At the beginning of the 20th century, ‘new’ or ‘progressive’ educational ideas were beginning to challenge Australia’s educational leaders to engage school students as active rather than passive learners — to move away from the then dominant rote-learning pattern of schooling. Dorothy Kass, in her book Educational Reform and Environmental Concern, argues that a key vehicle through which progressive ideas first came into Australian schools was in the emerging subject of nature study — first incorporated into new syllabi in Victoria in 1902, and in New South Wales in 1904. By the end of the 19th century, against a backdrop of industrialisation, urbanisation and land clearance, concern for conservation was growing within Australian society, fed by a deep feeling for the natural world integral to the Romantic legacy. Educators saw the primary school as an appropriate vehicle of this concern.
The nature study idea and its expression in the work of schooling was, Kass argues, a key element in a wider process of educational reform that gathered strength across the Western world at the end of the 19th and in the early decades of the 20th century. Kass writes: ‘Nature study enjoyed a distinctive definition and wide scope, including scientific observation and reasoning, aesthetic appreciation and development of close understanding of and sympathy for the natural world.’ What reformers were pursuing was schooling that fostered children’s active, self-directed learning, immediate and imaginative engagement with the material world, greater use of all the senses, and experiential learning. Children were to be encouraged to cultivate and refine their feelings, to understand and appreciate beauty, and to work cooperatively while developing a confident, purposeful, individual outlook on life. Study and direct engagement with nature were a crucial means to this end.
In several chapters Kass explores the educational and social forces leading Australian states to introduce ‘new education’, as well as the international, notably American, thinkers and educators involved in shaping the nature study idea from the 1890s. Australia is positioned as one of the ‘settler societies’ of the English-speaking world, with nature study introduced into schools immediately following federation in 1901, thus coinciding with the process of developing an identity for the newly independent nation. Nature study in Australian schools showed a strong focus on Australian indigenous flora and fauna, as well as distinctly Australian ecosystems. Kass finishes her book with a detailed investigation into the introduction and implementation of nature study in the public schools in the state of New South Wales, exploring as well subsequent school curriculum changes from the 1950s — first to natural science, then science, environmental education, and now education for sustainability.
Both the syllabus and books and articles on teaching nature study, whether in schools or teachers’ colleges, which began to appear soon after its initial introduction — well documented by Kass — encouraged teachers to teach elementary botany and zoology through observation and nature walks, at fishponds and in school gardens. Children were urged to admire birds and to understand their habits — even to mimic their calls — and not to rob nests. Some writers and inspectors focused on the value of agricultural education and the (vocational) need to promote rural living instead of migration to cities and industrial jobs. Kass rightly emphasises that nature study, by its leaders and advocates, was for decades treated not simply as a modification of the curriculum but as a highly significant vehicle of educational and social reform.
This book is not only a careful and reliable historical study of a significant change in Australian primary schooling at the beginning of the 20th century. The later emergence of environmental education has been faced with similar issues: constructing a powerful and convincing rationale for innovation; developing understanding and mobilising support across the teaching profession; and providing new curriculum resources and opportunities for learning for teachers as well as students. Kass draws out a diversity of practice and emphasis in teaching within the broad scope of nature study, and a sometimes shifting balance between its scientific, aesthetic and empathetic dimensions. Contemporary environmental education has roots deep in the nature study movement and continues to be nourished by its ideals and practices.
It cannot be claimed that nature study as it developed in the curriculum of New South Wales schools, whether intact or as subsequently incorporated into science and environmental education, was a uniform success. But as Kass so effectively demonstrates, it has been a valuable force in providing innumerable opportunities for children and their teachers to study, learn about, love and conserve the natural world. No less, in identifying nature study as an idea as much as a movement, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the origins of modern environmental thought. It is beautifully illustrated with examples of children and their teachers at work in school gardens and the wider environment.
The publisher, Routledge, is to be congratulated for its much needed new series on progressive education, of which this is the third book.
