86 HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 



may be in its place) crowd out all nature study, 

 just so long will you need schedules. Every time 

 you ask for a schedule, every time you make all 

 the pupils do the same work on the same object, 

 you are teaching science. Not that I love science 

 less, but, for the young folks, that I love nature 

 study more. I appeal to you to take the things 

 that come to hand and as they come to hand, and 

 let your young people develop along the line of 

 individual preferences. For nature study is not to 

 be taught. Never make a mill of your school with 

 an everlasting grind, grind, grind, and everything 

 going into one hopper. You are developing hu- 

 man beings, human beings (not naturalists nor 

 teachers) trained uniformly in some things, but 

 with enough nature study and some other things 

 to preserve and develop individuality. 



And yet a mere objection to schedules does not 

 seem to get wholly at the heart of the matter. 

 There surely is no harm in intelligently planning a 

 line of thought, or of suggesting to the young folks 

 what they will find of interest for the week or 

 month. 



Perhaps we get at the real difficulty from another 

 point of view, if we summarize by saying that it 

 is all right for the teacher to make the schedules ; 



