3 34 The National Geographic Magazine 



tions to its neighbors. After this a short 

 historical sketch, with sufficient refer- 

 ence to the geographic conditions of 

 the historical development, will furnish 

 the basis for an examination of the po- 

 litical contours of the map, in which 

 much repetition of the preceding lessons 

 will come in. Reciting the geographic 

 facts according to special topics ma^^ be 

 used as a means of repetition, as a help 

 to the pure memory of names, but even 

 then must never be done without always 

 pointing out on the map the location of 

 the places mentioned. 'It is, however, 

 absolutely to be condemned as a part of 

 the lesson, because it kills the geographic 

 feeling. 



The first country studied in this way 

 is, of course, the native countr}^, espe- 

 cially the home of the child and its en- 

 virons. This home geography fills the 

 first year and gives opportunity to make 

 the child acquainted with the prelim- 

 inaries of general geography, not in a 

 systematic, but in an inductive way, and 

 to introduce it to the thoughtful use of 

 the map. Map-reading may be carried 

 on to a very high degree of perfection, 

 and even furnish positive knowledge of 

 phenomena which cannot be studied in 

 nature, if map-drawing for school pur- 

 poses is done with such perfection as in 

 Germany, where the principle that for 

 children the best things are just good 

 enough has exercised a wonderful in- 

 fluence also in this direction. The car- 

 tographic productions of Debes (Ivcip- 

 zig) , Perthes (Gotha), and Reimer (Ber- 

 lin) have no peer in any country. In a 

 German geography class, therefore, 3^ou 

 can observe that the teacher reall^^ gets 

 his pupils to read the cartographic rep- 

 resentations like letters in a book, to use 

 the map as a directory in walking, to 

 find their way easily in unknown places 

 by the aid of the map, and perhaps we 

 have here one of the reasons why Ger- 

 many more than any other countr}^ is 

 the home of pedestrian trips and of trav- 

 elers' guide-books. 



In the second year follows the study 

 of Germany, after this a general surv^ej^ 

 of the globe and continents, then the 

 special study of Europe and of the for- 

 eign continents. It is not until then 

 that the systematic teaching of general 

 physical geography begins, which is 

 now indeed nothing but the repeating, 

 putting together, completing, and sys- 

 tematizing of what the pupils have 

 already learned in the former grades 

 in an occasional and inductive wa5^ 

 Part of the schools make this the final 

 course ; others take after it a second 

 and more advanced course of the geogra- 

 ph}^ of Germany, with special attention 

 to political, social, economic, commer- 

 cial, and colonial problems, for which 

 mature pupils are better fitted than the 

 children of the first German course. 

 Thus on leaving school they have a 

 clear idea of the actual state and con- 

 ditions of the country in whose life they 

 are to participate. On the whole, the 

 average German who does not pursue 

 higher studies will have from seven to 

 nine j^ears of geography, with generall)' 

 two hours a week for 40 weeks each 

 year. This makes about 550 to 700 les- 

 sons in the whole course, or 17 per cent 

 of all the instruction imparted outside 

 the university. 



WHY STUDY GEOGRAPHY? 



It seems proper to ask why German 

 educators lay so much stress on geo- 

 graphic training. What is the value 

 of a thorough study of geography for 

 education and for life ? 



There are, of course, a number of 

 practical reasons. The knowledge 'of 

 many geographic facts is so necessary 

 for everybody that even when no higher 

 merit had yet been found in it, the study 

 of geography was included at least in 

 the schedule of primar}^ schools. 



As to scientific geography, the ques- 

 tion has often seemed not very eas}'' to 

 answer. It has been objected that if 



