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"The Child Is Born a Naturalist": Nature Study, Woodcraft Indians, and the Theory of Recapitulation1
by Kevin C. Armitage, Miami University of Ohio
Beginning in the 1890s, the nature study movement advocated direct contact with the natural world to develop in children an appreciation for natural history, the beginnings of scientific inquiry, aesthetic and spiritual interests as well as the motivation to conserve nature. Defense of nature study pedagogy came from the theory of recapitulation. Recapitulation held that as humans developed they repeated the evolutionary history of the human race. Children were thus thought to be like Indians: primitive people with an innate closeness to nature. The most popular proponent of these ideas was Ernest Thompson Seton, widely read author, illustrator, and founder of the nature study boys club, the Woodcraft Indians. Nature study advocates hoped that the theory of recapitulation would allow them to bridge the modern and romantic, antimodern tendencies in their movement. Despite an intense focus on premodern virtues, nature study and the Woodcraft Indians mostly served to ease the tensions and incongruities of modern life.
I had a vision for my people, a figure of perfect manhood, a being physically robust, an athlete, an outdoors man, accustomed to brunt of flood, wind and sun—rough road and open spaces—a man wise in the ways of the woods, sagacious in council, dignified, courteous, respectful to all, and kindly as a good natured giant; a man whose life was clean, picturesque, heroic, and unsordid; a man of courage equipped for emergencies, possessing his soul at all times, and filled with a religion that consists, not of mere occasional observances, not of vague merits hoarded in the skies, but of a strong kind spirit that makes him desired and helpful here to-day.2— Ernest Thompson Seton
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Speaking to the 1889 meeting of the National Education Association from a podium surrounded with schoolchildren, Francis Parker, the crusading school reformer dubbed the "father of the progressive education movement" by John Dewey, announced, "I am a firm believer in children living out their lives in the mythical stage: in the period when they ask and answer themselves questions about nature."3 For Parker, the mythical stage of his students corresponded to life as native Americans ostensibly lived it: "A little child is a little 'Injun'...He begins with the same natural love and instinct...the wrong comes later."4 Like Indians, children had an innate interest in the natural world: "The child," asserted Parker, "is born a naturalist."5 Turning to the children who accompanied him at the podium during his talk, Parker asked, "Don't you want to be an Indian little boy, and put feathers in your hair? Wouldn't you like to dig a hole and live in the ground, and wouldn't you like to roam at will in the big woods? Certainly you would."6 |
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The idea that children, like Indians, were born naturalists who were instinctively interested in the natural world gained wide support among education professionals at the turn of the twentieth century. Intellectual justification for this belief came from the theory of recapitulation; the idea was that the individual child's maturation repeated, or recapitulated, the evolutionary history of the human race.7 Developmentally, then, children were thought to be Indians; they were in a savage state and needed to satisfy this part of their evolutionary history to mature into responsible adults. Furthermore, because growing children repeated the evolutionary history of the human race, teachers needed to use educational materials that coincided with the child's development. The savage child needed to interact with the natural world. As Katherine Dolbear, a high school teacher from Holyoke, Massachusetts, said to the National Education Association, do not "forget to consider man's animal ancestry, and to allow for it in supplying suitable foods for his mind during its various stages of development." Interaction with the green world needed to be among the educational materials used to fortify a student's mind because, "the child naturally turns to the same things which where were of utmost importance and interest to his ancestors; that is, to the study of living things."8 |
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