E.— GEOGRAPHY. 101 



there shall be more liberal recognition of the dignity and potential excellence 

 of craftsmanship, with all that is implied in the adaptation of what used 

 to be called the ' liberal arts ' to widen appreciation and deepen sensibility 

 in the craftsman-to-be, by familiarity with the masterpieces of his own 

 and kindred crafts. That the advent of the ' Next Phase ' should have been 

 signalled by the establishment of a Koyal Commission on National Museums 

 is of good omen in this respect, for there is much room for correlation of 

 studies and differentiation of teaching practice here. On the other hand 

 we may hope for, and claim, greater freedom of treatment for literary, 

 historical and scientific studies alike ; opportunity for fresh combinations 

 and closer interlock between related subjects ; less formal class-work 

 and mass-distribution of knowledge, but more team-work and ' mutual 

 improvement ' (to revive a gracious memory) among the students them- 

 selves ; less observance of time-table and syllabus, wider range and more 

 spontaneous choice of individual reading. In geography let us hope for 

 greater familiarity with the writings of the great travellers, less dependence 

 on textbook pemmican. As Mrs. Beeton says of another kind of chicken 

 broth, ' the best fresh meat only should be used.' And as main cause 

 and (in turn) inevitable effect of all this, let us insist on sincere relaxation 

 of the tyranny of external examiners and deliberate confidence in the 

 considered estimate of the teacher, as to the results of all this on the 

 child. 



In the years before eleven, too, may we hope for changes which in 

 fact, if not in name, may do something to obliterate the divergence between 

 what have hitherto been only too truly contrasted as ' elementary ' and 

 ' preparatory ' kinds of education. And herein the mere geographer will, 

 I think, demand two things : first, in ' preparatory ' schools, hitherto 

 so-called, such recognition of the ' preparatory ' value of geography as 

 has already been accorded in many of the best ' elementary ' schools ; in 

 particular, correlation between a coherent programme of geographical 

 teaching and those literary and historical studies which have in the past 

 been one of the best features of ' preparatory ' schools, though at some 

 cost to the preparation of their scholars for transference to any but the 

 conventional ' public schools.' Secondly, in ' elementary ' schools, which 

 will now be indeed ' preparatory ' to the ' new stage of education,' may 

 we not ask for careful reapportionment of the principal groups of studies 

 and aspects of learning ; elimination of technical elements and wage- 

 winning considerations altogether ; and concentration on the rather small 

 number of really ' primary ' studies, with the maximum of interplay 

 between them all ? For it is at this stage that we have most chance of 

 accustoming a child to ' see life whole ' as well as ' steadily ' ; and the 

 fewer the compartments into which it is found necessary to disintegrate 

 education, the greater the security that nothing really important has 

 failed to fall into some one of them. 



Now somewhere within those principal groups of studies which make 

 up the programme of education, geography — and ancient geography in 

 particular — has its reasonable place ; and the question to which I am 

 trying to frame an answer is as to the principles on which that just place 

 is to be assigned, and in what working association with other subjects. 

 If I digress at this stage into what will seem to some to be platitude, and 



