The earth and sky; a primer of astronomy for young readers

Front matter

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Introduction To The Home Beading Book Seeies By The Editor

The new education takes two important directions — one of these is toward original observation, requiring the pupil to test and verif y what is taught him at school by his own experiments. The information that he learns from books or hears from his teacher's lips must be assimilated by incorporating it with his own experience.

The other direction pointed out by the new education is systematic home reading. It forms a part of school extension of all kinds. The so-called " University Extension " that originated at Cambridge and Oxford has as its chief feature the aid of home reading by lectures and round-table discussions, led or conducted by experts who also lay out the course of reading. The Chautauquan movement in this country prescribes a series of excellent books and furnishes for a goodly number of its readers annual courses of lectures. The teachers' reading circles that exist in many States prescribe the books to be read, and publish some analysis, commentary, or catechism to aid the members.

Home reading, it seems, furnishes the essential basis of this great movement to extend education vi THE EARTH AND SKY.

beyond the school and to make self -culture a habit of life.

Looking more carefully at the difference between the two directions of the new education we can see what each accomplishes. There is first an effort to train the original powers of the individual and make him self-active, quick at observation, and free in hia thinking. Next, the new education endeavors, by the reading of books and the study of the wisdom of the race, to make the child or youth a participator in the results of experience of all mankind.

These two movements may be made antagonistic by poor teaching. The book knowledge, containing as it does the precious lesson of human experience, may be so taught as to bring with it onlv dead rules of conduct, only dead scraps of information, and no stimulant to original thinking. Its contents may be memorized without being understood. On the other hand, the self -activity of the child may be stimulated at the expense of his social well-being — his originality may be cultivated at the expense of his rationality. If he is taught persistently to have his own way, to trust only his own senses, to cling to his own opinions heedless of the experience of his fellows, he is preparing for an unsuccessful, misanthropic career, and is likely enough to end his life in a madhouse.

It is admitted that a too exclusive study of the knowledge found in books, the knowledge which is aggregated from the experience and thought of other people, may result in loading the mind of the pupil with material which he can not use to advantage.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. V1 [

Some minds arc so full of lumber that there is no space left to set up a workshop. The necessity of uniting both of these directions of intellectual activity in the schools is therefore obvious, but we must not,

in this place, fall into the error of supposing that it is the oral instruction in school and the personal influence of the teacher alone that excites the pupil to activity. Book instruction is nut always dry and theoretical. The very persons who declaim against the book, and praise in such strong terms the self -activity of the pupil and original research, are mostlv persons who have received their practical impulse from reading the writings of educational reformers. Very few persons have receive;! an impulse from personal contact with inspiring teachers compare;! with the number that have been aroused by reading such books as Herbert Spencer's Treatise on Education. Rousseau's Emile. Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude. Francis TV. Parker's Talks about Teaching, G. Stanley Hall's Pedagogical Seminary. Think in this connection, too, of the impulse to observation in natural science produced by such books as those of Hugh ATiller, Faraday. Tyndall. Huxley. Agassiz. and Darwin.

The new scientific book is different from the old. The old style book of science gave dead results where the new one gives not only the results, but a minute account of the method employed in reaching those results. An insight into the method employed in discovery trains the reader into a naturalist, an historian, a sociologist. The books of the writers above name;! have done more to stimulate original research on the viii THE EARTH AND SKY.

part of their readers than all other influences combined.

It is therefore much more a matter of importance to get the right kind of book than to get a living teacher. The book which teaches results, and at the same time gives in an intelligible manner the steps of discovery and the methods employed, is a book which will stimulate the student to repeat the experiments described and get beyond them into fields of original research himself. Every one remembers the published lectures of Faraday on chemistry, which exercised a wide influence in changing the style of books on natural science, causing them to deal with method more than results, and thus train the reader's power of conducting original research. Robinson Crusoe for nearly two hundred years has aroused the spirit of adventure and prompted young men to resort to the border lands of civilization. A library of home reading should contain books that incite to self-activity and arouse the spirit of inquiry. The books should treat of methods of discovery and evolution. All nature is unified by the discovery of the law of evolution. Each and every being in the world is now explained by the process of development to which it belongs. Every fact now throws light on all the others by illustrating the process of growth in which each has its end and aim.

The Home Reading Books are to be classed as follows :

First Division, Natural history, including popular scientific treatises on plants and animals, and also de-

EDITORS INTRODUCTION. [ x

scriptions of geographical localities. The branch of study in the district school course which corresponds to this is geography. Travels and sojourns in distant lands ; special writings which treat of this or that animal or plant, or family of animals or plants ; anything that relates to organic nature or to meteorology, or descriptive astronomy may be placed in this class.

