TEACHERS' LEAFLETS.
PUBLICATIONS DESIGNED TO AID THE TEACHER WITH SUBJECT-MATTER, TO
INDICATE THE POINT OF VIEW, AND TO SUGGEST A METHOD OF PRESENTATION.
THE SCHOOL HOUSE.
BY L. H. BAILEY.
In the rural districts, the school must become a social and intellectual
centre. It must stand in close relationship with the life and activities
of its community. It must not be an institution apart, exotic to the
common-day lives; it must teach the common things and put the pupil into
sympathetic touch with his own environment. Then every school house will
have a voice, and will say:
I teach
The earth and soil
To them that toil,
The hill and fen
To common men
That live right here;
The plants that grow,
The winds that blow,
The streams that run
In rain and sun
Throughout the year;
And then I lead,
Thro' wood and mead,
Thro' mold and sod,
Out unto God
With love and cheer.
I teach!
LEAFLET I.
WHAT IS NATURE-STUDY?[1]
BY L. H. BAILEY.
[1] Paragraphs adapted from Teachers' Leaflet, No. 6, May 1, 1897, and
from subsequent publications.
[Illustration]
Nature-study, as a process, is seeing the things that one looks at, and
the drawing of proper conclusions from what one sees. Its purpose is to
educate the child in terms of his environment, to the end that his life
may be fuller and richer. Nature-study is not the study of a science, as
of botany, entomology, geology, and the like. That is, it takes the
things at hand and endeavors to understand them, without reference
primarily to the systematic order or relationships of the objects. It is
informal, as are the objects which one sees. It is entirely divorced
from mere definitions, or from formal explanations in books. It is
therefore supremely natural. It trains the eye and the mind to see and
to comprehend the common things of life; and the result is not directly
the acquiring of science but the establishing of a living sympathy with
everything that is.
The proper objects of nature-study are the things that one oftenest
meets. Stones, flowers, twigs, birds, insects, are good and common
subjects. The child, or even the high school pupil, is first interested
in things that do not need to be analyzed or changed into unusual forms
or problems. Therefore, problems of chemistry and of physics are for the
most part unsuited to early lessons in nature-study. Moving things, as
birds, insects and mammals, interest children most and therefore seem to
be the proper objects for nature-study; but it is often difficult to
secure such specimens when wanted, especially in liberal quantity, and
still more difficult to see the objects in perfectly natural conditions.
Plants are more easily had, and are therefore usually more practicable
for the purpose, although animals and minerals should by no means be
excluded.
If the objects to be studied are informal, the methods of teaching
should be the same. If nature-study were made a stated part of a rigid
curriculum, its purpose might be defeated. One difficulty with our
present school methods is the necessary formality of the courses and the
hours. Tasks are set, and tasks are always hard. The best way to teach
nature-study is, with no hard and fast course laid out, to bring in some
object that may be at hand and to set the pupils to looking at it. The
pupils do the work,--they see the thing and explain its structure and
its meaning. The exercise should not be long, not to exceed fifteen
minutes perhaps, and, above all things, the pupil should never look upon
it as a "recitation," nor as a means of preparing for "examination." It
may come as a rest exercise, whenever the pupils become listless. Ten
minutes a day, for one term, of a short, sharp, and spicy observation
lesson on plants, for example, is worth more than a whole text-book of
botany.
The teacher should studiously avoid definitions, and the setting of
patterns. The old idea of the model flower is a pernicious one, because
it does not exist in nature. The model flower, the complete leaf, and
the like, are inferences, and pupils should always begin with things and
phenomena, and not with abstract ideas. In other words, the ideas should
be suggested by the things, and not the things by the ideas. "Here is a
drawing of a model flower," the old method says; "go and find the
nearest approach to it." "Go and find me a flower," is the true method,
"and let us see what it is."
Every child, and every grown person too, for that matter, is interested
in nature-study, for it is the natural way of acquiring knowledge. The
only difficulty lies in the teaching, for very few teachers have had
experience in this informal method of drawing out the observing and
reasoning powers of the pupil without the use of text-books. The teacher
must first of all feel in natural objects the living interest which it
is desired the pupils shall acquire. If the enthusiasm is not catching,
better let such teaching alone.
Primarily, nature-study, as the writer conceives it, is not knowledge.
He would avoid the leaflet that gives nothing but information.
Nature-study is not "method." Of necessity each teacher will develop a
method; but this method is the need of the teacher, not of the subject.
Nature-study is not to be taught for the purpose of making the youth a
specialist or a scientist. Now and then a pupil will desire to pursue a
science for the sake of the science, and he should be encouraged. But
every pupil may be taught to be interested in plants and birds and
insects and running brooks, and thereby his life will be the stronger.
The crop of scientists will take care of itself.
It is said that nature-study teaching is not thorough and therefore is
undesirable. Much that is good in teaching has been sacrificed for what
we call "thoroughness,"--which in many cases means only a perfunctory
drill in mere facts. One cannot teach a pupil to be really interested in
any natural object or phenomenon until the pupil sees accurately and
reasons correctly. Accuracy is a prime requisite in any good
nature-study teaching, for accuracy is truth and it develops power. It
is better that a pupil see twenty things accurately, and see them
himself, than that he be confined to one thing so long that he detests
it. Different subjects demand different methods of teaching. The method
of mathematics cannot be applied to dandelions and polliwogs.
The first essential in nature-study is actually to see the thing or the
phenomenon. It is positive, direct, discriminating, accurate
observation. The second essential is to understand why the thing is so,
or what it means. The third essential is the desire to know more, and
this comes of itself and thereby is unlike much other effort of the
schoolroom. The final result should be the development of a keen
personal interest in every natural object and phenomenon.
Real nature-study cannot pass away. We are children of nature, and we
have never appreciated the fact so much as we do now. But the more
closely we come into touch with nature, the less do we proclaim the fact
abroad. We may hear less about it, but that will be because we are
living nearer to it and have ceased to feel the necessity of advertising
it.
Much that is called nature-study is only diluted and sugar-coated
science. This will pass. Some of it is mere sentimentalism. This also
will pass. With the changes, the term nature-study may fall into disuse;
but the name matters little so long as we hold to the essence.
All new things must be unduly emphasized, else they cannot gain a
foothold in competition with things that are established. For a day,
some new movement is announced in the daily papers, and then, because we
do not see the head lines, we think that the movement is dead; but
usually when things are heralded they have only just appeared. So long
as the sun shines and the fields are green, we shall need to go to
nature for our inspiration and our respite; and our need is the greater
with every increasing complexity of our lives.
All this means that the teacher will need helps. He will need to inform
himself before he attempts to inform the pupil. It is not necessary that
he become a scientist in order to do this. He goes as far as he knows,
and then says to the pupil that he cannot answer the questions that he
cannot. This at once raises him in the estimation of the pupil, for the
pupil is convinced of his truthfulness, and is made to feel--but how
seldom is the sensation!--that knowledge is not the peculiar property of
the teacher but is the right of any one who seeks it. Nature-study sets
the pupil to investigating for himself. The teacher never needs to
apologize for nature. He is teaching merely because he is an older and
more experienced pupil than his pupil is. This is the spirit of the
teacher in the universities to-day. The best teacher is the one whose
pupils the farthest outrun him.
In order to help the teacher in the rural schools of New York, we have
conceived of a series of leaflets explaining how the common objects can
be made interesting to children. Whilst these are intended for the
teacher, there is no harm in giving them to the pupil; but the leaflets
should never be used as texts from which to make recitations. Now and
then, take the children for a ramble in the woods or fields, or go to
the brook or lake. Call their attention to the interesting things that
you meet--whether you yourself understand them or not--in order to teach
them to see and to find some point of sympathy; for every one of them
will some day need the solace and the rest which this nature-love can
give them. It is not the mere information that is valuable; that may be
had by asking someone wiser than they, but the inquiring and sympathetic
spirit is one's own.
The pupils will find their regular lessons easier to acquire for this
respite of ten minutes with a leaf or an insect, and the school-going
will come to be less perfunctory. If you must teach drawing, set the
picture in a leaflet before the pupils for study, and then substitute
the object. If you must teach composition, let the pupils write on what
they have seen. After a time, give ten minutes now and then to asking
the children what they saw on their way to school.
Now, why is the College of Agriculture at Cornell University interesting
itself in this work? It is trying to help the farmer, and it begins with
the most teachable point--the child. The district school cannot teach
technical professional agriculture any more than it can teach law or
engineering or any other profession or trade, but it can interest the
child in nature and in rural problems, and thereby join his sympathies
to the country at the same time that his mind is trained to efficient
thinking. The child will teach the parent. The coming generation will
see the result. In the interest of humanity and country, we ask for
help.
How to make the rural school more efficient is one of the most difficult
problems before our educators, but the problem is larger than mere
courses of study. Social and economic questions are at the bottom of the
difficulty, and these questions may be beyond the reach of the educator.
A correspondent wrote us the other day that an old teacher in a rural
school, who was receiving $20 a month, was underbid 50 cents by one of
no experience, and the younger teacher was engaged for $19.50, thus
saving the district for the three months' term the sum of $1.50. This is
an extreme case, but it illustrates one of the rural school problems.
One of the difficulties with the rural district school is the fact that
the teachers tend to move to the villages and cities, where there is
opportunity to associate with other teachers, where there are libraries,
and where the wages are sometimes better. This movement is likely to
leave the district school in the hands of younger teachers, and changes
are very frequent. To all this there are many exceptions. Many teachers
appreciate the advantages of living in the country. There they find
compensations for the lack of association. They may reside at home. Some
of the best work in our nature-study movement has come from the rural
schools. We shall make a special effort to reach the country schools.
Yet it is a fact that new movements usually take root in the city
schools and gradually spread to the smaller places. This is not the
fault of the country teacher; it comes largely from the fact that his
time is occupied by so many various duties and that the rural schools do
not have the advantage of the personal supervision which the city
schools have.
_Retrospect and Prospect after five years' work._[2]
[2] From Bull. 206, Sixth Report of Extension Work, 1902.
To create a larger public sentiment in favor of agriculture, to increase
the farmer's respect for his own business,--these are the controlling
purposes in the general movement that we are carrying forward under the
title of nature-study. It is not by teaching agriculture directly that
this movement can be started. The common schools in New York will not
teach agriculture to any extent for the present, and the movement, if it
is to arouse a public sentiment, must reach beyond the actual farmers
themselves. The agricultural status is much more than an affair of mere
farming. The first undertaking, as we conceive the problem, is to awaken
an interest in the things with which the farmer lives and has to do, for
a man is happy only when he is in sympathy with his environment. To
teach observation of common things, therefore, has been the fundamental
purpose. A name for the movement was necessary. We did not wish to
invent a new name or phrase, as it would require too much effort in
explanation. Therefore, we chose the current and significant phrase
"nature-study," which, while it covers many methods and practices,
stands everywhere for the opening of the mind directly to the common
phenomena of nature.
We have not tried to develop a system of nature-study nor to make a
contribution to the pedagogics of the subject. We have merely
endeavored, as best we could, to reach a certain specific result,--the
enlarging of the agricultural horizon. We have had no pedagogical
theories, or, if we have, they have been modified or upset by the actual
conditions that have presented themselves. Neither do we contend that
our own methods and means have always been the best. We are learning.
Yet we are sure that the general results justify all the effort.
Theoretical pedagogical ideals can be applied by the good teacher who
comes into personal relations with the children, and they are almost
certain to work out well. These ideals cannot always be applied,
however, with persons who are to be reached by means of correspondence
and in a great variety of conditions, and particularly when many of the
subjects lie outside the customary work of the schools.
Likewise, the subjects selected for our nature-study work must be
governed by conditions and not wholly by ideals. We are sometimes asked
why we do not take up topics more distinctly agricultural or economic.
The answer is that we take subjects that teachers will use. We would
like, for example, to give more attention to insect subjects, but it is
difficult to induce teachers to work with them. If distinctly
agricultural topics alone were used, the movement would have very little
following and influence. Moreover, it is not our purpose to teach
technical agriculture in the common schools, but to inculcate the habit
of observing, to suggest work that has distinct application to the
conditions in which the child lives, to inspire enthusiasm for country
life, to aid in home-making, and to encourage a general movement towards
the soil. These matters cannot be forced. In every effort by every
member of the extension staff, the betterment of agricultural conditions
has been the guiding impulse, however remote from that purpose it may
have seemed to the casual observer.
