THE

Educational Journal of Virginia.

Vol. XIX.

Richmond, Va., February, 1888.

Geography-What to Teach in our Elementary Schools.

By Principal CHARLES S. DAVIS, Saratoga Springs.

No. 2.

I once heard Horatio Seymour say in substance before a body of teachers that his idea of a talk on geography was as of one taking a journey, but who turns aside here and there to sit in the shadow of some grand old tree, to listen to the carol of birds, to the murmur of the breeze, or to refresh himself at a bubbling fountain. In this paper I shall, with your permission, avail myself of this privilege to turn aside now and then into the little retreats that lie along the line of my subject, and which, to me, seem justly to form part of it.

A STANDARD OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.

In examining the literature of geography we are confronted with the remarkable fact that nearly all writers on the subject have left the reader to form his own opinion as to what is a fair amount of geographical knowledge. Geography has been taught in the schools of Europe for more than a hundred years, and yet neither there nor in this country is there any recognized standard of geographical knowledge. Educators are not agreed as to what the average boy or girl ought to know of this subject before laying it aside. No doubt it should vary beyond a certain point with different individuals, but for all who lay any claim to scholarship there should be a minimum standard, to say the least, if the study should be pursued at all. It of course goes without saying that this standard should belong to and should be reached in the elementary schools.

The course required to reach such a standard should manifestly include the essentials of geography, and when I say essentials you will not infer that I mean a little rambling, neighborhood knowledge, which, for the sake of the knowledge itself, I hold to be scarcely worth the getting. Indeed, I believe that the child whose most impressionable years are frittered away in learning the geography of some one-horse country place is robbed in his helplessness and innocence by one who, for his offense should serve the State in another capacity.

LOCAL GEOGRAPHY.

By giving undue attention to local and so-called county geography, we unwisely teach the child what he will eventually know, not because of us, but in spite of us, and this at the expense of more important geographical knowledge, which the child may never have unless he learns it while in school.

I am well aware that many teachers believe that this oral study of county geography accomplishes great things, and I am also aware that while they believe this and find themselves sustained in that belief by popular opinion, they will not trouble themselves with the other side of the question. Let it be understood here, however, I have no quarrel with local geography when studied for a right purpose. On the contrary, I believe in this study under right circumstances and to a proper extent. But I earnestly protest against its being aimlessly taught for months in the name of a culture which it does not to any perceptible degree promote. Those teachers who make local knowledge the object and end of local study lose sight of the true purpose of their work, and thus largely defeat its aim. Local geography should be included as a part of the course in elementary schools so far as it is useful in teaching the child to read maps. Beyond this, and its use in furnishing objective illustrations for a small number of geographical terms, it is, as before remarked, scarcely worth our attention. And in many respects, even for the purposes named, its long continued and careful study is almost useless. Ofttimes the only section which the child can visit is so small and lifeless compared with other parts of the world that it affords no reasonable standard of comparison, and very often it does not in any degree represent any other place under the sun.

How are the magnificence and beauty of the mountain region to be explained and illustrated by anything in the home surroundings of a teacher in the lowlands of the Carolinas? To what part of the neighborhood in Saratoga Springs shall the teacher take his class to illustrate the grandeur of Niagara, or the scenery along the Hudson? To what, amid their own. surroundings, shall the teacher whose pupils daily gather around him in that splendid mountain knot at Lynchburg, in Virginia, point them as illustrating the boundless prairies of the far West? By what little stream do you at home illustrate the mighty Mississippi, and in what local gulch. do you point out to your pupils the incomparable grandeur of Yosemite?

I understand clearly the position I take here. I seem to repudiate the educational common-place that geography should begin at home-a principle, by the way, more frequently assented to than acted upon. The superficial will declare that in this I unconditionally oppose the doctrines of Pestalozzi and Carl Ritter, which in Europe have stood the test of nine de

cades, and which in this country are preached and practised by some of the best educators of our own day. But I do nothing of the kind. I simply oppose the misconstruction, the misapplication, the abuse of the principles laid down by them. As now applied, I hold these doctrines to form but a mass of weedy sludge, swept upon us by the new education's tidal

wave.

I believe in local geography. I hold that it should be an important. factor in the early education of every child.

POWER TO INTERPRET MAPS.

I believe that the geography of the places which the child can visit should be made, as far as possible, the means whereby he may correctly. interpret the geographical representations of the places he cannot visit. When the child has learned to do that, by local study or by other means, the best possible foundation for subsequent geographical knowledge has been laid, for ability to interpret maps is at the bottom of all success in getting a knowledge of geography. When a child has been taught to read correctly all that is expressed on maps, to translate by the loftiest exercise of his imagination representations that are minute and dead, into living realities upon the grandest scale, you can show him the whole world in an hour, and give him a better idea of its topography and landed outline than he could get by years of reading and travel. Many will dispute this and say that the geography of a place is better understood by seeing it. Well, perhaps so, but let us see. A cape is a point of land extendinto the water. Cape Hatteras is a point of land extending into the Atlantic Ocean, and it ought to be easily seen, and yet, were you to go there and walk up and down that low, sandy shore as I have done you would find it wonderfully hard to see the point. There are a great many things in this world too large to be seen, and Cape Hatteras is one of them. You can see it and understand it much better on the map.

