should not be regarded as an interference with the regular work of the school. The time is not far distant when out-of-door work will occupy a prominent place in elementary instruction.

The excursion should by no means be limited to the observation and study of geographic forms and processes, but should include mills, factories, quarries, museums, and many other centers of human activity. The trips need not be and should not be expensive. If carefully planned and skillfully handled the danger attending them is not worth considering.

Pictures constitute a very valuable aid in the teaching of geography. Here again practice falls short of theory. Merely exhibiting the pictures is not enough, altho there is value in this. The teacher should ask questions con

cerning them so as to encourage close observation.

The modern stereoscopic views are an inspiration to pupils. While using them one can easily imagine that he is observing the actual objects which they represent. The stereopticon should find a much more general use in the elementary school. By means of the slides we may take our pupils on in-door excursions to all parts of the world.

Much material in the form of raw and finished products can be brought into the schoolroom. In studying other states and countries, pupils should be encouraged to bring to the school articles which came from those areas. The list of materials easily obtained is a long one. Thru the efforts of pupils and teacher a school museum of some considerable value can be worked up. The materials, in connection with pictures and descriptions written by the children, could be so arranged as to present a graphic history of some of the most important industries. When desired they could be so placed as to show their geographical distribution.

Travel is a most potent factor in vitalizing the work in geography. The knowledge and the inspiration obtained by every member of this association who has traveled across the continent to attend this convention can be used to great advantage for years to come. Pupils are always deeply interested in what the teacher has actually seen. In many schools there are pupils who have enjoyed the benefits of some travel. This contact with geography at first hand should be drawn upon to the fullest extent. As early in the year as possible the teacher should learn just what regions have been seen by pupils. This information can be tabulated and the topics assigned pupils at the proper times. In all cases where trips are being described the routes followed should be carefully traced upon a map before the class.

The exchange of letters by schools in different parts of the country while by no means new, should be much more generally practiced. If one letter a month were written by each grade thruout the year, pupils would be in possession of a very valuable picture of changing landscape, planting and harvesting of crops, weather conditions, migration of birds, blossoming of wild flowers. In addition there would be descriptions of the surface, natural resources, industries, and the daily lives of the people. If a different section were selected by each

grade in the school, and the practice kept up from year to year, it would add immensely to the pupils' knowledge of geography. Pictures accompanying such letters would be a very valuable feature. Several pupils should have a hand in the writing of each geography letter, thus multiplying the benefit received.

To summarize: Geography, while intimately connected with daily life, is not so vital a part of school life as it should be or can be made. Our texts, while steadily improving, are still too meager and statistical in character. A striking weakness is shown by the map questions which do not serve sufficiently to develop thought. The books should be more limited in scope, thus making it possible to treat given areas more interestingly and fully. The map questions should be supplemented by others tending to create more interest and greater mental activity.

Introductory geography should be based upon the industrial and social phases of the subject, as investigation has shown that the geographical interests of children are strong along this line. Such study connects geography directly and vitally with the actual daily life of each pupil, not only as applied to the home, but as applied to the world as well. More uses should be made of pictures, stereograms, and slides, as well as of such materials, raw and manufactured, as can be supplied by pupils and teacher. Every school should start a museum which will increase in size and usefulness with each succeeding year.

Such knowledge of areas beyond the immediate vicinity as has been acquired by teacher or pupils thru actual observation should be used to the fullest extent. The exchange of letters by schools in different parts of the country can be made a source of the greatest interest and profit.

In these ways geography can be made to enter more fully into the school life of the pupil, and to enlist his conscious and purposeful participation in its study. It will then be fulfilling its deeper function, the training for the larger experiences which follow those of school days.

