34 PROMOTING "NATURE STUDY" IN SCHOOLS.
the teaching of gardening or agriculture. No one will deny that the proper
place for Nature-Study is in the open air, but I have always realised the difficul-
ties that exist in many cases of reaching the ideal, and have emphasised them
publicity from the time when I first summarised the results of the Nature-Study
Exhibition of 1902, in an address to the teachers at the Summer Meeting held at
Cambridge in that year.2 At the same time I have always urged that advantage
should be taken of any possibilities, and that whatever could be done in the
direction of Nature-Study should be carried out as far as may be. The master
or mistress of a small private, or village, school may do almost anything that he
or she likes in Nature-Study.
In the large classes of the big elementary schools, especially in a town, it is
too much to expect that any near approach can be made to the ideal, yet it is
really wonderful what is done. I call to mind a case in the suburbs where here
and there among the houses there is an occasional field, and through the
endeavours of au enthusiastic teacher permission has been gained from the
owner of one of these to carry out nature lessons there at any time. In the
generality of cases, however, as a substitute for out-door investigation, one has
to fall back upon observational lessons in the class-room. By these I mean
lessons in which the pupil does most of the work and observes and records and
comes to conclusions for him or herself.
What is true of the elementary schools also holds good in the case of the great
public schools, compulsory games taking up a great deal of time which might be
spent in rambles. When I drew up the observational lessons which are printed
in the book called Eton Nature Study.3 they were arranged with an idea of
getting as near an approach as could possibly be made indoors to real Nature-
Study.
On looking at some of the work suggested in this book, those who forget that
it is meant for very young children and beginners might think that it was trivial.
I maintain that no properly recorded observation is trivial, and it is a good
exercise for a child to point out other features of a plum besides that it is good
to eat and is red. One criticism which has been made is that the lessons are
not arranged to form any complete syllabus, so dear to the heart of the examiner
and the teacher, but may I be allowed to point out that in actual work, out of
doors, we have to take what comes, what is seasonal, and the plants or creatures
do not present themselves to our notice in the order of the latest classificatory
scheme ? Besides I must say again that such work is for very young children,
whose character it is to take in odd scraps of information for correlation and
arrangement in after life.
The small boys at Eton have to be treated as beginners. Such work, of
course, ought to be done in preparatory schools, but judging from experience
and the report on the curricula of secondary schools presented at the Dublin
meeting of the British Association, little or no Nature-Study is carried on at the
preparatory schools. It will be seen that it is necessary for the exponent of
Nature-Study not only to understand its objects, but to avoid remaining in a
groove. While, as we have said .before, he must urge that all work ought to
be done out of doors, he must take advantage of what can be carried out in the
schoolroom, and also remember that the Museum, even though its specimens are
dry and dead, may under certain conditions be of very great use.
2 Journal of Education, September 1902, page 583.
3 London, Duckworth and Co., Part I., published 1903, and Part II, 1904.