PAPERS OX GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY 367 



In tlie third month of the fifth year the ^vork on the 

 scale of the globe can well be omitted. School-room 

 globes are so small that the equivalent in miles for one 

 inch is too great a distance for children to comprehend. 

 The time can be spent to a much greater advantage in 

 teaching sizes and distances by means of comparisons 

 vnth which the child is familiar. Nothing is gained at 

 this age by teaching the child that the earth has a cir- 

 cumference of 25,000 miles. You can impress him with 

 its size by finding out how long it would take a train 

 going at an ordinary rate of speed to travel around it, or 

 by some other easy comparison. 



The sixth grade is not the proper place for the teach- 

 ing of much of the detailed work on latitude and longi- 

 tude. This part of geography should be put off as long 

 as possible in the grades. Positions should be taught 

 by comparisons, rather than by degrees of latitude and 

 longitude. In the list of definitions in the work of the 

 first month I would leave out parallels, meridians, merid- 

 ian-circle, circular measure, and all of the definitions 

 which follow them. Those terms which we do teach 

 should not be taught as definitions to be learned and 

 parroted in set phrases, but should be taught by illustra- 

 tion. 



I am convinced that we are accomplishing little by try- 

 ing to teach the wind system in the grades. Its place is 

 in physical geography. The students who enter my 

 classes in the Normal, having had no geography since 

 the grades, are utterly ignorant concerning a knowledge 

 of the winds, though some teacher has tried to teach them 

 this work in earlier years. It is not just a case of for- 

 getting because they do not even comprehend the prin- 

 ciples of the wind system. I think that we should teach 

 the causes of the winds, but that we should lay most 

 of the stress upon their effects; such as, mnds blowing 

 off water, winds on leeward and windward sides of moun- 

 tains, winds. from the north, and winds from the south, 

 etc. No attempt at a classification of the winds should 

 be attempted in the grades. We are interested in the 

 human effects of winds and not a scientific classification 



