Special Method in Natural Science for the First Four Grades of the Common School

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Preface

This is the fourth of a series of Special Methods in the common school studies, an J is designed to be a direct help to teachers in recitation work.

The plan is to give a broad view of the problem of science teachiujg by a brief historical and critical survey of science teaching, and of the ideas thus far developed in schools.

One of the great difficulties is to find some basis for selecting and arranging the most important and suitable topics for a course of study when the field of science furnishes such a vast and varied collection of materials.

The method of treating science topics in these grades is treated at some length.

Although natural science instruction is fundamentally based upon direct observation, the best books are found extremely helpful to teachers. A list of about a hundred books, somewhat carefully selected and classified, is presented for the help of teachers, and the publishers are named with addresses.

A large number of topics for first and second grade, worked out and used by Mrs. Lida B. McMurry in primary classes, is given in the full treatment.

The plan for third and fourth grades will be worked out and more fully illustrated by examples in the second edition of this book.

4 Preface.

It is the purpose of the author to work out in a separate volume a course of study in Natural Science for the last four grades of the common school (5th to 8th grade inclusive).

The other works of this series are:

Special Method in Literature and History^ especially the oral treatment of stories in primary and intermediate grades. The history course for grammar grades is also discussed and outlined.

Special Method in Heading^ a discussion of the quality, culture-value, and method of using the best classics as reading exercises. A full list of one hundred forty-six choice books, arranged according to grades, is given.

Special Method in Geography, a plan of geography lessons

for third and fourth grades. It deals with the selection

and method of important types. The material for thirteen

of these type-studies of the Mississippi Valley is given

in full.

Charles A. McMurry,

Normal, 111.

State Normal University, June 4, 1896.

INDEX.-

PAGE.

Introductory Discussion 7

General Purposes, 13

The Leading Aim, 25

Books as an Aid to Science Teaching, . . 66

Outline of Topics —

First Grade, 80

Second Grade, 82

Books of Reference, 84

1. The Shepherd Dog, 86

2. Autumn Leaves and Buds, 95

3. The Cow, 98

4. The Sheep, 106

5. The Rabbit, 112

6. The Horse 120

7. The Chicken, 130

8. The Robin, 144

9. The Red-headed Woodpecker, ... 153

10. The Cabbage Butterfly, T . . . . 161

11. The Common Blue Violet, 163

12. The Morning-Glory 172

13. The Austrian Pine, 178

14. The Common Crow, 188

15. The Screech Owl, 192

Outline of Course of Study for Third and

Fourth Grades, 199

Introductory Discussion

For at least three centuries there has been abundant discourse among writers on education in favor of natural science study in the schools. Educational reformers like Comenius, Rousseau, and Colonel Parker have laid great stress upon the educative value in childhood and youth of the contact between mind and matter in the forms which nature presents. School education has always been too bookish, too much separated from objects and realities of experience.

Comenius found education in his day mired 'in Latin forms, technicalities, and abstractions. It was a killing process to try to awaken childlike interests and mind action upon the dead rules and inflections of a purely formal grammar. By means of his Orbis Pictus and other books of method he tried to infuse some degree of interest and meaning into the lifeless drills of the schools. But it was an almost hopeless task so long as Latin remained, like a vMrt)reastwork of obstruction, at the very doorway of education. It was impossible to establish a rational system of popular education so long as a dead language stretched its lifeless body across the threshold of school life, barring entrance to the fields Elysian. But thanks to the power and vigor of our native tongue, it has 'taken at last the supreme place among languages in a child's education, and when he first enters school he is in possession of this treasure. The same thing has happened in France and Germany and in other European countries.

The vernacular has become the fundamental medium of thought. One of the enormities,* therefore, that vexed the souls of children two or three hundred years ago has been swept away. But the . linguistic and verbal spirit of the old regime is still with us, and many teachers still think children have the ideas when they have only conned the forms in which ideas are expressed. In the days of Latin supremacy, Comenius and the other reformers tried to save instruction from empty verbalism by associating the objects in nature with the Latin names, and we have been trying, for more than one generation, by nleans 0f object lessons and nature studies, to redeem education from the dry rot of verbal memorizing. But in our day we have already got beyond the idea that natural science is simply an auxiliary, a means of making language and other studies more significant and real. Nature study stands out in its own right, an equal among such studies as reading, mathematics, and language.

