1869, Ep. 146 with John Linstrom, editor of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea

9:26PM Feb 6, 2024

Speakers:

Jonathan Hall

John Linstrom

Keywords:

bailey

nature

book

education

teacher

hyde

study

outdoors

great

liberty

day

climate

science

led

edition

walking

textbooks

movement

work

museum

Welcome to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast. I'm Jonathan Hall. In this episode we speak with John Linstrom, editor of the definitive new edition of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea. John Linstrom is Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum. He coedited The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion.. Liberty Hyde Bailey was Dean of the College of Agriculture at Cornell University and Chair of the Commission on Country Life under President Theodore Roosevelt. A pioneer in modern horticulture and environmental philosophy, he was the author of more than seventy books. We spoke to John about how Liberty Hyde Bailey's book became the bible of the nature study movement; how his ideas completely transformed education around the country; and, how we can use this inspiring ideas today to get off of our screens, go outdoors and get more in touch with nature. Hello, John, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much. So great to be back.

Yeah, glad to have you back. You're repeat customer on the podcast. And I'm really looking forward to talking to you about this new definitive edition of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea that you've edited. Tell us how this project came to be?

Sure, yeah, well, I've been pretty obsessed with Liberty Hyde Bailey and his writings for gosh, over a decade now a little bit. I really became interested after I finished college in 2010, and was engaged in an MFA program in creative writing and environment out at Iowa State. And I actually grew up in the same hometown as Liberty Hyde Bailey in Michigan called South Haven, but grew up not knowing anything about him. It just so happened about that time, they had a new director who was really trying to focus on Bailey's life and accomplishments and highlighting those...got to know him. And I did an internship and then worked at the Bailey Museum for a few years. And in that time, I became interested in...I was introduced to his books, which the museum had many first edition copies of period editions from over 100 years ago. And I read some of them at the museum, but I, you know, was enrolled in school during the school year in another state and getting my hands on copies was so difficult that I just thought I wished you... this guy was so ahead of his time and has been under studied. And his work is largely overlooked for some interesting historiographic reasons that are a topic for another day. But, but I just, I just had, like, I wish there were Penguin editions of Bailey's books, or Norton Critical Editions or something. And so from at a very early point, I just thought, man, someday I wish I could be part of something like this. And then fast forward, by 2015, it was the centennial of his most known environmental philosophy were called The Holy Earth. And I thought, I wish we could get an edition together in time this was in 2014 or so kind of cutting it close. But I managed to pull it off, with some help was published by Counterpoint with a foreword by Wendell Berry. And then I thought, okay, I can do this. I know what I would do differently next time to do you know, more substantial work. Then my former Bailey museum colleague, John Stempien approached me with this partial manuscript of a collection of garden writings by Bailey. That's the thing that I first approached Cornell Press with and Katie Liu, the editor at Comstock Publishing Associates imprint was very interested in this collection of Bailey's garden writings, which was published in 2019, called the Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion. And it was while we're working on that, that I said, you know, Bailey's got a lot of books that are really interesting. What if we did a series and introduced them? And so this book is the first volume in that series. We're introducing the full works of Bailey. And it's, we started with it partly because it's sort of the first major literary philosophical book that Bailey published and one of the most culturally significant that had a huge impact culturally, and in terms of education across the United States. At the time, it was really well read. So it was an exciting one to work on. And, and then of course, as it evolved we got David Orr to write, the foreword, Dilafrus Williams contributed an essay about the current state of outdoor education and the relevance of this book to that. So it was a really exciting project.

Nice, nice. So it's called The Nature-Study Idea. Tell us what nature study is.

