HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 1 5 



itself. The child loves his parents for some end ? 

 No; the loving is an end in itself. But never 

 mind that, now. Hodge gives us a commendable 

 expression of his idea of nature study. 



Even John Burroughs in his famous statement 

 (previously quoted) : "The purely educational 

 value of Nature Study is in its power to add to 

 our capacity of appreciation — our love and enjoy- 

 ment of all open-air objects," fails to tell us what the 

 thing is. He speaks of its resultant values. So he 

 might have told us what the poetical, aesthetic, and 

 other values are, and yet not have defined them. 

 When I consider it seriously, I am really forced to 

 ask, if anyone has ever defined it ? Nature study, 

 in the popular pedagogical sense, is science — no, 

 it is not ; nature study is a matter of the school- 

 room — no, of outdoors ; nature study is learning 

 ■ — no, that is natural science ; but they are one 

 and the same — no, they are not ; nature study is 

 — is — I mean such nature study as you see in the 

 teachers' papers, in the books on the tables at 

 teachers' institutes, such as you hear talked about ; 

 it is in the air, like evolution, or wireless teleg- 

 raphy ; nature study, in its ordinary, school sense, 

 is — is — Why, any teacher knows what nature study 

 is! 



