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The nature study movement: The forgotten popularizer of America's conservation ethic

2010; Wiley; Volume: 95; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/sce.20417

1098-237X

Amrys O. Williams,

Religion, Ecology, and Ethics

Kevin C. Armitage. University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, KS, USA, 2009. vii + 291 pp. ISBN 978-0-7006-1673-2. Nature study—an educational method that sought to teach science through direct experience with the natural world—was one of the most important ways in which Americans encountered and internalized scientific practices and modes of thinking in the years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. It was also, according to Kevin Armitage's first monograph, an important element in the growth of the nationwide environmental crusade of the Progressive Era. However, despite the enormous popularity and near-ubiquity of nature study in school curricula and public life from the 1890s through the 1930s, there has been no comprehensive book-length historical treatment of this important and fascinating subject—until now. (A notable exception is the work of Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, whose Teaching Children Science: Hands-On Nature Study in North America, 1890–1930 appeared in May 2010 from the University of Chicago Press.) Armitage's central contention—expressed succinctly in the title—is that the practices and beliefs of nature study have been integral to the growth of an American ethic of conservation, from the Progressive movement of the turn of the twentieth century through the environmentalism that blossomed after World War II. The book is rooted in the former period: Armitage shows how Progressive educational, urban, and country life reformers looked to contact with the natural world as a means to both teach scientific habits and improve everyday living and personal contentment. Nature-study advocates believed this firsthand experience would lead to sympathy with nature, which could inoculate American citizens against the unhealthful conditions of urban living and protect American democracy from the dulling effects of industrial life. At the same time, these reformers embraced scientific modernity as the way forward. Nature study thus offers a revealing lens on the complexities of this unique American era. Like Progressivism itself, nature study repeatedly encountered the tensions inherent in modernization: between utilitarianism and romanticism, scientific truth and emotional sensibility, forward-looking progress and backward-looking nostalgia. Science and natural history formed the stage for negotiating these tensions: Nature study was about learning the ways of science and modern life, while at the same time embracing nature as a cure for the ills of a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing society. “Nature study was thus modern and countermodern, not simply a response to modernity but part of the very dialectic between science and sentiment that is an inescapable part of modern life” (pp. 11–12). Armitage frames his story as “a collection of interconnected yet separate examinations of the complex ways American culture struggled with science and its application to the natural world” (pp. 13–14). Nature-study proponents saw science as a way of knowing and developing sympathy with nature but also as the embodiment of modern living, the object of their critique. A chapter about “Bird Day”—a popular event similar to Arbor Day that aimed to foster bird conservation—demonstrates the difficulties reformers encountered in presenting nature as a crucible of both science and morality. Bird Day promoters believed that knowledge about birds would lead to empathy, but their moralizing efforts often undercut their credibility as objective scientists. The story shows how nature study was thus both a product of and means of contesting Progressive modernization. Nature study was not just a scientific movement: It was also one of the pedagogical reforms of the “new education,” which sought to adjust children to the demands of industrial society by creating modern technological workers well versed in science but also imbued with moral purpose. For nature-study advocates, nature itself was the rightful source of both the scientific thinking and the ethical values that constituted progressive citizenship. For example, the theory of recapitulation, which saw the growth of the child as human racial development in miniature, provided a powerful justification for nature study through outdoor education and woodcraft. According to the racial theories of the time, like earlier, more “primitive” races, youth were inherently suited to and sympathetic with the natural world. As a result, keeping them apart from nature in America's burgeoning cities could potentially interfere with their proper development into modern, civilized citizens. Children thus encountered nature study through recreational groups like the Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls, but the movement was more widespread. Perhaps the most important place where the public encountered nature study was the garden. School gardens in particular were a popular progressive teaching tool for rural and urban educators alike. Armitage's exploration of gardening demonstrates that Progressive conservation was concerned not only with wild places but also with the improving effects of the pastoral landscape. Training his sights on the country as well as the city, Armitage traces the connections between nature study and rural modernization. Reformers like Liberty Hyde Bailey and George Washington Carver felt nature study could revitalize rural culture and agriculture together, making farming more scientific and rural folk more content through understanding and appreciation of nature. Nature-study educators also put nature to work in ways that did not involve getting their hands dirty. Efforts to incorporate the new technology of photography into nature study's observational and aesthetic practices demonstrate how the “politics of beauty” (p. 169) were as important to Progressives as the politics of land use. Aesthetics also offered a wedge for aspiring female naturalists who would otherwise have had great difficulty gaining access to the world of natural science. Nature study allowed women like the novelist Gene Stratton Porter to become widely known and respected for their observational as well as their artistic work. At the same time, the feminine valence of beauty tended to undercut nature study's reputation as serious science, a trend that helped contribute to nature study's decline in the 1930s and 1940s. Armitage concludes by drawing out the ties between Progressive-Era nature study and twentieth-century environmentalism by focusing on two figureheads of the modern environmental movement, Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson. Both were steeped in nature study as children, and their scientific and popular work was profoundly influenced by their childhood experiences in the natural world. Postwar ecology and environmentalism, Armitage contends, is thus deeply indebted to nature study for some of its most fundamental ideas: nature as a moralizing force, an antidote to industrial society, a crucible of democratic citizenship, and a place of respite and beauty. The Nature Study Movement does not simply add nature study to the already rich historiography on Progressive conservation—it also changes the way we narrate the Progressives' story. By focusing his attention on the “grassroots” that nature study represents, Armitage enlarges the pantheon of conservationists to include children, rural schoolteachers, middle-class families, and authors alongside prominent reformers, academic scientists, technicians, and government administrators. By exploring a movement that existed as much in the realm of lay experience and individual practice as it did in the realm of academic theory and public policy, Armitage paints a picture of conservation on the ground that calls into question the elite focus of much Progressive historiography. Armitage's popular approach leads him to draw primarily on published sources, rather than on the manuscript collections of prominent figures like Liberty Hyde Bailey and Anna Botsford Comstock. These individuals appear as vehicles for telling pieces of the nature-study story, rather than as the primary actors. Armitage relies on their published work, as well as the writings that appeared in the movement's main periodical, Nature-Study Review. He connects the ideas of Progressive educators like John Dewey and Francis Parker to the thinking of conservation figureheads like Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, Mabel Osgood Wright, and William T. Hornaday, while also bringing in individuals not usually associated with nature study, such as the agricultural and social reformers Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. Armitage's exploration of their efforts to use nature to enrich rural life for African Americans is one of the book's most interesting and original contributions. All told, The Nature Study Movement offers a fascinating window onto the complicated, contested, and often-contradictory process of modernization. It is a story of a nation undergoing a set of profound social and environmental changes and negotiating them through the twin languages of science and nature. It is thus a story of modernity itself and of the complicated roles of both science and the American landscape in constituting and threatening that modernity. For those who promulgated and participated in nature study, science had the potential to bring people closer to nature as well as to alienate them from it. Natural science education, then, both constituted and transformed Americans' relationship to the natural world. The Nature Study Movement represents a (quite literal) grounding of Progressive politics in the everyday practices of middle-class Americans interacting with nature; as such, it speaks to historians of science, education, the environment, agriculture and rural life, and Progressivism. Armitage writes well, and his story is continually interesting; the book is likely to find an additional audience beyond the academy, particularly among educators and those with an interest in environmental thought. As an exploration of a moment in the formation of American nature and culture, this book is informative, enjoyable, and long overdue.