We have found by long experience that it is unwise to give too much
condensed subject-matter. The individual teacher can give subject-matter
in detail because personal knowledge and enthusiasm can be applied. But
in general correspondence and propagandist work this cannot be done.
With the Junior Naturalist, for example, the first impulse is to inspire
enthusiasm for some bit of work which we hope to take up. This
enthusiasm is inspired largely by the organization of clubs and by the
personal correspondence that is conducted between the Bureau and these
clubs and their members. It is the desire, however, to follow up this
general movement with instruction in definite subject-matter with the
teacher. Therefore, a course in Home Nature-study was formally
established under the general direction of Mrs. Mary Rogers Miller. It
was designed to carry on the experiment for one year, in order to
determine whether such a course would be productive of good results and
to discover the best means of prosecuting it. These experimental results
were very gratifying. Nearly 2,000 New York teachers are now regularly
enrolled in the Course, the larger part of whom are outside the
metropolitan and distinctly urban conditions. Every effort is made to
reach the rural teacher.
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.
The problems connected with the rural schools are probably the most
difficult questions to solve in the whole field of education. We
believe, however, that the solution cannot begin directly with the rural
schools themselves. It must begin in educational centres and gradually
spread to the country districts. We are making constant efforts to reach
the actual rural schools and expect to utilize fully every means within
our power, but it is work that is attended with many inherent
difficulties. We sometimes feel that the agricultural status can be
reached better through the hamlet, village, and some of the city schools
than by means of the little red school house on the corner. By appeals
to the school commissioners in the rural districts, by work through
teachers' institutes, through farmers' clubs, granges and other means we
believe that we are reaching farther and farther into the very
agricultural regions. It is difficult to get consideration for purely
agricultural subjects in the rural schools themselves. Often the school
does not have facilities for teaching such subjects, often the teachers
are employed only for a few months, and there is frequently a sentiment
against innovation. It has been said that one reason why agricultural
subjects are taught less in the rural schools of America than in those
of some parts of Europe, is because of the few male teachers and the
absence of school gardens.
We have met with the greatest encouragement and help from very many of
the teachers in the rural schools. Often under disadvantages and
discouragements they are carrying forward their part of the educational
work with great consecration and efficiency. In all the educational work
we have been fortunate to have the sympathy and co-operation of the
State Department of Public Instruction. We do not expect that all
teachers nor even a majority will take up nature-study work. It is not
desirable that they should. We are gratified, however, at the large
number who are carrying it forward.
This Cornell nature-study movement is one small part of a general
awakening in educational circles, a movement which looks towards
bringing the child into actual contact and sympathy with the things with
which he has to do. This work is taking on many phases. One aspect of it
is its relation to the teaching of agriculture and to the love of
country life. This aspect is yet in its early experimental stage. The
time will come when institutions in every State will carry on work along
this line. It will be several years yet before this type of work will
have reached what may be considered an established condition, or before
even a satisfactory body of experience shall have been attained. Out of
the varied and sometimes conflicting methods and aims that are now
before the public, there will develop in time an institution-movement of
extension agricultural teaching.
The literature issued by the Bureau of Nature-Study is of two general
types: that which is designed to be of more or less permanent value to
the teacher and the school; and that which is of temporary use, mostly
in the character of supplements and circulars designed to meet present
conditions or to rally the teachers or the Junior Naturalists. The
literature of the former type is now republished and is to be supplied
gratis to teachers in New York State. The first publication of the
Bureau of Nature-Study was a series of teachers' leaflets. This series
ran to twenty-two numbers. It was discontinued in May, 1901, because it
was thought that sufficient material had then been printed to supply
teachers with subjects for a year's work. It was never intended to
publish these leaflets indefinitely. Unfortunately, however, some
persons have supposed that because these teachers' leaflets were
discontinued we were lessening our efforts in the nature-study work. The
fact is that later years have seen an intensification of the effort and
also a strong conviction on the part of all those concerned that the
work has permanent educative value. We never believed so fully in the
efficiency of this kind of effort as at the present time.
LEAFLET II.
THE NATURE-STUDY MOVEMENT.[3]
BY L. H. BAILEY.
[3] Reprinted from the Proceedings of the National Educational
Association, 1903. Paper read in general session at Boston, July, 1903.
The nature-study movement is the outgrowth of an effort to put the child
into contact and sympathy with its own life.
It is strange that such a movement is necessary. It would seem to be
natural and almost inevitable that the education of the child should
place it in intimate relation with the objects and events with which it
lives. It is a fact, however, that our teaching has been largely exotic
to the child; that it has begun by taking the child away from
its natural environment; that it has concerned itself with the
subject-matter rather than with the child. This is the marvel of marvels
in education.
Let me illustrate by a reference to the country school. If any man were
to find himself in a country wholly devoid of schools, and were to be
set the task of originating and organizing a school system, he would
almost unconsciously introduce some subjects that would be related to
the habits of the people and to the welfare of the community. Being
freed from traditions, he would teach something of the plants and
animals and fields and people. Yet, as a matter of fact, what do our
rural schools teach? They usually teach the things that the academies
and the colleges and the universities have taught--that old line of
subjects that is supposed, in its higher phases, to lead to "learning."
The teaching in the elementary school is a reflection of old academic
methods. We really begin our system at the wrong end--with a
popularizing and simplifying of methods and subjects that are the
product of the so-called higher education. We should begin with the
child. "The greatest achievement of modern education," writes Professor
Payne, "is the gradation and correlation of schools, whereby the ladder
of learning is let down from the university to secondary schools, and
from these to the schools of the people." It is historically true that
the common schools are the products of the higher or special schools,
and this explains why it is that so much of the common-school
work is unadapted to the child. The kindergarten and some of the
manual-training, are successful revolts against all this. It seems a
pity that it were ever necessary that the ladder of learning be "let
down;" it should be stood on the ground.
The crux of the whole subject lies in the conception of what education
is. We all define it in theory to be a drawing out and a developing of
the powers of the mind; but in practice we define it in the terms of the
means that we employ. We have come to associate education with certain
definite subjects, as if no other sets of subjects could be made the
means of educating a mind. One by one, new subjects have forced
themselves in as being proper means for educating. All the professions,
natural science, mechanic arts, politics, and last of all agriculture,
have contended for a place in educational systems and have established
themselves under protest. Now, any subject, when put into pedagogic
form, is capable of being the means of educating a man. The study of
Greek is no more a proper means of education than the study of Indian
corn is. The mind may be developed by means of either one. Classics and
calculus are no more divine than machines and potatoes are. We are much
in the habit of speaking of certain subjects as leading to "culture;"
but this is really factitious, for "culture" is the product only of
efficient teaching, whatever the subject-matter may be. So insistent
have we been on the employing of "culture studies" that we seem to have
mistaken the means of education for the object or result of education.
What a man is, is more important than what he knows. Anything that
appeals to a man's mind is capable of drawing out and training that
mind; and is there any subject that does not appeal to some man's mind?
The subject may be Sanskrit literature, hydraulics, physics,
electricity, or agriculture--all may be made the means whereby men and
women are educated, all may lead to what we ought to know as culture.
The particular subject with which the person deals is incidental, for
"A man's a man for a' that and a' that."
Is there, then, to be no choice of subjects? There certainly is. It is
the end of education to prepare the man or woman better to live. The
person must live with his surroundings. He must live with common things.
The most important means with which to begin the educational process,
therefore, are those subjects that are nearest the man. Educating by
means of these subjects puts the child into first-hand relation with his
own life. It expands the child's spontaneous interest in his environment
into a permanent and abiding sympathy and philosophy of life. I never
knew an exclusive student of classics or philosophy who did not deplore
his lack of touch with his own world. These common subjects are the
natural, primary, fundamental, necessary subjects. Only as the
child-mind develops should it be taken on long flights to extrinsic
subjects, distant lands, to things far beyond its own realm; and yet,
does not our geography teaching still frequently begin with the universe
or with the solar system?
In the good time coming, geography will not begin with a book at all,
as, in fact, it does not now with many teachers. It may end with one. It
will begin with physical features in the very neighborhood in which the
child lives--with brooks and lakes and hills and fields. Education
should begin always with objects and phenomena. We are living in a
text-book and museum age. First of all, we put our children into books,
sometimes even into books that tell about the very things at the child's
door, as if a book about a thing were better than the thing itself. So
accustomed are we to the book-route that we regard any other route as
unsystematic, unmethodical, disconnected. Books are only secondary means
of education. We have made the mistake of considering them primary. This
mistake we are rapidly correcting. As the book is relegated to its
proper sphere, we shall find ourselves free to begin with the familiar
end of familiar things.
Not only are we to begin with common objects and events, but with the
child's natural point of contact with them. Start with the child's
sympathies; lead him on and out. We are to develop the child, not the
subject. The specialists may be trusted to develop the subject-matter
and to give us new truth. The child is first interested in the whole
plant, the whole bug, the whole bird, as a living, grooving object. It
is a most significant fact that most young children like plants, but
that most youths dislike botany. The fault lies neither in the plants
nor in the youths. A youth may study cells until he hates the plant that
bears the cells. He may acquire a technical training in cells, but he
may be divorced from objects with which he must live, and his life
becomes poorer rather than richer. I have no objection to minute
dissection and analysis, but we must be very careful not to begin it too
early nor to push it too far, for we are not training specialists: we
are developing the power that will enable the pupil to get the most from
his own life. As soon as the pupil begins to lose interest in the plant
or the animal itself, stop!
There is still another reason for the study of the common things in
variety: it develops the power to grasp the problems of the day and to
make the man resourceful. A young man who has spent all his time in the
schoolroom is usually hopelessly helpless when he encounters a real
circumstance. I see this remarkably illustrated in my own teaching, for
I have young men from the city and from farms. The farm boy will turn
his hand to twenty things where the city boy will turn his to one. The
farm boy has had to meet problems and to solve them for himself: this is
sometimes worth more than his entire school training. Why does the farm
boy make his way when he goes to the city?
It is no mere incident to one's life that he be able to think in the
thought of his own time. Even though one expect to devote himself wholly
to a dead language, in school he should study enough natural science and
enough technology to enable him to grasp living problems. I fear that
some institutions are still turning out men with mediæval types of mind.
Now, therefore, I come again to my thesis,--to the statement that the
end and purpose of nature-study is to educate the young mind by means of
the subjects within its own sphere, by appealing to its own sympathetic
interest in them, in order that the person's life may be sweeter,
deeper, and more resourceful. Nature-study would not necessarily drive
any subject from the curriculum; least of all would it depreciate the
value of the "humanities;" but it would restore to their natural and
proper place the subjects that are related to the man. It would begin
with things within the person's realm. If we are to interest
children--or grown-ups, either, for that matter--we must begin by
teaching the things that touch their lives. Where there is one person
that is interested in philology, there are hundreds that are interested
in engines and in wheat. From the educational point of view, neither the
engine nor the wheat is of much consequence, but the men who like the
engines and who grow the wheat are immeasurably important and must be
reached. There are five millions of farms in the United States on which
chickens are raised, and also thousands of city and village lots where
they are grown. I would teach chickens. I would reach Men by means of
the Old Hen.
How unrelated much of our teaching is to the daily life is well shown by
inquiries recently made of the children of New Jersey by Professor Earl
Barnes. Inquiries were made of the country school children in two
agricultural counties of the State as to what vocation they hoped to
follow. As I recall the figures, of the children at seven years of age
26 per cent desired to follow some occupation connected with country
life. Of those at fourteen years, only 2 per cent desired such
occupation. This remarkable falling off Professor Barnes ascribes in
part to the influence of the teacher in the country schools, who is
usually a town or city girl. The teacher measures everything in terms of
the city. She talks of the city. She returns to the city at the end of
the week. In the meantime, all the beauty and attractiveness and
opportunity of the country may be unsuggested. Unconsciously both to
teacher and pupil, the minds of the children are turned toward the city.