Sure. Well, for Bailey, you know, he likes to start out definitions by saying what something is not. So one of the memorable quotes from the book is: "Nature study is not science, it is not knowledge. It is not facts. It is spirit. It is an attitude of mind, it concerns itself with the child's outlook on the world." And there's a lot to actually unpack in that short, kind of mini paragraph from the first chapter. When Bailey wrote this book, he was partly defending what had been already become an educational movement from the attacks of a group of mostly men who were academically credentialed scientists. And it was a movement mostly led by women in the public schools. And he's clear about that in the book. He had been introduced to the ideas of nature study, as a child by a formative childhood teacher, who I write about in an introductory essay for this edition, named Julia Field—later Julia Field King— who didn't really know anything about natural history, but Bailey was interested in it. And one day, this kid at the time living in this rural frontier town, in this little two room schoolhouse, brings to his teacher, this textbook on natural history that he had found in someone's house in town, and was interested in and he said, Julia Field said, "Well, I don't know anything about natural history, Liberty, but if you'd like we can pursue a class follow through this book, and see where it leads us." So he would recite each day from the book. And in the 19th century, a lot of education was reciting from textbooks. And this is one of the things that the nature study movement ends up pushing against in a big way. And helps us move beyond that kind of pedagogy. And it was also dominated by the three Rs - reading, writing and arithmetic. Not a lot of science at that time. And Bailey ends up becoming a scientist. So why does he say nature study is not a science? Well, the other thing that Julia Field would do. It wasn't just a book learning, he would come in, and she would pose a question that he couldn't answer. She said one day, "Liberty, I feel sorry for you, you're walking through a wonderland with your eyes shut." And this is how he told the story many, many years later. And he said, "What do you mean? My eyes aren't shut, I see everything. I you know, I'm a farm kid. Like, I know what I'm walking around and everything." And she said, "Well, then tell me how many maple trees you walk by on your way to school. You walk a mile through the woods each day carrying your lunch, how many maple trees you walk by?" And he had no idea. But the next day he did because he started to count them. And when he told her and she said, "Okay, well, how high are the tops of those trees," he didn't really have any idea. So he paid more attention the next day. So those are kind of superficial observations. But over time, it led to a realization that there was so much that he was missing in his day to day life. He's walking to school in the mid 19th century, he doesn't even have a smartphone to distract him. But that attentiveness and that curiosity, and questioning and open-ended questioning was something that really impacted Bailey. And he ends up dedicating the nature study idea to this teacher, he says, to Julia Field King who allowed a boy to grow, a teacher who allowed a boy to grow. Okay, so fast forward, when he's a professor of horticulture at Cornell, and soon to be the founding dean of the College of Agriculture at Cornell University. He's a horticultural scientist. But he's also concerned with education in New York State, especially in the rural schools, because he's concerned about the future of agriculture in the state. And there's this problem that people are noticing where many people are leaving the country moving to the city, partly because there's an there's a farm crisis, there's an economic depression. They're looking for opportunities, but also he thinks because there's a dissatisfaction with farm life. And what he noticed is that the interesting line that he draws you wouldn't expect is that there's this educational movement afoot in the schools, where teachers are basically doing what Julia Field was doing for him. They're leading their kids outdoors. through an interest in teaching natural history and the natural sciences, but really the instruction is going way beyond just science. It's about just recognizing your place in the world and feeling more connected. And Bailey sees this as really concerned about developing the bonds of sympathy between child and their surroundings and their world. It's as he sees it as a kind of spiritual movement, a foundational educational movement. By bringing students out of these typically cramped classrooms with, you know, where they're sitting all day on benches and reciting from textbooks, taking them out into the spontaneity of experiencing the wildness of the world outside those doors. Kids are getting excited, and they're relating to education differently. So he saw it as a foundational educational principle that was potentially transformative. And that could equip students with a way of relating to their surroundings in these agricultural districts. That is an endless source of curiosity and wonder. And he saw that as more promising a direction in terms of keeping people on the land, which was this concern at the time, there's a great line where he's talking about this particular problem. And he said, "before I would increase the bushels of wheat per acre, I would have every home, grow a flower garden, as a point of kind of poetic, personal spiritual refreshment, right there outside of their door." So all of these threads are coming together. And it's this kind of beautiful, blossoming thing. It's led by women in the common schools, the term for the public schools back then. And then there's a series of attacks that are published by these university scientists who are like, Wait, this is a science teaching movement. And these teachers are not trained in the sciences. In fact, they're sentimentalized in nature. This is not only unscientific, it's dangerous for these students. And actually Bailey's former mentor, scientific mentor William Beal, botanist at Michigan Agricultural College, who he respected highly. And the two of them, by all accounts had a very positive relationship. But he publishes this article that's basically undermining the stuff that Bailey is lifting up as positive. And gives the example of a student who drew a picture of a flower with some bees attending to it. And he said, The picture was all wrong. The flower had the wrong number of petals, the bee had the wrong number of wings. It didn't look like any bee or any flower in nature. These are images are dangerous, not just to the children who produced them, but to anyone who looks at them. Anyway, so and words like a feminization, and sentimentalism, sentimentalism were being leveled. So that's a long answer to your question. But for Bailey, it all comes down to a fundamental educational process of seeing the things which one looks at and drawing proper conclusions from what one sees, toward the end of establishing a bond of sympathy with the natural world. That's his kind of most succinct definition. And it ties to all these different swirling ideas.

