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
"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,
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