Knowledge? The knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says yes to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working; the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic-vortices, till we try it and fix it. Doubt of whatever kind can be ended by action alone.

To be true to child-life, nature study must first of all give the widest possible scope for spontaneous activity, and its distinctive function should be to lead this activity out toward human good and into harmony with the creative forces of nature. We all know what the immortal George did with his little hatchet, and many are inclined to descant upon the instinctive destructiveness and the inborn cruelty of children. I hope your own experience with children, as mine certainly does, leads you to repudiate this. Any child who has not been ill-taught or maltreated will choose to do good rather than evil, if he knows how, and if the good affords his passion for activity equal scope.

Suppose we set down in a garden a ten-year-old boy who does not know beans from burdocks, and we at once begin to realize the truth of Goethe's aphorism: "Nichts ist schrecklicher als unwissende Thätigkeit" (nothing is more terrible than ignorant activity). Contrast the result with the actions of a child who knows the garden plants and weeds. How easily his feet keep in the paths and between the rows, and how efficiently his knowledge enables him to work! Contrast, too, the relative degrees of satisfaction the two get from their experience. The one finds nothing of special interest, while the other works with motive and purpose. Contrast the satisfaction that the youthful George Washington had in hacking down the cherry tree with that he might have had from the same amount of effort in planting a tree. The one act yields a painful memory, the other a lifelong delight. This homely illustration applies to the entire range of a child's activities in relation to nature. In nature study the teacher has unlimited opportunity, with the gardens, the flowers, and the trees, the birds and insects and all the rest, to open up endless vistas of wholesome activity for the child. And every step in such work will establish the child more firmly on the side of law and order in the community.

With the child normally interested, and consequently happy, in the work, the battle of the teacher is more than half won. I have sincere respect for the teacher of young children. I have taught a grade school, and am free to confess that it was the hardest work I ever did; but we had no nature study then. No plan of nature study can make good its claim of being true to the life of the teacher which does not lighten rather than weigh down the load he already carries.

As I have looked teachers, often weary and hard pressed, squarely in the face, and have asked myself what we can do to break the dead lockstep and infuse fresh life and spontaneity into the school task, it has

seemed to me that there is a knowledge of nature which lies so close to everyday life that it will buoy it up, make it easier and more cheerful, and continually more and more worth the living. It is just this, and no more, which will constitute the nature study true to the life of the teacher. When it comes, the nature-study lesson will be a period of genuine refreshment and delight for teacher and pupil alike.

It is a wise saying that wherever there is difference of opinion there lies a problem to be solved. In matters of elementary science teaching, object-lessons, and finally nature study, we have certainly had differences of opinion enough. The problem remains to discover the nature study that is fundamentally true to human life. Experiments may be tried and be discarded, fads may come and go, books may be written and forgotten. The nature study that is true to life must and will come; and this will live as long as mankind and nature endure.

DISCUSSION

WILBUR S. JACKMAN, dean of the College of Education, University of Chicago.Nature study true to life! There is no other. If there is anything abroad imposing itself upon childhood that is not true to life, it is not nature study; it is its caricature; it is an impostor and a cheat. Nature study true to life has existed with children before they entered school since the creation of man. In their early years they learn because they love nature; if in after years they fail to learn of her, it is because they hate science. They surrender themselves unconditionally to nature, but with science they barter and make terms.

A few years ago someone, in Boston I believe, sought by a questionnaire to find out whether children loved nature or spelling the more; and spelling won the votes. But the decision was not against nature, but against the teacher and the teaching. If it were a question of either the spelling-book or a day in the wood, the groves would surely win.

Nature's methods with the young learner are strictly scientific and rational. She offers herself to the child as a coherent and well-ordered whole. This whole appeals to the child thru its function and purpose, which are primarily to him its beauty, then its use. The young learner meets these overtures of nature with an intellectual attitude that is ideally scientific. He is not blinded by prejudice, nor enslaved by creeds, nor frightened nor coerced by authority. He is immersed in nature, and it thrills in him. Nature study here is true to life.

In the schools nature study becomes false for many reasons. The school usually fails to estimate properly the value and the thoroness of the lessons already learned. Many of nature's teachings have misled the child, but the lessons have been well taught and thoroly learned. For this incomparable study of nature the teacher too often substitutes that of definitions, and the study then becomes false to life.

