GEOGEAPHIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA. 
By Albert Peery Bkigham. 
The evolution of geography on the west side of the Atlantic Ocean 
has, like every other great movement, been a continuous process. But 
we may for convenience say that about 30 years ago a new epoch 
began. Influences already at work came, in a somewhat accelerated 
manner, into fruition, until at the close of the period, the Great War 
has brought to geographic investigation and geographic teaching 
unexpected emphasis a^nd a new array of problems. 
In 1890 the National Geographic Society had been organized for 
two years and had published a few bulletins. The American Geo- 
graphical Society had then pursued its work for nearly 40 years. It 
was domiciled in a downtown house, which with its narrow and 
elongated rooms and brownstone front seemed to be an old home of 
some well-to-do New^ York family. Its venerable and courteous sec- 
retary was on duty, almost a solitary w^orker, it would seem, con- 
serving the books and periodicals that came to hand, and guiding to 
their use the rather rare inquirer who broke the solitude. A modest 
bulletin was published five times a year and occasional lectures were 
offered to the public. 
The elementary textbooks of previous years abounded in definitions 
and in the routine of place geography but dealt little with the causal 
relations and the great network of facts and principles in which men 
are bound to the earth and to each other. The first textbook of 
physical geography which fully recognized the modern viewpoints 
of physiography was to appear in the following decade. 
Very little instruction in geography as such was given in American 
colleges and universities. Harvard and Princeton had offered ^ 
courses in geography before 1860, Wisconsin, Cornell, and Yale Uni- 
versities introduced the subject in a limited way about 10 years later, 
but it gained no real place in the university consciousness. In 1900 
only 12 of our higher schools were teaching geography, and this was 
mainly of the phj'sical sort, and under the wing of geology. 
^ Geography in American and European Universities, R. H. Whitbeck, Jour. Geog., 
XVIII, 129-141, April, 1919. 
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