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headline writers manifest in sorting out the crucial things in a news article, and thus enabling us to get the general news of the day by simply reading the headings?

The other evening I picked up one of our best grammar school geographies. I opened to the section on Belgium. There are one hundred and fourteen different facts given there about Belgium. Among a hundred well-educated people not ten could tell offhand a quarter of these one hundred and fourteen facts. I think that nearly every fact of the one hundred and fourteen is of general interest, and worthy of a place in a school geography, yet not over an eighth of them deserve to be drilled or reviewed. My hope is that teachers will thoughtfully go over such a section as that on Belgium, underline the fourteen significant facts, and lay the emphasis upon them, letting the one hundred interesting but incidental facts drift away into the inner chambers of the pupil's memory, where only a mere residuum will remain. Yet this residuum really makes for intelligence.

Nearly every country has some things that are characteristic, very characteristic; as Germany's military system and educational system; Holland's dikes, canals and windmills; England's wonderful colonial empire, unequaled ocean commerce, matchless merchant fleet and navy; the Frenchman's artistic taste in manufacturing, etc. Upon these characteristic things. in each country, I would lay the emphasis. In many cases the causes which led up to such important results are clear, and are within the understanding of even grammar school children. The causal notion is the keynote of modern geography. The almost inevitable tendency is to teach too many things, and discriminate too little between big things and little.

I should not care much, for example, about the products or the commerce of Italy, but I should care to know about its famous cities, its ruins and its past. In the case of Russia, the opposite is true. There the cities and the past are less important than the struggles of the present. In Switzerland, I would emphasize the Alps, their passes, their valleys and the spirit of liberty and democracy which they breed. In Norway, I would emphasize the wonderful fiords which have so strongly molded the national character from the days of the Vikings.

downward to the present; but on the other hand, I would emphasize the achievements of the Japanese and the peculiar customs, traits and institutions of the Chinese.

I should like my pupils to catch something of the spirit of some of the peoples of whom they study, and I should not hesitate now and then to wander away a little into history or literature in order that my pupils might catch a glimpse of splendid spirit of some of these peoples. The story of William Tell belongs to the geography of Switzerland, for it takes the air of the Alps to breed the spirit of a Tell. The story of the encounter of James Fitz James and Roderick Dhu is part of the geography of Scotland. There could have been no such types of men had there been no highlands and no lowlands. I would make the story of Phoebe Cary's The Leak in the Dike a part of the geography lesson on Holland; the beautiful story of little Peter who found the tiny stream trickling down the side of the dike, knew its fearful meaning and,–

"He forces back the weight of the sea,

With the strength of his single arm."

"And his deed shall be sung by the cradle,

And told to the child on the knee,

So long as the dikes of Holland,
Divide the land from the sea."

I am not unmindful that things of this kind are so alluring that they easily lead the class away from the more prosy, yet absolutely necessary drill upon matters of location, commerce, industry, etc. The interesting stories are legitimate, yet it must be conceded that they are incidental, rather than fundamental.

Not long since I had a class of one hundred and twenty-five freshmen in the university, studying physical geography. Ten out of one section of thirty did not know what longitude is; not one in the section could give accurately the causes of the changes of the seasons. Many could not tell in what country such cities as Vienna, Naples, Liverpool and Rio Janeiro are. Very few indeed of the world's great rivers seemed to be at all familiar to them. I know this is the old story, but I wonder if there is not a remedy. I wonder if this lack of knowledge

about larger geographical facts does not in part result from an attempt to teach too many facts, the location of too many places, the names of too many rivers. Would it not be practicable to select a committee which should attempt to prepare a list of cities, of rivers, of mountains, of bodies of water, which ought to be very thoroughly taught and reviewed until their locations are permanently learned; until the pupils come to know them so well that they cannot forget where they are? I recognize the difficulty of securing anything like agreement on such lists, yet we tried such a plan one summer at Cornell University, and got a fair approach to agreement among the members of the committee. There were present in the geography classes some seventy-five teachers, principals and superintendents from twenty or more states; they represented all kinds of schools. These teachers were divided into committees, and each committee was asked to decide upon what cities in the continent assigned to it are of primary importance; cities that are so important that an American school-teacher should teach their location rather accurately; teach why they are important, and for what they stand in world affairs. It was agreed that a city must stand for more than one important thing in order to be included in the list. Lyons, for example, though it is the leading silk-making city of the world, presents nothing else than an American schoolboy need know, and hence would not be included. The committees decided upon the lists of cities and passed them over to a committee of the faculty of geography. These men were Prof. Ralph S. Tarr of Cornell, Prof. Albert P. Brigham of Colgate University, Prof. Charles A. McMurry, the well-known writer and lecturer on pedagogy, and instructors Philip Emerson of Lynn, Mass., Geo. D. Hubbard, now of the Ohio State University, and the writer. Two thirds of the cities listed by the first committees failed of approval by the faculty committee. Any city in the United States which received two or more of the six faculty votes was listed. Following is the list; the numeral after a name signifies how many of the six faculty votes this city received:

New York (6)
Chicago (6)
Philadelphia (6)

St. Louis (6)

Boston (6)
Baltimore (2)

Cleveland (3)
Buffalo (3)
Pittsburg (6)

San Francisco (6)
Cincinnati (2)

New Orleans (6)

Milwaukee (2)

The United States (25)

Washington (6)
Denver (6)
Louisville (2)

Minneapolis-St. Paul (6)
Kansas City (2)
Indianapolis (2)
Duluth-Superior (5)
Salt Lake City (3)

Puget Sound cities (4)
Scranton-Wilkes-Barre (3)
Galveston (4)

Lowell (3)

No foreign city was listed unless it received the approval of at least three of the six members of the faculty. Following are the lists:

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It is worthy of note that, while the text-books in geography mention upwards of one hundred cities in Europe, only sixteen are regarded by this committee as deserving of emphasis, and only eleven received the endorsement of the whole committee. It is understood, of course, that this committee would expect pupils to be familiar with the names and approximate locations of probably twice as many more cities. The object in any such endeavor is to secure on the part of pupils more lasting knowledge of the really fundamental facts of elementary geography. I know that, in order to secure this, we must be able to place in the teacher's hands a syllabus with definitė lists of places, etc., to be drilled upon, and I know, too, that this list need not be long. The result of the deliberations of the Cornell committee show that the list of essential cities would be short. There would be ample time to teach much besides these minimum lists, as there ought to be, and the freedom and individuality of the teacher need not be sacrificed.

I close this paper with a plea for the recognition of six facts:

1. The need of sifting the vast amount of geographical material which might be taught, and the preparation of a syllabus which shall outline a limited body of facts that are likely to prove of most use to the average person.

2. Such a selection of material having been made, that both teachers and pupils be held rigidly responsible for the thorough teaching and knowing of this body of knowledge. Local needs, and the personal preferences of teachers, may guide in selecting the rest of the things to be taught.

3. The value of studying maps and making maps, to the end that clear mental pictures of these may be impressed and may remain, to serve their owner a thousand times in later life.

4. The limiting of the amount of attention given to pure physiography, and the relating of that which is taught to the life-conditions; a reduction of the list of productions, manufactures, exports, etc., usually given in text-books.

5. The introduction of enough of the cause-and-effect idea to create in the pupil the habit of thinking that behind the facts of geography always lie the causes, and at the same time a recognition by teachers of the truth that the grammar school age is the time for learning facts rather than for groping after reasons which only adults can appreciate.

6. The wisdom of laying emphasis upon those things that are most characteristic of the country or region, rather than of following any stereotyped topical outline for all countries.

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