There results a constant migration to the city, bringing about serious
social and economic problems; but from the educational point of view the
serious part of it is the fact that the school training may unfit the
child to live in its normal and natural environment. It is often said
that the agricultural college trains the youth away from the farm; the
fact is that the mischief is done long before the youth enters college.
Let me give another illustration of the fact that dislike of country
life is bred very early in the life of the child. In a certain rural
school in New York State, of say forty-five pupils, I asked all those
children that lived on farms to raise their hands; all hands but one
went up. I then asked those who wanted to live on the farm to raise
their hands; only that one hand went up. Now, these children were too
young to feel the appeal of more bushels of potatoes or more pounds of
wool, yet they had thus early formed their dislike of the farm. Some of
this dislike is probably only an ill-defined desire for a mere change,
such as one finds in all occupations, but I am convinced that the larger
part of it was a genuine dissatisfaction with farm life. These children
felt that their lot was less attractive than that of other children; I
concluded that a flower garden and a pleasant yard would do more to
content them with living on the farm than ten more bushels of wheat to
the acre. Of course, it is the greater and better yield that will enable
the farmer to supply these amenities; but at the same time it must be
remembered that the increased yield itself does not arouse a desire for
them. I should make farm life interesting before I make it profitable.
Of course, nature-study is not proposed merely as a means of keeping
youth in the country; I have given these examples only to illustrate the
fact that much of our teaching is unrelated to the circumstances in
which the child lives--and this is particularly true of teaching in the
rural schools. Nature-study applies to city and country conditions
alike, acquiring additional emphasis in the country from the fact that
what we call "nature" forms the greater part of the environment there.
But the need to connect the child with itself is fundamental to all
efficient teaching. To the city child the problems associated with the
city are all-important; but even then I should give much attention to
the so-called "nature subjects;" for these are clean, inspiring,
universal. "Back to nature" is an all-pervading tendency of the time.
We must distinguish sharply between the purposes of nature-study and its
methods. Its purposes are best expressed in the one word "sympathy." By
this I do not mean sentimentalism or superficiality or desultoriness.
The acquiring of sympathy with the things and events amongst which one
lives is the result of a real educational process--a process as vital
and logical and efficient as that concerned in educating the older pupil
in terms of fact and "science." Nature-study is not "natural history,"
nor "biology," nor even elementary science. It is an attitude, a point
of view, a means of contact.
Nature-study is not merely the adding of one more thing to a curriculum.
It is not co-ordinate with geography, or reading, or arithmetic. Neither
is it a mere accessory, or a sentiment, or an entertainment, or a
tickler of the senses. It is not a "study." It is not the addition of
more "work." It has to do with the whole point of view of elementary
education, and therefore is fundamental. It is the full expression of
personality. It is the practical working out of the extension idea that
has become so much a part of our time. More than any other recent
movement, it will reach the masses and revive them. In time it will
transform our ideals and then transform our methods.
The result of all this changing point of view I like to speak of as a
new thing. Of course, there is no education that is wholly new in kind;
and it is equally true that education is always new, else it is dead and
meaningless. But this determination to cast off academic methods, to put
ourselves at the child's point of view, to begin with the objects and
phenomena that are near and dear to the child, is just now so marked,
and is sure to be so far-reaching in its effects, that I cannot resist
the temptation to collect these various movements, for emphasis, under
the title of the "new education."
"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,
"Teaching, not telling." (4) A fourth point I ought to mention is the
danger of clinging too closely to the book habit; this I have already
touched on. We are gradually growing out of the book slavery, even in
arithmetic and grammar and history. This means a distinct advance in the
abilities of the teacher. Of all subjects that should not be taught by
the book, nature-study is chief. Its very essence is freedom from
tradition and "method." I wish that there were more nature-study books;
but they are most useful as sources of fact and inspiration, not as
class texts. The good teacher of nature-study must greatly modify the
old idea of "recitations." I wish to quote again from President Eliot:
"Arithmetic is a very cheap subject to teach; so are spelling and the
old-fashioned geography. As to teaching history in the old-fashioned
way, anybody could do that who could hear a lesson recited. To teach
nature-studies, geometry, literature, physiography, and the modern sort
of history requires well-informed and skillful teachers, and these cost
more than the lesson-hearers did." (5) Finally, we must come into
contact with the actual things, not with museums and collections.
Museums are little better than books unless they are regarded as
secondary means. The museum has now become a laboratory. The living
museum must come more and more into vogue,--living birds, living plants,
living insects. The ideal laboratory is the out-of-doors itself; but for
practical school purposes this must be supplemented. The most workable
living laboratory of any dimensions is the school garden. The true
school garden is a laboratory plat; time is coming when such a
laboratory will be as much a part of a good school equipment as
blackboards and charts and books now are. It will be like an additional
room to the school building. Aside from the real school garden, every
school premises should be embellished and improved as a matter of
neighborhood and civic pride; for one cannot expect the child to rise
above the conditions in which he is placed. All these dangers cannot be
overcome by any "system" or "method;" they must be solved one by one,
place by place, each teacher for himself. Whenever nature-study comes to
be rigidly graded and dressed and ordered, the breath of life will be
crushed from it. It is significant that everywhere mere "method" is
giving way to individualism.
In time, the methods of teaching nature-study will crystallize and
consolidate around a few central points. The movement itself is well
under way. It will persist because it is vital and fundamental. It will
add new value and significance to all the accustomed work of the
schools; for it is not revolutionary, but evolutionary. It stands for
naturalness, resourcefulness, and for quickened interest in the common
and essential things of life. We talk much about the ideals of
education; but the true philosophy of life is to idealize everything
with which we have to do.
LEAFLET III.
AN APPEAL TO THE TEACHERS OF NEW YORK STATE.[4]
BY L. H. BAILEY.
[4] Supplement to Home Nature-Study Course, March, 1904. (Vol. V, No.
6.)
[Illustration]
The kernel of modern educational development is to relate the
school-training to the daily life. Much of our education is not
connected with the conditions in which the pupils live and is extraneous
to the lives that they must lead. The free common schools are more
recent in development than universities, colleges and academies and they
are even yet essentially academic and in many ways undemocratic. They
teach largely out of books and of subjects that have little vital
relation with things that are real to the child. The school work is
likely to be exotic to the pupil. The child lives in one world, and goes
to school in another world.
Every subject has teaching-power when put into pedagogic form. The
nearer this subject is to the child, the greater is its teaching power,
other conditions being comparable; and the more completely does it put
him into touch with his environment and make him efficient and happy
therein. In time, all subjects in which men engage will be put in form
for teaching and be made the means of training the mind. The old
subjects will not be banished, but rather extended; but the range of
subjects will be immensely increased because we must reach all people in
terms of their daily experience. How all these subjects are to be
handled as school agencies, we cannot yet foresee, nor is it my purpose
now to discuss the question; but it is certain that the common things
must be taught. And the common subjects are as capable of being made
the means of developing the imagination and the higher ideals as are
many of the traditional subjects.
[Illustration: _Fig. 1. Junior Gardeners beginning the work of cleaning
up a New York school ground._]
Great numbers of our people are in industrial and agricultural
environments. By means of the industrial and agricultural trades they
must live. These trades must be made more efficient; and the youth must
be educated to see in them more than a mere livelihood. These industrial
and agricultural subjects must be put more and more into schools. My own
interest lies at present more with the agricultural subjects, and these
are the occasion for this appeal. The so-called "industrial" and
commercial subjects have already been put into schools with good effect:
the agricultural subjects now must come within the school horizon.
Probably one million and more of the people of New York State live on
farms. This is approximately one in seven of our entire population.
Moreover, every person is interested in the out-of-doors and in the
things that grow therein. The future agricultural efficiency of New York
State will depend on the school training more than on any other single
factor; and on the agricultural efficiency of the State will depend, to
an important extent, its economic supremacy. New York is the fourth
State in total agricultural wealth, being exceeded only by Illinois,
Iowa and Ohio. All the country children should be reached in terms of
the country. Most of our school books are made for the city and town
rather than for the country. The problem of the development of the rural
school is the most important single educational problem now before us;
and it is essentially an agricultural problem.
[Illustration: _Fig. 2. Junior Gardeners at work in a New York school
ground. The grounds are now ready for planting. The mail carrier now
calls and the pupils take the mail home._]
My appeal, therefore, is to every teacher in New York State, whether in
country or city--for the city teacher makes public opinion, helps to set
educational standards, and many of the country children go to school in
the cities. I do not wish to press agriculture into the schools as a
mere professional subject, but I would teach--along with the customary
school work--the objects and phenomena and affairs of the country as
well as of the city. The schools lead away from the country rather than
towards it. All this I do not regard as a fault of the schools, but
merely as a limitation due to the fact that the schools are still in
process of evolution. It requires time to adapt a means to an end, and
the schools are not to be criticised. But we must do our best to hasten
the evolution. Schools, colleges and universities have only begun to
reach the people effectively: these institutions must eventually touch
every vital and homely problem, for they are to be the controlling
factors in our civilization. Any subject that is worthy a person's
attention out of school is also worthy his attention in school.
[Illustration: _Fig. 3. Sugar beets and a fourteen-year-old
experimenter. (Supt. Kern, Illinois.)_]
I heard a good story the other day of an occurrence of many years ago
illustrating the fact that school training may be wholly exotic to the
pupil. The story was told in Ogdensburg, and Heuvelton is near by. The
class in geography was on exhibition, for there were visitors. The
questions were answered quickly: "How far is it from Rome to Corinth?"
"From Rome to Constantinople?" "From Paris to Rome?" A visitor was
asked whether he had any questions to propound. He had one: "How far is
it from Heuvelton to Ogdensburg?" No one answered; yet the visitor
said that none of the pupils would be likely to go from Rome to
Constantinople, but that every one of them would go from Heuvelton to
Ogdensburg.
Not only must the school teach in terms of its own environment, but more
and more it must become the intellectual and social center of the
neighborhood or district. Every modern rural school building should be
attractive enough to induce clubs of many kinds to hold meetings in it.
In the old "lyceum" days the school house was an important gathering
place. These days are mostly past, but better days should be coming: the
school should connect at every point with the life of the community. Any
event, however small, that centers the attention of the people at the
school house is a beginning and is worth while. A year ago the children
and teacher in one of our district schools began the work of "cleaning
up" the premises. The picture (Fig. 1) shows them at work. Later, when
the grounds were renovated and ready for the planting, boxes were placed
for the reception of the mail for those who do not live on the carrier's
route: this is the beginning of a centering of attention at the school
house. I think that the boxes might have been more attractive and
perhaps better placed, but this will come in time: a beginning has been
made. When once the people of any community come to think of the school
house as a meeting-place for old folks as well as for children, what may
we not expect of the rural school? We need adult education as well as
juvenile education.
I have now no course of study to propose for agricultural or
country-life subjects in the schools, but I would like to know how many
teachers in the State desire to take up certain work of this nature as
an experiment. The College of Agriculture will be glad to suggest the
kind of work, if need be. The western states are undertaking this work:
we must not be behind. It is endorsed by Superintendent Skinner, as will
be seen from the letter published at the close of this pamphlet.
To be effective and meaningful, this work should deal directly with the
things,--handling the things, studying the things, learning from the
things. This is nature-study. To commit to memory something about things
is of little consequence. We are too closely committed to books. We are
often slaves to books. Books are only secondary or incidental means of
educating, particularly in nature-study subjects. We have known the
book-way of educating for so long a time that many of us have come to
accept it as a matter of course and as the only way. A New York school
man recently told me an incident that illustrates this fact singularly
well. In the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation he opened a school in which
at first he employed only manual-training and nature-study work. Soon
one of the children left school. The teacher sought the mother and asked
why. The mother replied that there was no use in sending the child to
school because the teacher had given it no books to study. So slavishly
have we followed the book-route that even the Indian accepts it as the
only road to schooling!
[Illustration: _Fig. 4. Prize corn and a ten-year-old experimenter in
one of Supt. Kern's districts, Illinois.]_
SCHOOL-GARDENS.