The picture of nature which the child gradually built up for himself is shattered to fragments by the methods of the schools. This is accomplished by picking out bits here and there for special study, to the exclusion of much that is necessary to a clear understanding of what is presented. This false specialization renders nature study untrue to the life of the child. The function of the school should be to preserve the original picture and to further develop it in breadth and in detail. The school, as now usually constituted, cuts him off from his original sources of material; it limits his contact with

nature to the occasional excursion; and thus nature study becomes a discordant note in his life.

The schools should leave nothing undone that will make the pupils skillful in the various forms of expression. Children are stifled in their growth by the average school thru a lack of proper and adequate means whereby they may express themselves. Left to himself, the child exhausts every resource in his attempt to do this. Nothing creates a greater demand for variety and amount of expression than the study of nature. He lives, as do we all, in a world of color, and nothing makes nature study seem more untrue to life than the fact that in the schools there is as yet almost no means whereby he may express his mind-pictures of color.

So, too, his images of force, the questions of how much and how strong, receive almost no help in their further development thru the study of mathematics. The study of form and proportion is yet hardly applied to the centers of the pupil's interests, and his artistic taste in form is not stimulated because he has little or no opportunity for training thru the use of plastic materials. From lack of adequate opportunity to express himself in these various ways, a large part of the energies that are started and dimly outlined by his early contact with nature are never further developed at all. They shrivel up and pass out of consciousness, nevermore to return, because the methods of study and teaching are not true to life.

There is another aspect of nature study of the utmost importance that teachers do not yet fully appreciate. It is the relation of nature study to moral development. The center of all human interests lies in human conduct, and it must be shown that the study of nature directly affects this, if it is to hold a permanent place in the curriculum. It is not the final aim of nature study to make man comfortable thru the clothes, the food, and the shelter it provides, important as these are; its ultimate effect must be shown to be to make him good. Because it has not yet been fully accepted as being capable of doing this, nature study and scientific study have always been compelled to stand in an unfortunate relationship with the so-called humanistic studies. We may study man and the tree, but we must study man; whereas the fact is that all studies are or should be humanistic, and all studies are or should be scientific. As long as man, the carnal being, is set over against man, the spiritual being, the house will be divided against itself. When at last our study shall be no longer man and nature, but man in nature, then it will be possible for the first time to have nature study entirely true to life.

MISS EMMA G. OLMSTEAD, principal of Training School, Scranton, Pa.- One error almost universal is to interpret nature study as nature teaching. Nature study must be by the child, not by the teacher. The unfolding and the growth must come from the child's own efforts. The teacher may quicken and warm it into life, but she cannot do the child's work; that is the child's privilege.

Nature study must be natural. With all due regard to the wisdom of the gentlemen who have spoken, both of whom have been greatly enjoyed this morning, and have done so much to give life to this subject, yet the final word has not been said. The common error is to give the child too much, to give it to him too early and too fast. There can be nothing unnatural in nature study, nothing perfunctory, and nothing stilted. Unless the study of nature can be rational, it would better be learned about from books.

Who of us has not seen children painting "from nature" in an unnatural way? Placed upon the wall is a branch of cherries. Childern are allowed, if not actively encouraged, to begin by painting the brilliant cherries, and then put in the leaves, and finally the branch. Such treatment of nature is demoralizing. There is a study about nature from the printed books that is heaven-high above such travesty. Education, to be true, does not draw away from nature, but takes us to her to know her as she is.

The problems multiply when we try to decide what to study. If we are willing to be led by little children-which is one of nature's ways of guiding-their interests will be shown first in living things about them. Later, as they develop, they will lead us to the inanimate in life.

There are many helpful books for this study now, but the bookshops are full of so-called nature books; some a compilation of facts and some of fancy. It is evident that the authors up to the time of writing have gone thru life with the windows to their souls closed, the shades drawn, the shutters tightly fastened, and a sign out, “Wanted— Material for a Nature Book." Why were these books published? Is it a case of supply and demand? Do the teachers choose these books, or do the publishers choose to give the teachers these books? However, let us hope that even the effort of compilation will arouse an interest in nature, and react on the writers, so that the books will not have been written in vain. There are some excellent books, but how are you to choose? Go to nature for the truths as to the what and the how.

