nations, though still in its beginning, is yet the most significant fact of the present era. The "federation of the world" should be kept before all minds as the highest ideal of history. To this noble end the schools can contribute by making the events and the heroes of peace appear to the children in their true light, as even greater than those of war. Summary. 1. History in our schools should be mainly biography. 2. It should include both American and " history. general 3. In the primary schools, chronology should be disregarded. In the grammar schools the American history taught should follow chronology moderately. General history should give little attention to it. In the higher schools chronological relations assume increasing importance. 4. History, whether chronological or not, should be taught about carefully chosen, picturesque centers of interest persons, places, significant events or objects. 5. Discrimination should be exercised in choosing what to teach. The dead level of the chronicle should be avoided. 6. The highest ideals should be kept to the fore. Peace should appear as greater than war. taught," is a strange composite of subjects, including, besides the sciences, a little history, a little philosophy, politics, sociology, anthropology, religion, and literature, which with more or less reason from time to time have been grouped about the name. As a "Description of the Earth," it is made to include all that is in it, on it, or about it. The earth may be studied as a member of the solar system; as a geological product; as a sphere having an irregular surface, partly land, partly water, in various forms and presenting various appearances; as the abode and support of life, both vegetable and animal, varying according to the above-mentioned conditions; as the home of man, supplying him with his support and partly, at least, determining his character and his pursuits; and as the scene of human history and the present ground of human effort, divided among the nations of the world, according to race, intelligence, power, and other conditions. Each one of these subjects is a vast one. Yet they all have been first amplified and then squeezed into the compass of a school textbook for the consumption of children. In its present state geography is an almost hopeless subject. The doctors disagree. No two authors of textbooks take the same view as to what should be taught. Naturally enough the teachers are at sea, and the result in school is too often altogether barren. Selection Needed. What is most needed is a wise and workable plan of selection and coördination. But unfortunately most of the experts who have thus far written for us either textbooks or discussions on the teaching of the subject have been too eager to give their views as to the incomparable importance of their pet fields of knowledge to present us with a sane and judicial treatment. It is necessary to determine first the ability of children, at varying stages of growth, to learn geography in order to ascertain what and how much might be taught profitably, given unlimited time. It is necessary, in the second place, to take up the question of time and determine how much and what of this possible maximum may properly be attempted within the time limits of a school course of study. It is from this point of view almost of greater manifest importance to determine what should not be attempted than to tell what should be taught. The importance of the undertaking can hardly be overstated, because I am inclined to think that over geography and its allied subjects more time is wasted in school than over any other subject, not excepting arithmetic. I can merely speak as a layman, and I very modestly offer the following suggestions: Fundamental Defects. The fundamental defects of most teaching of geography are first the attempt to give a knowledge of facts physically and psychologically remote from the children, before the necessary geographic concepts have been created, and, second, the continual presentation of verbal statements beyond the apperceptive range of the children learning them, which consequently are to them merely idle words. Geographic Concepts of a Child.-Let us consider the possible geographic concepts of a child of ten or eleven years, the age at which most children take a textbook in geography. If he has not been taught in school, he knows direction; something of distance; the location of the buildings and other notable objects of his neighborhood; such physical features as he has seen, probably hills and valleys, possibly lakes, rivers, brooks, and an ocean, varying with the locality. He knows something of the vegetation growing immediately about him, and will have a few surmises as to other kinds which he finds at the grocery. In like manner he knows a limited number of animals. He also knows weather. He is familiar with industries in a general way, with one or two quite intimately. He knows a few types of people, generally so modified as to have. more resemblances than differences. If he lives in one of the very large cities, his knowledge of types of people and of industries will be much greater, and of plants, animals, and physical phenomena correspondingly less. If he lives in the country, the reverse will be true. If he lives in a village or a small city, his apperceiving centers will vary toward one extreme or the other. But this knowledge is all purely local, and when extended by the imagination into remoter fields goes out unmodified. That is, the children imagine the farmers and the merchants and the manufacturers of foreign countries, of whom they learn in their geography books, as like the farmers and merchants and manufacturers that they see about them, and they cannot conceive them to be different excepting as the result of new experiences or of good teaching. Such differences as they do imagine belong in the same class as fairy stories. The geography of Sindbad the Sailor's voyages is much more real to many children than that of Europe, the difference being solely in vividness of impression and not at all in accuracy. Depends on Imagination. This suggests the fundamental difficulty in teaching geography. It depends so completely on the imagination. The children must project themselves into a purely imaginary world. In no other subject is this so completely true, not even in history. It is necessary to establish a point of contact between the real and the imaginary so that the former may be carried over into the latter, making the pictures of the unknown true. If the steps are too long, the children's feet are lifted off the ground entirely. What is here described may be called the natural state of the average child as to geographical concepts. They are really all individual. He generalizes, of course, but his generalizations are merely the extensions of his limited experiences to unlimited and absurd lengths. The city child imagines all milk coming in bottles. A little boy said, "Mamma, who puts the bottle of milk at our door every night while we are asleep?" "What a foolish question," said the foolish mother; "Why do you ask that?" "Well," answered the child, "I s'pose God does, but I wanted to be sure." A child in the mountains for the first time, where the milk came from the local dairy, said to her mother, "I don't like cow's milk; I like Borden's better." To one imagi |