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VI. GEOGRAPHY.

{Translated from Raumer's "History of Pedagogy," for the American Journal of Education.]

PESTALOZZI mentions a schoolmaster who instructed his scholars in geography so skillfully that they were well acquainted with the road to the East Indies, but very ill with the roads and paths about their own village. And Rousseau says: "I assert that no child of ten years old, who has had two years' instruction in geography, can, by using the rules which have been given to him, find his way from Paris to Saint Denis; or can even find his way about the curved paths in his own father's garden, without making a mistake. And these are the learned men who know, to a hair, whereabouts are Pekin, Ispahan, Mexico, and all the countries of the earth." The reason of this practical incapacity Rousseau found to be that the children were taught maps only; the names of cities, countries, and rivers, which existed, for the scholars, only on the maps where they were shown to them. He advised, on the contrary, to commence instruction in geography by furnishing the boys with correct knowledge of the neighborhood of their own place of abode, and making them draw maps of it.

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These views of Rousseau seemed the more reasonable to me, because I had spent years in geognostic researches among the mountains, and knew by experience the heaven-wide difference between a knowledge of a map and of a country. I composed a dialogue upon teaching geography, in which I set forth Rousseau's views in detail. The speakers were Otto and George. "Before I made my first tour to the Silesian mountains," says George, "I read over all that I could find respecting them in books of travels. The result of this reading was, that I formed in my mind so distinct an idea of those mountains that I could have painted them from these descriptions. I came among the mountains themselves; and, to my astonishment, the mountains of my imagination had no resemblance whatever to the real ones." And he says, again, "Permit me to add something further, in order to make my meaning clear. If any one inquires of you about the features of your room, or your house, you describe them to him according to the representation of them which is before your mind; not according to such a representation before your

*Second book of "Emile."

mind of ground-plans or elevations. If you are asked about a house in your neighborhood, you answer in like manner, not according to any representation before your mind of a plan of the city, but according to a representation-such as your faculties have made it— of the city itself; you say through what streets the questioner must go to reach the houses, and you point it out to him by shape, color, and peculiarities. And you can in the same way describe localities. in the neighborhood of the city-unless you are an inveterate stayer at home. But how will it be if any one inquires of you for directions to a place say twenty-five miles distant? Will the picture of the road in that case still be clear before your mind, as it runs in through the fields and the woods, so that you can tell through what villages and over what waters it passes, how you must leave this mountain on the right hand and that castle on the left? Or will not your imagination in this case be at fault; will you not have forgotten many portions of the road, and have but an obscure recollection of others? May you not even have quite forgotten the whole road?" And when Otto answers, "This is the case for which maps are intended," George replies, "Then you must have within you the representation of the maps instead of that of the localities, and give your directions wholly from that, or else your recollection of the map will mingle in a confusing manner with that of the ground." And, at last, when the question is put, "How does the road run from your residence in Germany to Canton, for instance, or Irkutsk?" it appears that all representations in the mind of the extensive regions over which you must travel will quite disappear, and the representation of the map will entirely occupy their place.

Otto now calls attention to the necessarily limited extent of the knowledge of most persons respecting countries. No Titan, he says, is born, who can give information about the whole earth as fully as we can about our own homes and places of abode--who carries in his mind representations of all lands and nations. We must therefore make use of indirect knowledge, of some kind, in the place of direct. Whether this indirect knowledge shall begin with the district in which the learner lives, or the kingdom-whether with a smaller or larger area is of but small importance.

George. What you say is like what I once heard alledged against the intuitional method in arithmetic, which Pestalozzi urged so earnestly. What is the use of it? asked its opponents; in the case of large numbers, all actual pictures of them must disappear from the mind. Who can imagine even a hundred apples? Away, therefore, with all intuitional arithmetic.

Otto. I agree with them.

George. I do not. I think the power of intuition should be developed as far as to the number ten, which can be counted on the fingers. So far the smallest capacities might attain. Then the tens, and afterward the hundreds and thousands, might be treated as units, and thus, by means of the wonderful decimal system, the most monstrous numbers can be dealt with. Without this intuitional knowledge, from one to ten, the children are liable to run into a mere course of juggling by means of the decimal system, without gaining a clear and intelligent knowledge of arithmetic.

Otto. And what is your application of all this to geography?

George. The numbers from one to ten are the boy's place of abode, the man's country; they are the Archimedean point in geography. He who understands them thoroughly may acquaint himself with other countries.

George now proceeds to explain how, according to Rousseau's system, the boys may be carried onward from the knowledge of, and ability to map out, the neighborhood-their home and its vicinity-to an acquaintance with foreign countries and the ability to describe them. During youth and manhood, he says, they may take journeys, especially within their Gernran fatherland, and to countries most interesting to Germans, and may thus enlarge their direct knowledge of countries. But, he adds, how great soever their knowledge is, it can never include the whole earth; and this fact forces us to use substitutes-to supply the defect by means of a symbolical knowledge of the earth. And he explains this symbolical knowledge as follows:

The sphere of the individual man is limited in space and in time; he can not exceed the measure of his bodily growth, nor add a single year to his life, nor do wings bear him over the earth. Yet his mind belongs not merely to the immediate present, but to a greater spiritual universe. Thus there is an incongruity between the wide aspirations of his mind and the limitations of his mortal body. The use of symbols is a mode of reconciling this incongruity.

