THE HORTICULTURAL PHASE OF "NATURE-STUDY." Ill 



THE HORTICULTURAL PHASE OF " NATURE-STUDY." 



By R. Hedger Wallace, F.R.H.S., 

 Chairman of the School Nature- Study Union. 



Nature- study is a pedagogical term of American origin, and usage 

 there has determined for it a special office, namely, to indicate the move- 

 ment which endeavours to open the minds of young school children, by 

 direct observation, to a love and appreciation of the common things of 

 their environment. This movement began to take shape in the United 

 States about 1884, but the compounded or hyphenated term as now used, 

 and in the limited sense noted, was first employed in 1889 by Mr. F. Owen 

 Payne in his contributions to the " New York School Journal." 



The keynote of the movement, that is its ideal — whatever be the 

 methods employed — is to develop in children a keen personal interest in 

 every observable object and phenomenon. It is an attempt to get Nature- 

 love or Nature-sympathy into the school atmosphere, to lead children 

 natureward. This idea is now widespread and thoroughly established. 



Although Nature-study is an American pedagogical term and the 

 present movement first started in the United States, still we can claim that 

 the germ of the Nature-study idea is to be found in Mr. Herbert Spencer's 

 work on " Education." In it he says : " Teachers are eager to give second 

 hand facts in place of first-hand facts. Not perceiving the enormous 

 value of that spontaneous education which goes on in early years — not 

 perceiving that a child's restless observation, instead of being ignored or 

 checked, should be diligently ministered to and made as accurate and 

 complete as possible, they insist on occupying its eyes and thoughts with 

 things that are, for the time being, incomprehensible and repugnant. 

 Possessed by a superstition which worships the symbols of knowledge 

 instead of knowledge itself, they do not see that only when his acquaint- 

 ance with the object and processes of the household, the streets, and the 

 fields is becoming tolerably exhaustive, only then should a child be 

 introduced to the new sources of information which books supply." 



In another chapter Mr. Spencer writes : " After long ages of blindness, 

 men are at last seeing that the spontaneous activity of the observing 

 faculties in children has a meaning and a use. What was once thought 

 mere purposeless action, or play, or mischief, as the case might be, is 

 now recognised as the process of acquiring a knowledge on which all after- 

 knowledge is based. . . . Children should be led to make their own 

 investigations and to draw their own inferences. They should be told 

 as little as possible, and induced to discover as much as possible. . . . 

 Those who have been brought up under the ordinary school-drill, and 

 have carried away with them the idea that education is practicable only 

 in that style, will think it hopeless to make children their own teachers. 

 If, however, they will consider that the all-important knowledge of 

 surrounding objeccs which a child gets in its early years is got without 

 help — if they will remember that the child is self-taught in the use of its 