DISCUSSION

A. L. HAMILTON, superintendent of schools, Pasadena, Cal.—I regret to agree that geography does not hold as important a place in the life of a child as it should. This condition is more to be regretted when we consider the richness of this subject in material which touches life from so many directions. When we consider, however, the growth in interest in the study of physical geography in the high school, and its remarkable and rapid development as a subject of study we are led to the conclusion that there is a future for geography in the grades. I well remember my own experience, when as a boy I owned my first large geography. I opened it and the whole world seemed before me. I resolved to conquer it. I mastered long lists of questions, and I presume they did me good. I became acquainted with the maps, at any rate. The greatest revelation came to me, however, when on one summer afternoon, I walked along the flooded, muddy, country road, with my teacher. It was after one of those heavy eastern thunder showers, and the storm water was playing at its own sweet will with the yielding earth of the roadside. I saw there miniature valleys in actual process of formation, waterfalls eating their way back, creating grand cañons in depth reaching to my boyish shoulders, stream deltas as

complete as the ones on a larger scale which I have observed since that day. That was a memorable walk and impressed its lessons on my mind. It entered into my life.

Not long ago I had the pleasure of listening to a fifth-grade girl talk to her mates on her experiences in Japan where she had lived for some time. She had brought to the schoolroom many Japanese articles and her talk was interesting and instructive. It took hold of her schoolmates as some other method of presentation could not. Altho the mother was not present I suspect that she had been interested in the affair and had rendered valuable assistance.

This is an excellent subject thru which to keep in touch with the home. Our schoolwork ought to go into the home and be felt there. We should prize any sign of interest shown by parents in the work done, and seek in all ways to honor the parent by expressing our appreciation of all they do, rather than wound their feelings by criticism of methods used. Honor the parents. They are necessary in the work of putting into the life of the child the things taught.

Geography work, as also all other work, must be related to life and to the life of the child. The study of people, products, and industries will put the pupil in touch with the whole range of geography work. If we do not know anything until we have experienced it, some of our pupils will never know much unless we put some deeper thought into our methods of instruction. Such books as How We Are Fed, Clothed, Sheltered, enable the pupil to go on tours of inquiry from his own breakfast table and home.

In your teaching you aim always to climb to the high points and take a survey of the field and then are able to lead out into the details. You, for example, do not take for your topic "the cat," but "cat food," and from this familiar position you lead the pupil out into large areas of the cat field; so in the use of pictures in the teaching of geography, you select some point of vantage and so organize the picture material that the pupil shall get the large characteristics first, then work out the details. We do not use our pictures intelligently sometimes, that is to say, we allow the pupils to become confused over unclassified and miscellaneous collections. Allow me to illustrate how I think this should be done. A short time ago, in teaching a young men's Bible class the lesson on Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, I used three stereopticon pictures to get our bearings; one taken from the Mount of Olives, looking to the eastward down upon the village of Bethany and on across the plains toward Jericho and the Jordan. It was all spread out before us. We could see for a portion of the way the rocky road skirting the hills along which Christ had just traveled. Then from another point on the same mountain we looked down its western slope across the valley of Kedron and upon the city of Jerusalem and the country beyond. The third picture was taken from a point south of Jerusalem looking up the valley of Kedron-the Mount of Olives on one side, the city of Jerusalem and country adjacent on the other. After such general features are fixed, the details may be intelligently worked out. So any section may be handled to the great advantage of the pupil. You should persuade your high-school people that they are sufficiently interested in the outcome of your work to allow that precious lantern to be loaned to you, if you are not fortunate enough to have one yourself, and with the proper appliances ready for it you should make it tell its stories as only a lantern can.

I agree that we attempt to do too much in each grade, but when that happy time shall come when there are no grades, requiring the pupils to be fitted to them, and when the work shall be arranged in courses which are consecutive from a beginning to an end, then the pupils will be given what they need and when they need it, and in quantity which may be assimilated. If pupils have a definite aim in their excursions and an interest in the things they are to find, which has been excited by careful classroom work done with the excursion in view, and if the instructor has before been over the ground and knows that the trip will not be fruitless, the tramp abroad will be about the most valuable exercise of the course.

A discussion has been going on for some time on what sort of matter is or is not per

missible in presenting nature subjects, in which discussion even the president has taken part. I have been interested in reading what John Burroughs, also, has had to say about it. I think, as does he, that in the realm of science we ought to be very sure of the truth of the statements we make as facts.

