CHICAGO VACATION SCHOOLS
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have in the vacation schools than the teacher who is merely an expert in a special department. If specialists are to be employed as nature-study teachers, such persons should be selected as have been fairly well trained for the work in a training school or in the school of experi- ence. No person who simply likes nature for the sake of nature alone should be chosen as an instructor in this depart- ment. Such people are almost certainly lectur- ers and not teachers. They are impatient to have the children see at once the thing in which they themselves are interested, thus robbing the pupil of the great pleasure of dis- covery and the valuable discipline coming from real investigation. In such schools as these there is not time to train teachers in methods of work, no matter how good material they may be made of, nor how well "educated" they may be.
The study of nature in the vacation schools may be char- acterized as a study of life. Great care was exercised to pre- serve all forms. The boy who caught the bumblebee in his hand, and christened it a Spanish bug on account of its yellow back, was taught that peace with Spain was about to be declared, and he should release the bug, though the Spaniard did strike him with his stiletto.
CLASS WORK IN THE FIELD
MANUAL TRAINING.
In this department the teachers attempted to utilize material gathered during their trips to the woods. The outcome of their efforts was most satisfactory in the construction of easels, pic- ture frames, flower-pot holders, etc., showing much ingenuity and taste. Children of all grades took this work, and the results plainly showed that our present plan of beginning manual training
