benefits which man 

 may derive from nature, then it is not justified. If ele- 

 mentary agriculture fails to consider the response to all 

 nature which may be aroused in us — the one thing which 

 will make higher agriculture consistent with higher living 

 — if it is purely utilitarian and " practical," then it, too, is 

 not justified in a school system which aims to turn out a 

 higher type of man as well as a higher type of farmer. 



Instead of impeding agriculture in the schools, nature 

 study must be there to make agriculture wholly successful. 

 Agriculture is called for in some courses of study in the 

 seventh and eighth grades, but it will never realize the 

 success it should have in those grades if nature study is not 

 taught in the lower ones. It does not take much insight 

 into child psychology to realize that if boys and girls have 

 not been trained to keep eyes and ears, mind and heart, 

 open to nature, if they have not acquired a taste for cultivat- 

 ing plants and solving problems connected with them before 

 they have reached the seventh and eighth grades, they are 



