"Nature-study" is another name for this new education. It is a revolt from the too exclusive science-teaching and book-teaching point of view, a protest against taking the child first of all out of its own environment. It is a product of the teaching of children in the elementary schools. The means and methods in nature-study are as varied as the persons who teach it. Most of the criticism of the movement—even among nature-study folk themselves—has to do with means and methods rather than with real ideals. We are now in the epoch when we should overlook minor differences and all work together for the good of a common cause. There is no one subject and no one method that is best.
While it is not my purpose to enter into any discussion of the methods of teaching nature-study, I cannot refrain from calling attention to what I believe to be some of the most serious dangers, (1) I would first mention the danger of giving relatively too much attention to mere subject-matter or fact. Nowhere should the acquiring of mere information be the end of an educational process, and least of all in nature-study, for the very essence of nature-study is spirit, sympathy, enthusiasm, attitude toward life. These results the youth gains naturally when he associates in a perfectly free and natural way with objects in the wild. Science-teaching has fallen short of its goal in the elementary schools—and even in the colleges and universities—by insisting so much on the subject-matter that the pupil is overlooked. In standing so rigidly for the letter, we have missed the spirit. President Eliot has recently called attention to this danger: "College professors heretofore have been apt to think that knowledge of the subject to be taught was the sufficient qualification of a teacher; but all colleges have suffered immeasurable losses as a result of this delusion." (2) A second danger is the tendency to make the instruction too long and too laborious. As soon as the child becomes weary of giving attention, the danger-point is reached; for thereafter there is loss in the spirit and enthusiasm, however much may be gained in dry subject-matter. I believe that even in high schools and colleges we make mistakes by demanding too long-continued application to one subject. Short, sharp, enthusiastic exercises, with pith and point, of five to ten minutes' duration, are efficient and sufficient for most purposes, particularly with beginners. (3) A third danger is the practice of merely telling or explaining. Set the child to work, and let the work be within his own realm. Pollen, lichens, capsules, lymphatics, integuments—these are not within the child's range; they smack of the museum and the text-book. Yet it appears to be the commonest thing to put mere children at the subject of cross-fertilization; they should first be put, perhaps, at flowers and insects. I wish that in every schoolroom might be hung the motto, "Teaching, not telling." (4) A fourth point I ought to mention is the danger of clinging too closely to the book habit; this I have already touched on. We are gradually growing out of the book slavery, even in arithmetic and grammar and history. This means a distinct advance in the abilities of the teacher. Of all subjects that should not be taught by the book, nature-study is chief. Its very essence is freedom from tradition and "method." I wish that there were more nature-study books; but they are most useful as sources of fact and inspiration, not as class texts. The good teacher of nature-study must greatly modify the old idea of "recitations." I wish to quote again from President Eliot: "Arithmetic is a very cheap subject to teach; so are spelling and the old-fashioned geography. As to teaching history in the old-fashioned way, anybody could do that who could hear a lesson recited. To teach nature-studies, geometry, literature, physiography, and the modern sort of history requires well-informed and skillful teachers, and these cost more than the lesson-hearers did." (5) Finally, we must come into contact with the actual things, not with museums and collections. Museums are little better than books unless they are regarded as secondary means. The museum has now become a laboratory. The living museum must come more and more into vogue,—living birds, living plants, living insects. The ideal laboratory is the out-of-doors itself; but for practical school purposes this must be supplemented. The most workable living laboratory of any dimensions is the school garden. The true school garden is a laboratory plat; time is coming when such a laboratory will be as much a part of a good school equipment as blackboards and charts and books now are. It will be like an additional room to the school building. Aside from the real school garden, every school premises should be embellished and improved as a matter of neighborhood and civic pride; for one cannot expect the child to rise above the conditions in which he is placed. All these dangers cannot be overcome by any "system" or "method;" they must be solved one by one, place by place, each teacher for himself. Whenever nature-study comes to be rigidly graded and dressed and ordered, the breath of life will be crushed from it. It is significant that everywhere mere "method" is giving way to individualism.
In time, the methods of teaching nature-study will crystallize and consolidate around a few central points. The movement itself is well under way. It will persist because it is vital and fundamental. It will add new value and significance to all the accustomed work of the schools; for it is not revolutionary, but evolutionary. It stands for naturalness, resourcefulness, and for quickened interest in the common and essential things of life. We talk much about the ideals of education; but the true philosophy of life is to idealize everything with which we have to do.
LEAFLET III.
AN APPEAL TO THE TEACHERS OF NEW YORK STATE.[4]
By L. H. BAILEY.
The kernel of modern educational development is to relate the school-training to the daily life. Much of our education is not connected with the conditions in which the pupils live and is extraneous to the lives that they must lead. The free common schools are more recent in development than universities, colleges and academies and they are even yet essentially academic and in many ways undemocratic. They teach largely out of books and of subjects that have little vital relation with things that are real to the child. The school work is likely to be exotic to the pupil. The child lives in one world, and goes to school in another world.
Every subject has teaching-power when put into pedagogic form. The nearer this subject is to the child, the greater is its teaching power, other conditions being comparable; and the more completely does it put him into touch with his environment and make him efficient and happy therein. In time, all subjects in which men engage will be put in form for teaching and be made the means of training the mind. The old subjects will not be banished, but rather extended; but the range of subjects will be immensely increased because we must reach all people in terms of their daily experience. How all these subjects are to be handled as school agencies, we cannot yet foresee, nor is it my purpose now to discuss the question; but it is certain that the common things must be taught. And the common subjects are as capable of being made the means of developing the imagination and the higher ideals as are many of the traditional subjects.
