GEOGRAPHY FOR TEACHERS 223 



gether with the Editors of the Magazine, the Secretaries, and 

 the Board of Managers in general, have given freely of their time 

 and best energies to the furtherance of the interests for which 

 it stands. For the first time in its history a systematic effort 

 is about to be made to increase its membership, as the first step 

 toward the enlargement of its work, and if each member will 

 recognize his obligation — if not to the Society as an organiza- 

 tion, at least to the cause with which it is identified, the closing 

 year of the century will see the National Geographic Society 

 enter upon a career of usefulness unexceeded in its far-reaching- 

 importance by that of any other scientific society in the world. 



John Hydf. 



GEOGRAPHY FOR TEACHERS 



There have been evident of late two simultaneous tendencies, 

 one in scientific, the other in pedagogic, circles, whose combined 

 result bids fair to exercise a great and far-reaching effect on the 

 literature and life of the future. The idea was long prevalent 

 among teachers that pupils in the common schools ought to 

 learn only such well-established facts as could never be disputed, 

 thus laying a firm foundation for all later knowledge; that in 

 the college course modern theory might be profitably discussed, 

 but that only the post-graduate student should be intrusted with 

 original investigations. The pendulum has now swung so far 

 the other way that some modern educators refuse to allow the 

 multiplication table to be taken on faith, and inductive arith- 

 metics, grammars, and physics, inductive methods even in Latin 

 and Greek, flood the market. On the other hand, the specialist 

 is everywhere read — through interviews in the daily papers, 

 through articles in the magazines, through popular publica- 

 tions — retailing in untechnical English the fruits of his discov- 

 eries, and, where necessary, introducing and explaining those 

 technical terms which are untranslatable, to the enrichment of 

 the popular vocabulary. 



One phase of the interrelations between the learned and the 

 learning world is found in the text-books of the day. The writ- 

 ing of these books is no longer intrusted to professional book- 

 makers as middlemen, but such names as Fiske and McMaster 

 in history, as Davis, Russell, and Gilbert in geography, show the 

 desire of the public for the voice speaking with authorit} r . A 