It is a matter of no little surprise with many that nature study has made so small progress in

Introduelory Discussion. 9

the common schools. For three centuries in Europe and America there has been constant advocacy and boundless faith and enthusiasm in nature studies for children, but the output in the schools is close up to nothing. Yet a fuller appreciation of the inherent difficulties involved in a deep educational problem like this shows that centuries rather than years are required in working out such a problem. It may be truly said that a right selection of topics and a right teaching of natural science would produce a marked change in the teaching of all subjects in the common school. The method of realism in science subjects is a good criterion of method in all studies. A proper attitude of a teacher in handling science topics in a class is a direct protest against the major part of the work in all studies now done in our schools.

We talk about science teaching, realism, sense training, experimental work, investigation, field work, etc., and still we hug our books as tightly as before. If we were dropped into a school of eighty children without books or paper, as was Pestalozzi at Stanz, we might be helpless. True science teaching is the direct realism of education. In nearly all other studies we can get along with books and deceive ourselves, more or less, with words. But in introducing children to nature studies the absurdity of using books is more apparent than in other bnincbes of learning. In natural science, therefore, more than \rv aw^ Q>l\\fex

M study, we are forced to find the true method of object study. We are dealing* with those objects and phenomena which stimulate the mind to its fundamental activities and supply it with elementary material of thought. Nature study furnishes the constructive materials and illustrations out of which other ' studies explain and make real their notions. In its own right, nature study is the direct acquaintance-making and examination of these objects at first hand. It is, therefore, the true parent of all realism in studies (realism used in the sense of object-study). In contrast to this we see an oppressive verbalism still prevailing in the schools, and the heaving of general notions to the front in most text books and recitations. The movement from particular to general, from percept to concept (general notion) is not yet recognized as the primary law of learning. Is it strange that nature study with its objective realism is not yet come into possession of its rightful patrimony? Nature study, more perhaps than any other branch of learning, advertises the foolishness of forcing upon a child the general notions, the principles, before the illustrative materials have been presented to his mind.

The world of nature is the chosen domain of a child's operations; it is the field of his enterprise, of his efforts at self expression. Nature holds out objective inducements and pleasures and invites him to varied effort. Even if the stimulus comes

Introductory Discussion, 11

from literature, as from myth or historical story, the place for actualizing his ideas is in his physical environment. Robinson Crusoe, for example, is the starter for his making a variety of experiments and investigations upon the dogs, parrots, grain fields, clay, and other animate and inanimate objects in his own physical surroundings. This is the way in which all historical and literary works should be studied in the schools, with feet upon the ground though the eyes be turned to the stars.

We may find, therefore, that the effort to discover the best materials and methods of science teaching will bring us face to face with the broader and deeper problems of the school course. Science teaching has a direct word of warning and of helpfulness to all the other studies. It speaks also to the heart of a child as well as to his senses in all his earlier years. Its place, therefore, in the child's life and in the school curriculum is one of no mean or secondary rank.

Nature study includes the whole broad territory of the physical universe. In order to make the notion explicit, we speak analytically of the natural sciences, botany, geolog3^ zoology, physics, chemistry, physical geography, astronomy, meteorology, physiology. But this list is simply explanatory to older people. From the standpoint of pedagogy, nature study is not a collection of sciences, nor a scientific unity of all sciences in

12 Special Method iTi Science.

one, but a practical grasp of the whole physical world around us as a set of conditions environing a child. The best way to look at nature is as a body of educative materials, pressing upon the children from all sides, calling* out their activities, and impressively iterating the simplest real lessons. There are two phases of artificiality in science teaching which we wish to avoid in the early work with children, though both ar^ indispensable as we advance into higher grades. One is the notion of scientific classification, which to mature minds is identical with any notion of science; and the other, the use of books in science studies. Nature, as she thrusts herself upon the attention of children, is neither classified nor bookish. Nature shows herself as an interesting collection of physical realities, and it is only little by little that children discover and recognize the threads of system running through these objects and activities, and still later that books appear at all helpful in getting at the explajiation of things.

General Purposes. 13

General Purposes,

If we inquire among thoughtful instructors in science what the purpose of this study is, we shall get a variety of answers, somewhat as follows:

The training of children to observe closely and accurately so as to form habits of scrutiny. This includes the sharpening of the senses to acuteness and vigor. It includes, also, the storage of elementary percepts of strictly experimental type. We deal with those objects and phenomena which stimulate the mind to its fundamental activities and supply it with the elementary materials of thought. Nature study leads also to thoughtfulness and the exercise of reason upon the materials presented. It arouses and feeds the spirit of inquisitiveness and investigation. It not only awakens an interest in the causal relations of nature's work, but teaches respect for the law-abiding quality and truthfulness in nature, as grounded in the realism of experimental knowledge. Nature study is also directly useful for its deepening and extension of practical knowledge, as in the lessons of health, temperance, and sanitation. It reveals the utilities of natural products and the inventions and processes of man's ingenuity as embodied in telesco^es*^ \s!lv

14 Special MetJwd in Science.

croscopes, steam eng'ines, medicines, ventilation, photography, mirrors, the compass, pumps, etc. Without a real knowledge of these things, children and grown people cannot adapt themselves to the physical conditions and necessities which their own bodies and the objective world around them impose.

