HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 1 73 



want to hug you ; and you, too, dear champion, 

 Emerson, for you are right when you say : 



I believe that our own experience instructs us that the 

 secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not 

 for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It 

 is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his 

 own secret. By your tampering and thwarting and too 

 much governing he may be hindered from his end and kept 

 out of his own. Respect the child. Wait and see the new 

 product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repeti- 

 tions. Respect the child. . . . One bums to tell the 

 new fact, the other burns to hear it. 



The spirit of hushing the class to allow the 

 child to speak, and of loving that child for what 

 he tells of his own experiences and observation, 

 is the spirit of nature study. 



The dignity of that teacher, the unswerving 

 class instruction, the claim that this is true be- 

 cause I say it is true, whether we call it science 

 or whether we call it hypocrisy, is not the spirit 

 needed to bring young folks into relation with na- 

 ture. I do not state, nor even imply, that most of 

 our teachers have this method of teaching what 

 they term elementary science. Many excellent 

 instructors in what they call science have the 

 spiritual insight that I have styled the spirit 

 of nature study. It is a commendable and en- 

 viable faculty, with which some of us, I fear, 



