Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/689

Rh can not be obtained," the teachers will reply: "Several towns have already appropriated ten and twenty dollars for the purchase of natural history collections, and these can be used a number of years. Teachers awakened to the new and beautiful revelations of nature are preserving specimens at the sea-shore and in the country. Children have collected hundreds of specimens which have been used in class work, or have helped to form valuable school cabinets."

When, again, it is said, "Our teachers have not been trained by the 'natural method'; how, then, can you expect them to teach by it?" they will answer: "We know from experience the defects of the old methods; is it not possible, then, for us to shun these defects, and to teach by better, more effective methods? The fossilization of teachers is not in order. We must grow, for growth is the necessity, if not the charm, of the teacher's life of to-day."

Again, when it is said, "Too much observational work results in lack of mental concentration and in weak power of memorizing," they will assert: "The time for considering the results of 'too much observational work' has not yet come, nor is the danger so imminent as to concern us now. The criticism offered may be true of much poor oral instruction which 'entertains' children, but it can not be true of elementary science work, the very soul of which finds verbal expression in the words individual effort—such effort as is only possible when the mental faculties are under control."

It is true the mission of the science lesson is not to strengthen the memory. The studies of literature and language do this, while the science lesson quickens the perceptive faculties and cultivates the power of delicate discrimination and of just generalization.

Finally, when it is urged that "the object of this teaching is to make naturalists of our children," they will emphasize the fact that while the object of advanced biological teaching may be to make specialists of those who have an aptitude for this work, the object of elementary science work must be, always and ever, the training of the young mind. We are just beginning to find out that a one-sided system of education is not sufficient for our many-sided human nature. We are not all born to be teachers, or professors of law or medicine; we have among us natural mechanics, merchants, inventors, investigators; and a system of instruction which is not broad enough to train these for a life of productive industry falls far short of what it ought to do. Education must have its industrial and scientific as well as its classical side, and not until it does will each child realize its own bright possibility of a better and more enlightened humanity.