ADDITIONAL COPIES OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON, D. C. AT 15 CENTS PER COPY Δ FIGURES. Page. FIGURE 1. Using museum collections in the study of Indian life................. Frontispiece. 19. The honey bee...... 17. Studying birds-Swimmers and waders.. 18. Typical specimens of sea life-Nautilus and Abalone... 20. From the bird collection........... 21. Typical photograph showing quarrying.... 27 28 29 31 26. Class studying Switzerland, with maps, charts, etc., from the mu 30. Material used to render collections accessible and transportable.... 31. Teachers' circulating library and study room........ 41 43 44 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, January 15, 1915. SIR: In reply to Polonius' question, "What do you read, my lord?" Hamlet said, "Words, words, words." Such might be the reply of most people in regard to much of their reading, and this is especially true of children in school, whose range of reading extends much more rapidly than the range of their concrete experiences. Careful examination into the contents of children's minds reveals the fact that for much of their reading in geography, history, and other similar subjects they have no interpreting ideas. Teachers spend much time in vain attempts at explanation by means of words little if any better understood than those of the book. Dictionaries can not help much. The meaning of one word is not found in another. The real meaning of a word for any person is the idea with which it has been associated by virtue of the fact that word and idea have at some time come into consciousness together. Ideas are the results of experience. For any accurate ideas of the things of the world at large the child must be taken on extensive journeys or the things of distant places must be brought into the school. For most children the first is clearly impossible. Therefore, from the time of Comenius and his Orbis Pictus, teachers have tried to find some means of doing the second. The most successful means yet found is the well-selected and carefully arranged museum, put at the disposal of children and teachers in such way that any portion of its material may be had at the time when it is needed for the illustration of any lesson or the extension of the children's knowledge in regard to any part of the world, its products and industries. I know of no museum that has been made more useful to this end than has the Educational Museum of the St. Louis Public Schools. I therefore asked Mr. Carl Rathmann, assistant superintendent in charge of this museum, to prepare for this bureau some account of the museum and its use in the schools. In reply to this request Mr. Rathmann has submitted the accompanying manuscript, which I recommend for publication as a bulletin of the Bureau of Education. Respectfully submitted. P. P. CLAXTON, Commissioner. The SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR. |