202 Third Conference 



prevent the frequent transference of the geography 

 lesson from the school-room to the hillside. 



The child needs the concrete. He will try to 

 simulate sea and land in his morning porridge- 

 plate. 



It is this anxious feeling for the real which has 

 caused the occasional abnormal distention of that 

 admirable institution the school museum; which, to 

 satisfy some, should be nothing less than a com- 

 pendium not only of natural history and science, but 

 of all the arts and industries, embracing everything 

 from leather -tanning to quartz -crushing and from 

 a barnacle to a thunderbolt, to say nothing of such 

 trifles as boomerangs and snow-shoes. 



These things are not lightly to be decried. They 

 at any rate show how ready the pendulum of correct 

 pedagogic instinct is to swing right away from the 

 crude old plan of learning from books alone. 



The specimens in the museum cupboard are as 

 much better than the essay- card as the geography 

 picture-book is better than the geography catechism. 



Still, they do not entirely obviate the weakness of 

 the prevailing object-lesson system; which is, that it 

 forces into the child's mind a succession of ill-digested 

 and unassimilated matters, resulting too often only 

 in erroneous ideas of processes and products. 



Is it not the experience of every adult, that, how- 

 ever well an unknown object or locality may have 

 been described to him, the first sight of it is usually 

 a surprise.^ 



How much more must this be the case with children, 

 whose imaginative minds, unaided and unfettered by 

 any precise valuation of descriptive words, create 



