The nature study movement (alternatively, Nature Study or nature-study) was a popular education movement in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nature study attempted to reconcile scientific investigation with spiritual, personal experiences gained from interaction with the natural world. Led by progressive educators and naturalists such as Anna Botsford Comstock, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Louis Agassiz and Wilbur S. Jackman, nature study changed the way science was taught in schools by emphasizing learning from tangible objects, something that was embodied by the movement's mantra "study nature, not books."
The movement popularized scientific study outside of the classroom as well, and has proven highly influential for figures involved in the modern environmental movement, such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson.
Read more about Nature Study: Background, Definitions, "Study Nature, Not Books", Education For Children, Women in The Nature Study Movement, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words nature and/or study:
“I don’t know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)