An Improvement Needed In Our Public Schools

As a parent and one deeply interested in our public schools, I ani glad to see an agitation beginning in the papers in favor of confining our children less exclusively to books, and turning their attention more directly to nature and the world of things in the midst of which they live. Doubtless it is a good thing for American boys and girls to know the names of the rivers of África, the principal productions of Siberia, and why "but" is a disjunctive conjunction. But is it not quite as important for them to know the names of the trees on our streets, and something about the birds that sing around us all the season through ? Is it well for them to grow up to think that the little books that men make are more important than the great book of nature which God makes ? What are our schools doing to teach their pupils to see the world around them ? A cent held close to the eye may shut out the sun. Do not our school books too often shut out the world from our children's minds ? The best educators of the world are beginning to protest loudly against so much of books, books, and go little of things. They are saying that it is more important to see the grain, and the wheat, and the flowers, and to find out really about them, than it is to read concerning them. Why learn to spell "goose" and "duck" before you can teil a goose from a duck, or either írom a heu ? Things, then words, - that is nature's order; the concrete then the abstract. Many of the better schgols of the country now are sending their pupils to nature regularly, systematically,- not only bringing in objects of nature, of all kinds, to be seen and handled and studied in the school room, but every week írom early spring to late autumn send ing out their pupils, of every class and grade, at least one afternoon a week wi'th a competent teacher to see and find out about the world in which they live- to explore the school yard, and discover its trees, ground, plants, flowers, stones, bugs, spiders, spider-webs, insects of a hundred kinds; to explore the fields and gardens and woods, and brooks and riverbanks, within reach - all of them as full of undreamed-of and wonderful things as any fairy land. Why should not all schools do this ? Does any one answei-, "It would take time." ? There is always time enough for the most needed things ? If it would take some of the time now given to books, that is precisely what is wanted. There is no more pitiable dunce than a boy or girl with a head stuffed with books, but unable to teil an oak from an elm, oats from rye in the field, a bobolink from a bluebird, or a shovel from a hoe. What are schools for if not to teaeh children to be intelligent about the world in which they live ? All this is written not in disparagement of our Ann Arbor schools. Of their kind they are certainly among the very best in the land. A more intelligent, faithful or hard-working body of teachers it would be hard to find anywhere. But a new light is beginning to shine for all schools. Sball we not open our eyes to it ? It is beginning to be recognized that the printed page is only one door to knowledge, and not the most direct either. The most important thing to teaeh a child is not the remembering of words, but to see and to think. Let him be made intelligent about the near world first, after that about the far away worlds. Let him first of all be taught to use his eyes. Cannot our school board and our teachers arrange for this kind of instruction to begin in a simple way, this spring, at least in all the lower grades ? This is reasonable; it would cost little or nothing; it would be very gratifying to many parents, as well as of the highest possible value to the children; it would put our schools in line with the most progressive in the country.