The Teaching of Geography 



61 



of it is absolutely meaningless to them, 

 because they lack experience ; and be- 

 fore the}' can take it they must have a 

 foundation. Next to the need of better 

 teachers I should place the need of a 

 better basts upon which to study distant 

 geog raphy. They must really know the 

 meaning of mountain, valley, river, 

 ocean, commerce, etc.; and they must 

 understand what maps stand for before 

 they can study intelligently about the 

 Atlantic Ocean, Mississippi River, and 

 Alps, and before they can understand 

 why London is a great city and be able 

 to locate it on the map and know what 

 such a location really means. 



Too much care and attention cannot 

 be given to the building of this founda- 

 tion. It is difficult to treat in a general 

 way, and is therefore absent or poorly 

 presented in almost all the text-books. 

 It can be secured only by a study of the 

 conditions surrounding the school and 

 the intelligent use of the knowledge thus 

 gained in application to more remote re- 

 gions and conditions. Thus it is neces- 

 sarily dependent upon environment ; 

 and what in detail is adapted to one en- 

 vironment is perhaps not available in 

 another. Therefore only general rules 

 can be laid down, and this is not the 

 place for them ; but that home geography 

 should serve as the foundation for future 

 geography study is absolutely certain. 

 Yet how rarely it is done ! In a city of 

 15,000 a few years ago I found a teacher 

 giving a lesson on the Mississippi delta. 

 I asked if any in the class had ever seen 

 a delta, and no one had — not even the 

 teacher. Yet the school was on a delta 

 two miles long and half a mile wide. 

 How much more the Mississippi delta 

 would mean if these children had under- 

 stood their own ! And the same thing 

 holds for quantities of other features. 

 There is no school in the country that 

 has not scores of geographic features 

 available for use in building a founda- 

 tion for geography study. 



Nor does the study of the home sur- 



roundings merely serve in giving a prep- 

 aration for future study ; it also arouses 

 interest. Geography is no longer a mere 

 study of distant lands, for the home of 

 the child is a part of it. The winds, 

 rains, soils, rivers, railways, etc., are 

 bound up in intimate connection with 

 world phenomena. The pupil's home is 

 but a part of a whole; and when he 

 studies the whole he is constantly seeing 

 its relation to the part which he knows 

 so well. 



There is so much of value to be gained 

 from long and thorough study of the 

 home, and from frequent use of these 

 facts in later study, that I should like to 

 see a full year, or even two, devoted to 

 it ; and when this is done provision 

 should be made for frequent excursions, 

 as the Swiss so effectively do. Will 

 teachers and superintendents in America 

 ever realize that a half day spent by the 

 river or in the factory may be made of 

 more educational value than tenfold as 

 much time in the class-room ? The 

 nature-study idea is a move in the right 

 direction ; but it seems to me that far 

 more good would come of it, and far 

 ■ more opportunity for its extension 

 would be found, if it were geographic 

 nature study — that is, study that not 

 merely creates interest in surroundings, 

 but in that particular class of surround- 

 ings which have a broad application to 

 something. The same powers of obser- 

 vation could be developed and the same 

 interest aroused with , in addition , a larger 

 training in reasoning and an application 

 to life work. Rain or wind offer as good 

 an opportunity for nature stud}' as a tree 

 bud ; a lake or stream as a tadpole ; and the 

 soil as a caterpillar. Zoologists and bot- 

 anists have developed nature stud}-. Is 

 there not some one ready and compe- 

 tent to present geographic nature study ? 

 It is needed. 



THE PHYSIOGRAPHIC BASIS 



Having a foundation resting on the 

 appreciation of the home environment, 