Many lines of work might be suggested for an occasional period. Perhaps
the best one for spring is a school-garden. In time, every good school
will have its garden, as it now has charts and blackboards and books. A
school-garden is a laboratory-room added to the school house. It may be
five feet square or ten times that much. The children prepare the
land,--lessons in soils, soil physics; sow the seed,--lessons in
planting, germination, and the like; care for the plants,--lessons in
transplanting, struggle for existence, natural enemies, conditions that
make for the welfare of the plants. The older pupils may be organized
into experiment clubs, as they are being organized in parts of Illinois
(see article on "Learning by Doing," by Supt. O. J. Kern, Review of
Reviews, Oct., 1903, p. 456). We can help you in this school-gardening
work.
[Illustration: _Fig. 5. "Learning by doing." A new kind of school work
in Illinois, under the direction of Supt. Kern._]
OTHER WORK.
If not school-gardens, take up other lines of work,--study the school
premises, the nearby brook or field, an apple tree, or any other common
object or phenomenon. If there is any special agricultural industry in
the neighborhood, discuss it and set the pupils at work on it. Any of
these common-day subjects will interest the children and brighten up the
school work; and the pursuit of them will teach the children the
all-important fact that so few of us ever learn,--the fact that the
commonest and homeliest things are worthy the best attention of the best
men and women.
IMPROVING THE SCHOOL GROUNDS.
Just now, the improving of school grounds is a pressing subject. As a
preliminary to the actual improving of the grounds, suppose that the
following problems were set before the pupils:
1. _Exercises on the Grounds._
1. _Area._--Measure the school grounds, to determine the lengths and
widths. Draw an outline map showing the shape. The older pupils may
compute the square surface area. The distances may be compared, for
practice, in feet, yards and rods. (Arithmetic.)
[Illustration: _Fig. 6. Using the Babcock milk test at Professor
Hollister's School, Corinth, N. Y._]
2. _Contour._--Is the area level, or rough, or sloping? Determine how
great the slope is by sighting across a carpenter's level. In what
direction does the ground slope? Is the slope natural, or was it made by
grading? The older pupils may draw a cross-section line, to a scale, to
show what the slope is. (Geography.)
3. _Fences._--What parts of the area are fenced? What kind of fence?
Total length of fence? Give opinion whether this fence is needed, with
reasons. Is the fence in good repair? If not, what should be done to
remedy it? (Arithmetic, language.)
4. _Soil._--What is the nature of the soil--clay, sand, gravel, field
loam? Was subsoil spread on the surface when the grounds were graded? Is
the soil poor or rich, and why do you think so? Is it stony? What can
be done to improve the soil? (Geography, language.)
5. _Ground cover._--What is on the ground--sod or weeds, or is it bare?
What do you think would be the best ground cover, and why? (Geography,
language.)
6. _Trees and bushes._--How many trees and bushes are there on the
ground? Were they planted, or did they come up of themselves? Make a map
showing where the principal ones are. Name all the kinds, putting the
trees in one list and the bushes in another. Do any of the trees need
pruning, and why? State whether any of them have been injured or are
unhealthy. (Geography, language.)
7. _Tenants._--What animals live or have lived on the school premises?
What birds' nests do you find (these may be found in winter)? Hornets'
nests? Perhaps you can find cocoons or egg-masses of insects in winter,
and the active insects themselves in spring and fall. What birds visit
the place? Do rabbits or mice or moles or frogs inhabit the premises?
(Geography, language.)
8. _Natural features._--Describe any strong natural features, as rocks,
ponds, streams, groves. What views do you get from the school grounds?
(Geography, language.)
2. _Exercises on the School Structures._
9. _Buildings._--How many buildings are on the grounds, including sheds,
etc.? Give the sizes in lengths and widths. Brick or wood? Color? Make a
map or chart showing the position of these structures, being careful to
have the buildings properly proportioned with reference to the entire
area. (Language, geography.)
10. _Repairs needed._--Describe what condition the structures are in.
Tell whether repairs are needed on foundations, side walls, roof,
belfry, chimney, steps, doors, windows, paint. (Language.)
11. _Flag pole._--Where is your flag pole? Could it be in a better
place? How tall is it above ground? How much in diameter at the base?
What kind of wood? Painted? How deep in the ground? When was it put up?
What repairs does it need? (Language.)
3. _General Exercises._
12. _History._--When was the land set aside for a school? When was the
school house built? Who built it? (History, language.)
13. _Cost._--Try to find out what the land cost. What the building cost.
Are they worth as much now? (History, language.)
14. _Government._--Determine what officers have general control of the
school. How did they come to be officers? How long do they hold office?
What are the duties of each? Determine whether your school receives any
aid from the State. (Government.)
15. _Improvement._--Tell what you think should be done to improve the
school grounds and the school structures. (Language.)
16. _Photographs._--The teacher or some pupil should photograph the
school premises, and send the picture to us. We want at least one
picture of every rural school house and grounds in the State. Even a
very poor photograph is better than none.
_Experiment Garden._--Every school ground should have at least one small
plat on which the children can grow some plant that is useful in that
community. Just now alfalfa is demanding much attention from farmers,
and it is certain soon to become a very important farm crop in New York
State. It is used for pasturage and for hay. When once established, it
lives for years. It is allied to clover and is a handsome plant for any
school grounds. Will not the teacher suggest to the children that they
make an alfalfa bed along one side of the school grounds? It will be
attractive and will teach many lessons to pupils and parents even if it
is only a few square feet in size. We want to put an alfalfa plat on
every rural school ground in the State. _We will supply the seed free._
Alfalfa is easy to grow if only a few essential principles are kept in
mind. We will send full directions to any one who applies. From year to
year we will give nature-study lessons on these alfalfa plats.
We are anxious to start work of the above kind. It can be done at any
time of the year. We are already in touch with more than 400 school
grounds, but we want to reach every rural school ground in the State.
_Will not the teacher send to us the best piece of work done by any
pupil in any of the foregoing sixteen problems?_ These papers we will
file, as showing the conditions of the premises of the particular
school. They will enable us to see the progress that is being made from
year to year in the improvement of your school premises. They will also
enable us better to give advice, when called upon to do so. Sometimes we
can send to the particular school a man to give advice on the spot.
Sending the best reports to the University will be a reward to the most
diligent pupils. Send all reports to John W. Spencer, Nature-Study
Bureau, Ithaca, N. Y.
We desire to put in the rural school houses of the State some good
pictures of country and farm scenes. These pictures will be artistic
reproductions of meritorious photographs, and large enough to hang on
the walls of the school room. With each picture will be sent
instructions for framing in order to make the picture more attractive.
We shall choose eight such pictures for distribution the present school
year. _We will send one of these pictures free to any rural school in
the State that takes up two of the problems given above; and all of them
to schools that take up the sixteen problems._ We expect to publish
lists of all schools, with teachers' names, that take up this work in
improving the premises of rural schools.
[Illustration: _Fig. 7. Junior Naturalists making ready for planting.
Tompkins Co., N. Y._]
To one who is not teaching in the public schools, all this work seems to
be simple enough. Such persons are likely to be impatient that more
rapid progress is not made in introducing agricultural and common-life
subjects into the schools. But the teacher knows that all this work
requires patience and skill. It cannot as yet be forced into the schools
and still retain spontaneity and vitality. It must come gradually, and
prove itself as it goes. Probably all public school teachers are now
agreed that the schools should be put closely in line with the life of
their various communities. The questions now to be solved are chiefly
those of means and methods, and of arousing the school constituencies to
the new points of view. A full and free discussion of the whole subject
is now needed. The time is hardly yet ripe for very definite courses of
study in these new fields. Many schools are already teaching these new
subjects with entire success: these schools can serve the cause by
making their experience public.
LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT.
[Illustration: _Fig. 8. Junior Gardeners at work in one of the New York
Schools._]
However, this circular is merely an appeal. It is an inquiry for
suggestions and co-operation. I desire to know what can be accomplished
in the schools of New York State in the direction of inspiring and
useful work for children that live in the country or are interested in
the country. I am sure that something needs to be done: just what is
most feasible and best the teachers must largely determine. As further
suggestions, I append two letters from New York teachers:
_From A. M. Hollister, Principal of the Corinth Public Schools, Saratoga
Co., N. Y._
"I am sending you under separate cover a picture of my class at
work with the Babcock test machine (Fig. 6). We have used the
machine both as a means of instruction in physics and chemistry
and as a general demonstration before the different classes in the
school. It beautifully illustrates some very important principles
of physics and chemistry. The most marvellous effect, however, has
been shown in the quality of the milk sold in the village. Milk
was sold showing a test as low as 2.9 per cent butter fat. Almost
as soon as the first testing was reported, the milk showed 3.8 per
cent butter fat. Milk has been sent to the school from a number
of dairymen with request for a test on particular cows that the
parties might base their purchases of cows on the results of the
test.
"In regard to the gardening with some of our boys, I would say
that both boys and parents are much interested in the subject. We
shall doubtless start about forty gardens of one-tenth acre each.
The boys are to keep an exact account of all expenses to study
methods, and to do all the work. I am anticipating results in a
number of directions. The boys will be given something to do and
to interest themselves in, which of itself is an important thing
for a village boy. It will also develop a power of observation and
ingenuity. We wish to get all the information we can on potato,
tomato and squash culture. Other things will be suggested during
the winter."
_Approval of the Superintendent of Public Instruction._
(_Published by permission._)
"For many years I have been making earnest efforts to induce
teachers, pupils and patrons to improve and beautify the school
buildings and school surroundings of our State. Some progress has
been made, but much remains to be done.
"I heartily welcome the coöperation of every agency which can
contribute to this result. We must interest parents and teachers
in this work, but to obtain the best results I have always found
that we must first interest the children. Once a spirit of
enthusiasm is awakened in the children, it is easy to keep them
interested and busy.
"I have long appreciated the earnest assistance of representatives
of Cornell University in arousing the interest of pupils, and I
heartily commend the plan outlined by the College of Agriculture
to make a study of the schoolhouse and school grounds a practical
part of the daily education of the child. A child's surroundings
have much to do with his education. The result of such systematic
study as is suggested must surely be a steadily increasing
determination to remedy defects and correct any evil which may
exist. When the attention of children is directed to existing
conditions which bring discomfort, it will not be difficult to
induce them to devise ways and means to improve matters.
"I shall watch the result of your efforts with deep interest, and
stand ready to coöperate with you in every way.
"Very sincerely yours,
"CHARLES R. SKINNER,
"ALBANY, _Dec._ 17, 1903.
_State Superintendent._"
LEAFLET IV.
WHAT IS AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION?[5]
BY L. H. BAILEY.
[5] Cornell Countryman, June, 1904.
Agricultural education has made great progress within the past few
years. Methods are crystallizing and at the same time the field is
enlarging. We once thought of agricultural education as wholly special
or professional, but we now conceive of it as an integral part of
general and fundamental educational policy. As a college or university
subject it is necessarily technical and semi-professional; but college
work must articulate with the common-school work, as language and
science now articulate with the schools. That is, agricultural subjects
are now to be considered as a part of primary and secondary school work,
leading naturally to special work in the same subjects for those who
desire technical training. In the schools the subjects are to be treated
non-professionally, as primary means of educating the child. The reason
for using these subjects as means of educating lies in the principle
that the child should be educated in terms of its own life rather than
wholly in subjects that are foreign to its horizon and experience. It is
most surprising that, while the theory of education is that the person
shall be trained into efficiency, we nevertheless have employed subjects
that have little relation to the individual child's effectiveness.
Not long since my father showed me a letter that he received from a
school girl in 1851. It read as follows: "I seat myself expressly for
the purpose to finish this letter which has been long begun. I go to
school room to Mr. Wells and study parsing mental Philosophy grammar and
penciling." This sounds as if it came from "The Complete Letter-Writer."
This person lived on a farm. She lives on a farm to this day. Her
parents and grandparents lived on a farm. The family had no expectation
of living elsewhere than on a farm. Yet, in her entire school life, I
presume there was not a single hour devoted to any subject directly
connected with the farm or with the country. If her studies touched life
in any way that she could comprehend, it was probably in habits of
thought of the city and of the academician rather than in anything that
appealed to her as related to the life she was to lead. It is small
wonder that the farm has been devoid of ideals, and that the attraction
has been to leave it. The direction of the stream determines the course
of the river.