LESSONS FROM A GLOBE.

Instead of passing from neighborhood geography to that of the county, I would give the child some lessons from a globe. I would teach him about the axis, the poles, the equator, the tropics, and zones, being careful not to teach too much. Passing from this to the grand divisions and oceans, as represented on the globe, I would have the child know them by their forms, and locate them with reference to the equator, and with reference to each other. Impress it upon the child that these things represent the entire world. Children will take an interest in this, and be proud of their accomplishments. They will go home and tell their fathers and mothers, in moments of childish confidence, that they know how far it is around the world, and through it, and that they know the names of the continents and the big oceans.

OUTLINE MAPS.

At this point the child should learn what relation a map holds to the whole earth. To show this, take a simple outline map of some grand division, say Africa, of the same size as Africa on the globe. Place both map and globe side by side before the class and thus lead them to see that a map represent part of the surface of the globe-part of the surface of the earth. Now locate on your map a mountain range, a river, a city, a neighboring island. If possible, name those the child has heard of before, for children love to get definite information in regard to those things about which they already know a little. Tell the children that camels and elephants and lions come from Africa, and you will find them wonderfully interested. The secret is this: the child knows about these animals. He has seen them, and it awakens his interest in the places under consideration to learn that these creatures really dwell there. Now, if the teacher has life, and vim, and tact, and patience, and perseverance, and knowledge, wonders may be accomplished in making that outline map suggestive of all that characterizes the country which it represents. If the study is South America, tell of the plains of the Orinoco, with their peculiar vegetation and the strange people who dwell there and build their houses in the trees; of the grand forests of the Amazon, richer in gorgeous flowers and rare fruits, and monkey-life, and plumage birds, than any other region on the globe; of the great, grassy plains, with their millions of cattle and horses, to the southward; of Brazil, with its diamonds and its coffee; of Peru, with its silver mines and earthquake-shattered cities; of the glorious Andes, with that long line of flaming beacons, whose mysterious watch-fires never forget to burn, and in whose ruddy light the eagle and the condor spread their wings and upward mount in endless giddy revelry.

You may stop now, if the lesson is done, but the work goes on, for you have aroused that divine faculty which in a child ever swells responsive to a master's call. You have led your pupil to one of the intellectual heights of childhood, and from that eminence pointed out new regions, and set him to peopling them with creatures that really dwell there. You have taught that child to use his imagination, and to give to what otherwise were but "the airy nothings of his thought, a local habitation and a name."

THE ESSENTIALS OF GEOGRAPHY.

The essentials of geography must include not only a complete and harmonious arrangement of the related facts of earth-knowledge, but a fair conception of its unalterable and abiding laws. They must include those things which properly belong to the beginning of geography regarded as a great work, those things which, if once mastered will impel the student to continue that work after school for him is done.

These essentials must also include all that is necessary to give strength and clearness and organization to that promiscuous mass of geographi cal facts which come to us from books, newspapers, pictures and conversation from school days until the close of life. The idea of this course is based on the mastery of a few great geographical principles, which shall seem to expand and grow and blossom in the learner's maturing years, while it discards the endless detail which only taxes memory in youth to betray it in manhood.

I hold these essentials to include, among other things, a knowledge of the earth's form and size; its motions on its axis and around the sun; its division into zones by circles and into irregular climatic belts by isothermal lines; the distribution of land and water, and the separation into continents and oceans; something of the position, size, boundaries, surface, climate, productions and people of every land; something of the world's political divisions and their governments; something of the origin, location and size of the great cities; something of the occupations of mankind, as influenced by their geographical surroundings; much in regard to the great natural and artificial lines of trade and travel. This course would, perhaps, include some things whose use and significance the pupil would not at the time fully appreciate, but, nevertheless, I would teach them, for in this subject I think it wise to store the youthful mind with some true and matured forms, to which a growing experirience may be required to give greater meaning. If I neglect to teach fixed principles because the child can make no use of them to-day, I am a quack. If I teach for present results only, I am a humbug. The seed planted to-day would be worthless if dug up next week. The farmer plants for the future. So should we. It is not the teacher's business to put wise heads on young shoulders, but to see that the heads shall be wise when they come to stand on old shoulders. Our business in the school room is not to make smart boys, but put the boys in a way to become useful men.

Forgetting this, our instruction becoms childish, a thing to avoid by teaching children much as we would teach older people. Store their minds with big truths. Their heads will stand the pressure, and their mental constitution will thrive under it. Most boys in our public schools seem to have brain enough to keep abreast of men in the vices of the street, and these boys are keen and apt pupils in the school of wickedness, because it is the only school in which they are taught to do things as men do them. When these boys go to school they are talked to much as if they were kittens or parrots. They are "deared" and "darlinged," and sometimes kissed, until they feel as if they must go out in the back yard and swear, and fight, and pitch pennies, and smoke, to prove that they are not baby girls.

Dr. Stearnes tells of such a boy, who was asked on his return from school, "What are you studying, Charlie?" "Ain't studying anything."