has often been made in the pure sciences in the high schools and universities. Second, the practical work is especially interesting to children because their "instinct of endeavor" soon finds a most enjoyable outlet in the industrial activities of society. Thus, advantage may be taken of the fact that "during the years of the elementary school, children progress from a stage at which their main interests center in the object for its own sake to a stage at which their interests, to a decided degree, center in the object as controllable by their creative energies and adjustable to man's needs".

We hear much nowadays about illustrative experiences, for example, in the teaching of history, and the gaining of culture through learning those primitive arts and crafts from which our modern industries have developed. This commends itself as eminently desirable; and in the elementary agriculture for rural schools and elementary horticulture for city schools we have activities which co-ordinate both historically and very practically with the great applied sciences upon which rests the very life of society. It seems clear, therefore, that elementary horticulture for city schools furnishes a practicable series of "mind-body activities" for a course which will attain to the aims of nature study.

Department, of Science,

Chicago Normal School

GRANT SMITH

Home Geography for Older Children

"The ideal geographer is a man of trained imagination."

'N ALL criticisms upon modern education, the teaching of

writer calls geography "the sick man of the curriculum", and many other writers declare it to be the worst taught of all the subjects in the elementary schools.

To offer criticism such as this without at the same time making some suggestion for the betterment of the teaching is a questionable plan. If the poor results of geography teaching, so fully realized by every teacher, are held up to ridicule one turns away discouraged with no incentive or ambition to solve the apparently hopeless problem. Fortunately there is open another way of criticism. We may first consider the situation, make a diagnosis of the case, as it were, after which the proper remedies may be sought for and applied..

A most successful geography teacher has stated it to be his belief that the success of any teacher's work may be measured by the permanent interest shown by his pupils in the subject. If this be a fair standard, and but few of us will doubt it, we must admit that the widespread attitude of indifference or positive dislike for geography on the children's part shows that our geography teaching, however conscientious and painstaking it may be, still leaves, from the pupil's standpoint at least, much to be desired.

Let us consider a few of the more common methods which prevail today in teaching geography. In some cases we allow the pupils to read daily a selection from the text, with little or no regard for anything but the correct pronunciation of words. Sometimes, alas, we compel them to commit to memory, not pages perhaps as we did in our youth, but certain summaries or some very condensed and definite statements. We use maps that are without significance to children who never have been taught to interpret map sym

bols, an acquirement which is necessary to make an intelligent use of a map possible. What are some of the objections to these three methods? When the text book is used as a reader the emphasis is not laid upon geography but reading. For the most part the children of the elementary schools are not fluent readers and in but few cases are they able by a superficial reading to get the geographical knowledge behind the printed page. We have not improved matters when pupils are made to write or recite some such condensed summary as the following:

"The Philippines are an island possession of the United States obtained from Spain in settlement of claims at the close of the Spanish war. The chief products of the islands are manila hemp, tobacco, and sugar."

To the teacher alone does this stand for something interesting. She clothes this bare skeleton of fact with all the material she has gained from years of reading, study or travel. To the pupil the statement is "words, words, words." And last of all, when we wrongly assume that the symbols of the map are as significant to the children as they are to ourselves and set our small victims to copy maps or answer long lists of map questions, we are still blundering.

Is it any wonder if geography is taught by any one. of these methods that many children do not like the subject? Is it any wonder that they regard geography as a a subject apart from their lives and interests, a thing to be learned and not to be lived?

In the hope of making geography a more real and practical subject we have recently adopted the method of basing geography upon a study of a country's products and industries. This plan has been tried in many schools and marks a long step in advance of the other three methods. The plan, however, has its points of weakness. A quotation from a recent letter states one of the most obvious of these faults. "In our school," the writer says, "we are instructed to teach the geography of a country through its products and industries. I believe in this plan in a way, but I think the danger lies in our proneness to teach the product or industry without its geographic setting. We teach facts about rubber, cotton, or sugar, but these facts are not organized and do

not collectively make up geography."

In the June, 1909, number of THE EDUCATIONAL BIMONTHLY the subject of home geography for children of the fourth grade was discussed somewhat at length. It was the belief of the writer, as stated in the article, that if the lines of study there suggested were carefully carried out there would be aroused in the children a keen, lively and personal interest in the study of geography in the first year of the work and that this interest might be carried over into the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades.

Put briefly, the study of geography in the fourth grade has the following purpose. To lead out from the home to the outside world by means of the objects and relations in the home surroundings. To this end the children are taught first of all to represent familiar areas by the symbols of the map maker, thus learning the use and significance of maps. They study the truck farms, tracing the product to its market at South Water Street or elsewhere, gaining by means of this study the idea of market and source of its supply. They locate the lumber yards, the grain elevators, the coal yards of the city, the wholesale groceries and picture the sources from which the contents of each came. In tracing to the sources the supply of all of these markets, they establish lines of interest which form connecting links with the remote parts of the earth.

What is the value of the study of home geography? It lies in investing geography with that spirit of definiteness and reality which we get from the use of first hand material of any kind. It lies in giving to the children that habit of mind which looks at foreign lands and people as real and existing and linked to us by a thousand ties. And what we may call the spirit of home geography is that living imagination which invests distant peoples and remote places with life and reality. This spirit of home geography is just as necessary to the trained geographer as to the little child, and in just the proportion in which teachers arouse this spirit in the children will the study of geography prove profitable and delightful.

The question of how to accomplish the result is not one to which a blanket answer can be given. Methods must

vary as conditions vary, but the best test of the value lies in the question: Do they arouse the permanent interest of the class? A plan which seemed to arouse a sixth grade class from a state of apathy and indifference to one of lively interest was as follows. A teacher transferred to a new district in the midst of a school term found the class about to begin the study of the Pacific States. A certain number of paragraphs in the text had been assigned for study and upon the board had been written a set of questions so framed as to serve as a test of whether the pupil had read the text. When the geography hour arrived, the new teacher began the lesson. She asked the class how they could reach California. No one knew and no one cared. Her own trip of the previous summer offered a starting point. On a slated outline wall map of the United States she roughly sketched in red chalk the Southern Pacific route and gave the children some bits of description of what she had seen along the way. For the next day's work a part of the class was set to correct her rough sketch. Another set of pupils was told to find the four transcontinental railroad lines to the west, the terminus of each and a few of the really important cities through which each passes. Another group was told to find the price of first class railroad tickets to various places in the Pacific States. Still others were to find out the time necessary for these trips, the stations from which each line left Chicago, and the hours at which the trains departed.

When this first hand material was collected, the routes to the west were sketched on the outline map and the pros and cons of each route discussed, just as if the class and teacher were about to take a trip. The Santa Fé route was decided upon and the class started upon an imaginary journey. They stopped at the Grand Canyon and the San Francisco mountains, learning all they could about each from various sources at hand. They viewed the Mojave desert. San Diego was the next stop. The coaling station and the ostrich farm were the two characteristic features noted. Then on to Los Angeles, with its luxuriant foliage resulting from irrigation and strikingly in contrast with the unirrigated stretches of land which surround it. The city's irrigation system furnished a starting point for investigating the sub