Right, right. Now, that makes sense. That makes sense. So it's interesting, you know, he, he publishes this book, which basically, is asking people to put down the book and go outside, which is interesting. But as you said, it transformed the country. And I believe you mentioned in another talk that I'd heard you say that, it's mentioned in the book that, you know, the field trip, the idea of the field trip is part of the whole nature of study movement. So I think anyone that's gone on a field trip, you know, thanks to Liberty Hyde Bailey, and the movement, and he's got a great quote in here in the book: "The power that moves the world is the power of the teacher." That's really amazing statement. And so Liberty Hyde Bailey saw this nature study movement as a important force, not only for education and children, but for democracy itself. Tell us more about that. And who he imagined nature study was for.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. He...So I mentioned that this is Bailey's first major kind of philosophical book. Nature study also was kind of the operational foundation to this larger project. He spent a lot of his life thinking and writing about which was this kind of worldview transition toward what he called a new hold on our relationship with the rest of the world. Or this outlook to nature is another term that he uses. He, he's he's writing from the position of industrializing America, right, like actively industrializing. And he's writing also as a member of the Progressive Era who we would describe as a progressive of this time. So he's not a Luddite. He's not anti-industrialization, necessarily, but he's really concerned about losing touch with certain aspects of our relationship to this world that that he had encountered growing up on a very pre industrial kind of farm setting. Okay, so in terms of its specific relation to democracy, Bailey believed that democracy was a state that had never yet been achieved. It was something that he believed strongly in as a project and saw a lot of promise in the kind of American experiment. But he saw it very much as a process and as something that would be rooted in every individual of a society, right. It's not something you can impose as a governmental system. It's perspective that you bring as a citizen toward your, your sense of responsibility and engagement to your fellow neighbors. And so demanded a kind of rigorous sense of relationality, both to your fellow people and also to the more than human world that you inhabited. And nature study, he saw this as something that was potentially transformative across social lines. I was saying a little bit before about how he was actively engaged in lifting up women leaders and voices and the nature city movement. In fact, he hired the first women professors at Cornell University to lead the nature study bureau that they established within the College of Agriculture. Anna Botsford Comstock being the most high profile example. But other leaders like Alice McCloskey, Ada Georgia, Julia Rogers, and a whole, you know, kind of dream team of nature study leaders.

We're currently in an age of distraction. You can watch Netflix for the entire year, if you want to, there's so many shows streaming, and people are addicted to their cell phones and just looking through the internet or social media. So a lot of people are distracted and not paying attention to how many maple trees they've walked by, or the height of the trees and things like this. So how can Bailey's open ended place-based outdoor learning help us get more in touch with not only our environment, but even help us deal with huge issues? Like for example, climate change?

