270 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [7:9— Dec, 1911 



The examination for entrance to the high schools referred 

 to above afforded abundant evidence of the inutility of mere talk 

 and book-study in teaching (?) this subject. Examples like the 

 following — not mere howlers culled from the papers of the most 

 ignorant candidates — could have been collected in sufficient quan- 

 tity to fill a book. "The process of digestion (a phrase from the 

 question) causes headaches and much impure blood; fried pota- 

 toes often causes digestion." "It is easy to have curvature of 

 the spine if you think about it when you are writing; one good 

 way is to set the feet firmly on the floor and rest the left arm light- 

 ly on the desk." "When you are chewing gum in school you are 

 apt to swallow carbolic acid from so many children's breaths." 

 "A disinfectant is anything you catch by going where they are ; 

 measles and chicken-pox are disinfectants ; when you have them 

 you should stay in the house and keep warm and try not to give 

 them to other people ; pimples on the face are not disinfectant but 

 some kinds are." 



The printed text or dictated note doubtless contained the 

 truth for persons with experience enough to image it properly, 

 but for the child the result was too often an association of sounds 

 with a confusion of vague and vanishing ideas. The evident 

 uselessness of this experience had led some to advise the reduction 

 of the instruction in physiology and hygiene to a few didactic 

 preachments on such rules as brush the teeth, keep the skin clean, 

 and swat the house-fly. 



Taught by the Nature-study method the study of physiology 

 and hygiene with enough of anatomy to make the instruction in- 

 telligible becomes at once highly useful as knowledge and cultural 

 as discipline. When you come to think of it why is not a child's 

 body as suitable a subject for nature study as a bird's or a kit- 

 ten's? For the purposes of observation of and reasoning about, 

 structures, functions and performances, what advantages have 

 the latter? Those people who confuse nature study with formal 

 science may have an answer. They think of pickled grasshoppers, 

 skeletons and anatomical dissections and then throw doubt on 

 the practicability of teaching human physiology by the nature- 

 study method in the common school grades. 



To compare the effects of verbal, didactic instruction and of 

 self-active investigation take for example a study of the teeth. 

 Direct one class to open text-books, turn to the page, read it with 

 your explanations, memorize the substance if not the very words 

 of the statements. Supply the other class or have its members 

 obtain their own supplies of grains of wheat or rice, pieces of 



