While I do not for a moment decry the use of books, either for
collateral reading or for text-books--in fact, I plead for a wider
reading and profounder study of the best scientific writers--still, I
feel just as you must feel, that there is something radically wrong in
much of our science teaching, and that we have come to regard books
as more real than the earth, the sky, the rocks; the plants, and the
animals, which are all about us.
Just why this is so, I am unable to understand. Nature is so lavish!
On all sides, easy of access, are the phenomena and the realities,
while the school-room is artificial, and the teacher, alas, in perfect
keeping with the school-room.
Can it be that pupils are averse to actual contact with nature? Not
at all. From the earliest childhood throughout life there is in most
persons a remarkable turn toward curious investigation, and thorough
understanding of the things of nature. That I know from my own
experience while teaching in the grammar schools.
One day I asked the pupils to bring me in any specimens of stones they
might find in the vacant lots and the fields; and then I promised to
give them a talk about these stones. I expected perhaps twenty or
thirty specimens. What was my amazement and secret horror when, the
next day and the next came dozens and dozens of specimens until, in
a few days, I had over a ton and a half, containing 3,000 specimens.
There were granites, gneisses and schists and quartzes; there
were sandstones, slates, shales, limestones, glacial scratchings,
marbles and onyx; there were geodes, crystals, ores, stone hammers,
arrow-heads, brickbats, furnace slag, and fossils. I took everything
smilingly, and at night the janitor and I buried many duplicates and
the useless stuff in a deep hole where they wouldn't be likely to get
hold of it again.
We soon possessed an excellent cabinetful, and had fine times talking
about the making of stones--the crust of the earth--former inhabitants,
the great ice age, and such simple geology as they could understand;
and they did understand; that did not end it. We studied plants in the
same way; physics and chemistry, with home-made apparatus. Of course,
it all took time, and a good deal of it; and there wasn't any extra
pay for it, either; but there are labors whose recompense is far more
precious than dollars and cents.
And so I find enthusiasm also for out-door science, among secondary
pupils and among the great body of intelligent people of our cities;
and if nature is so accessible, and pupils are so eager for its
secrets, and we still worship books and ignore the visible objects
and forces so freely at our disposal, there is no other conclusion
to arrive at, except that the teacher himself is either too ignorant
or too indolent to make proper use of them. It takes time; it needs
enthusiasm; it needs a genuine love for the subject in hand, and a
profound interest in and sympathy with the student.
The subjects in which field work may be made very useful are geography,
geology, botany, and zoölogy, and the objects are, of course, apparent
to all. First, it cultivates a familiarity with nature, which is
wholesome and desirable. We are living in an artificial age. Children
nowadays get too much pocket money; there is too much theater; too much
smartness; too much flabbiness for the real business of life; too much
blasé yawning; too many parties; too much attention to dress; the color
of the necktie; the crease of the trowsers, or the make of a gown. The
only meaning science has for many of the richer classes is the curved
ball of the pitcher, the maneuvers of the quarterback, or the manly art
of self-defense.
I know of nothing that will counter-act the indifference of parents and
lead the young mind back to a simpler and more humanizing condition of
life than to make it familiar with old mother earth, the stream, the
valley, the tree, the flower, and the bird.
Another object of field work is to develop habits of correct
observation. Pupils ordinarily take too much for granted. They will
swallow anything that is printed in a book, or that the teacher may
choose to tell, always providing the pupil is sufficiently awake to
perform the function. It is hardly an exaggeration that they would
believe the moon was made of green cheese, providing the statement came
with august solemnity from the teacher's chair. There is too hasty
generalization and a prevailing unwillingness to careful examination.
Careful field work opens the eye and corrects much of this slovenly
mode of thinking, creates honest doubt, and questions an unsupported
statement. The pupil wants to see the pollen on the bee before he
believes in cross-fertilization; he wants to see rocks actually in
layers before he will believe they could have been deposited in water,
and he pounds up a fragment of sandstone to get at the original sand;
he wants to see the actual castings before he will believe all that
Darwin says about his wonderful earthworms; and few things escape the
eye of the pupils who go out with the understanding that it is business
and their duty to observe and take notes.
Another object of field study is to see life in its environment.
Stuffed birds and animals in cases are all very good; shells look
pretty behind nice glass doors, and herbaria play a very important
part; yet, after all, how much better to see a thrush's flight; to hear
the pewee's song; how much more satisfactory to watch a snail creep and
feed; how much more delightful to study the blossoming hepatica; to
note its various leaves, its soil, its surroundings, and discover why
it blooms at the very opening of springtime.
More can be learned from a handful of pebbles on the beach than a whole
book written upon the same subject.
Yet another object is to acquire specific information not contained
in books. The feel of a leaf, the odor of the honeysuckle, or the
pine, the cry of the kingfisher, the locomotion of a horse, and the
locomotion of a cow, the formation of miniature gorges in a rain
storm, and the wearing of a shore under the action of the waves, these
and countless other manifestations can never be described in mere
words.--_The School Journal._
[Illustration: GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER.
Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.
6-99
COPYRIGHT 1899,
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.]