GEIKIE ON THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY. 91 



should be carefully avoidecl. Instead of apiDcaring to discourse him- 

 self, tbe teacher should aim at obtaining clear, articulate expression of 

 the knowledge and experience of the children. He may then judi- 

 ciously sum up what has been gained during the lesson from the 

 united experience of the whole class, and supplement it by filling in 

 some of the more notable gaps. But the additions thus made by him 

 to the common stock of acquirement should never be too preponderat- 

 ing a feature in the earlier lessons, and should come as naturally sug- 

 gested by what has been obtained from the class. 



It is often of advantage to let the lesson be suggested by some in- 

 cident of the day, or something that has arrested notice since the pre- 

 vious lesson. The attention of the children is thereby riveted to the 

 subject. They are ready to say all that they know about it, and eager 

 to hear anything more which the teacher may tell them. A wet morn- 

 ing will profitably suggest a lesson on rain ; the replenishing of the 

 school-room fire with coal will furnish materials for another lesson, of 

 a more advanced kind. The flitting of a butterfly through the open 

 window of the school-room will suggest a lesson on insect-life, and 

 give the teacher an opportunity of unfolding some of the wonders of 

 the animal world and enforcing a reverence and sympathy for all liv- 

 ing things. In short, his eye should be ever on the watch for mate- 

 rials on which he can train the observing and reflecting faculties of 

 his scholars. If an incident likely to be of this useful kind should 

 occur even in the midst of a lesson on another subject, he may profit- 

 ably interrupt the work to direct attention to it that it may be dis- 

 tinctly seen, and he can afterward, at the proper time, return to the 

 elucidation of it. 



An observant teacher will not fail to notice that, long before 

 children can understand or take any intelligent interest in the geog- 

 raphy-lesson as ordinarily given in our schools, they are quite alive to 

 the attractions of that large mass of phenomena embraced within the 

 scope of what is called physical geography. They at first care little 

 about the political boundaries or subdivisions of countries ; but if you 

 speak to them of the changes of the sky, the movements of the wind, 

 the fall of rain, the nature of snow and frost, or of rivers, lakes, and 

 glaciers, of waves and storms, of the soil and the plants that grow in 

 it, of insects and birds and familiar quadrupeds, in short, of the outer 

 world which they see around them from day to day, their attention is 

 at once arrested. The subject is one that comes within the range of 

 their own observation. And in education, the importance of connect- 

 ing the subject of instruction with the personal experience of the 

 pupils can hardly be overestimated. As the school district constitutes 

 the basis from which, as far as possible, the pupils are to realize what 

 the world is as a whole, early attention should be given to its natural 

 features. Among these the configuration of the ground should claim 

 special notice. In flat regions, it must obviously be less easy to find 



