“The Child Is Born a Naturalist”: Nature Study, Woodcraft Indians, and the Theory of Recapitulation

Abstract

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.

Exploration of the variety of teachers’ VNOS in China: Is the “step-over development” approach effective?

“…The above inferences are also based on the theory of educational recapitulation originating from the theory of recapitulation in life science, which holds that, as individuals' cognition develops, individuals repeat the evolutionary history of the human race (Armitage 2007), although the nature of the changes in the development process might be interpreted differently (see Haaften 2007). With regard to the pedagogical significance of the recapitulation approach, the child should trace and follow the progress of humankind's evolutionary history.…”

Decolonizing youth development: re-imagining youthwork for indigenous youth futures

“…. during its various stages of development” Dolber, 1900 (cited in Armitage, 2007). Adults must not only play active and supervisory roles for children, but they must “sequence” (Dopp, 1902) or use corresponding sociological stages as a guide to develop their programming (Armitage, 2007, p. 57; Fallace, 2015, p. 94).…”

“…The child’s educational environment, it was thought, must be free from restrictions and open to play which was somewhat animalistic, “lower-level,” and reflexive (Gulick, 1899). The child liked to swing, jump, run, build and play with tools, knifes and bows (ibid); he had limited attachments to his peers, was focused on subsistence and “innately close to nature” (Armitage, 2007, p. 44). Joseph Lee, longtime president of the Playground Association of America was an ardent proponent of what he termed the “big Injun age of childhood development” (Armitage, 2007).…”

“…The child liked to swing, jump, run, build and play with tools, knifes and bows (ibid); he had limited attachments to his peers, was focused on subsistence and “innately close to nature” (Armitage, 2007, p. 44). Joseph Lee, longtime president of the Playground Association of America was an ardent proponent of what he termed the “big Injun age of childhood development” (Armitage, 2007). His organization alongside the American Physical Education Association 2 , would help to establish public playgrounds across the country in an effort to harness these habits of savagery and evolve children through play; one park going as far as to provide a “cave men” simulation (Gagen, 2007).…”

“…By 1915, 14 states required nature study in public elementary schools. Charles Lincoln Edwards, the Director of Nature Study for the Los Angeles Public Schools (California), called for school gardens and field trips to be buttressed with “the stories and songs of negroes and Indians” because “these more primitive people are but grown children, living in closer touch with nature” (Armitage, 2007, p. 52).…”