142 W. B. Powell — Geographic Instruction. 



which is to be to him a source of profit and delight throughout 

 his future life, will be presented to his mind mainly by means 

 of symbols. 



During all the work thus far outlined the child has been 

 assigned no tasks, or at most very few tasks. He has been 

 led to put forth purposive effort by an interest that the teacher 

 has aroused in him in the subjects under consideration. The 

 kindergarten has been taken up into the primary school ; but 

 the child has learned geographic terms, has learned their uses 

 by using them, has learned their definitions by talking about 

 them repeatedly, and has learned to spell them by writing them 

 many times in his little compositions. He has learned the 

 proper use of English idiom in the expression of geographic 

 phenomena, whose forms and other conditions he has sought to 

 explain to his teacher. 



Our young learner is yet in the primary school while doing 

 the difterent kinds of work enumerated above. He has been 

 learning to read, having read many stories and descriptions and 

 poems relating to, and based on, the work which he has done 

 and which enables him to understand thoroughly what he reads, 

 and which causes him to be interested in what he reads, because 

 it is the confirmation and expansion of that which he knoAvs to 

 be true, as found by his own efforts. Very few, if any, tasks 

 have been assigned, yet the child has become an original in- 

 vestigator. Very few lessons have been prescribed,* 5^ et the child 

 has learned to use English for the expression of exact ideas and 

 in their exact relation. Very few requirements have been de- 

 manded, yet the child has made a delightful beginning in the 

 most interesting study of geography. 



If the purpose of the child's school life thus far had been only 

 that he might learn to read, no more profitable, plan nor one 

 more certain of true success could have been adopted. If the 

 purpose of the work had been only to teach him to talk cor- 

 rectly, to use his mother tongue for a purpose accurately and at 

 the same time exactly, no better scheme could have been in- 

 vented. If the purpose of the work had been to train the child 

 to see, to discover, to project, to observe and to conclude within 

 the limits of the possibilities of his mind adapted thereto, no 

 better process could have been employed. 



The work, however, requires ideal teaching. It is not done 

 by the assignment of lessons on the part of the teacher ; it is not 



