How to study geography

Front matter

Earning anb |Tabot.

LIBRARY

OF THE

Preface

In beginning this book I proposed to write a pamphlet of one hundred pages, more or less, for the use of the teachers of the C. C. N. S., but the work has grown to its present size, and I am obliged to allow some faults in type and arrangement to remain. The book has been written in the odds and ends of a busy schoolmaster’s time. There is, no doubt, much in it for friends to criticise adversely and much that '<>eds the sharp lance of others not so friendly. I dedicate the booh to all teachers who thoughtfully and thoroughly prepare every lessor^

Cook County Normal School,

Englewood, III., January , 1889.

A

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

The books in this Education Series have been classified under four heads : (a) History, (b) Criticism, ( c ) Systematic Theory, ( d ) Art or Practice. The fourth head includes works on (1) Methods of Instruction ; (2) Methods of Government or Discipline ; (3) Methods of Organizing Schools, Construction of School-houses, Provision for the support of ^ Schools, the Employment of Teachers, and such matters; (4) the Supervision of Schools by School Committees or School Boards, Superintendents, and other officers. It will

be seen that the book here introduced to the reader falls

i

under the first subdivision of the fourth general head.

•p Geography is one of the five elementary studies of primary importance that occupy the attention of the child at school. Its significance may be readily seen by a brief glance at the whole course of study — which is designed to give the child a general survey of the world into which he is born, and, besides this, a command over the technical means of increasing his own knowledge by adding to it the stored-up knowledge of others.

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L' Heading and writing, the arts of intercommunication, are fundamental because they furnish these technical means. Without them the child may grow to manhood possessing only the slender store of experience which his own personal observation and reflection have furnished him, augmented by inaccurate and confused ideas obtained by oral conversation with his companions. But, aided by a knowledge of letters, the child grows up with access to the trustworthy record of the observations and reflections of the wisest and best of his race, present and past, in science of all descriptions, in literature and art, in religion, in the practical combinations of men into institutions. This study grounds all the others.

II. Arithmetic opens the window of the soul that looks out upon the quantitive aspect of nature. All the sciences of inorganic matter and motion take their origin in it.

III. Geography is equally fundamental in furnishing a common basis for the special sciences that relate to organic matter— the plant, the animal, the races of men, the conditions that render life possible — as found in heat, moisture, atmosphere, and soil. Geography has its highest usefulness in revealing the process by which the differences of climate, soil, productions, and races of men on the earth, arise and develop, and by a counter-process of human industry are united again through the commerce of the world. In this geographical view the humblest inhabitant may see himself contributing by his day’s labor to the world-market for the supply of mankind, and himself in turn sharing in the aggregate product of all human labor. Its highest lesson is that of the triumph of human mind over

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

Vll the obstacles of nature, and even over the limitations of climate and soil.

IV. Grammar, as the science of language, the special product of reason, is the basis of all those higher special studies that reveal the nature of the essential activities of the soul — namely, logic, psychology, philosophy, literature, and the like.

Y. History opens the window of the soul that looks upon the deeds of the human race. It shows the will of man in the process of revealing what is essential in his nature, and unfolding its higher possibilities. While grammar leads to the sciences of introspection, history leads to the practical sciences of jurisprudence, politics, sociology, anthropology, national economy, and others.

While geography is so important as a foundation of culture, it is confessed ^y enlightened teachers that it has suffered more than any other branch of study through the prevalence of bad methods. Mere isolated details of topography have been memorized, while the processes of earth, water, and atmosphere, that go to produce the differences and characteristics of the earth’s surface, have been neglected. In later years practical reforms have been made in teaching commercial and political geography. But in spite of the labors of Bitter, Beclus, Guyot, and their disciples, it can not be said that the teaching of the earth-process has taken the place of mere topography.

What is wanted is the study of the dynamics of geography— the ever-active, living forces of the earth that produce its differences of climate and soil, and thus favor or

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

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retard its occupation by man. This subject is quite thoroughly treated as a matter of advanced science, but it has not yet been reduced to pedagogic form with sufficient skill. It is this defect in methods of geographical instruction which this book of Colonel Parker aims to remedy. His great fertility of resources to discover, in the already familiar knowledge of the pupil, the elementary ideas needed to build up the geographical concept of the river-basin, the continent, or the world, goes far to insure the value of his contribution to our methods of instruction. No teacher of geography can read divisions IV to VI (pp. 85-285) without profit. Those who study these chapters with sufficient zeal to get the secret of the author’s method, will have no difficulty in teaching the dynamics of geography even to pupils in any stage of their first six years of school-work. After mastering these chapters, the method of teaching the details given for the seventh grade (heat and moisture in their effects on fertility, and the distribution of plants, animaR, and the races of men, pp. 301-338) will become clear. Then no difficulty will remain in the matters of the eighth year or grade (pp. 339-358) relating to politics and society.

The second and third divisions (pp. 13-83) furnish a syllabus for constant reference, showing the relation of the details to their unity.

The highest method of school-work is the method of investigation. This book shows how to lead the pupil to this highest form of activity. He is taught how to use all that he has learned out of school in assimilating the new ideas

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

IX of his school-lessons. He is taught, moreover, to use his school-acquired knowledge on his surroundings, and thus re-enforce his natural powers of observation. The process of building up new ideas by the combination of already familiar ideas is called by the author “apperception ” (p. 124). By this the pupil learns to interpret the language of a new science into his vocabulary of already familiar ideas.

The author’s method of re-enforcing all the other branches of the school instruction by each is worthy of the highest praise. For example, the comparison of the Mississippi basin by arithmetical work with the size of Bhode Island and of New York; the calculation of the number of farms in this basin, and the amount of grain possible (p. 204) ; the plan of a pupil’s dictionary (p. 138) ; history (p. 339) ; materials for interesting lessons (p. 120).

Finally, the cautions of the author against losing the idea of the whole in a multitude of details should be quoted here on account of their importance :

“ The chief danger to the teacher who is really trying to teach scientifically, is the attempt to teach a multiplicity of details that form no part of the first (to the learner) general whole, and which obstruct if not prevent his power to generalize ” (p. 128).

“ The simplest general whole should be the first point. This is found in the river basin and second in the continent, each made up of simple slopes, constituting an organism for life.”

“ Any attempt to go from all the parts to a complete whole is injurious to growth ” (p. 127).

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EDITOR’S PREFACE.

“ The fatal mistake of many teachers, and especially of specialists in education, is to lead their pupils into the search for (to the teachers) alluring details, instead of teaching just enough of facts for the purpose of clear and simple generalization.”

An additional caution in the same spirit is surely unnecessary for those who penetrate the teachings of this hook ; it is this : the details of the process by which differences of soil, climate, and productions arise, should not be allowed to occupy so much of the pupil’s time that he neglects to study the counter-process of industry and commerce by which man unites all parts of the earth, and progressively overcomes the obstacles to his perfection by making climate and soil to suit himself wherever he wishes it.

W. T. Harris.

Concord, Mass., January , 1889.

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Contents

GAADE

I. Introduction.

Motive Theory- Method Difficulties .