/Second Division. Whatever relates to physics or natural philosophy, to the statics or dynamics of air or water or light or electricity, or to the properties of matter ; whatever relates to chemistry, either organic or inorganic — books on these subjects belong to the class that relates to what is inorganic. Even the so-called organic chemistry relates to the analysis of organic bodies into their inorganic compounds.

Third Division. History, biography, and ethnology. Books relating to the lives of individuals ; to the social life of the nation ; to the collisions of nations in war, as well as to the aid that one nation gives to another through commerce in times of peace; books on ethnology relating to the modes of life of savage or civilized peoples ; on primitive manners and customs — books on these subjects belong to the third class, relating particularly to the human will, not merely the individual will but the social will, the will of the tribe or nation ; and to this third class belong also books on ethics and morals, and on forms of government and laws, and what is included under the term civics, or the duties of citizenship.

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Fourth Division. The fourth class of books includes more especially literature and works that make known the beautiful in such departments as sculpture, painting, architecture and music. Literature and art show human nature in the form of feelings, emotions, and aspirations, and they show how these feelings lead over to deeds and to clear thoughts. This department of books is perhaps more important than any other in our home reading, inasmuch as it teaches a knowledge of human nature and enables us to understand the motives that lead our fellow-men to action.

Plan for Use as Supplementary Reading.

The first work of the child in the school is to learn to recognize in a printed form the words that are familiar to him by ear. These words constitute what is called the colloquial vocabulary. They are words that he has come to know from having heard them used by the members of his family and by his playmates. He uses these words himself with considerable skill, but w r hat he knows by ear he does not yet know by sight. It will require many weeks, many months even, of constant effort at reading the printed page to bring him to the point where the sight of the written word brings up as much to his mind as the sound of the spoken word. But patience and practice will by and by make the printed word far more suggestive than the spoken word, as every scholar may testify.

In order to bring about this familiarity with the

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. x i

printed word it has been found necessary to re-enforce the reading in the school by supplementary reading at home. Books of the same grade of difficulty with the reader used in school are to be provided for the pupil. They must be so interesting to him that he will read them at home, using his time before and after school, and even his holidays, for this purpose.

But this matter of familiarizing the child with the printed word is only one half of the object aimed at by the supplementary home reading. He should read that which interests him. He should read that which will increase his power in making deeper studies, and what he reads should tend to correct his habits of observation. Step by step he should be initiated into the scientific method. Too many elementary books fail to teach the scientific method because they point out in an unsystematic way only those features of the object which the untutored senses of the pupil would discover at first glance. It is not useful to tell the child to observe a piece of chalk and see that it is white, more or less friable, and that it makes a mark on a fence or a wall. Scientific observation goes immediately behind the facts which lie obvious to a superficial investigation. Above all, it directs attention to such features of the object as relate it to its environment. It directs attention to the features that have a causal influence in making the object what it is and in extending its effects to other objects. Science discovers the reciprocal action of objects one upon another.

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After the child has learned how to observe what is essentia] in one class of objects he is in a measure fitted to observe for himself all objects that resemble this class. After he has learned how to observe the seeds of the milkweed, he is partially prepared to observe the seeds of the dandelion, the burdock, and the thistle. After he has learned how to study the history of his native country, he has acquired some ability to study the history of England and Scotland or France or Germany. In the same way the daily preparation of his reading lesson at school aids him to read a story of Dickens or Walter Scott.

The teacher of a school will know how to obtain a small sum to invest in supplementary reading. In a graded school of four hundred pupils ten books of each number are sufficient, one set of ten books to be loaned the first w^eek to the best pupils in one of the rooms, the next week to the ten pupils next in ability. On Monday afternoon a discussion should be held over the topics of interest to the pupils who have read the book. The pupils who have not yet read the book will become interested, and await anxiously their turn for the loan of the desired volume. Another set of ten books of a higher grade may be used in the same way in a room containing more advanced pupils. The older pupils who have left school, and also the parents, should avail themselves of the opportunity to read the books brought home from school. Thus is begun that continuous education by means of the public library which is not limited to the school period, but lasts through life. W. T. Harris.

Washington, D. C, Nov. 16, 1896.

AUTHOK'S PBEFACE.

This book is intended as the first of a series of three or more volumes all treating of astronomy in one form or in another. All of them are suited for reading in the school and in the home, and they will have failed of their object if they do not inspire young readers to undertake simple astronomical observations on their own account ; and if they do not, at the same time, suggest the spirit in which such observations must be made, and reflected upon, to be truly fruitful.

The earliest teaching of astronomy must be closely joined to the teaching of geography. What is already known about the earth will serve as a stepping-stone to a knowledge of the planets ; and, conversely, the little we xiv THE EARTH AND SKY.

know of the planets will serve to throw light upon the constitution of the earth, and specially upon its past and future history. Any child who is old enough to study geography is not too young to begin to grasp astronomical ideas, and to observe simple astronomical phenomena.