Yeah, that's such a great question. And, and I will say, David Orr's foreword to the book, which is just great, really starts out and focuses on this, you know, question of how what does this have to say to our current moment of climate crisis, as well as democratic crisis. Another line from the book that I love from Bailey's book is, he says something like, No man should be dependent on another for his happiness. Of course, that's the gendered language of over 100 years ago, but no person should be dependent upon another for their happiness. And I think of that a lot when I think about my own addiction to my smartphone, this dependency that we begin to develop on distraction for kind of making us feel happy in this short term way that gives us a dopamine kick, you know, that we all know about social media is, you know, focused on that particular wiring in our brain and increasing that dependency. So I think if you want to apply the nature study ideal today, there's the one hand there's the question of how to do it in the schools. And, you know, in Bailey's day, it was textbooks and he does, he has a little bit of fun. You were alluding to this earlier with the fact that he's writing a book about less depend less on books. But he always says good books are very helpful. You just need to put them down and then go outside afterwards. They a good book should direct you outdoors to the natural world, not keep you in it. And one of the things also getting taught to the question of women's professionalism in education at the time these textbook salespeople part of their you know mode of operating was to sort of say like, oh, you need this because you don't you're not professionally trained in this topic. So you need this book. You need this book. He's kind of reinforcing a sense that you're, you're not good enough to be able to do this on your own, you need to rely on the books, which oftentimes, those books, Bailey said, would take children away from their immediate surroundings and throw them into exotic landscapes like the Amazon rainforest, or the Alps or whatever. Rather than relating them to the lives, they actually live in a way that's meaningful and profound. So today, we have, you know, web-based applications and the Internet, right, which I, like Bailey said, of textbooks can be a very useful and important critical tool. But when it's not leading you away from it toward the rest of the world. And, you know, closer connection and understanding of that world, it's not serving you. So there's, again, a whole industry, attached to education focused on making teachers feel like they need these, you know, they need to be on...my mom's a teacher, and she attended a workshop once where they're basically told, like, you need to be on Twitter. This is like 15 years ago, in order to be an effective fifth grade teacher, you need to be on Twitter. That's...Bailey was very interested in empowering teachers, to be able to say, I disagree. What I need to be an effective teacher is my own passion, and leading students to curiosity and wonder and experiences. So within the educational sphere, part of what we can apply today is this message of empowerment to teachers that Bailey had, which is, Do not be afraid to teach, do not be afraid to do what you know how to do without this over reliance on technological gadgets and silver bullets, because there are no silver bullets, education is messy. And he always said, you know, it's the strong teacher who can say I do not know. So, don't be limited by your, by what feels like a shortcoming or, or a lack of expertise. As soon as you don't know something, you can pose it to the students as a problem to investigate. So anyway, but I think also like more broadly beyond education. carving out time, in our days, which this is what nature study, when implemented, carved out time in the school day for students to just have open ended observations outdoors. We can do that too, as overworked busy adults. And I, you know, this is a constant struggle for me, but we can go for walks without our phones in our pockets. Sometimes we forget that. I'll go, I used to go for runs and leave my phone at home and think like, What if I die, and no one can find me? crazy thoughts that we have now. Because of the way we've been tethered to this technology, which again, the technology itself is not the problem, it's about finding a sense of balance, and just carving out time to have firsthand contact with a world outside of yourself, I think is kind of just the basic message of the nature study idea. And in terms of you asked, how does this all relate to climate change, and I haven't really, I keep talking about these kind of very personal sounding experiences. But you know, the more connected we feel, to the world we live in, the more concerned we may be on the one hand, on the other hand, some of us are strung out and anxious all the time and need this time outdoors, for the sake of refreshing ourselves and recognizing the beauty that is here on the planet that that we have to experience and should cherish. And another thing I mean, I'm currently working at the climate Museum in New York City, and part of the philosophy of our existence, why we would argue the world needs a climate museum actually, we probably need many climate museums. And it's gaining steam, at least internationally as an idea is that kind of like in Bailey's time, where his mentors were growing up at a time that the science is needed to carve out space for themselves in the educational system. This is part of why they were arguing nature study is dangerous because they were worried it was a threat to science. Bailey's generation could see in the Progressive Era, science was the dominant discourse. And we're in here because of that, too, in ways that are often positive, a super majority of Americans right now, not only believe in climate change, but they're concerned about it in human-caused climate change, I should say. Yeah, there are holdouts, of course, right. And those people need access to scientific education about why it's really happening. But the science itself, as important as it is, for us to know where we are, and to be able to take action is not going to lead to the action on its own, which is why we're so behind right now on our global goals, in terms of reducing emissions from fossil fuels and everything else. What we need is a cultural shift. And that's going to be powered by the full human experience in community. And that means engaging the arts, that means engaging the humanities, the social sciences, it means the whole kit and caboodle. We need it all. And, and the reason that Bailey thought nature study was so important to that kind of shift in his own day, was that it grounds those efforts in an experience of the world, rather than in abstractions that we get from our books, or our internet experiences, or, you know, Google searches, or whatever it grounds it in lived experience, which is the safer bet. So we need to mobilize the arts, we need to mobilize cultural institutions, and recognize that in order to achieve net zero in order to work toward actual climate, justice and equity, we need everyone.

