for it is necessary to teach the map as well as to teach geography -care should be taken to combine with each lesson as many little facts, within the comprehension of the children and suitable to the growth of their mind, as will tend to realise the subject, and make it interesting and instructive. They may be told, as already stated, the productions of each country-under the three heads of animal, vegetable, and mineral—and which of them form the chief exports, with what country each chiefly trades, and for what articles. They should also learn the different races and habits of the people; the various causes which retain them in one spot, as in China; or determine them upon particular countries, as Australia, California, &c., with the routes pursued by emigrants and those engaged in commerce, in going from place to place; they should also know the influence of geographical position, or the proximity to deserts, mountains, &c., upon temperature, upon health, upon the races of animals, and the growth of plants. The mineral wealth of the large mountain chains, the character of the rivers rising in them, whether rapid and shallow, slow and deep, navigable or not, and if navigable, the towns which have sprung up on their banks, together with their commercial character, should also form portions of the lessons.1 Each lesson must become more minute, and each description more strictly accurate and scientific. When giving those facts, the teacher should take every occasion to make the children compare them with what they already know, or with what they had observed in their own country and neighbourhoods. It is by such a comparison that knowledge of distant things and places is made real and instructive. A country once well described becomes a standard. It is a good plan to describe one country well, and make it the 1 Mr. Combe, in his 'Notes on the United States of America,' mentions the plan which a gentleman adopts to improve his sons in geography, and which I think may be followed with advantage by teachers. He desires one of his sons to read from the daily newspapers the list of ships which have arrived in the port of Boston (any other port would, of course, do). It specifies the places from which they have come, and the nature of the cargo. He then gets one to point the place out on the map; another is desired to assign a reason why it brings that particular cargo from that particular place. This leads to an explanation of climate, soil, and natural productions of that part of the globe; and this is often followed up by descriptive particulars concerning the religion, government, manners, and customs of the people. This will be found a difficult test for even advanced pupils, as geography is now taught in schools. I select a dozen of the ports mentioned in a Liverpool newspaper as carrying on a trade with Great Britain, and anyone who tries will find how few scholars could state where they are, or the nature of the cargo usually brought from them: Callao, Matamoras, Pensacola, Taganrog, Cardenas, Matanzas, Lagos, Massowah, Tamataive, Macao, Pernambuco, and Stavanger. GEOGRAPHY NEEDS GENERAL KNOWLEDGE. 227 standard for most others. 'If any one country were well taught, its size made fully apparent, its natural features all placed as a picture before the mind, its productions, its people, its usages, its laws, its religion, all impressed and explained, it would become a kind of central point of light and knowledge, from which the scholar could proceed to other countries, until he has, as it were, paced the globe, circumnavigated its oceans, and seen in his mind's eye everything remarkable as he passed onwards.' 'Lively narrative of travellers and tourists might be used with great advantage in teaching geography to primary schools. The description of a country like Switzerland, its mountains, lakes, plains, glaciers, waterfalls, avalanches, smiling valleys, and eternal snows, all accompanied with a proper map and a description of the habits, history, and government of the people, would certainly do far more to instruct the mind than a catalogue of boundaries and divisions involving a number of names to which no mental imagery whatever is attached. The comparison of Switzerland, again, with a country like Holland, would draw forth various considerations highly instructive; while the mere localities would be far more vividly than ever impressed upon the mind, by connecting them with the mighty stream which rolls from the summits of the one, and loses itself in the marshes of the other.' 1 This subject requires a great deal of general knowledge. Geography is one of the most valuable of studies, as it deals with so many various subjects of the most practical kind. It instructs, and while it instructs it humanises, by showing us how intimately we are all bound together in working out a common end. There is scarcely any subject, however, which requires from the master a greater amount of general knowledge, or a greater tact in bringing his information to bear upon each day's lesson; but, on the other hand, there is scarcely any subject in which pupils take so much delight, or in which they make such gratifying progress, when it is rationally and carefully taught - taught not as a system of names, but as an interpretation of nature and art. Teachers should not wholly neglect names, &c. In making geography descriptive, the teachers must not, however, fall into the extreme of making it purely so. It is essentially necessary to teach the names of places, of mountains, rivers, oceans, seas, and the whole topography of the map, as a picture of what in reality exists, as it is to teach the facts to which I have previously alluded; but instead of teaching the names by themselves, they should be joined with everything which will create in the minds 1 Min. of Council, 1848-9, vol. ii. p. 469. of the children an interest and a pleasure, so that, thus associated, they may be permanently remembered.1 What a knowledge of geography is. The following extract from Dr. Arnold's 'Lectures on History,' places the connection between the two portions of geography in a clear light, while at the same time it contains some hints upon the general objects of the study, which will be of assistance to the teachers : 'Let us consider a little what a knowledge of geography is. First, I grant, that it is a knowledge of the relative position and distance of places from one another, and by places I mean either towns or the habitations of particular tribes or nations, for I think our first notion of a map is that of a plan of the dwellings of the human race. We connect it strictly with man and with man's history, and here I believe with many persons geography stops. They have an idea of the shape, relative position, and distance of different countries, and of the position, that is, in respect to the points of the compass, and mutual distance of the principal towns. Every one, for instance, has a notion of the shapes of France and Italy that one is situated to the north-west of the other, and that their frontiers join; and again, everyone knows that Paris is situated in the north of France, Bordeaux in the south-west; that Venice lies in the north-east corner of Italy, and Rome nearly in the middle, between north and south, towards the western sea. This much of geography