present to us a penumbra? and the umbra be a momentary glimpse or reflection of the sun's real mass?

Consider that in looking at the sun we see in reality the outer ends of countless millions of powerful electric discharges, flashing toward us from some hidden stratum of the sun's interior. The sun spot, then, a well, walled by dazzling steeps as ethereal as vacuity itself, bursts into view, holds its short sway and presently is swallowed up in the glowing surface of the sun, a mere interloper in the scheme of heat and light.

Song-Sparrow

(Seen and heard singing in a snow storm, March 3, 1904.)

The Nature-Study Movement

WALTER E. RANGER, SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION OF THE STATE OF VERMONT, MONTPELIER.

ATURE-STUDY is the inevitable issue of a larger movement in education, embracing progressive educational thought and practice since the time of Comenius, and supplying the essential elements of the so-called new education, which, among other important and distinctive characteristics, holds education to be a process of life-growth rather than that of molding or manufacture, and a method of natural training rather than a means of formal information, and which makes its aims practical and ethical as well as intellectual. It involves the historic reaction from authority to freedom; from a belief in the innate depravity of childhood to a sacred regard for the spontaneous life of the child; from harsh and tyrannical to humane and sympathetic treatment of children, and from repression as a practice in teaching to expression or free self-activity as a natural law of education. It consequently places the child and his development above subject-matter, method and appliances in all rational teaching, and realizes that he is to attain development according to natural laws by his own activity and the influences of his environment.

School education, governed too much by tradition and animated too little by the real industrial and social life of the people, is inclined to be concerned rather with traditional subject-matter than with the life of the child and its needs. It too often tends to take the child out from his true and natural environment and to create about him an artificial world of unreal forms, unintelligible facts and arbitrary laws, which seem to have little relation to his own real and onrushing life. To the child the life of school, of home, of play, of work, and of God's out of doors should be one and harmonious. Nature-study tends to correct an error of traditional school education by opening, in response to the needs of the child, the door of the schoolroom to the truth and beauty of Nature, the child's dear

companion and teacher. Even in school it keeps him in contact, and places him in more intimate relations, with the objects and events with which he lives. It restores the pupil to a true relation and sympathy with his own life, and brings the school into harmony with other educative influences. It sets forth the ideal revealed in Whittier's kinsman :

"Himself to Nature's heart so near,
That all the voices in his ear

Of beast or bird had meaning clear."

The coming citizen should be trained to think the thought of his time, to grasp living problems and to be resourceful in the common circumstances of his life. The life of nature and of man constitute the actual and proper environment of the child, and are the natural, obvious and potent means and influences for his education in school and everywhere. Nature-study means that the real life of man and nature are to permeate, energize and enrich the life of the school. Such must be school education if it is to be "the adaptation of a self-conscious being to environment" and the development of capacity to control that environment; in other words, if it is to help the pupil in finding his place and in living his life well.

Nature-study is not a new subject to be added to the daily program, not a "study" calling for more work, not a lesson to be prepared for recitation. It is to enrich all school subjects, to rectify their treatment and to vitalize all school work. It has to do fundamentally with the spirit, aims and practice of all elementary school education. It is even a principle of education to govern practice. It is not "science," not botany, biology, or mineralogy, not even elementary science. The capacity of young children prevents the careful analysis and systematic treatment of subjects known to scientific method. Nature-study follows the natural order. What the child touches, sees, hears, becomes the object of his interest and attention. It follows that no set course of study can become mandatory. Outline courses are valuable, but chiefly on account of their suggestions, helpful guidance and inspiration. The wise teacher will learn from the child and his surroundings what to teach and how to teach him.

The aim of nature-study, as an educational process, is to put

the child in sympathy with his surroundings—with his own life. Its end is to educate him by means of the subjects within his own sphere. It seeks to quicken his sympathetic interest in the things about him, and thereby to energize his self-activity, through which his life is to be enlarged, enriched and vitalized. Its immediate value is to broaden knowledge, to cultivate interest in nature and man, to develop power of observation, to develop the power to compare, discriminate, judge, to train the power of expression and to make one resourceful. An incidental value of nature-study is to inspire an appreciation of rural surroundings, to give contentment to country life, and to make farming a happier, more attractive, and more valuable calling. Nature-study contributes much to right civic and moral training. It inspires kindness to God's creatures, gentle manners and a fine regard for the rights and well-being of others. It gives a larger love of home and familiar scenes and a deep interest in men and things, which are at the heart of good citizenship. In brief, it tends to "adapt the child to his threefold environment, nature, man, God."

The constant and significant cry of Comenius, "Study nature," re-echoed again and again by the world's eminent educators, meant more than to gain a knowledge of natural objects. It means intimacy, communion, sympathy with the creative life that throbs through nature's myriad beings. The study of Nature should lead one to a realization of her mighty forces in which man finds or loses his life, bring him to a recognition of universal law that has governed from the beginning, and inspire him to conduct his own life in sympathetic relation with the creative and infinite spirit in which he has his being.

If this view of the nature-study movement be true, naturestudy is the natural and inevitable product of real educational progress, and not that of professional faddishness or exploitation. As it finds expression in conscious organized effort, there is greater hope that our children may learn to "consider the lilies of the field," to understand the speech that "day unto day `uttereth" and the knowledge that "night unto night showeth," and to realize the old saying, "Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven."

Editorial

HE meeting of the Superintendents Department, N. E. A., at Atlanta, Georgia, was a genuine love feast; balmy air, comfortable quarters, genial hospitality, all combined to make the meeting memorable though not famous. The program was a family one in that the papers were almost entirely from the ranks. The subjects were family subjects of direct interest to the work in hand. They were dealt with in a direct, practical way. There were no startling utterances; there was no talking for effect; but there was a deal of sound sense, notably in the papers of Superintendent Maxwell of New York and Dr. Frank McMurry. The main thread running through all the utterances was the practical betterment of the school system with the teacher as the centre. Perhaps the most notable thing was the fact that self-glorification was entirely absent, and that the child and the teacher received constant undivided attention.

THE

HE discussion at the meeting was not vigorous in that there was too general agreement with the trend of the speakers. The liveliest period was over the reformed spelling, which resulted in the decisive victory for the reformers. It is easy to form a committee and to investigate and spend money-other people's-but it is not so easy to make the public adopt the committee's conclusions. It is a long struggle to get even a single word changed; as witness the time it has taken to get people to adopt "program" as correct spelling. Ten thousand dollars. from the N. E. A. treasury, plus an equal $10,000 raised from outside, to be spent by a committee of thirty "eminent scholars," with five years to spend it in, will accomplish-what? Will "thru" be received by the general people, and if it is, is it worth $20,000? Here is a problem in arithmetic which may be worked by the old "rule of three." If thirty men working five years at a cost of $20,000 can remove three letters from a cumbersome English word, how long will it take to revise the Chinese alphabet?

IN

N the last number of EDUCATION, we devoted an editorial paragraph to the subject of love as one of the fundamentals underlying true home life. We have in mind in these paragraphs that phase of family life which has to do with the relations of parents to children. Next, in importance to love, which creates and sweetens the atmosphere of home, stands AUTHORITY. If love makes the sweetness, authority makes the strength of true family life. Love without a wise firmness which