Sure, sure. Well, and what you had mentioned earlier was connection that was one of the keys to be able to feeling connected to nature, therefore, you're going to want to protect nature. And what Bailey asked us to do is to see nature as part of our family, we did see that for eons. And then once we started moving into the cities, and our were tucked into this more abstract system, with the internet, fueling this of just being almost disembodied in another world. Bailey asks us to see nature as part of our family, there's a great quote, “[i]t were better that we know the things, small and great, which make up this environment, and that we live with them in harmony, for all things are of kin; then shall we love and be content” Oh, that sounds fantastic. What, what are some simple things people can do listeners can do to get into the state of harmony?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that idea that I was describing of, give yourself prioritize time in the week where you leave your cell phone at home and go for a walk in your neighborhood. I mean, I live in Queens, you know. But I take my daughter for walks, now she's gonna turn two in a few months. And it's amazing to see the world through her eyes. And walking around her neighborhood, there are squirrels or birds or trees and flowers. And there's so much to notice about those things that, you know, I've realized I've only been on this earth for, you know, three and a half decades, and there's so much that I've been missing. It's kind of like child Bailey, walking through the woods to school and not noticing the maple trees. So I think making time for that...and especially to the extent that that kind of time can be done in community with others. You know, to draw again, on my Climate Museum work, we talk a lot about the way that the arts can build community and combat the sense of isolation that a lot of us feel in the face of the horrors of climate change, and of many of the other horrors that are facing our world right now. politically and otherwise. One great antidote for that is community, especially community, through arts and culture, looking for the organizations looking for the neighbors and the individuals who can accompany you on that journey and to know that you're not alone, because I think it's when we feel the most alone that we retreat to, you know, our little corners of the digital stratosphere, but there's something really important that that I think is being reclaimed now, you know, after the months of lockdown early in the pandemic, and everything else, a real valuation for sharing space, and you know, in responsible ways, but and especially outdoors, you know, COVID doesn't travel very well, outdoors. So there's an excuse to get together outside.

Yeah, now there was a boom for outdoor manufacturers and all the parks suddenly now are exploding with almost too many people in the parks. But thank goodness, that's such a great outlet for people to experience nature. And as you said, you're living in Queens that you can just go outside. And no, you're not in Yosemite, but you can see trees and squirrels and go to the park and things like that. Get into nature that way.

And knowing that you're... the way that you relate to the natural world is valid. And that's part of what Bailey is saying, and the nature city idea. He's saying, you know, some people will be, will approach nature through the lens of poetry, because they love poetry. He's got a whole chapter on this in the book. This is one of the things that had come under attack from the scientific establishment in his time, saying, Well, what value is there in reading a nature poem. And he says, well, sometimes the nature poem gives you more of the life of the animal than a stuffed specimen does. And he says, of course, I would take the live specimen over anything else living in its natural habitat outdoors, but the poem is gonna get you closer to that. So another part of it is just realizing there's no right way to do this. And, and that message comes through again, and again, the book in a way that I think is really refreshing. And especially coming from someone who himself was a lifelong scientist who loved the scientific study of plants. For someone with his kind of background to come to this issue and say, oh, yeah, look, that's how I relate. But that doesn't have to be how you do it. And in fact, there is there are so many ways that we should relate to the world. The scientist should not lack a poetic appreciation, and the poet should not lack a scientific appreciation, we, we really need to reclaim that kind of multidisciplinary sense of the whole person, and teaching to the whole child in the case of, of education.

So, right, it's great. Wow, well, there's so much wisdom that you've just unveiled just in this short time period. But there's obviously plenty plenty more in this new definitive edition of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea that's now out. And we're so grateful that it's open access to you, you can go to our website, you can go to Amazon, you can go to Barnes and Noble, you can get a free ebook edition of this book. You can also get it in print, obviously, as well. But as you've John had said, we encourage listeners to read it, but also put the ebook down or the or the physical book down and get outdoors. That's the whole point of the book. But it's definitely it's very inspiring to do that to get outdoors and really be with nature and commune with nature. And that's great for all of us, both of our mental health and for the health of the community. So we're so grateful that your passion has brought Liberty Hyde Bailey's passion to a larger audience, and we thank you for all your effort.

Well, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure.

Well, it was great talking with you and I'm sure we'll talk to you again soon.

Sounds good. All right.

Take care.

You, too.

That was John Linstrom, editor of the definitive new edition of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea. If you'd like to read this new book right now, download the free ebook from our website at Cornellpress.cornell.edu. You can also purchase the print edition and save 30% off by using the promo code 09POD. If you live in the UK, and we'd like to save 30% Use the discount code CSANNOUNCE and visit the website combined academic.co.uk Thank you for listening to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast