The Guide to Nature Volume 3, No. 8 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ...the recreation may be carried to an extreme, where common sense was lacking. Says a correspondent: "I know of a man in the northern part of New Jersey who devoted all his time to the study of mosses, while his wife took in washing. 'I bet you' that was practical." (Such is the appreciation of moss study by humanity Perhaps this specialist was a teacher of botany and the salary so small that his wife had to "take in washing." The world pays its professional students of nature in a manner to make it not surprising that such situations exist ) Stop "Teaching" Nature Study. Reprinted from the Nature Study Department of the "Pennsylvania School Journal," Report of the Convention of School Superintendents at Erie, Pennsylvania. Dr. Edward F. Bigelow, the international president of The Agassiz Association and editor of the nature and science department of "St. Nicholas Magazine," followed in a good-natured but serious denunciation of the general methods of nature study. Elementary science stands for something quite distinct and apart from nature study. Nature cannot be harnessed to the dry, hard lines of text-books. "One fact discovered by the pupils working with the teacher is worth a thousand that are pumped into them. A little girl nine years old was the first to discover that the limbs of trees are constantly moving; another little girl discovered that caterpillars are partial to certain colors." DISCONTINUE TEACHING "NATURE STUDY." The learned gentleman who has preceded me spoke enthusiastically in the interest of promoting nature study teaching in the schools, but in his eager desire to have nature well taught he has unconsciously spoken more than I think he intended....