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FIGURES.

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FIGURE 1. Using museum collections in the study of Indian life...... Frontispiece.

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17. Studying birds-Swimmers and waders..

18. Typical specimens of sea life-Nautilus and Abalone...

19. The honey bee................

20. From the bird collection...

21. Typical photograph showing quarrying.

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26. Class studying Switzerland, with maps, charts, etc., from the mu

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30. Material used to render collections accessible and transportable....

31. Teachers' circulating library and study room.

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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.

THE EDUCATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE ST. LOUIS
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

To make the child acquainted with the world in which he lives, we must bring him into personal contact with the world. Telling him or having him read about the earth, about the great changes produced on its surface through the activity of nature and man, about the people, their life and work, and their adjustment to their environment, will not give the child vivid and lasting impressions, nor arouse in him the desire and develop the power to do his own exploring and discovering. We must, as O'Shea says, "take him into the world or bring the world to him."

In St. Louis the teachers are given excellent opportunities to put their pupils in touch with the world around them. Entering a schoolroom during a geography lesson, the visitor may find that the children, after a thorough study of the relief map, are transported into the country which is the subject of their lesson. They have before them the typical representatives of the animal world, the minerals, the soil and the industrial products, which they observe, study, and discuss; or they view through the stereoscope or on the screen the surface features, the natural advantages, the scenery, the large cities and their institutions, the people, their occupations, their homes, and their manner of life.

Surrounded by carefully selected objects characteristic of the country, viewing all that is interesting in it through lifelike pictorial illustrations, living, as it were, in the country while studying it, the children receive vivid and permanent impressions of what is taught. The use of such illustrative material satisfies the child's desire for the concrete; it lends life and reality to the work and makes the geography lessons interesting and enjoyable.

The objects and pictures for the illustration of the work in geography, as well as for the lessons in nature study, history, reading, and art, are furnished by the Educational Museum of the Public Schools.

In other cities the public museums have in late years extended the scope of their work of disseminating knowledge to a field where it is of inestimable value. They have opened their great storehouses of information to the public schools and they ask the teachers

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to make extensive use of the wonderful things from all parts of the world in connection with their regular school work. Some of the museums send a number of typical collections of illustrative material to the schools. Others invite the teachers to bring their classes to the institution and to give their lessons there, aided by the wealth of interesting specimens placed at their command; still others do both. In this manner the museums enable the teachers of our schools to supplement the textbook and their own statements of facts and descriptions of conditions by the study of real things, and thereby lend life and reality to their work. This practical cooperation of the museums with the schools is hailed by the teachers as one of the most helpful means of enlivening the study of nature and geography,

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FIG. 2.-A few typical specimens of physics apparatus.

of stimulating the interest and self-activity of the children, and of making school work more enjoyable to both pupils and teachers.

St. Louis has no public museum. Washington University, St. Louis University, the Academy of Sciences, and the Historical Society have their own excellent museums, but these can not aid the schools.

In 1904, St. Louis had within her borders a most magnificent public museum-the World's Fair. The exposition gave St. Louis the opportunity to extend to her schools the same educational advantages that museums give to the schools of other cities.

During the entire period of the exposition, classes from all of our schools visited the fair grounds, accompanied by their teachers. From building to building the little folks wandered, gazing and wondering, eagerly listening to the explanations of teachers and exhibitors. The Government Building, the palaces of Agriculture,

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