The method in nature study must be natural in three essentials. First, it must be the natural method of the child. He is first of all interested in the ungrown and the undeveloped. It is the baby dolls, kittens, puppies, bunnies, chickens, and lambs, and not the large doll, cat, dog, rabbit, hen, and sheep that attract him most. He studies for a long time animals of size and action that are attractive and substantial — that he can get hold of by using the larger muscles. He does not naturally take kindly to worms and caterpillars, to flies and bugs. Many of the animals selected for school study are those that a child would never study if left to himself. He may chase a butterfly, but he cares nothing for it after he has it. Moralizing may not be harmful; but teach it as ethics, and do not call it nature study.

In the second place, the method in nature study must be natural in that a child deals with but one thing at a time and that he enjoys it for its own sake. When a boy plays with jacks he has no use for marbles; when he rolls the hoop he cares not for mud pies. He has but one love, one fad, at a time, and you do violence to his whole nature when you make him go with a hop, skip, and a jump from bugs to buds, from pebbles to cherry stones, and from cotton to snow.

In the third place, the method must be natural in that nature is studied out of doors. The arbutus is not natural unless it is trailing, nor clematis unless it is climbing; the violets must be in the field and the lilies in the pond. Nothing outrages a child more than to make him think he is studying nature when he is handling grasshoppers or crickets by the pint or quart that have been preserved in alcohol, or pulling apart wilted violets, hepaticas, and forget-me-nots.

There is no more noble mission for a teacher than to follow the child in his nature study of the works of God, out into God's sunshine, thru fresh fields and forests. There is no more ignoble work done by a well-intentioned teacher than to dismantle God's works and try to make a child think that the wreckage which she shows him represents creative wisdom, power, and beauty.

If the child studies nature only when and where you lead him, you have done no more for him than when you solve his problems or translate his French. Field days and school gardening are valuable, no doubt; but if there are no field days but school days, and no pulling up of weeds except as a school exercise, then you have scarcely put a veneer upon his aimless life and soulless nature.

Reverence for Him in whom all things live, move, and have their being must be natural, or it is not reverential. The rocks in their solidity; the fruits and grains in their life-giving; the flowers, birds, and animals in their beauty; the heavens in their majesty -all speak God's goodness.

THE CHILD'S FAVORITE STUDY IN THE ELEMENTARY

CURRICULUM

EARL BARNES, LECTURER FOR THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE EXTENSION OF UNIVERSITY TEACHING, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

During the past fifty years the boundaries of knowledge have been vastly extended. The perfecting of our means of transportation has carried men into every corner of the earth; while the perfecting of the scientific method has led men to exploit all living and all inanimate things at home and abroad. This extensive and intensive study has accumulated knowledge until we stand appalled in the presence of the mass of facts we have brought together. To facilitate our work of assimilation and classification we have split up old subjects of knowledge, such as history and geography, into dozens of new subjects; and since 1870 we have been busily at work extending and enriching the elementary-school curriculum with all this new and untried knowledge.

Since the child is to be cultivated by his studies, it is obvious that he is one of the factors to be considered in selecting them; we must know the child's reaction upon a subject of study if we are to estimate its culture value upon him. And let us recognize that this knowledge of the child's reaction upon a subject of study is equally important, whether our philosophy of education seeks development thru opposing a child's interests or thru following them. Whether one is paddling up or down a stream, it is equally important for him to know its currents, its shallows, and its falls.

Just now the tendency to introduce some measure of election into the high school, and even into the higher grades of the elementary school, and the attempts on every side to formulate an ideal course of study, make an inquiry into children's attitude toward the various subjects of the curriculum of immediate practical value.

In 1897 Superintendent H. E. Kratz, then of Sioux City, published "A Study of Pupils' Preferences" in the September number of the North Western Monthly. This study still remains the most important contribution to the subject. In 1899 Miss Kate Stevens made an extended study on the children of her own school in North London, and published the results in five numbers of Child Life, beginning with July. In the same year, 1899, M. Chabot made a study on four hundred children in Lyons, and published the results in the Revue pédagogique for April, under the title "Une enquête pédagogique dans les écoles primaires de Lyon." So far as I know, these are the only quantitative studies so far made covering the general field of the elementary curriculum.

In making the present study I have used Superintendent Kratz's questions: "What school study do you like best? Why? Which one do you like least? Why?" These questions were given as a composition subject