is indeed indispensable to the simplest understanding of history, and this kind of knowledge extending over more or less countries, as it may be, and embracing with more or less minuteness the divisions, provinces, and positions of the : 1 The names may be made interesting by an attention to their derivation. In fact, the Etymology of geographical names forms an important feature in this branch of knowledge. The name of a place often tells its condition or history; and the explanation of the same, by calling into exercise the power of association increases the probability of its being remembered. Thus the name Buenos Ayres still shows the salubrity of the air of that town; Sierra, the Spanish name for a range of hills, the sawlike appearance which it presents; New York tells us that it was once a colony of England, and those who know that it was first called New Amsterdam know, too, that it was founded by the Dutch; Virginia shows that it was colonised in the reign of our virgin queen, Elizabeth; Carolina, during that of Charles (Carolus). The term fell, applied to mountains in the north of England, the south of Scotland, and to the islands of the north and west, shows that these parts of the country were occupied by some tribe or tribes of Scandinavian origin; while ben, or pen, found in the most mountainous regions, confirms the facts of history, that these high grounds were unconquered by the northern invaders, and continued in possession of the original Celtic inhabitants. In thus finding out the cause of the name, the reason has been exercised, and the study rendered highly philosophical; and a science which has often been thought to consist only of lists of hard unmeaning words, has been made attractive in a more than usual degree.'Min. of Council, 1846-7, vol. ii. p. 356. PUPILS TO FILL IN SKELETON MAP. 229 smaller towns, is that which passes, I believe, with many for a knowledge of geography. 'Yet you will observe that this knowledge does not touch the earth itself, but only the dwellings of men upon it. It regards the shapes of a certain number of great national estates, if I may so call them, the limits of which, like those of individuals' property, have often respect to no natural boundary, but are purely arbitrary. A real knowledge of geography embraces at once a knowledge of the earth, and of the dwellings of man upon it. It stretches out one hand to history, the other to geology and physiology. It is just that part of the dominion of knowledge where the students of physical and of moral science meet together.' He adds, 'The deeper the knowledge the easier it is remembered. I find it extremely difficult to remember the position of towns when I have no other associations with them than their situation relative to each other. But let me once understand the real geography of a country; its organic structure, the form of its skeleton, —that is, of its hills; the magnitude and course of its veins and arteries—that is, of its streams and rivers: let me conceive of it as a whole mass made up of connected parts, and the position of man's dwellings, varied in reference to these parts, becomes at once easily remembered, and lively and intelligible besides.' If skeleton map were given, the pupils should be able to fill in the towns, &c. In fact, if the skeleton of a country were properly sketched out, if all its natural advantages and disadvantages were fully known, any intelligent child should, from merely knowing the general laws which determine man's residence in different places, be able to place, in the rough outline, without ever consulting the finished map, the majority of the towns and cities it actually possesses. The very effort to do this would be instructive, and even the failures could be made to yield valuable knowledge, by causing inquiry into the reasons for any discrepancy which might exist.1 1 Certain conditions are given, from which certain consequences are to be inferred. Thus they are expected to discover that the rivers of Eastern Europe are slow, and of Western Europe rapid; after having been told that the former have their rise at a slight elevation, and have a lengthened course, and the latter originate in the high land of Central Europe, at no great distance from the sea. Political and social geography are thus shown to be in a great degree dependent on physical geography; the reason is seen why one country is agricultural and another commercial; why a certain manufacture should be carried on in a particular locality in preference to every other; and why an alteration in the mode of manufacture should involve a change in its seat. Thus, that Holland is agricultural, and England manufacturing; that our cotton manufacture is carried on in South Lancashire and the edges of the neighbouring counties, and not in Lincolnshire; that our manufactures generally are travelling north and west; and that iron, which was once Errors now met with in examining upon geography. In examining a class upon geography, the chief defect now apparent is a want of sequence and proper connection among the several questions. Most teachers begin, no matter with what class—with the highest as well as with the lowest-somewhat thus :— 1. What is a map? 2. What is this map a picture of? 3. How is the world divided? 4. How many parts land? 5. How many water? 6. Where is the Equator? 7. Where is the tropic of Cancer, &c., &c. All these forming the unvarying introduction to some such questions as these: 1. Show me Europe. 2. Where is the Mediterranean Sea? Now this is very absurd. (1) Because if the queries suit one class they cannot suit all. (2) The pupils learn the questions and answers by rote, and gradually cease to think upon the subject at all, answering merely mechanically. And (3) the questions are so separated as to destroy all connected thought, and to blend the impressions into a confused mass. At one time they ask about a line, at another about a strait; one time about an ocean, the next about a mountain; one time about a cape, the next about the poles, going from question to question without any distinct purpose in view. This is exactly as if, in teaching grammar, the master asked a question, now about a noun, next about a verb; now about a vowel, and again about Syntax. Teacher should have a distinct object before him. In every lesson the teacher should have a distinct object to carry out, and to that he should adhere to the exclusion of everything else. Thus, if he wish to treat of the continents, or of the oceans, or of their subdivisions, or of the mountains of the world, or of its rivers, he may do so in each case, in one lesson or in several: or if he wish to show the natural connection between some of these, as between the shapes of the continents and the oceans, between the mountains and the rivers, between the rivers and the towns, &c., he may do so by grouping them judiciously with that end in view. In fact, if he wish to talk of land, well; if of water, well; and if of their connection, it is well also; but he should know exactly, largely manufactured in Kent and Sussex, is now only smelted on the great coal fields; are not merely so many facts, but highly interesting facts-interesting because regarded as effects, the causes of which are perceived, and have probably been discovered by the student himself. |