The future course of education will develop many means of training the
child mind. Heretofore these means have been few and the result has been
narrow. We shall see agricultural, commercial, social subjects put into
pedagogic form and be made the agencies whereby minds are drawn out.
These will be at least as efficient as the customary methods that we
happen thus far to have employed. How much of one or how much of another
is a detail that must be left to the future. Nor does it follow that the
old-time subjects are to pass away. They will be an important part of
the system, but not the whole system. These new subjects are now coming
into the schools as rapidly, perhaps, as they can be assimilated. It is
a general feeling that our schools already are overcrowded with
subjects; and this may be true. The trouble is that while we are
introducing new ideas as to subjects, we are still holding to old ideas
as to curriculums and courses of study. We will break up our schools
into different kinds; we will employ more teachers; we will not endeavor
to train all children alike; we will find that we may secure equal
results from many kinds of training; we will consider the effect on the
pupil to be of much greater importance than the developing of the
particular subject that he pursues; there are many men of many minds;
some system will be evolved whereby individual capabilities will be
developed to the full; the means will be related to the pupil: one of
the factors will be subjects making up the environment of the pupil that
lives in the country.
My plea, therefore, is that agricultural and country life subjects
become the means of educating some of the pupils of at least some of the
schools. To be sure, we have already introduced "natural science" into
many of the schools, but, for the most, part, this has worked down from
the college and, necessarily, it usually stops at the high school. We
need something much more vital for the secondary schools than science as
commonly taught. The great nature-study movement is an expression, as
yet imperfect, of the feeling that there should be some living
connection between the school life and the real life.
A college of agriculture, therefore, is as much interested in the common
schools as a college of arts and sciences is. It should be a part of a
system, however informal that system may be, not an establishment
isolated from other educational agencies. But even as a college it will
reach more persons than it has ever reached in the past. In any
self-sustaining commonwealth it is probable that one-third of the people
must be intimately associated with the soil. These people need to be as
well-trained as those who follow the mechanic trades or the professions.
It is immensely difficult to put these agricultural subjects into
teachable form and to reach the agricultural people in a way that will
mean much to them, because agriculture is a compound of many wonderfully
diverse trades in every conceivable kind of natural conditions. Nor can
one institution in each large state or province hope eventually to reach
all these people, any more than one institution can reach all those who
would best be taught in terms of books. But there must be at least one
institution that is well equipped for the very highest kind of effort
in these fields; Congress long ago recognized this fact in the
establishment of the land-grant colleges, and all persons who are
informed on agricultural education also now recognize it. The
agricultural colleges have been handicapped from the first for lack of
funds. It is now coming to be recognized that the highest kind of effort
in these colleges cannot be sustained on a farm that pays for itself nor
by means that are copied from the customary college work in "humanities"
and "science." If it is to be efficient, agricultural education of a
university grade is probably more expensive to equip and maintain than
any other kind of education.
Once it was thought that the agricultural college should be wholly
separate from any "classical" institution. The oldest of the existing
American agricultural colleges, the Michigan institution, is established
on this principle. So are the Massachusetts, Iowa and Pennsylvania
colleges and a number of others. It is natural that this should have
been the feeling in the original movement for the establishment of these
colleges, for the movement was itself a protest and revolt from the
existing education. Time, however, has put agricultural subjects on an
equal pedagogical plane with other subjects, and there is no more
reason why the agriculture should be segregated by itself than that the
architecture or law or fine arts should be. The agricultural colleges
connected with universities are now beginning to grow rapidly. This is
illustrated in the great development of the agricultural colleges at the
universities in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri,
Ohio, and elsewhere. It was once thought that the agricultural student
would be "looked down upon" in a university or in a college with other
departments. This was once true. It was true once, also, of the student
in natural science and mechanic arts. Pioneers are always marked men.
The only way to place agricultural students on an equality with other
students is to place them on an equality.
These remarks are made in no disparagement of the separate agricultural
colleges, but only to illustrate the character of the growth of
agricultural education. No doubt the separate colleges blazed the way.
They stand for an idea that we would not like to dispense with. Every
state and territory has one college founded on the land grant, and in
the Southern states there are two, one for the whites and one for the
blacks; in nearly half of the states these colleges are separate
institutions. But the fact remains that the college connected with the
university is to have the broader field in the future. Its very
connection dignifies it and gives it parity. It draws on many resources
that the separate college knows not of, unless, indeed, the separate
college develops these resources for itself. The tendency, therefore, is
for every ambitious separate college to develop the accessory resources,
in the way of equipment in general science, literature, the arts; for
agricultural education is constantly coming to be of a higher grade. The
separate agricultural and mechanical colleges are rapidly becoming
essentially industrial universities, giving general training but with
the emphasis on the technical subjects.
It is strange how far this principle of education by isolation has been
carried in the development of the agricultural colleges. Not only have
the colleges been separated from other educational enterprises, but in
many cases they have been planted far in the open country, partly on the
theory that the farm boy, of all others, should be removed from
temptation and from the allurements of other occupations. It was the
early theory, also, that the agricultural student must be compelled to
do manual labor in order that he be put in sympathy with it and that his
attention be isolated from tendencies that might divert him from
farming. These methods seem to have rested on the general theory that
if you would make a man a farmer you must deprive him of everything but
farming. It would be interesting to try to estimate how much this
general attitude on the part of the agricultural colleges was itself
responsible for the very inferiority of position that the agricultural
student was supposed to occupy. This attitude tended to maintain a
traditional class distinction or even to create such a distinction.
Agricultural education must be adapted to its ends; but it must also be
able to stand alone in competition with all other education without
artificial props. It is no longer necessary that the agricultural
student wear blinders.
On the other hand, the farm point of view must be kept constantly before
the student, as the engineering point of view is kept before the student
in a college of civil engineering; but we are coming to a new way of
accomplishing this. Mere teaching of the sciences that underlie
agricultural practice will not accomplish it; nor, on the other hand,
will drill in mere farm practice accomplish it. It is not the purpose of
an agricultural college to make men farmers, but to educate farmers. We
are not to limit the student's vision to any one occupation, but to make
one occupation more meaningful and attractive than it has ever been
before. From the farmer's point of view a leading difficulty with the
college course is that it sometimes tends to slacken a man's business
energy. One cannot at the same time pursue college studies and
commercial business; and yet farming is a business. In a four years'
course some students are likely to incur certain habits of ease that are
difficult to overcome upon their return to the farm. How much this is a
fault of the courses of instruction and how much a personal equation of
the student is always worth considering. But if this is a fault of
college work it is generic and not peculiar to colleges of agriculture.
Experience has now shown that a compulsory labor system is no preventive
of this tendency, at least not with students of college and university
age. Student labor is now a laboratory effort, comparable with
laboratory work in medicine or mechanic arts. The mature student must
have some other reason for laboring than merely a rule that labor is
required. However, it is yet largely an unsolved problem with the
agricultural colleges as to just how the stirring business side of
farming can be sufficiently correlated with the courses of study to keep
the student in touch and sympathy with affairs. With the passing of
compulsory student labor there has no doubt been a reaction in the
direction of too little utilization of the college farm in schemes of
education; but we shall now get back to the farm again, but this time on
a true educational basis.
Nothing is more significant of the development of the agricultural
colleges than the recent splitting up of the professorships. From
agricultural chemistry as a beginning, in one form or another, there
have issued a dozen chairs, first one subject and then another being
separated as a teachable and administrative entity. Even the word
"agriculture" is now being dropped from the professorships, for this is
a term for a multitude of enterprises, not for a concrete subject.
Horticulture was one of the first protuberances to be lopped off; and
even this must very soon be divided into its component parts, for there
is little relationship between the effort that grows apples and that
grows orchids or between the market garden and landscape gardening. Even
the chair of agronomy, the newest department of the colleges, must soon
be separated into its units. Forty years ago mechanic arts was
undivided. Who then would have prophesied such professorships as
experimental engineering, electrical engineering, marine engineering,
railroad engineering, naval architecture, machine design? The progress
of the dividing up of the mechanic arts and civil engineering marks the
rate of our progress, in the terms of the Land Grant Act, "to promote
the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the
several pursuits and professions in life." All trades, classes and
professions are to be reached with a kind of education that is related
to their work. One by one we are reaching persons in all walks and all
places. Socially, there are centuries of prejudice against the farmer.
When education is finally allowed to reach him in such a way as to be
indispensable to him, it will at last have become truly democratic.
In this spirit agriculture is divided into its teachable units. The
lists of divisions of the teaching force or curriculum in the larger
agricultural colleges illustrate this admirably. In Illinois, for
example, the title of professors and instructors are associated with
such divisions as thremmatology, agronomy, pomology, olericulture,
floriculture, soil physics, dairy husbandry, dairy manufacture, horses,
beef cattle, swine husbandry, farm crops. At Cornell the coördinate
departments of instruction in the College of Agriculture are classified
as agricultural chemistry, economic entomology, soils, agronomy,
horticulture, animal husbandry with its sub-department of poultry
husbandry, dairy industry, agricultural engineering and architecture,
the farm home, rural economy and sociology, out-door art (including
landscape gardening), nature-study for teachers, besides miscellaneous
courses--making altogether thirteen divisions. The courses now offered
in the Cornell College of Agriculture, not including the winter-courses,
are 76, of which 71 are to be given in the next academic year. Nearly
all these courses comprise a half-year's work.
While all this subdividing represents progress there are disadvantages
attending it, because it tends to give a partial view of the subject.
The larger number of farmers must engage in general "mixed husbandry"
rather than in specialties. Farming is a philosophy, not a mere process.
The tendency of the inevitable subdividing of the subjects is to force
the special view rather than the general view, as if, in medicine,
students were to become specialists rather than general practitioners.
The farm-philosophy idea was represented by the older teachers of
agriculture. Of these men Professor Roberts is a typical example, and
his work in making students to be successful, all-around farmers is not
yet sufficiently appreciated. Much of this farm philosophy is now coming
into the courses of instruction under the titles of rural economy, rural
economics, rural sociology and the like. I have sometimes thought that
the time may come when we will again have professors of "agriculture"
who will coördinate and synthesize the work of the agronomist, soil
physicist, chemist, dairyman and others. However, the dividing has not
yet worked any harm, and perhaps my fears are ungrounded; and it is
certain that with increasing knowledge and specialization the courses of
instruction must still further divide.
Another most significant development in agricultural education is the
change in attitude towards the college farm. Once it was thought that
the college estate should be run as a "model farm." However, a farm that
sets a pattern to the farmer must be conducted on a commercial basis;
yet it is manifest that it is the province of a college to devote itself
to education, not primarily to business. A farm cannot be a "model" for
all the kinds of farming of the commonwealth; and if it does not
represent fairly completely the agriculture of the state, it misses its
value as a pattern. At all events the pattern-farm idea is practically
given up. It is then a question whether the farm shall be used merely to
"illustrate,"--to display kinds of tools, examples of fences and
fields, breeds of stock. This conception of the college farm is
comparable with the old idea of "experiments" in agricultural chemistry:
the teacher performed the experiments for the students to see. The
prevailing idea of the college farm is now (or at least, I think, soon
must be) that it shall be used as a true laboratory, as the student in
chemistry now works first-hand with his materials instead alone of
receiving lectures and committing books. Is a student studying cattle?
The herds are his for measurements, testing as to efficiency, studying
in respect to heredity, their response to feeding, their adaptability to
specific purposes, and a hundred other problems. Cattle are as much
laboratory material for the agricultural student as rocks are for the
geological student or plants for the botanical student. Technical books
were once kept only in libraries; now they are kept also in laboratories
and are laboratory equipment. College museums were once only for
display; now they are also for actual use by the student. Barns are
laboratories, to be as much a part of the equipment of a college of
agriculture as shops are of mechanic arts. They should be in close
connection with the main buildings, not removed to some remote part of
the premises. Modern ideas of cleanliness and sanitation are bound to
revolutionize the construction and care of barns. There is no reason why
these buildings should be offensive. It was once thought that dissecting
rooms and hospitals should be removed from proximity to other buildings;
but we have now worked these laboratories integrally into the plans of
colleges. Time has now come for a closer assembling of the college barns
with the college classrooms. Likewise the entire farm is no doubt to be
used in the future as a laboratory, at least in the institutions of
university grade--except such part as is used for pure investigation and
research. Where, then, shall the student go to see his model barn? To
these farms themselves; here a stock farm; there a fruit farm; elsewhere
a dairy farm. The shops in the colleges of mechanic arts have long since
come to be true laboratories; they do not engage in railroading or
manufacturing. They do not try to "pay their way;" if they do pay their
way this fact is only an incidental or secondary consideration. A
college of agriculture is a teaching institution: it must have equipment
and laboratories.