There are two kinds of symbols; artificial and natural. The artificial symbol brings before the mind original ideas, by means of representations; while the natural sees the original idea in the parts of it. Permit me to give a brief illustration of these two kinds of symbols. You can represent Paris to yourself by plans of the city, panoramas, models, descriptions-by the most various kinds of representations, based upon an actual immediate observation of Paris. You see the city mirrored in another mind. These I call artificial symbols. But suppose you could remain for some time in some house in Paris, without leaving it. You would see and hear from your

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window the various noise and haste, the running, and the outcries of laborers and tradespeople, the mountebanks and marionnettes, cabs and water-carriers, national guards and chestnut-sellers, cobblers and fishwives, and thus, by your observation of a small part of the city, you would obtain a knowledge of it as a whole, by the method of natural symbols. Ex ungue leonem.

Now put the earth in the place of Paris. We have all manner of representations of it: globes, maps, reliefs, pictures, and engravings of localities, cities, and buildings, descriptions of all countries, and general descriptions, compiled from the descriptions of individual immediate observers. These representations are, some of them, of late invention, such as reliefs and panoramas; and in part they have been so improved, within the last century or two, that they must now be treated as entirely new subjects-as is the case with maps.

Thus there has arisen, during these last centuries, a most earnest and thoughtful endeavor to create, by means of these various representations, a new earth on the earth-the greatest of all artistic efforts. To this end point the untiring zeal shown in collecting beasts, animals, and minerals from all parts of the world; and the investigations of all the nations, their languages and manners. Who can tell how far this unwearied zeal will go? As man's susceptibility to impressions increases by early travels within his own country, and at the same time his own powers of representing, and his capacity for comprehending the representations of others, which again are on their part becoming more and more perfect, who can tell to what a degree of broad, general comprehension of the whole earth one can attain who is acquainted with his own country, by means of intercourse and artificial symbols?

In describing natural symbols, George says:

As at Paris you would become acquainted with Paris itself by looking out of your window, and not with a representation of itlearning the whole from a part-so should you gain from your own country a knowledge of the whole earth; this portion of the earth should be to you a symbol of the whole of it. Do not the sun, moon, and stars shine upon your own country as they do upon all the rest of the world? Does not the magnetic needle, that living representative of the earth's magnetic axis, point to the north before your eyes? Are not the mountains of your own country constructed almost exactly as are those of all other parts of the world; and are not her plants and animals the same, or of the same species, which are found throughout a great part of the world? Open your eyes, and your own home will be seen to be as a new paradise, having gathered together in it all the creatures of the earth. Learn, however,

first of all, to know and love your own people; and this will lead you to the comprehension of humanity as it exists throughout the whole earth. Thus direct knowledge of your own country is an object in itself, and affords the means of understanding representative descriptions of the earth-the geography of artificial symbols-while its thorough development also forms a basis for the geography of natural symbols, which shows, in our own country, the features which characterize the whole earth.

Four years after writing this dialogue, I went to Nuremberg, and there taught geography for the first time. The question came up, whether my views in this department of instruction, based upon Rousseau's, would stand the test of practice? And I must confess that they did not.

Taking walks-an aimless wandering about the neighborhoodwas very pleasant to the boys. But when a definite purpose was contemplated in these walks-when the boys were made to gain correct knowledge in them, consciously and of purpose, and were again made to use all their knowledge in drawing a map, all their enjoyment of the walk was at once destroyed. Instead of being a relaxa tion and a relief from the school-lessons, they became merely peripatetic lessons themselves. This dislike of theirs proved to me clearly that my theory of geographical instruction was wrong; and I gave it up.

I afterward, however, attained my purpose of making my pupils use a knowledge of their abode and its vicinity as an introduction to the understanding of maps, and even of the globe, in a manner apparently similar to that which had failed, but really very different. During the geographical instruction which I gave in Erlangen, I began, for instance, with a large plan of the city. The pupils examined this with the most lively interest, and picked out all the streets, their own homes and those of their acquaintance, and the churches and other public buildings. They could not satisfy themselves with looking, and their researches had no end.

After this I gave them a large and very fully detailed plan. On this the city itself was, of course, smaller than on the first plan, but was still clearly laid down. The pupils now first carefully compared the two representations of the city, and observed their resemblance, and how they differed only in the difference of their scale.

They then looked out upon this map all the neighboring localities with which they had become familiar during their walks, and followed the roads from the city to one place and another, vieing with each other in the exercise. Those who were less accurate in their

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