 | Teaching Children Science: Hands-On Nature Study in North America, 1890-1930 In the early twentieth century, a curriculum known as nature study flourished in major city school systems, streetcar suburbs, small towns, and even rural one-room schools. This object-based approach to learning about the natural world marked the first systematic attempt to introduce science into elementary education, and it came at a time when institutions such as zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums, and national parks were promoting the idea that direct knowledge of nature would benefit an increasingly urban and industrial nation. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt directs the Program in History of Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota. Her teaching and research focus primarily on the history of science in American culture, with particular attention to museums, public education, and women and gender issues in science. In 2009 she edited, with Maria Rentetzi, Gender and Networking in Twentieth-Century Physical Sciences , a special issue of Centaurus . Current projects involve analysis of the use of texts in the object-rich subject of nature study, an account of the Smithsonian Institution, national identity, and the American West in the late nineteenth century, and an Isis reader. |
