THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
136 
An Attempt to Interest the Govern- 
ment in Nature Study in the 
Public Schools. 
BY DR. R. W. SHUFELDT, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
A few months ago I took occasion 
to invite the attention of Dr. Philander 
P. Claxton, United States Commis- 
sioner of Education, to the advantages 
to be gained by a more thorough study 
of nature by the pupils of the various 
grades in the public schools of the 
country. My suggestions along such 
lines were taken into consideration by 
the Honorable Commissioner, and 
later I was allowed to submit my views 
to him in person on this question. At 
the time I availed myself of this, the 
matter Avas gone OA'er Avith some little 
care and thoroughness, and there 
seemed to be every reason to hope that 
something Avould be accomplished in 
the premises. Another interA'ieA\ r Avith 
the Commissioner folloAved Avithin a 
feAA r days, upon AAdiich occasion I AAas 
requested to submit a letter on the sub- 
ject — a matter punctually attended to 
in that the encouragement initially ex- 
tended might not fail of its purpose 
through procrastination. 
In compliance with his request, the 
folloAving letter AAas submitted to the 
Honorable Commissioner on the fourth 
of September, 1920; but up to the pres- 
ent time (October 4. 1920) no action 
upon it has been taken. This by no 
means implies, hoAA^eA^er, that the in- 
tention is to ignore the communication, 
as I haA'e eA'ery reason to belieA'e that 
the United States Bureau of Education 
is in full sympathy Avith such a move- 
ment as is touched upon in the letter. 
From such study as I haA'e gwen the 
public schools and Avhat I haA'e learned 
from the teachers in them, I am satis- 
fied that both the latter and the pupils 
are strongly in faA'or of far more atten- 
tion being paid to a course in elemen- 
tary biology and nature study than 
there is at the present time. For many 
years I haA'e been strongly impressed 
AA'ith AA-hat Mr. Huxley set forth on 
this subject, and ewer thirty years ago 
I publicly expressed myself as being 
one of his ach-ocates in such premises. 
For the present. however, I shall be 
content to feel the pulse of parents and 
teachers of today through noting such 
effects as my letter to the Honorable 
Commissioner may haA'e, and then de- 
cide upon such additional measures as 
may be needed later on. My letter ran 
as follows : 
Washington, D. C. 
Dr. Philander P. Claxton, Hon. United 
States Commissioner of Education, Bureau 
of Education, Pension Building, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 
Dear Doctor Claxton: Since the inter- 
A'iew j'ou were so good as to grant me at 
the Bureau on Thursday last, I have, as 
j'ou requested me to do, given the matter 
AA r e had under consideration some little 
thought and stud}'. The suggestions you 
made at the time AA'ith reference to prepar- 
ing a series of nature pamphlets for the use 
of teachers in our rural schools especially 
appealed to me, and I shall welcome the 
more definite fixing of a date to call upon 
you some evening at your home, as you 
proposed, in that the matter may be dis- 
cussed in detail. 
As the subject presents itself to me, it 
would seem more practical to prepare these 
lessons for the use of teachers, rather than 
to bring them out in this form to be placed 
in the hands of the school children them- 
selves. This plan AA-ould greatly reduce the 
expense of publication and distribution, and 
place the desired information and methods 
of instruction in the hands of those where its 
influence and use would be the more 
promptly and effectively operatwe. In time, 
the older and more receptive children in 
these rural schools will come to care to 
possess copies of these pamphlets them- 
seh-es, and a plan to supply this demand 
could easily be arranged as the teachers’ ap- 
plication and approvals for the prints came 
to hand at the Bureau. 
A \-ery large number of our rural schools, 
not to mention those existing in towns and 
cities, are so situated that the biological 
material to be used in a system of nature 
teaching, as applied to the development of 
the obser\-ational pOAvers in children, is close 
at hand and readily obtainable. 
As you are aware, Doctor, to a far greater 
extent than I am, a very large proportion 
of our teachers in rural schools are them- 
sel\ r es but indifferently informed as to the 
best methods of employing biological ma- 
terial to such ends as will ad\ r ance the ob- 
serA-ational pOAvers of children; as to hoAA r to 
bring them in touch with elementary facts 
leading to a fuller comprehension of the na- 
ture of life processes they see but dimly on 
eA'ery hand eA'ery day of their lives. Finally, 
through a comprehension of man’s real place 
