THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE ELEMENTARY

SCHOOLS.

THE branches of study pursued in the elementary schools are chosen for the purpose of securing two useful and reasonable ends. In the first place, they are chosen to give the child an ability to understand his environment, and to come into a mastery of it so that he can make it useful to himself. He is taught arithmetic in order that he may divide and conquer; in order that he may measure the things and forces of his environment, and learn how to adapt one set of them to control and utilize another. He is taught geography in order that he may understand the causal relations existing between his habitat, or the place in which he lives, and other places as well as other systems of things and events on the earth.

On the other hand, a second reason for adopting a branch in the course of study is that it develops some faculty or power in the child, and gives him possession of himself in that respect; for one of the primary objects is to develop the intellect, the memory, the judgment, or the heart. By the expression heart I mean the aggregate of affections and inclinations of the soul. Some discipline in school, like writing, drawing, calisthenics, or manual training, finds its place in the curriculum because of its power to develop the will, the tenacity of purpose, the ability to pay long and continuous attention to one thing, and to form habits of industry, cleanliness, regularity, and punctuality, and thus acquire those virtues which make a man a better citizen than he could possibly be without them—which make his service of more value to his fellow-men and give him the ability to get a larger share of service from them than he otherwise could.

Let any one take up the branches of the common school in the light of these purposes, and he will find that those branches, as they are in the schools, are all needed, and that it would not be possible to make any one of them a substitute for any other. But I wish to call attention to the fact that the two principles or purposes which I have named as the reasons which have determined the adoption of branches of study

in the schools not only are not antagonistic, but in many particulars agree absolutely. The cultivation of the intellect, for instance, by such studies as arithmetic, grammar, and literature, has for its result not only the unfolding of the powers of the individual within himself, but the enlargement of the individual's sphere of influence among his fellowmen, making him useful to them and making them useful to him. The boy or girl who understands arithmetic is not only cultivated or accomplished to that extent, but by so much the more useful in the family, in the industrial community, and in the nation, and by so much the more able to conquer nature for his or her own benefit, and to make useful combinations with his or her fellow-members of society throughout the world.

So, too, in the matter of literature. The literature of the English language or of any other reveals human nature in one or more of its national manifestations. Indeed, each literary work portrays some trait, or, perhaps, several traits or phases, of human nature. The student of literature comes to know the secrets of the human heart. He comes to know how feelings and emotions may become clear ideas and convictions of the intellect, and then how they become translated into deeds, habits, and established forms of living such as appear in the network of manners and customs which forms the substance of the daily life of each man, woman, and child. Literature and mathematics literature the first and mathematics the second-form important branches of all school education. Literature is the first and most important, because, in order to adjust himself to society, one must understand the motives, desires, and views of the world which his fellow-men entertain. It is impossible for a man to live in a community where he has no insight into or knowledge of the world-view of his fellow-men, and does not know the things that make up their daily consciousness. In all nations, tribes, and peoples, the man who is entirely ignorant of the prevailing code of manners and ethics is not permitted to enjoy the freedom of civil society, and, perhaps, is not even permitted to live. One must be heedful of the fundamental requirements of society, such as the respect for life and property and the respect for the sense of decency in one's community, or else he will be restrained in person and perhaps deprived of life. It is well to remember that this is so not only in savage and half-civilized peoples, but also in the highest and most refined and in the freest and most liberty-loving communities in the world.

This is the ground on which I pronounce literature the most important of all branches of school education, whether it be in China where

Confucius and Mencius form the matter of school education, or East India where the Vedas and the great heroic poems form the staple of the course of study, or among Mohammedan nations where the Koran is learned, or in Greece where Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were the school books, or in the schools of Boston, New York, St. Louis, and San Francisco, where English literature in the school reading-books does its work in enlightening the pupil as to the modes of thinking and the motives of his fellow-men.

After literature comes geography, meaning by the term what is usually understood by it in the elementary school. After geography comes history, first, that of one's native country, secondly, that of the civilizations of the world; after history, grammar, as a special study of the forms of language. In the grammatical forms are revealed the methods of the action of the intellect; for grammar is a sort of concrete logic, revealing not only the methods of thinking, but also the methods of perception, and the methods of recollection, which form the laws of memory.

These branches, which throw so much light upon the individuality of the pupil — upon his own nature and upon the nature of the institutions as well as upon the structure of the world in which he livesform the tools of thought and action; they are the machines, the instruments, by which he supplements his body; they are the organs by which he energizes upon the world outside of him and by which he makes with his fellows combinations useful to them and doubly useful to himself.

