Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets: Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904 — John Shaqi
Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets: Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904New York State College of Agriculture
History
Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets: Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904
New York State College of Agriculture
Natural history; Nature study
In order that the work may reach the children, it must be greatly
popularized and the children must be met on their own ground. The
complete or ideal leaflet may have little influence. For example, I
prepared a leaflet on "A Children's Garden" which several people were
kind enough to praise. However, very little direct result was secured
from the use of this leaflet until "Uncle John" began to popularize it
and to make appeals to teachers and children by means of personal talks,
letters and circulars. So far as possible, his appeal to children was
made in their own phrase. The movement for the children's garden has now
taken definite shape, and the result is that more than 26,000 children
in New York State are raising plants during the present year. Another
illustration of this kind may be taken from the effort to improve the
rural school grounds. I wrote a bulletin on "The Improvement of Rural
School Grounds," but the tangible results were very few. Now, however,
through the work of "Uncle John" with the teachers and the children, a
distinct movement has begun for the cleaning and improving of the school
grounds of the State. This movement is yet in its infancy, but several
hundred schools are now in process of renovation, largely through the
efforts of the children.
The idea of organizing children into clubs for the study of plants and
animals, and other outdoor subjects, originated, so far as our work is
concerned, with Mr. John W. Spencer himself an actual, practical farmer.
His character as "Uncle John" has done much to supply the personality
that ordinarily is lacking in correspondence work, and there has been
developed amongst the children an amount of interest and enthusiasm
which is surprising to those who have not watched its progress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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