But do put in generous proportions of viewing nature that will "hush all the class and encourage him to tell it so that all may hear." Then, if you have the right spirit, you will want to "hug him,” that bright little James. That is the thing needed in the schoolroom you may call it anything you please. I call it nature study "from the child's standpoint." By the way, Thoreau said, "There is something of spring in all seasons." There should be something of the nature-study spirit in all school exercises, very frequently so "from the child's standpoint." "All that is needed to give the child an impulse to talk You may is to fill his mind with facts that interest him. indeed by discipline, or by appeals to emulation or to the child's desire to please, create an artificial motive. But discipline which does not strengthen a natural impulse to action, appeals to emulation or to the desire to please for the sake of making a pupil do what he has no inclination to do at all, is perverted. What a child does under such influences is always done in a half-hearted, perfunctory way." "The value of work, however, should not be measured by the acquisition of knowledge or the power to express it, but rather by the love and the sympathetic interest awakened in nature and the profound reverence for the design and the protecting care revealed in the works of earth and sky by an all-wise Creator."-ANNA E. McGOVERN, B. S., in "Nature Study and Related Literature." CHAPTER XXIV WOVEN INTO CHILD NATURE "Is this Mrs. Durant?" inquired a caller, rising as the lady of the house entered the drawing room. "Yes, and you are Miss Plimpton, my Dorothy's teacher. I am glad to see you. I should have known you at once, even if you had not sent up your card, and in spite of the fact that this is the first time I have had the pleasure of meeting you." "How is that?" surprisingly inquired the teacher. "I feel as though I were a perfect stranger, except to my boarding-mistress and the little folks in school. I have been so busy that this is my first call in Van Wert, but I have been here only three weeks." "Let me explain that perhaps you haven't known just what you have been doing. I see that you are not aware that you have been calling on about forty families every day; that is, if all your pupils are like my little Dorothy. It is in this way that you multiply yourself. Dor othy plays keeping school, and morning, noon, and night we are served with Miss Plimpton in voice, in walk and even in every little action. So you see I am well acquainted. I recognized and welcomed your voice and manner as of at least three weeks' acquaintance." There are good contagions and "catchings" of good things, as well as of bad things and diseases, in the life of every child. We quarantine from the bad, but too often, I fear, forget to supply the good. That supply should come from various sources, nature, associates, books, playthings, and the greatest of these is nature. Mother Nature is truly loved by the best that is in us, and never did she betray the heart that loved her. Let us weave her in large proportions into the heart, head, and muscles of the child. The ingredients of child-life are fresh air, sunshine, trees, flowers, birds, and all the other happy life of the fields and forests. Weave in generous proportions. Do not skimp and carve, and trim, and minimize, and scrutinize too much. Pour in the generous cupfuls, hours rather than minutes. The strength, the happiness, the life, all are good. You appreciate them and the child needs them. Let him have them in their fullness of enjoyment. |