When an attack is made upon any one of these branches of study, it should cause us to reflect upon the individual and social necessity that has placed it in the curriculum. An attack upon geography, for instance, should cause us to consider for a moment what one's education would be if the study of geography were entirely omitted in the elementary school. Sufficient reflection upon the inconveniences which would arise in one's practical life will enable us to form a list of the points of usefulness to be found in geography. One will be able to draw up a sort of rough inventory of what the child gets from the study of geography for a few years in his early youth.

Let us for the moment make a list of the important items which the child will get from a superficial study of geography in the elementary schools under what would be admitted to be a poor quality of instruction, namely the unaided study of the text-book, the text-book being of an inadequate pattern, and the so-called teaching being confined chiefly to hearing the words of the book repeated. The pupils of average intellect will acquire some understanding of the main topics touched upon;

and they will have in memory, in a more or less digested form, some facts connected with them which will be retained throughout their lives. The constant use of certain typical facts, familiarity with which is demanded by the newspaper and magazine literature of the day, and which is more or less required by the daily gossip over national and international affairs, keeps the memory fresh in these matters. The average child will carry off with him a pretty vivid idea that the shape of the earth is round "like a ball or orange," or like the moon and the sun which he sees every day. He will also acquire the very important idea that the earth is one of the bodies which move around the sun, although he may not learn the technical term "planet." These simple ideas carry with them a correction of mere sensuous observation by an abstract and deeply scientific train of thought. One's sense-perception does not avail to convince him that the earth is round. This can be reached only by reasoning on the logical presuppositions which are implied to make the fact before him possible. But once attained, a whole system of inferences extending throughout the life of the individual, from the idea of the earth's rotundity and its revolutions, will be initiated, if nothing more is learned from geography.

In the next place, there will be acquired the ideas of latitude and longitude, which determine with mathematical exactness the location of any place with reference to base lines, like the equator or the first meridian. The pupil will certainly learn something regarding latitude and longitude, and he will learn a method, the only method by which geographical descriptions may be made accurate. No matter how superficial his study of geography may be, he will also form some approximate ideas of the latitude and longitude of many given places. He will remember, for instance, that the United States in which he lives is in North latitude, and that most of his country is in West longitude as compared with the meridian of Washington. He will learn that nearly all of Europe is in East longitude as compared with the meridian of Greenwich.

We must remember that these general superficial notions are more important than any more specific notions which follow later. It is of more importance to the individual to know that Brazil is in South latitude while we are in North latitude, than to know that the mouth of the Amazon is on the equator, and that the capital of Brazil is about twenty-three degrees South. For ordinary practical thinking the generalities of geography are exceedingly important.

Next the pupil will come to form mental images of the terri

tories that are occupied by states and nations. First, however, he will form an idea of the contours of the several continents and of the great oceans which separate those continents. Then he will seek to learn the location on those continents of each of its several states and nations. He cannot help acquiring at the same time some historic adjuncts to his geographical knowledge. The map of Great Britain will call up in his mind much that he has heard with regard to the relations of the United States to that country. France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Russia will each suggest certain unclassified and ill-digested items of knowledge which he has collected from hearsay or general experience regarding those countries; and it will give him pleasure to be able to reduce to consistency and order some portion of the chaotic information which he already possesses. It will be of value to him every day of his life to have some notions of the shapes, boundaries, and general positions of the States of his own country.

Besides these there is another class of geographical categories which relates to the formation and modification of the features of land and water. Even the poorest geography yet made deals with rivers, and gives information regarding their sources and their outlets, as well as their navigability and their usefulness in furnishing motive power for manufactures. It gives information regarding lakes, highlands, lowlands, and the trend of mountain chains.

Two objects on the earth especially arouse man's wonder and excite him to reflection, namely, the monster elevations of the surface of the land, which we call mountains, and the vast, seemingly unlimited, extension of the surface of the ocean. It has been the habit of geographies for two or three generations to explain the elevation of mountain chains by the molten condition of the elements in the interior of the earth. Once the elevations were supposed to be caused by volcanic agencies; but now, perhaps, the general opinion is that the gradual cooling with the consequent contraction of the earth's crust produces wrinkles on a large scale, wrinkles large enough to form the mountain systems of the Alps or of the Himalayas. No pupil of average intelligence who has studied geography in school at any time during the last sixty or seventy years has escaped forming some idea regarding the prodigious forces of nature which lift up the mountains. Nor has any one within the last fifty years or more escaped the important geological idea of the wearing down of the mountains and hills by the constant effect of rain and the escape of water carrying a load of solid matter to the sea by brooks and rivers. In other words, the average pupil has formed some idea of