It will be seen that the word "agriculture" has taken on a new and
enlarged meaning. The farmer is not only a producer of commodities: he
is a citizen, a member of the commonwealth, and his efficiency to
society and the state depends on his whole outlook. Also his personal
happiness depends on his outlook. He must concern himself not alone with
technical farming, but also with all the affairs that make up an
agricultural community: good roads, organizations, schools, mail routes,
labor movements, rural architecture, sanitation, the æsthetic aspect of
the country. One will be struck with the new signification of
"agriculture" if he scan the titles of publications that issue from
governmental agricultural departments, agricultural experiment stations,
agricultural nature-study bureaus, agricultural colleges.
I cannot close this sketch without calling attention to the fact that
the college of agriculture has obligations to the farmers of its
commonwealth. The very fact that every college of agriculture in North
America is supported by public funds imposes this obligation. Moreover,
the colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts stand for true democratic
effort, for they have a definite constituency that they are called upon
to aid. It is desirable that as many persons as possible shall assemble
at the college itself, but those who cannot go to college still have the
right to ask for help. This is particularly true in agriculture, in
which the interests are widely separated and incapable of being combined
and syndicated. Thereupon has arisen the great "extension" movement
that, in one way or another, is now a part of the work of every
agricultural college. Education was once exclusive; it is now in spirit
inclusive. The agencies that have brought about this change of attitude
are those associated with so-called industrial education, growing
chiefly out of the forces set in motion by the Land Grant Act of 1862.
This Land Grant is the Magna Charta of education: from it in this
country we shall date our liberties.
LEAFLET V.
SUGGESTIONS FOR NATURE-STUDY WORK.[6]
BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK.
[6] Syllabus of Lectures: Nature-Study (Animal and Plant Life), Mrs. A.
B. Comstock.
[Illustration]
Suggestions for nature-study must necessarily be more or less general.
Nature-study should be a matter of observation on the part of the
pupils. The teacher's part is to indicate points for observation and not
to tell what is to be seen.
After the child has observed all that it is possible for him to see, the
remainder of the story may be told him or may be read.
The objects of nature-study should be always in the teacher's mind.
These are, primarily, to cultivate the child's power of observation and
to put him in sympathy with out-of-door life.
Having these objects clearly in mind, the teacher will see that the
spending of a certain amount of time each day giving lessons is not the
most important part of the work. A great amount of nature-study may be
done without spending a moment in a regular lesson. In the case of all
the things kept in the schoolroom--_i. e._, growing plants, insects in
cages and aquaria, tame birds and domestic animals--the children will
study the problems for themselves. The privilege of watching these
things should be made a reward of merit.
The use of nature-study readers should be restricted. The stories in
these should not be read until after the pupils have completed their own
observations on the subjects of the stories.
Stories about adventures of animals and adventures with animals may
always be read with safety, as these do not, strictly speaking, belong
to nature-study. They belong rather to literature and may be used most
successfully to interest the child in nature.
Blackboard drawings and charts should be used only to illustrate objects
too small for the pupil to see with the naked eye. The pupil must also
be made to understand that the object drawn on the board is a real
enlargement of the object he has studied with his unaided eye.
The use of a simple lens often contributes much interest to the work of
observation. The compound microscope may be used to show some
exceptionally interesting point, as the compound eyes of insects, the
scales on the butterfly's wing, or the viscid thread of the spider. But
this is by no means necessary. Nature-study work does not actually
require the use of either microscope or lens, although the latter is a
desirable adjunct.
The great danger that besets the teacher just beginning nature-study is
too much teaching, and too many subjects. In my own work I would rather
a child spent one term finding out how one spider builds its orb web
than that he should study a dozen different species of spiders.
If the teacher at the end of the year has opened the child's mind and
heart in two or three directions nature-ward, she has done enough.
In teaching about animals, teach no more of the anatomy than is
obviously connected with the distinctive habits of each one; _i. e._,
the hind legs of a grasshopper are long so that it can jump, and the
ears of a rabbit are long so that it can hear the approach of its foes.
While it is desirable for the teacher to know more than she teaches, in
nature-study she may well be a learner with her pupils since they are
likely any day to read some page of nature's book never before read by
human eyes. This attitude of companionship in studying with her pupils
will have a great value in enabling her to maintain happy and pleasant
relations with them. It has also great disciplinary value.
_Reasons for and against graded courses in nature-study._
The question whether there should be a graded course in nature-study is
decidedly a query with two answers.
The reasons why there should not be a graded course, are:
1st. The work should be spontaneous and should be suggested each day by
the material at hand. Mother Nature follows no schedule. She refuses to
produce a violet one day, an oriole the next, and a blue butterfly on
the third.
2d. A graded course means a hard and fast course which each teacher must
follow whether or not her tastes and training coincide with it.
3d. There is no natural grading of nature-study work. A subject suited
for nature-study may be given just as successfully in the first as in
the fifth grade.
There is only one reason why a nature-study course should be graded, and
that is so cogent that it outweighs all the reasons on the other side:
the training of the grade teacher in nature-study is at present so
limited in subject-matter that if the course were ungraded the same work
would be given over and over in the successive grades until the pupils
became utterly weary of it. To many a pupil in the lower grades to-day,
nature-study means the sprouting of beans and peas and nothing more. As
a matter of experience, we believe that after a nature-study subject is
once studied it should be dropped entirely, the pupil should not again
meet it in the schoolroom until he finds it in its respective science in
the high school or college. On this account, we have been persuaded that
a graded course, or at least a consecutive course, is necessary.
The following suggestions about grading the course are given with a hope
of being helpful, and not because we believe that the courses indicated
are necessarily the best courses possible. We have graded each subject
so that a teacher may follow her own tastes and inclinations, and may
not be forced to teach zoology when her interests are entirely with
botany, or vice versa.
We have tried to give a distinctive trend to the observations for each
year, and have suggested a line along which the work may be done.
As a matter of fact, however, the time to study any living thing is when
you chance to find it. If you find an interesting caterpillar or cricket
or bird, study it, whatever your grade of work. The probabilities are
that it may be long before you chance upon these same species again.
It has been the experience of most teachers that the lower grades are
much more interested in nature-study than are the higher. Especially are
the seventh and eighth grades difficult to interest. Therefore, we have
made this part of the course economic in its bearing, hoping that this
may appeal to the grown-up feeling of pupils of these grades.
INSECTS.
FIRST GRADE.
The first year of work with insects may well be restricted to
familiarizing the pupils with the three most striking phases in the life
of insects with complete metamorphosis, _i. e._, the larvæ, the pupæ,
and the winged insects. Moths and butterflies are especially adapted for
this work with the small children.
_Fall work._--In September there are still many caterpillars feeding.
Bring them in the schoolroom and feed them in breeding cages. For
different forms of cheap breeding cages, see Insect Life, pp. 326-330;
Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 5 (No. XIX, this volume); Lessons in
Nature-Study, p. 45.
During October many of the hairy caterpillars will be found hurrying
along in quest of suitable winter quarters. These should be brought in
and put in box cages having sand or dirt in the bottom. They are seeking
secluded corners in which to curl up and hide during the cold weather.
Some of them pass the winter in their cocoons, and some do not. Insect
Life, pp. 239-241; Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 317-324; Moths and
Butterflies, (_b_), pp. 191-198.
Bring in as many cocoons as possible. November or December, after the
leaves have fallen from the trees, is the best time in which to hunt for
the cocoons of _Cecropia_, _Promethea_, and _Cynthia_. Insect Life, pp.
194-196; Moths and Butterflies, (_b_), pp. 119-180.
Teach the pupils the difference between the cocoon and the pupa. The
pupa is the quiescent form of the insect. The cocoon is the silken bag
covering it, and is always made by the caterpillar before it changes to
a pupa.
If possible bring in some butterfly larvæ. In September many may be
found. The cabbage butterfly especially is always with us. Insect Life,
p. 245. Also the larvæ of the black swallow-tail may be easily found.
Insect Life, p. 243; Everyday Butterflies, p. 130; Moths and
Butterflies, (_b_), p. 39.
Show the children (do not tell them) that the butterfly caterpillars do
not make cocoons, but that the naked pupa is suspended by a silk button,
and in some cases also by a silk thread.
Many teachers complain that but few of the moths are able to get out of
the cocoons. The usual reason for this is that in the heated atmosphere
of the schoolroom the cocoons become too dry. To obviate this, the
cocoons should be dipped in water every week or two.
_Spring work._--During the spring term use the apple-tree
tent-caterpillars. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 5 (No. XIX, this
volume); Moths and Butterflies, (_b_) p. 201. Show the four stages of
the insect: egg, caterpillar, pupa, and moth. Pay especial attention to
the way in which the caterpillars grow.
_Summary of methods._--This whole year's work may be done with no
regular "lessons," and all the time required will be the care of the
breeding cages and the time given to hunting for the caterpillars and
cocoons. The child's reading may be selected from the many stories of
the caterpillars, moths and butterflies. Yet be very careful to make
each child understand that he himself is studying out the especial story
of each caterpillar and cocoon in the schoolroom.
SECOND GRADE.
The plan for the second year is to continue the study of the
life-histories of insects. The pupil, having learned the different
stages of the moths and butterflies, should learn that all insects do
not experience such marvelous changes of form.
_Fall work._--Arrange a breeding cage like figs. 288, 289, Insect Life,
p. 329, placing fresh sod in the flower pot and covering the lamp
chimney with a square of wire netting. Push the glass chimney down into
the earth so as to allow no crevices through which the insects may
escape. In such a cage, place grasshoppers and crickets of all sizes,
and study their growth. Insect Life, pp. 33-37.
Show the pupils that the young grasshopper looks like the old one except
that the wings are shorter; the same is true of crickets. Keep the sod
damp so the grass will not become dry; and when it gets too old replace
it with other sod. A good way to keep these insects alive and to keep
the children interested in them is to plant wheat and grass seed in
several flower pots, and then to move the glass chimney from pot to pot,
giving the insects fresh pasturage when needed.
As early as possible start some aquaria. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No.
11 (No. XII, this volume); Insect Life, pp. 330-332.
The mosquito is one of the most available insects for study in the
aquarium. Insect Life, pp. 131-136; Lessons in Nature-Study, p. 12.
The nymphs of dragon flies and damsel flies and many others may be
studied during the entire winter. Insect Life, pp. 140-142; Cornell
Teachers' Leaflet, No. 11 (No. XII, this volume); Outdoor Studies, p.
54. Those that have cannibalistic habits should be kept apart, each one
in a separate jar. They may be fed by dropping into the jar a bit of raw
beefsteak tied to the end of a string. The purpose of the string is that
the uneaten meat may be withdrawn before it decays. It should not be
left in the water more than twenty-four hours. The insects do not need
feeding more than twice a week.
_Spring work._--In the spring get new material for the aquaria. In pools
where there are many dead leaves look for the caddice worms that build
the log cabin cases, for these may be kept in aquaria that have no
running water. Insect Life, p. 149.
While we advise the introduction of the aquaria during the second year,
their use should be continued during the following four grades; there
are always new things to study in ponds and streams, and nothing so
fascinates a child as watching the movements of these little denizens of
the water.
_Summary of methods._--There need be no set lessons in the work of the
second year, unless the teacher in a few words, now and then, chooses to
call attention to certain things as the occasion seems to demand. The
object of the year's work is to teach the pupil the life histories of
insects which have no quiescent or pupa stage, and this should be
accomplished by simple observation of specimens bred in the schoolroom.
THIRD GRADE.