The lessons of a child's first years, whether given at school or less formally through reading at home, are necessarily extremely simple. He should first be led to making an inventory of the visible universe — sun, moon, planets, comets, nebulae, stars. His books will describe these objects, and he must be led by slow degrees toward verifying the descriptions by his own observations.

If a constellation is figured in his book he must be made to see that the figure exists in the book because the constellation exists in the sky. It is not so simple as it appears to fix in a child's mind the fundamental fact that it is Nature which is true and the book or the engraving which is a true copy of it. "It says " — is the snare of children as well as of

AUTHORS PREFACE. xv

their more sophisticated elders. The vital point to be insisted on is a constant reference back from words to things. After the things are understood we may go back to words again, and we can then restate the matter in hand in briefer, apter, and more technical forms.

The early studies of a child should be utilized to lay the foundations of future advances. For example, the child should have his attention directed, almost at the beginning, to some of the more striking constellations — to the Great Bear, to Orion, to the Pleiades. During the whole lifetime of the child the naming of the constellations should go on. It is not so much that these names are of any great importance, though to know them is a source of real pleasure. But in tracing their outlines through the sky, by the eye, the mind becomes intent on allied matters, and the thoughts reach out to better things.

Very many children will take a lively interest in the identification of stars and in tracing the course of the planets among the conxvi THE EARTH AND SKY.

stellations ; and this interest deserves to be fostered for its ultimate, as well as for its immediate, results. The delight of discovery is hardly less poignant to the child who has really observed for the first time that the stars in their courses really move about the pole from east to west, than to an astronomer of maturer age who makes some real step to advance his science.

Early in the child's life his attention should be directed to the observation of the moon's face, of her phases, and of her motions. After the unassisted eye has done its part the use of a common field glass will open a new world. Galileo was not better equipped. An opera glass, a watch, a straight stick for a gnomon, or for testing the allineations of stars or planets, bits of colored glass for looking at the sun (using care in this matter), terrestrial and celestial globes, if they are to be had — these are the simple pieces of apparatus that the child should be encouraged to successively acquire and utilize.

It is very important to introduce such aids

AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xv ii

slowly, one by one. The eye should be faithfully employed before the opera glass is used. Thoroughness is a scientific (and a moral) virtue which a child can not acquire too early ; and the simplest beginnings of astronomical acquirement may be used to impress the habit on a child's character.

Not only should observations be made as thoroughly as possible with the means at hand, but they should be recorded neatly, accurately, and exhaustively. The child should feel a responsibility for what he records, and he should authenticate his pages or his drawings by his signature. A signed page will soon come to mean to him an observation that has been carefully and correctly made, and that can be depended upon ever after.

The observation of the morning and evening stars will serve as an introduction to the mapping of the apparent path of a planet (Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn) among the stars. The revolution of the moon will suggest the origin of the month, and thus may introduce some consideration of the calendar — a knotty xx THE EARTH AND SKY.

steadily cultivated. The circles exist, first of all, in the heavens, and the book or the globe only exist because the circles are there. The ground idea of an eclipse is very simple if it is studied out of doors with real shadows. Afterward the drawings of a book will mean something real.

The power of conceiving geometric relations of the sort can be wonderfully cultivated even in young children. Just as descriptive-geometry gives the very best training to advanced students of mathematical form, so this habit of representing geometrical relations in the mind is of prime importance to the beginner in astronomy.

All the early teachings of children in Nature studies should, in general, be directed mainly to training their eyes to observe correctly and to leading their minds to genuine reflection. What they learn of the facts of astronomy is of comparatively little account. The real matter is so to use the universe as to train each small mind to observe, to register, and to reflect.

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Astronomy is especially fitted to serve this end, and it has been my endeavor in these volumes to utilize it to the best advantage of the child.

New York, January, 1898, E. S. H.

BRIEF ANALYSIS OF THIS BOOK.

The volume is written as a conversation with a young lad. He is first shown how he may know for himself that the earth is not flat, though it certainly appears to be so. The next step is to show him that he may know that the earth is, in fact, round ; and that it is a globe of immense size. Its situation in space is next considered, and the child's mind is led to some formal conclusions regarding space itself. The sun and the moon are next treated, and the child is encouraged to observe the moon's phases, and shown exactly how he may best do it. This leads him to inquire why it is that the bright part of the moon changes its shape from night to night. He is put into a position to solve this problem for himself. The motion of the stars in their courses is next considered, and the child learns for himself that the earth turns round once in every day. It is believed that nothing here presented is too difficult for a young child to comprehend, and that the bases of scientific habits are laid down in a manner not to be misunderstood.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — The earth is not flat 1

II. — The earth is round . . . . . . .9