The Teaching of Geography 



63 



■main underlying principles are those 

 set forth above. My final point is that 

 it is by such practical expositions as the 

 preparation of text-books that we are 

 to gain much of our advance in geogra- 

 phy instruction. Much time is wasted 

 in committee reports and association 

 •discussions of geography courses. These 

 presuppose that teachers can fill in the 

 gaps, which in nine cases out of ten is 

 .an unwarranted assumption. Let us 

 have more text-books, each embodying 

 the ideas of its writer. Each good text- 

 book will improve the teaching, partly 

 by its own use and partly by forcing 

 competing publishers to try to equal or 

 excel it. Out of these books in time will 

 come one which approaches the ideal ; for 

 •each good new book makes it easier to 

 write a better one partly by showing 

 what is weak and partly by reason of 

 the strong points which it contains. 

 We need more geographies and each 

 good one that appears should be wel- 

 comed as a step toward attaining better 

 results. 



I dwell upon text-books with full 

 knowledge of the fact that there are 

 •dreamers who believe the text-book to 

 be bad, who think teachers do not need 

 these helps, and who say that to tell a 

 teacher how to teach, or to give ques- 

 tions and suggestions, is "an insult." 

 The teacher needs all the help she can 

 get ; would that it were different, but 

 it is not, and teachers know it and ad- 

 mit it and are doing their best to ad- 

 vance under difficulties. It is better to 

 use the poorest of text-books than to 

 follow the plan of teaching without one, 

 for the latter method leaves many loose 

 •ends. It is the introduction of the 

 "college idea" into the grades. It is 

 •coming to be believed by many that the 

 lecture system is overdone in colleges 

 where specialists are employed. What a 

 result, then, must be obtained where the 

 hearers are mere children and the teach- 

 ers by no means specialists ! Far better 

 is it to use a text, and then, if the teacher 



has the ability and knowledge, to add 

 to it where it is weak or where she is 

 strong — that is to say, have a skeleton 

 to build on. There are in every text- 

 book some things said better than most 

 teachers can say them, and these state- 

 ments are in print, not taken down as 

 notes with a part lost. 



If the teacher can find time for extra 

 work, it would be far better to use that 

 time in laboratory work, using this term 

 to include also a study outside of the 

 school-room. Here is a chance to do 

 something that no text can provide and 

 whose results are of exceeding impor- 

 tance. The value of this work as pre- 

 liminary and basal has already been 

 mentioned when speaking of home 

 geography; but it should be continued 

 throughout the course. I do not speak 

 of it further here, partly because it has 

 already been pointed to with more or 

 less fullness by others on various occa- 

 sions, and partly because I believe that 

 there are other lines of improvement of 

 more fundamental importance than this, 

 and much more liable to be adopted, 

 because the way to their adoption is al- 

 ready open. ■ Laboratory work means 

 time, equipment, and training not now 

 generally available. It is better to try 

 to get it started where most needed, 

 namely, in the very earliest years; and 

 from this as a nucleus it will spread to 

 the higher grades, when once its value 

 is established there. 



SUMMARY 



Briefly summarized, the points made 

 in this article are that there is an op- 

 portunity for improvement in geography 

 instruction along several lines. First of 

 all, there is need for better training of 

 teachers, and this calls for geography 

 courses in the high schools, better teach- 

 ing in the normal schools, and provision 

 for training of geographers in the uni- 

 versities; but by making a better use of 

 the talent already available — that is, by 