The general subject of this year's work may well be the Homes of
Insects. This is a most interesting topic, and if well taught will
inspire the pupils to much individual observation and collecting.
The questions to be asked concerning insect homes are:
Of what material are they made? How are they made? What is the purpose
of the home? Is it made by the insect for itself to live in, or is it
made by the mother for the protection of her young? Is it made as a
protection for the insects while they are eating, or do they go out to
feed and come back only to rest and spend the night or day?
_Fall work._--Leaf rollers: Insect Life, p. 206; Ways of the Six-Footed,
p. 119.
Leaf miners: Insect Life, p. 208; Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 29.
Galls: Insect Life, p. 210; Outdoor Studies, pp. 18, 38-39.
Fall web worm: Insect Life, p. 200.
Scallop shell moth: Insect Life, p. 201.
Nests of silver spotted skipper: Insect Life, p. 203; Everyday
Butterflies, p. 190.
Bag worms: Insect Life, p. 204. Ant lions: Outdoor Studies, p. 81.
Carpenter bees: Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 108.
Tiger beetle larvæ: Insect Life, pp. 270-272.
All kinds of cocoons are found by the children. Ask concerning the
cocoons: Where did you find them? Were they in protected places? Why?
Of these nests there are many more than those mentioned above. In fact,
to one who sees what he looks at, every plant, every tree, every fence
corner and every foot along the country path contains many most
interesting homes. The leaf rollers and leaf miners are the most common
and most easily found of all.
_Spring work._--The spring work in this subject may be to study the way
in which caddice worms make their houses; take a caddice worm out of its
house and watch it build another. This is a new phase of the study of
caddice worms. Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 133.
Study the homes of beetles under sticks and stones, and find the homes
of the engraver beetles under bark. Insect Life, p. 216. This work must
necessarily be done by the pupils out of school hours, and their
discoveries and specimens of homes should be made topics for lessons for
the whole school.
During this term begin a butterfly calendar, made on the same plan as
the bird calendar. A collection of butterflies might be started for the
schoolroom in connection with the calendar. Study the specimens caught
and determine whether they hibernated as adults or chrysalids. If their
wings are battered and torn, they spent the winter as adults. If they
are bright in colors and their wings perfect, they spent the winter in
the chrysalis state.
Hints for collecting insects: Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 7 (No.
XVIII, this volume); Insect Life, pp. 283-314 and pp. 48-49. How to Know
the Butterflies.
_Summary of methods._--The work in the third grade, as outlined,
requires a lesson period now and then when single specimens are brought
in by individual pupils. Each pupil should examine the specimen, and
after that the lesson may be given.
FOURTH GRADE.
After having studied Insect Homes, the pupils will be ready to take up
the broader subject, How Insects Live. The work of this year may be
given on this subject.
In order to study the life-histories of insects, the pupils should know
some things about insect anatomy. If the work as indicated in the
previous grades has been followed, the pupils know the number of legs,
wings, and compound eyes most insects have, without ever having killed a
specimen or having received a special lesson in insect anatomy. Now
teach the children how insects breathe and how they eat. Show the
spiracles on the body of any caterpillar which is not hairy; they may be
seen on the abdomen of a grasshopper or of a butterfly that has not too
many large scales to cover them.
After they have seen these spiracles or breathing pores, give a lesson,
illustrated by chart or blackboard, showing that these holes lead to the
breathing tubes of the body. Manual for the Study of Insects, pp. 73-75.
To show how insects eat, allow the pupils to watch the following insects
in the breeding cages while feeding: a grasshopper; a leaf beetle
(potato beetle is a good example); any caterpillar; an ant; and a wasp.
Show that all these have mouth parts made for biting. Let the pupils see
an aphid sucking the juice of a plant; this may be done by bringing in a
twig infested by aphids. Let the pupils see the water bugs in the
aquarium eat. Insect Life, pp. 123-131, and pp. 137-140. Let them watch
a fly, a honey bee, and, if possible, a butterfly or moth, eat. All
these have mouth parts made for sucking. All this work should be
original investigation on the part of the pupils.
After the pupils find out how insects breathe and eat, let them see how
each insect lives a life adapted to its own peculiar needs. Try to feed
some cabbage worms on clover or grass. Then try turnip or mustard
leaves, and watch the result. Change the potato beetle larvæ to some
other plant, and watch the result.
Let the pupils first find out how the insects breathe in the water. Each
insect in the aquarium tells a different story as to its way of getting
air. The teacher will find all these stories indicated in the chapters
in Insect Life devoted to pond and brook insects.
Call especial attention to protective coloring of insects. Show that
when an insect resembles its surroundings in color it is thereby
enabled to escape its enemies; or, if need be, is enabled to creep upon
its prey unobserved.
Note the color of the grasshopper in the road; color of meadow
grasshopper; color of the caterpillars of the cabbage butterfly (green
and hard to find). Notice the shape and color of walking sticks; color
of the katydids. Note the bright color of the larvæ of potato beetle.
Why? (They are distasteful to birds, and their colors advertise the
fact.) Study the Monarch butterfly and the Viceroy. Everyday
Butterflies, p. 95 and p. 297; Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 39. Bring out
strongly in all this work that the insect in order to live must have its
special food plant and must escape notice of its enemies. This is the
proper place to begin the study of the valuable work done by birds in
destroying insects.
In addition to this general work, study especially the wasps.
Solitary Wasps: Mud daubers. Bring in their nests and examine them. Ways
of the Six-Footed, p. 96. How are the nests provisioned, and for what
purpose were they made? Find, if possible, nests of other solitary
wasps. Insect Life, p. 218, p. 262, p. 264.
Social Wasps: Bring in a deserted nest of yellow-jackets. Of what is it
made? How? What for? Do the wasps store honey? Do they live as a colony
during the winter? All these questions may be answered by a pupil who
knows of a yellow-jackets' nest in the fall and watches it during the
winter. For the teacher there are discussions of these insects in Manual
for Study of Insects, pp. 660-664. Wasps and their Ways.
Continue the butterfly collection and the butterfly calendar.
_Spring work._--In the spring, begin a collection of moths for the
schoolroom. Insect Life, p. 50. Caterpillars and Moths.
In the spring, notice when the first house-flies appear. What happens to
the house-fly in winter? (Send for Circular No. 35, second series, Div.
of Entomology of Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., for the
life-history of the house-fly.) Explain that one female destroyed early
in the season means thousands fewer late in the season.
Encourage the children to bring to the schoolroom all sorts of flies
and compare them with the house-fly. The object of this is to
teach something of the wonderful variety of forms among small and
inconspicuous insects. Make a collection of flies for the schoolroom.
For description of flies, see Insect Life, pp. 83-84.
A good plan for the spring work is to keep the pupils interested in the
first appearance, after the vicissitudes of winter, of each insect which
it is possible for them to find. Note that insects do not appear before
their food plants appear.
_Summary of objects and methods._--The questions to be answered during
the whole year's work are: How do the Insects live,--on what do they
feed? How do they escape their enemies? What happens to them in winter?
How are the new broods started in the spring? The work is chiefly
observation, but occasional lessons may be given and stories may be told
to keep the interest in the work from flagging.
FIFTH GRADE.
_Fall work._--Study the Bees and Ants.
Fit up ants' nests. Insect Life, p. 278.
Teach the whole life-history by allowing the pupils to colonize the
nests. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 633-639; Insect Life, p. 271.
Make observations upon the _eggs, pupæ, workers, males, females_. What
are the winged forms that appear in swarms in June and July.
Let the pupils observe the relation of ants to aphids. This may be done
on almost any shrub or roadside plant. Home Nature-Study Lesson 1904,
No. 8.
The teacher should read Sir John Lubbock's "Ants, Bees and Wasps."
Many stories on these subjects may be told and read, especially those
concerning the habits of exotic ants and ant wars which the children are
not likely to see; also of the slave-making ants. These slave-making
ants are quite common in New York State; their nests may be found under
stones. They resemble the brown mound-builder ant; the slaves are black.
_Spring work._--In the spring work in this grade, study the habits of
the honey bee. An observation hive is desirable but not necessary. Bring
in the honeycomb filled with honey. If there are apiarists in your
neighborhood, they will gladly give you specimens of brood in the comb.
Read The Bee People and the Manual for Study of Insects, p. 673.
Develop all the facts of the wonderful life in the hive by letting the
pupils observe them as far as possible. Then give them the many
interesting stories:
Story of the Workers.
Story of the Queen.
Story of the Drone.
Story of the Bee Larva.
Story of Honey Making.
Story of Wax and Comb Making.
Story of the Swarm.
In connection with the study of the honey bee, study the bumble bee.
Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 672-673; Insect Life, p. 256. Begin
with the study of the big queen that appears in May or June. Show that
she is of great benefit to us and must not be harmed or frightened. Let
the bumble bee's nest be a problem for summer observation, and finish
the study in the next grade in the fall.
_Summary of objects and methods._--The work of this year should have for
its objects the harmonious life of social insects; their unselfish work
for each other; their devotion to their respective colonies; their ways
of building and of defending their habitations.
The work should be based upon observations made by the pupils in and out
of the schoolroom. Many lessons should be given, mostly in the form of
stories. Ways of the Six-Footed, pp. 55-94.
SIXTH GRADE.
_Fall work._--Study the spiders. Lessons in Nature-Study, p. 103; Insect
Life, pp. 223-232. Cornell Teachers' Quarterly, final number (No. XV,
this volume).
In order to study spiders, they need not be handled with bare hands.
While all spiders are venomous to the same extent, perhaps, that a
mosquito or a bee is venomous, there is only one species in the eastern
United States (and that is very rare) the bite of which need be feared
by human beings.
The use of spiders in nature-study does not have to do with handling
living specimens, but rather with the habits of the different species
and the building of the webs. In catching spiders to bring into the
schoolroom, use the method indicated by Professor Kellogg in
Nature-Study Lessons. Capture the specimen by the use of a pill box:
take the box in one hand and the cover in the other, and catch the
spider by suddenly closing the box over it.
The pupils should be made to observe the chief differences between
spiders and insects; _i. e._, spiders have two regions of the body
instead of three as in insects; eight legs instead of six, simple eyes
instead of compound. Compare spiders with daddy-long-legs.
If the teacher chooses to kill a specimen and show the arrangement of
the eyes and the spinnerets under the microscope, she may do so. This is
not necessary, although I have seen it done successfully in the sixth
grade. Diagrams and blackboard drawings may be used instead of the
microscope.
Let the pupils observe the uses of silk by the spider:
1. Snare for prey. 2. To enwrap prey when first entangled. 3. Nests for
eggs. 4. Lining for habitations. 5. Means of locomotion.
Introduce the grass spider into the schoolroom in glass jars containing
grass sod, and let the pupils observe it at work.
Encourage a study of cobwebs. Capture the owner of an orb web, and bring
it in a glass jar to the schoolroom. Try to give it its natural
environment; _i. e._, some sort of frame or branch of tree on which it
may fasten its web.
The orb web: 1. How is it made? 2. Of how many kinds of silk? 3. The way
the spiral thread is arranged as shown by drawings. 4. The position of
the spider on the web. 5. The way the spider passes from one side of the
web to the other. 6. The way it treats its prey when the victim is once
entangled.
The engineering ability shown in making this web is one of the most
marvelous things in all the realm of animal life. These observations may
well cover two months of this term.
Study the ballooning spiders, the jumping spiders, the running spiders,
and the crab spiders. Study as many egg-sacs of spiders as possible.
Another topic for study during the fall term is the Songs of Insects.
Insect Life, p. 235. Bring in the katydids, crickets, and meadow
grasshoppers, place them in cages containing green sod, and observe them
while they are singing. Note that only the males sing. Show the ears of
the crickets, katydids, and meadow grasshoppers in the elbows of their
front legs. The ear of the grasshopper is on the side of the segment of
the abdomen next to the thorax. Ways of the Six-Footed, pp. 3-27.
Study snowy tree cricket. Manual for Study of Insects, p. 118.
If possible, get a cicada as these insects continue to sing through the
warm days of September. Show the cover to the drums on the lower side of
the common cicada. Cornell Nature-Study Bulletin, No. 1, p. 24 (No. VI,
this volume). This can be made a most interesting subject, and pupils
should be encouraged to do observation work outside of school.
