1 8 NATURE STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 



is the result. As one examines the product of the schools 

 to-day has he a right to feel satisfied? The essential 

 feature of the test is not to be obtained from school records, 

 but from the social order. Are the schools contributing to 

 society men and women who will improve it; men and 

 women who are not only sound morally but also intellectu- 

 ally, and who have wide interests ? Have the schools given 

 us men and women incapable of becoming victims of dem- 

 agoguery, of superstition, of hallucinations of any kind? 

 It has seemed to many that our educational schemes 

 lack efficiency in just this direction; and that, judged by 

 the results, we have not hit upon just the form of training 

 that results in clear thinking and the prevalence of clean 

 truth among the greatest number of adults. 



The Opportunity. — Nature study has the opportunity 

 to develop mental steadiness and clear thought at the 

 very beginning of education. The chief troubles connected 

 with doing this have not come from unprepared teachers 

 so much as from self-appointed leaders whose books and 

 addresses have somewhat befogged and belittled the situ- 

 ation. Nature study is much easier to talk about than to 

 teach. It lends itself peculiarly to schemes which upon 

 trial prove to be visionary. It represents one of the great- 

 est problems of education, and it will not be solved by 

 schemes imposed upon teachers, but by the teachers them- 

 selves attempting to work out in a practical way certain 

 evident principles. 



The Dominant Motive. — Before teaching nature study 

 in the grades the teacher must determine its dominant 

 motive; not merely its incidental advantages, which are 

 numerous enough. In suggesting what seems the ap- 