Nature study leads up gradually to a grasp of scientific classifications, of the systematic order and law that prevail in the world; in short, ultimately, to a perception of the plan and wisdom that pervade nature. Here we are upon the threshold of religion The esthetic interests and tastes cultivated by nature study, the perception of beauty and grandeur and harmony, are among the strongest educative influences of science study. Some even claim that nature is essentially moral in its teaching, and we may all agree, at least, that indirectly many moral qualities are strengthened by a wise method of science study.

History of Science Teaching.

By an inquiry into the history and present status of nature study in the grades we shall lind that all these ideas have their influence with teachers, one person laying stress upon one phase of science training, another upon some other. Not only so, but there has been a decided evolution and progress in ideas of method in connection with science instruction in the grades.

One of the advantages belonging to the study of European schools is the opportunity to trace the development of method in particular studies as well as in the school course as a whole. The schools of Germany, for example, have a much longer and more gradual development under trained, even expert, instructors than ours. For more than a hundred years they have been working steadily at the problem of science teaching in the common school, and, having passed through a series of progressive stages, have worked their way forward to a position commanding a liberal and practical view of the whole subject. Prom the rich experience of others we might learn a valuable lesson but for our lack of confidence in the plodding Germans, as we sometimes call them, and had we not such abounding confidence ii\ omt

16 Special Metfwd in Science.

own ability to solve the most perplexing" problems at short notice. But great educational problems are not solved in a day — not even by Americans Sometimes even centuries seem to pass by without clearly marked progress. At any rate it is tolerably certain that a number of years must elapse before a satisfactory course in nature lessons for the grades can be fully worked out and put in practice.

The following brief historical view of the successive ideas that have influenced science teaching is suggested by Dr. W. Rein's discussion of natural science in the fourth school year (Das vierte Schuljahr).

In taking up nature study in the common schools, the first idea to make itself practically operative with teachers and book-makers was the notion of the wonderful. Curious or remarkable plants or animals were talked of or read about. Teachers presented children with something marvelous or prodigious in nature to excite their curiosity. Things even freakish or outlandish were called in to satisfy this thirst for the marvelous. Quite a number of the elementary science books now in use in our schools are mainly devoted to a description of such curiosities in nature as the big trees of California, Mammoth Cave, the ant-eater, an elephant hunt, the duckbill of Australia, an iceberg, a geyser. This primitive impulse to feast on foreign wonders and curiosities is directly contrary to two of the most important requirements of g'ood science study, first, that the objects studied be taken from the home neighborhood, as the house-cat, the dandelion, the maple tree, the butterfly, and other objects already familiar to the observation and experience of children; and second, children should learn to see wonders in the commonest objects, instead of going to the world's end to find strange things. Such study of foreign wonders can only be made through books, pictures, and verbal descriptions, while true science teaching throws books aside and shows children how to look nature directly in the face. It is a curious fact that this first impulse to seek extraordinary and freakish things in nature is the exact opposite of the true method of nature study. The whole tendency of this perversion of method is to put our trust in books rather than in our own powers of observation, and to cause children to disregard the marvelous things all about them in nature, and to chase the world over on imaginary journeys in the search for curiosities. The tendency of this perversion of nature study is to teach dependence upon books and hearsay, and even upon what is mythical, instead of personal observation and direct experience. It turns the mind away from surrounding realities toward distant uncertainties. Yet the impulse to find out the wonderful in nature is legitimate and inspiring, and is one of the strongest motives in nature study. Only let it begin at home with familiar objects, and rest upon the undoubted realities and wonders which every child can find for himself at his own doorway.