Begin a general collection for schoolroom.
_Spring work._--Continue making a general collection for the schoolroom,
and specialize in this direction. When an insect is brought in and added
to the collection, if the teacher knows the insect, a lesson should be
given on its life and habits. This connecting of the life and habits of
the insects with the collection of dead specimens is of greater value
from a nature-study point of view than the collection itself.
_Summary of methods._--While this year's work must be based on the
observations of the pupils in the schoolroom and out-of-doors, yet many
interesting lessons may be given by the teacher.
SEVENTH GRADE.
The study of this entire year may be the relation of insects to flowers.
Most of the references are given in the Plant-life work for this grade.
The insect work may be limited to: What insects visit flowers? How do
they carry pollen? How does each kind of insect reach the nectar? Which
insects are robbers, and which are true pollen carriers? The use of
pollen by insects. Outdoor Studies, pp. 7-12.
Take up the study of golden rod and its insect visitors, _i. e._, let
the pupils watch a bunch of golden rod and note all the insect visitors.
For directions concerning this work see Outdoor Studies, pp. 29-46.
In the same way take up the study of asters and the late flowers, and
their insect visitors. Describe the visitor; what it does; what part of
the plant it visits.
_Summary of objects and methods._--The object of this whole year's work
is to show the beautiful inter-relation between insects and flowers. The
studies must necessarily be made in the field. But many delightful
lessons may be given on the structure of flowers, that make of greatest
use to the flowers the work of insect visitors.
EIGHTH GRADE.
The object of this year's work is the economic side of insect-study.
Many pupils do not continue these studies to high school or college. Yet
if they have homes with gardens or trees in city or country, they must
learn to cope with the many insect enemies that feed upon cultivated
plants. They should also learn to discriminate between insect friends
and foes. They should learn the best methods of combating the foes and
preserving the friends.
Explain first that in fighting an insect enemy we must know how it eats.
If it inserts its beak in the stem of the plant there is no use trying
to kill it by putting poison on the leaves.
COMMON INSECT FOES.
To be studied in the schoolroom:
_Fall work._--Codlin-moth. Insect Life, p. 180. Show work on an apple,
and give methods of destroying it.
Plum curculio. Insect Life, p. 182.
The pomace flies. Insect Life, p. 184.
Scale insects. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 165-174.
Potato beetle. Manual for Study of Insects, p. 176.
_Spring work._--Tussock moths and canker worms. Circular No. 9, 2d
Series, Dept. Agr., Div. of Ent., Washington, D. C.; Cornell Teachers'
Circular, No. 1.
Cabbage worms. How to Know the Butterflies.
Currant worms. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 613-614.
Plant lice or aphids. Insect Life, pp. 177-178.
Carpet beetle. Circular No. 5, 2d Series, Dept. Agr., Washington, D. C.;
Manual for Study of Insects, p. 539.
Clothes moth. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 257-258; Circular No. 36,
2d Series, Dept. Agr., Washington, D. C.
Tent caterpillar. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 5 (No. XIX, this
volume).
A study of spraying should be made. Insects and Insecticides, pp. 39-56.
Spray Calendar, distributed free by the Cornell Agricultural Experiment
Station.
Important Insecticides. Farmers' Bulletin No. 127, Dept. Agr.,
Washington, D. C.
INSECT FRIENDS.
_Fall work._--Lady bugs. Insect Life, p. 179.
Aphis lions. Insect Life, p. 178; Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 125.
Red clover and the bumble bee.
Parasitic insects. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 621-630.
_Spring work._--Bees and orchard in blossom.
_Summary of methods._--The observations may be made in the schoolroom or
out-of-doors. There should be observations of experiments in spraying.
This may be accomplished in most localities by encouraging the pupils to
visit orchards undergoing the operation of spraying. However, by means
of syringe or watering pot, the infested plants brought into the
schoolroom may be sprayed and the results noted. Lessons should be given
on the importance of preserving insect friends while we are destroying
insect enemies.
OTHER ANIMALS ADAPTED FOR NATURE-STUDY.
_The Toad and Frog._ The study of either of these two species is
delightful spring work for any grade. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 9
(No. XVI, this volume); Wilderness Ways, p. 25.
_Salamanders or Efts._ Familiar Life of the Roadside.
_Fishes._ Observations upon goldfish or minnows kept in an aquarium
should be made the basis of lessons upon the life of fishes. Study: (1)
The shape of the body; see how it is especially adapted to rapid
movement through the water. (2) The shape and arrangement of the fins,
and their uses. (3) How the fish propels itself through the water. (4)
How the fish breathes. (5) The shape of the fish's mouth, and how and
what it eats. (6) Experiment to ascertain the ability of the fish to see
and hear. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 21 (Nos. XIII and XXXVI, this
volume).
Encourage observations of habits of different species of fish common in
our ponds and streams. Study their eggs and the places where they are
found. Teach the children the reason for the game laws, and impress upon
them a true respect for those laws. Food and Game Fishes.
_Mice._ Some house mice in an improvised cage may be placed in the
schoolroom, and the habits of the little creatures observed. Give them
paper to see how they make their nests. Note how and what they eat, and
how they clean themselves. Note shape of teeth and their use. If
possible, study the wild mice. Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers, p. 111;
Wild Life, p. 171.
_Squirrels and Chipmunks._ The work on these animals must be based on
out-of-door observations. Try to get the pupils to discover for
themselves answers to the following questions: How and where do they
travel? What do they eat? Where and how do they carry their food? Do
they store it for winter? If so, where? What do they do in winter?
Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers, p. 15, p. 134; Wild Neighbors, p. 1.
_Rabbits._--A domesticated rabbit should, if possible, be kept in the
schoolyard so that the pupils may make their own observations upon its
habits. Let them study: How and what it eats. The shape of its teeth.
The form and use of the ears. How does it travel? What sort of tracks
does it make, and why? From these observations lead the pupils to think
of the life of the wild rabbit, how it is adapted to escape from its
enemies and to get its food. Ways of Wood Folk, p. 41; Story of
Raggylug.
_Guinea pigs._--These little animals are easily kept in the schoolroom,
and, though not particularly interesting in their habits, they prove
attractive to the smaller children and may be studied in the same way as
the other animals.
_Domestic animals._--These need not be studied in the schoolroom, as the
pupils, if they have opportunity, can make the observations at home.
Studies of the horse, cow, pig, sheep, and goat, and also the cat and
dog may be made most interesting. Such questions as these may be asked
concerning each: What is the characteristic form of the animal? What is
its clothing? What does it eat? How are its teeth adapted to its food?
What is its chief use to man? How does it travel, slow or fast? How are
its feet adapted to its way of running or walking? Has it a language?
How many emotions can it express by sound? How many can it express by
action? How does it fight, and what are its weapons? What sort of life
did its wild ancestors live? How did they get their food, and how did
they escape from their enemies?
_Summary of methods of nature-study of animals._--Study only so much
anatomy as is clearly adapted to the animal's ways of living.
Observations made by the pupils should be arranged into lessons by
either pupil or teacher. Such lessons make excellent English themes, and
they may be adapted to any grade.
BIRDS.
Begin the study of birds by the careful study of some domesticated
species that may be observed closely and for a long period. The hen is
perhaps the best for this purpose. Study carefully all of the
adaptations of her anatomy to her life necessities. Study shape of her
body; the feathers; the bill; her food; how she eats; drinks; the shape
of her feet; their covering; how she sees; hears; smells; sleeps; study
the life of a chick; study the language of chick, hen and cock;
embryology of a chick. Study a robin or some bird that builds near
houses. Note all its habits from the time it appears in spring until
autumn.
Bird houses and bird protection. Usefulness of birds. Our Native Birds,
Lange. Publications of U. S. Dept. Agr.
_Summary of methods._--It is much more important that the pupil know the
habits of one species than that he should know by name many species.
Therefore encourage patient watching and careful observation concerning
the things which birds do. Such observations may be made into lessons by
pupil or by teacher for the benefit of all the pupils. First Book of
Birds, and Second Book of Birds; Bird Lore; The Story of the Birds; Bird
Neighbors.
PLANTS.
FIRST GRADE.
_Fall term._--Let the children study the different forms and the
colors of leaves. By no means teach the botanical terms for all the
shapes of leaves; simply let the children gather and bring in all
the different kinds of leaves they can find. Let them draw the
different forms in their blank books. Press leaves and mount
them.
The object of this work is to give the child an idea of the great
number of leaf forms and colors, and to get him interested in
observing them. References: Botany, Bailey, pp. 90-100; Lessons
with Plants, pp. 79-90; Gray's How Plants Grow, chapter on
Leaves and Forms of Leaves; Elements of Botany, pp. 89-93.
_Winter and spring terms._--Let the children study vegetables.
The following questions should be answered concerning a vegetable.
What part of the plant is it? Does it grow below or above ground?
What sort of leaf has it? What sort of flower? What sort of fruit
or seed? Lessons with Plants, pp. 353, 356, 364; First Studies,
pp. 50, 51, 174; Botany, Bailey, pp. 31-37; Cornell Teachers' Quarterly,
No. 7 (No. XXXIX, this volume).
SECOND GRADE.
Teach the use of the flower. Do this by bringing in all flowers
possible, and show that as the flower fades the fruit becomes evident.
Let the pupils observe for themselves the fact that the flower
exists for the sake of the fruit. Interest the pupils in all kinds of
fruits and seeds. This is not the place to teach seed dispersion,
but simply the forms and colors of fruits and seeds. Let the
pupils also observe that insects carry pollen from flower to flower.
Do not give the explanation of this to children of this age, but let
them see the bees at work.
For this work see Plant World, by Mrs. Bergen, pp. 80-107.
Let the pupils observe the following things in plant physiology:
Flowers sleep: Botany, Bailey, p. 50; Lessons with Plants, p. 402;
Plants, Coulter, pp. 9, 10, 48; Elements of Botany, p. 98.
Plants turn toward the light: Elements of Botany, p. 100; Botany,
Bailey, p. 50; First Studies, p. 136.
Effect of frost on flowers and leaves.
_Winter and spring work._--Seed germination: First Studies, pp. 1-24;
Lessons with Plants, pp. 316-331; Botany, Bailey, pp. 164-171; Cornell
Teachers' Leaflet, No. 1 (No. XXVIII, this volume); Plants, p. 307;
Lessons in Nature-Study, p. 22.
Let the pupils observe in the field: Position of leaves when first open.
A Reader in Botany, by Newell, Part I, p. 84.
Position of leaves and flowers in the rain. First Studies, p. 135;
Elements of Botany, pp. 175-176; Plants, p. 51.
THIRD GRADE.
_Fall work._--The fall work of this grade may be (1) The way flowers
make fruit, _i. e._, the way the fruit is formed from the flower. (2)
The dispersion of seeds.
Fruits. First Studies, pp. 168-171; Lessons with Plants, pp. 251-310;
Botany, Bailey, pp. 147-157.
Seed dispersion. First Studies, p. 176; Plant World, pp. 133-156; Little
Wanderers, by Morley; Seed Dispersal, by Beal; Cornell Teachers'
Quarterly, No. 2 (No. VIII, this volume); Seed Travelers, by Weed;
Botany, Bailey, p. 158.
Let the pupils observe: "How some plants get up in the world." First
Studies, p. 150; Lessons with Plants, p. 396; Botany, Bailey, p. 108.
_Spring work._--Opening of the buds. Lessons with Plants, pp. 48-63;
First Studies, p. 33.
Arrangement of buds. Lessons with Plants, pp. 63-69.
Expansion of bark. Lessons with Plants, pp. 69-72.
FOURTH GRADE.
The object of this year's work may be the teaching of the value of
earth, air, light, and water upon plants.
_Fall work._--Experiments to show these to be carried on in schoolroom.
Experiments to show value of earth to plants:
(1) Plant seeds in fertile earth; poor earth; clean sand or sawdust.
(2) Plant seeds in sawdust and on cotton batting placed on water in a
jar.
Experiments to show use of light to plants:
(1) Sow seeds in two boxes of earth prepared just alike. Place one in
the window, one in a dark closet, and note results.