aper read before the State Teacher's Association, Dec. 26, 1878, by Miss ROSE C. SWART, Teacher of Geography in the Oshkosh Normal School.

It is the disposition of intelligent thinking to take nothing for granted. The realization that human life, in all its departments, should ever be a living toward what is more truly good and largely useful, gives to mind a quality that questions the wisdom of the established past, and searches the present and the future for the possibilities of better things. That a custom exists is not a proof that it is wise and right. That a bygone generation believed this or did that, is not a sufficient reason why a succeeding age should think or act in the same way, to the same end. In these latter days, particularly, life crowds, and there is more than ever before, the necessity to "prove all things, and hold fast only to what is good."

This is peculiarly the duty of the teachers. They are the keepers of the gates that open into active life. It is largely under their training, that children are fitted or unfitted to live their lives in happiness and usefulness. If teachers would meet the demand their profession puts upon them, it is imperative that they consider the child's future needs in that busy life to which the school is the portal, and shape their instruction to the end of preparing him for the duties and enjoyments that await him. In addition to knowing what they teach, it is incumbent upon them to know why they teach it.

These thoughts bring me, as a teacher of Geography, to ask:

First, what right has this branch, to a place in a course of study? Second, what can it be made to do toward equipping a child against future need, or fitting him for future service?

1- Vol. IX. - No. 1

Arthur Searle, of Harvard College Observatory, in a paper on " Examinations and Text-Books" in substance says, "Education has two main objects: first, to teach a child to do something, and second, to store his mind with information which will enable him to interest himself in the pursuits of others. He is to learn certain arts, and he is also to learn something of the world he lives in." We doubtless all agree with these conclusions.

The most elementary school education could not aim at less than the acquisition of three arts, reading, writing and ciphering; so far, well; but it must be conceded that at this stage of educational progress, we cannot claim to have stored the mind with general information. If it is urged that the acquisition of the art of reading will do that, I answer that without some general information, reading, beyond the mere calling of words, cannot be intelligently done; while intelligent reading, in any large sense, demands a considerable degree of culture.

If this process of education is to continue beyond the "three R's," something should now be introduced that will impart the information needed. Can we do better than supply that need by the study of geography? It will find a foundation to build upon in the knowledge the child has already acquired through his perceptions. It is true that the natural sciences will do the same; but they instruct, each in its special line; while geography properly taught, will bestow that general knowledge of which the child is now in need. It will also furnish an indispensable introduction to all study of civilization past or present, and will greatly aid in forming just estimates of social surroundings.

There is, then, a point in a child's intellectual development at which the study of geography becomes his best means to a larger mental life; and he has just cause of complaint against his teachers if they, through carelessness or lack of apprehension, fail to put him in possession of its willing benefits. He has a right to every advantage it can confer; and it is their duty to have as clearly defined and correct. aims in teaching him geography, as in teaching him writing or arithmetic.

An intelligent teacher once said. "Give me outline maps and a daily newspaper, and I will teach geography." Whether or not that teacher had arrived at the best method of producing the desired result, he had at least risen to a conception of the importance and purpose of the study in question.

Teachers should bear in mind that geography may be the only study in its line that many of their pupils ever pursue, and it should be their aim to make it yield those pupils as large a heritage of light as possible.

To be truly practical an elementary course in geography should keep two ends in view, first, to fit the pupil to read intelligently the current literature of the day; second, to give him a desire for information and a knowledge of the means of getting it, so that he will not stop learning when the farm or the work-shop takes him from the school. The saying is trite, but like most trite sayings, very true, that no school instruction can complete the work of education. That teacher does his work best, who so imbues his pupils with a love of learning, and so trains them in the use of aids to learning, of whatever sort, that they become, when they leave him, independent and loving searchers after truth. This student disposition can be planted and fostered in the elementary course of training, if the branches reading and geography be properly taught. And the disposition, once given a vigorous start, will "grow by what it feeds upon," until the tutored child developes into the self-instructed man, seeking to understand life, interested in its varied activities, studying its complex and often opposite relations.

It is clear that the study of geography is capable of yielding large returns; yet, dissatisfaction is quite generally and justly felt among teachers and patrons, with the slow and meagre results obtained from the great amount of time usually spent upon it. With possibilities so great, why should we have results so unsatisfactory? Either the purpose of the study is not understood, or the methods of instruction. are not adapted to the accomplishment of the ends in view.

Geography presents a multitudinous array of facts. If we teach it merely as a collection of facts, looking for and finding no thread of dependence running through them and uniting them, we shall signally fail in obtaining desirable results, no matter how faithfully we work. Such a course would be parallel with thoroughly teaching a child a vocabulary and then expecting him to read with understanding. Geography is a science, and the facts of industrial and political geography are effects referable to causes, those causes being mainly physical conditions of soil, climate, configuration, and coast-line. In teaching, these dependencies should be constantly traced.

Finally, if the teaching is to be effective, it is imperative that to definite aims and correct estimates of the means to their accomplish

ment, be added a knowledge of the material upon which the work is to be done. Along side of an understanding of the subject to be taught, must be ranged an understanding of the nature of the child to whom we are to teach it. Fortunately a compass has not been given to the mariner and the explorer alone; for the conscientious teacher, searching earnestly and intelligently for the best way in which to train the mind, the needle trembles no less surely to the pole.

There are three strongly marked periods in a complete study of geography, the work of each being determined by the condition of the mind which it is intended to develop. These periods are the Preparatory, the Elementary, and the Collegiate.

The little child, to whose needs and capacities the training of the first period must be adapted, has used his eyes to good advantage long before he "goes to school." He has already seen much geography, but he has seen it only as part of that great whole, the new, strange world into which he has so lately come. It is now the duty of his teacher, whether mother or more formal instructor, to teach him to see it as geography, and to apply geographical terms correctly, whether to the features of a natural landscape, or to the same represented in pictures. He should learn to know the running water as a river, the lofty elevation as a mountain, the level stretch of surface as a plain; and the more of these features he can actually see out-of-doors, the better.

Later, removed alike from landscape and from picture, he should be taught to recall them as they were, by reproducing them in mindpictures, to conceive what he has previously perceived. From association of terms with things, can be developed ideas of location, relative position, or direction, and the points of the compass.

But the time allotted to this paper will not suffice to detail the natural order of the successive steps by which his knowledge of the subject would be steadily and systematically increased. We must consider the purpose, rather than the method of instruction. The teacher having trained the pupil to an intelligent perception of the geography that lies about him, and to the power of recalling to mind in clear conceptions, that which he has seen, should now directly aim to cultivate his imagination, that he may form vivid and correct conceptions of regions he has not seen. This cultivation of the imagination is an important part of the teaching of geography. If it is properly done, and particularly if pictures are used as an aid to it, the symbols of the map will represent to the pupil real things. New York, Liverpool,