The second idea which early showed itself in science studies was the doctrine of utility, the practical value and information contained in this study for the average man or child. It is certainly worth while to know the useful and hurtful things in nature. The study of plants and trees brings out medicinal or poisonous qualities. Some animals and plants are of daily use to men for food or clothing or shelter. Some of the simpler lessons of physics, chemistry, and physiology have to do with comfort and health, while the common inventions and machines in general use in our homes, fields, and factories need to be explained in science lessons. This notion of the utility of science studies has a wide range of meanings, from the low mercenary motive of personal gain, up through all the steps of practical benefit to the highest utilities which nature has to offer in her service to man. One of the most striking characteristics of the physical world 4n which we live is the multiplex utility of natural science in the affairs of all classes of people in all their daily concerns. So far as there is progress in the world men are everywhere seeking to understand and to utilize nature, and it is one of the great problems of education to prepare children for real life by securing to them an understanding and a mastery of the physical conditions of life and of the many and varied utilities in nature. In the early history of science teaching", however, the utility of nature study was thought of in a narrow and illiberal sense. The poisonous and useful plants and animals marked the limits of the study.

In the third place a more significant and fruitful notion of science came to notice when teachers asked the question, What mental discipline is supplied by these studies? Rising above the bare question of utility, teachers inquired what mental habits and tendencies science studies fostered. Most science teachers today lay the chief stress upon the mental discipline afforded by science, that is, the training of the observing powers of children, the quickening of the sense perceptions, learning to see and hear and take more accurate note of the things seen and heard, the habits formed of observing, comparing, and tracing relations, the respect for law and order and truthfulness impressed by such realities. All these are doubly emphasized by science teachers of our day. Perhaps no other idea has been so much exalted by science teachers as this peculiar mental discipline which, it is claimed, is not furnished by other studies. Stated in the above form this aim is comprehensive and stimulating, but when reduced to the practice of the schools it runs into serious error and difficulty. The test for a^H^vyc^v drill exercises, which aim at discipline and habit of observation is the power to describe the objects seen and compared and description becomes a mania. In order to carry this observation drill into school a variety of natural objects is examined and described as to form and appearance, color, quality, and materials. Trees, plants, and flowers, birds and insects, crystals and minerals are drawn into this descriptive process which easily degfenerates into a smooth rut. Every tree is analyzed into roots, stein, and leaves, every flower into calyx, corolla, stamens, and pistils, every leaf into ribs, veins, and margins, etc., through all the round of nature objects. Such descriptive work may easily grow into a barren detail of external form and feature The spirit of science teaching drops out and only the empty form of discipline remains.

A special advantage reputed to spring from this descriptive drill is language training. But science is too important to be made simply a handmaid of language exercises. In fact if lessons fail as science lessons they will doubly fail as language. Training children, therefore, to observe and describe, is not the leading aim of science study. Its tendency is so strong in the direction of formalism and superficial study of objects that it soon loses all power to stimulate effort. It does not lay hold of the deeper impulses, the wide-awake interest and stronger effort of children to trace out causal relations, to discover the hidden law, to explain,

History of Science TeacJmig, 21

for example, the construction and use of different organs in plants and animals. In spite of the emphasis placed by the scientists themselves upon this disciplinary value of studies, in spite of the strong necessity for right habits of observation, the mere discipline derived can not be regarded as the controlling aim of these studies. The real purpose ot science teaching in its higher influence is not bare mental discipline but the permanent awakening of the whole mind and spirit of the child. Discipline, therefore, is one of the secondary or incidental aims of science instruction.

In the progress of science teaching in the schools a fourth and more comprehensive aim has been set up and put into practice. It is the idea of scientific order and classification, the reduction of all the varied objects and phenomena of nature to an accurate system of classes and sub-classes, of general and special laws. It is an effort to get the mastery of nature by reducing its endless variety of forms and phenomena to system and law. Dr. Rein says: "In the latter half of the last century lived the great founder or reformer of systematic natural science, Karl von Linnaeus. His influence reached far into the nineteenth century and was universal. Goethe himself afiirms that next to Shakespeare and Spinoza, Linnaeus exercised the greatest influence upon him. Through Linnaeus, sj'^stem came to the highest renown. In the effort to set up a system. w\\\c\s.

would satisfy all requirements, was recognized the highest aim of scientific natural science. In quick succession followed the systems of many scientists. Is it any wonder that system, even down to the common schools, became the chief aim of natural science instruction? Moreover, the pursuit of this aim seems to satisfy an inevitable need, that of bringing knowledge into order, by means of order to get a survey of the multiplicity (die vielheit) of single things. For without a principle of order this multiplicity would become an unbearable load." (Das vierte Schuljahr, p. 115.)

