Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1873-12-03

A FINE EXAMPLE-An interesting par
agraph just now going the rounds OF the
press tells how young female teacher IN
a rural district, near Portland, in the
State of Maine, has been wont to initiate
her scholars in the study and knowledge of
botany and mineraogy. She tells them to
bring to her the plants and stones they
fnd in the woods. Then, either before or
after school hours, she describes and names
correctly the objects brought to her, and
afterwards gives the children an opportu-
nifty to show whether or no they remember
what she has told them. The results of
this method of teaching natural history
are said to be surprising to persons who
have never observed with what interest in
telligent children often regard flowers and
minerals. Many of the little people thus
taught have, without interference with
their other studies, gained a clear idea of
classification, and are able promptly and
correctly to name and describe a great
multitude of the natural objects OF their
neighborhood. 1t is less surprising to be
told that school director Of the district
forbade the innovation for the reason that
the heads of the children would be filled
with nonsense to the neglect OF really i'm
portant subjects. The act of the director
is not surprising, we say. Reform moves
gradually, and it is not remarkable that a
rustic school director in the State of
Maine is not wiser to-day than some OF the
most eminent educators in Germany were
fifty years ago. La Prussia a prolonged
and hardly contested battle was necessary
to introduce natural history as a subject OF
instruction even in the higher schools, and
its introduction into schools of a lower
grade was still more obstinately contested.
And in both cases one chief argument
against the innovation was the very argu
ment used by the Maine director. The
new study would withdraw time and atten-
tion from other studies of real Importance,
AMI especially from the classics.
In Prussia it was also argued that natu-
raj history was matter OF such vast and
boundless compass as to be quite unadapt-
ed to youthful discipline. 1t would, they
f said, merely confuse and confound the
young mind, the knowledge acquired being
chaotic mass, burdening the memory and
f affording no illumination to the under
standing. The champions of the new stu
f dy, in reply, distinguished between an ex
. tensive or exhaustive knowledge and
sound knowledge of a science. And they
Raumer, for instance-appealed tt
experience for evidence that even very
! Young students, in the intervals OF othel
studies, can acquire a sound knowledge o
. botany OF mineralogy. In other words,
knowledge definite and satisfactory as ia
n as it went, knowledge especially delight
/ ed to juvenile minds, imparting fresh ant
. ever growing interest to familiar objects
f and reactiug with admirable and most use
r full effect upon their pathological studies.
q A similar battle was at a later perio'
>. fought out in England, where, however, tn
70 results have not yet been SO wide reachin
Is as in Germany. Still even in Englan
e natural history is at present pretty exten
IS sively taught in the public schools. W
8 may add that a considerable impulse wa
in given to the reform by an experlmeI
60 much resembling shat Of the young fema
ID teacher of Maine. An eminent botanis
20 of Oxford we believe, who was curate Of
If country parish, determined to try wheth'
~ he could not excite an interest in b
er 81 favorlte science among the children Of