Training of the Imagination. 147 



have done our work as we had hoped to do, trained our children 

 to such a degree that, in part at least, they can be lead to under- 

 stand maps and texts that describe them. They are now ready 

 for the study of geography as found in the text book. The last 

 group of units constitutes the second circle of geographic work. 



It should be stated here that during the progress of this tech- 

 nical geographic work the children read much of people and of 

 places, of industries, of products and of processes. This reading 

 is made intelligible by the preparation the children have had 

 for it and by the fact that most of it is either exemplified or 

 illustrated in the school-room. The children have articles of 

 clothing brought into the school-room to be examined and to be 

 compared with corresponding articles of their own ; they have 

 products, both natural and manufactured, on their desks in 

 abundance, for study, for comparison, for conversation ; they have 

 illustrations of fields, of factories, of processes ; they study the 

 changed forms of materials, in connection with the processes 

 and machines by which these forms are changed ; they compare 

 the crude materials with the marketable materials, and show 

 where the one kind is found, in a package on the grocer's shelf, 

 and name the processes by which the transformation is made. 

 Thus are the}^ made ready, in a further sense, to study the 

 geography of the world and to understand some of the very im- 

 portant and valuable facts which the study of geography dis- 

 closes to him who knows how to read properly. 



One purpose of the work thus far has been that of training 

 the imagination of the child. If he goes from home he sees 

 other cities and compares them with his own, for which com- 

 parison he has been prepared ; he sees hills, valleys, streams, 

 plains and other phenomena, which he interprets by that which 

 he learned in his home study, by comparing the two. If he 

 does not travel from home he takes journeys in imagination, for 

 books are put into his hands for that purpose. He thus, in im- 

 agination, visits other cities in distant states. These he finds 

 on river banks or by the seaside. He sees ranges of hills, val- 

 le3''s, mountains, streams, dams, canals, factories ; he witnesses 

 processes and examines products, in every step of which com- 

 parison is made and conclusions drawn. In this work, too, he 

 is trained to estimate distances by comparing the unknoAvn with 

 the known, thus getting some adequate conception of direction 

 and space, 