The drift toward scientific classification or system has been very strong with us, especially in high schools and colleges. In the study of botany, for example, the chief effort was directed to analysis and determination of specimens. When this process had gone on long enough to secure a superficial grasp of all the important classes of plants the chief result was attained. The zoologies, a few years ago, contained a full classification and brief description of the leading families and orders of the animal kingdom. The text-books in physics and chemistry also gave a brief outline of those sciences. In all these cases the text book played the principal role, and the true scientific method of experiment remained unrealized. The text-book methods followed systematic aims, but as we have broken with the text-books and come in direct contact with the objects in nature, other aims than those of classification have become prominent. In elementary schools, especially, it is not well to emphasize classifications but to rest the work more upon particular phases of object study and experiment. The studies for children should be individual and biographical. A life history of butterfly or squirrel, or fish, with a sufficient consecutive observation into details and gathering of facts so as to give a deeper insight into habits and mode of life, is necessary. Until we can furnish teachers and children with the opportunity of making such biographical studies in nature, the science work in our common schools must be greatly hampered. The strong tendency of text-books in natural science to be systematic (that is, to give the outlines of a system), almost completely destroys their value for the common schools, And yet all true nature study leads up to the system and order of the universe. As children gather up the rich materials from the biographies of tree and insect, of fish or bird, they will gradually gain comprehensive views of the chief classes and underlying principles of order. The whole movement in science teaching is toward an adequate grasp of classes and laws. The great mistake is made in trying to begin where we ought to end. Classifications are the abstract forms of science and sum up the results of study, while the characteristic value of early science lessons is their concreteness. Children are easily and naturally attentive to the concrete phases of object study, while they turn away in dislike from the barren study of classes. If we can answer the question how to approach the general truths of science, we shall probably have the solution to the most troublesome problem in this study, and at the same time settle some of the most vexed questions in methods of teaching*.

Tke Leading Aim. 25

The Leading Aim.

We are not content, therefore, with any of the four aims of science study thus far suggested. Neither singly nor combined have they sufficient value to stand as the central, controlling aim of the great procession of nature lessons. How, then, shall we find a standpoint from which to survey this broad field of studies and discover the leading aim for its conquest?

We may get a suggestion of the proper attitude for attacking this problem from the child himself. He is the one, after all, who is most concerned with the outcome of our theories. What use has he for this large world of varied realities both now and in the future? If you ask him the question outright, he will remain as speechless as the sphinx, but if brought face to face with nature's teachings he may jespond heartily in a score of ways. As parents and teachers it is our business to take a sort of composite photograph of a child's present impulses and future needs, and then, by combining our knowledge of children with the garnered wisdom of the world in matters of education, we may possibly discover a method of teaching which will satisfy a child's present

26 Special Method in Sdeivce.

growing needs for food and nourishment, and at the same time fit him for his future life in the midst of nature and society. If the old saying is true that the child is father to the man, that is, foreshadowing what the man will be, he has within him those better instincts and tendencies which, if properly developed, will make him the father of the right sort of man, that is, the instincts which will prompt him to respond vigorously to those methods of science study which give him the best preparation for life.

We may state the broad aim of science studies as a responsive insight into nature^ an interested understanding of the materials and activities of her great workshop, an appreciation of the variety, beauty, harmony, and law of nature's handiwork. If a child is to reach maturity with a proper insight into physical laws, forces, products, utilities, and inventive ai)pliances, he must begin early to train his eye and his understanding to look into these wonders. Yet this is not a dull business to a child. It is the very thing he is most of all inclined to do if kept in a proper attitude and prudently guided in his employments. It falls in with his present impulses toward physical activity and mental expansion. The native interests which call forth his energetic effort, both physical and mental, are powerfully directed toward the many curious and useful attractions in nature. Nature study should lead to something beyond useful

The Leading Aim. 27

knowledge, sense-training, observation, discipline and the mastery of scientific order and system. With these and through them it should appeal to his instinctive interests, because of its recognized value to him, because it reveals the physical world to him and to his needs. It thus enters as a constituent element into his own personal culture and growth; it becomes a part of his life and character. If we devote our whole energy to any of the secondary or subordinate aims of science study, we shall make the work mechanical and superficial and not attain even such lower aims. If we follow the higher aim, to give to each child a personal insight, a sympathetic appreciation of the realm of nature, so far as it can be grasped by his mind, if we seek to enshrine all this knowledge in his tastes, interests, and feelings, we shall find this phase of culture an essential agency in personal character development. Not that it contributes directly to his moral sense, but it appeals to his esthetic tastes, religious instincts, and human wants. It supplies him with the materials and tools for the exercise of his present urgent activities, and its utilities are found to be so interwoven with the comforts and progress of men that nature is seen to lay down the conditions of life. Every child, therefore, should go into nature studies up to the full measure of his powers and come out enriched in knowledge, in discipline, and especially in