Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 178, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1910 — ANIMALS AT SCHOOL [ARTICLE]

ANIMALS AT SCHOOL

Not to Learn, But to Instruct Young Chicago Pupils. Bugs, Frogs, Puppies, Kittens, Mice and Other Dumb Candidates Admitted to Inculcate Taste for Nature Study. Chicago.—Kittens, puppies, pigteons, chickens, rabbits, squirrels, guinea pigs, Japanese mice, white rats, tadpoles, salamanders, turtles, toads, frogs, birds, bugs, ants and bees are some of the new pupils which a committee of principals and district superintendents appointed by Mrs. Ella Flagg Young has decided to admit to the Chicago public schools. At the head of “Alice in Wonderland” —or was it “Alice la the Looking Glass?"—Lewis Carrol describes a court scene In %hich the Jury box is just such a strange little menagerie as this. The iplea was one which appealed powerfully to the imaginations of children. Acting on the same principle, the school authorities have decided to give the youngsters in the kindergarten grades this strange conglomeration of school companions. They wish to inculcate in the children a taste for nature study and they believe this the best way to do it. With nature’s living handcraft before them, they feel, the youngsters’ Interest will be quickened. In time they will come to know their grotesque schoolmates as well as they do the little boys and girls who study with them, and from this will come not only knowledge that will be useful, but a humanity toward all living creatures which will make the lives of future generations of frogs, tadpoles, mice, turtles and even salamanders better worth the living. The list of the dumb candidates for kindergarten work has just been made out and will be submitted to a mass meeting of the principals to be held with Mrs. Young. It is expected that all of them be allowed to matriculate. In a higher grade of the kindergarten work the children will take up the feeding of caterpillars and the study of the habits of crickets and spiders. The report in which the strange roster of kindergarten pupils is suggested says: “The kindergarten should aim to develop the sense of delight in nature and of interesting plays with nature material, also the sense of affectionate kinship with all living things.” "Short excursions should be taken often, especially in the spring and fall. The purposes of these excursions should be to see trees, flowers, grass and to have motor and sense experience in connection with them, such as feeding the roughness of the bark, the coolness of the grass, and so on; to gather pods if possible, to play with shadows and sunshine, to watch the clouds, to feel the wind and play with it. There should be many plays with lights and colors, blowing soap bubbles, using reflected and refracted light and transparencies.”