nite generalizations of wide application, but it should develop these from instances, not merely state them. The larger the truth, the more important does it become to arrive at it in the right way, the way of real as distinguished from "verbal" knowledge. The truth stated may mean something or it may mean nothing to the hearer. The truth that grows upon the vision, slowly, from cause to effect, from what is already known to a new truth, becomes a part of the mind itself. This is real knowledge.

It is worth more to a primary class to know that there are many waterfalls along the Genesee River, that waterfalls may be used to drive machinery, and that hence one might expect to find manufactories in the Genesee Valley, and then to know that Rochester and other manufacturing places are found here, than to have a list of all the cities of central New York with a statement that each produces this or that article.

Elimination and Selection. Evidently, then, before the teaching of geography becomes even reasonably satisfactory, two things are necessary, elimination and selection of material and the introduction of the laboratory method.

For the former courage is needed. Elementary geography must cease to attempt to give universal knowledge, and must confine itself to a few types, embodying generalizations. The greater part of the small items relating to political geography, which fill most of our primary textbooks, must be cut out entirely. Those that are to remain must be carefully selected as typical, so that children may have the wherewithal to assimilate new facts as they present themselves.

The full, detailed study of a single city or mountain range or river valley is worth more to a primary school child than the naming of all with an item or two about each.

By detailed study, I mean study as nearly at first hand as possible; at any rate, the study of essential characteristics, one by one, in such a way that they are comprehended. This means the use of the laboratory method in so far as it can be used.

The Laboratory Method. By the laboratory method I mean the use of direct observation of typical forms and drawing conclusions from these observations.

If in the neighborhood of a river or a mountain, or in a large city, the immediate environment should be studied to master the type. The book is merely incidental.

When studying forms not to be found in the immediate environment, some typical instance easily comprehended through description and story should be selected and studied in much picturesque detail until a clear, pregnant image is secured. Suppose the subject is a river, and there is none near. Select the river in which the children are most likely to be interested, for instance, if in the Middle West, the Mississippi or the Ohio, if in New England, the Connecticut, or if on the western coast, the Columbia.

Spend time enough upon it to make it loom large in the imaginations of children. See that a vivid picture of the river, from source to mouth, is in the mind of every child, — its banks, the country it flows through, the towns along it, its traffic, if any, its influence upon the life in its vicinity all the facts that an investigating traveler of the age of the children would acquire. A single such

study is worth more than the naming all the rivers on

the continent.

Follow Natural Interests. One more thing should be said. A primary geography should follow the natural interest of children, which proceeds from themselves outward. This is chiefly in marked resemblances and in marked contrasts, that they can understand. It is in people more than in things. It passes from people to the things that affect them. It weighs all values by effects upon people.

CHAPTER XVII

GEOGRAPHY FOR GRAMMAR GRADES

Establish Apperceiving Centers. - The principal aim of the teaching of geography in the grammar school is the same as in the primary school, namely, the establishment of apperceiving centers. In both, geography is mainly an informational subject of the most general character. The amount of actual knowledge that can be acquired by a child in school at the most is, however, so pitifully small that it is of the slightest value, unless it is strongly cohesive and carefully organized. It must be of such a sort that new knowledge resulting from reading and travel will readily find its place around the apperceiving centers established by the study of geography in school and will get its explanation from them. I have asked children in school, who were living near the foothills of the Appalachian range, while studying geography, if they had ever seen a mountain, and have received the answer, "No."

No one will question that the older geographies gave little heed to this need. They supplied for the most part condensed and desiccated statements of fact, both uninteresting to children and conveying little, if any, meaning to them. Of what use, for example, to a grammar school child is the statement, quoted from a geography, quite modern too, that "On the slopes of the Himalayas are the independent states Nepal and Bhutan

and the native principality of Kashmir." This is unexplained and unamplified except by a single sentence about Kashmir. It is taken from a page filled with just such isolated statements. If memorized is not such information given in such a way worse than useless? Is it not sure to result in merely verbal knowledge, attic refuse, which is not knowledge at all? Is it not likely to interrupt the natural process of learning, to impair the assimilative power of the child, and to make the subject itself disasteful? The example quoted is by no means an isolated or an extreme instance. It is a type of the statements that pervade all the older geographies and several of the newer ones.

Wherein are its defects? It ignores apperception. It takes for granted that comprehensive general knowledge of the world which it should be the function of a geography to give. Geographies like the one quoted lack detail and yet have too much detail. That which they have is of the wrong sort and in the wrong places. It consists in a vast number of isolated and, to a child, meaningless facts. The detail needed, as in the primary grades, is the amplification of single typical subjects, with abundant illustration and many associated and interesting facts, which may serve as a basis for inducing principles. Better ten pages devoted to the complete exposition of a single river valley than the same space filled with a hundred isolated statements about as many river valleys.

The former may serve to establish certain general truths regarding valleys and their relations to the industrial and social life in them, which will create justifiable expectations as to other valleys that may be studied,