The children usually understand what is imaginative and what is presumed to be fact. When we travel with the pupil in company with some familiar desert plant out into its lonely habitat, we may paint about the facts with colors of the imagination as we will and the child will understand, we may read poems picturing death from thirst and make it all as vivid as seems best, but the statement of fact should be such that the child shall not be required later to correct its data and thus weaken its confidence in authorities. If we do not know the facts with reference to a given question then we ought to say so, and seek more light in that direction.

The children ought to be so taught that they may have a feeling that they are part of the universe in which they live, and as they look up into the skies at night they ought at least to be able to locate the north star, and understand somewhat the movements that are occurring, and be able to look familiarly upon some of the beauties there. The children should be able to get a grasp upon the great thoughts that come to every one of them, and to widen their horizon till they are able to take in the multitude of living things that they will find in this most interesting study.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXCURSIONS FOR FIELD SIGHT

HAROLD W. FAIRBANKS, U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, BERKELEY, CAL. Experience has shown that in teaching the child we must lead it step by step from that which is known and has become a part of experience to that which is strange and unfamiliar. We cannot plunge it at once into that which is wholly unfamiliar and expect any real comprehension.

The object of field excursions in geography is twofold. On the one side the child becomes acquainted with the facts of his environment. On the other he acquires that necessary foundation thru actual contact with the geographical facts of his home region which will enable him to grasp intelligently similar phenomena in the world at large.

The home is a little world replete with materials for a practical concrete foundation in geography. These seem so simple, however, and so commonplace that we are apt to overlook their importance. Too often the pupil goes out into life without the faintest conception that the world of geography lies all about him. The geography of the textbooks seems far away and unreal and few of its disconnected facts laboriously committed to memory are retained in such form as to ever be of any value.

Observations in the home region should include a great number of facts which are not geographic but which properly belong under the head of naturestudy.

Elementary geography, nature-study, and the beginnings of history as illustrated in the district open to excursions are for the pupil parts of one whole and might be termed "home lore." It is essential, however, that the teacher understand the bearings of these various factors, and, as the pupil advances, gradually differentiate them.

We may conveniently take up first in our discussion of field excursions the use of the home district as a basis for a real understanding of maps. Mapdrawing as commonly practiced is little more than an exercise in the training of the eye and hand. Unless we begin by actually developing the meaning of the symbol from the real thing for which it stands the pupil will have had no experience to enable him to interpret the symbols or form mental images of the features of any remote region as expressed in the map of that region.

We must begin with a study of the features of the neighborhood and pass from these to their representation upon a model. The step from the features of the model, or from those of the actual landscape to their representation upon a plain surface then easily follows. The pupil now in looking at a map of the home district is able to form a mental image of the features for which the symbols stand. He is further prepared to see in maps of regions which he has never visited those things which the various lines and figures represent.

As a usual thing the variety of geographical features in any one neighborhood is not great. Excursions will bring to light many examples in miniature of the working of nature's forces in the shaping of the earth. The children in the Mississippi Valley can form little conception of a cañon by reading about it from a textbook, but when taken out into the field and shown the work of a torrential rivulet upon an unprotected bank, they can picture in their minds something of the nature of a real cañon.

It is utterly useless to study the work of the various forces shaping the earth and the origin and meaning of the various geographic features if the textbook is depended on entirely. Only in so far as this phase of geography is supplemented by actual observations out of doors is it of any value to the pupil. In a certain large city the pupils are given dictation lessons on the work of streams and asked to memorize it for examination without ever taking any out-door excursions altho the city is surrounded on all sides by the most interesting geographic features.

What realization can a pupil have of a delta who has never had his attention directed to one. In every locality delta plains and débris fans can be seen upon either a large or small scale, and also the influence which they exert upon the location of the homes of people and their occupations.

Civilized man has had a great and disastrous influence upon the surface of the earth. He has killed the wild animals, cut off the forests, and left the surface to be torn and washed away by torrential streams. It will do the pupil no good to know of these things and that they are wrong. He must get out into the fields and see what has taken place. Under the direction of a skillful teacher such object-lessons will never be forgotten, and the importance of conserving nature's gifts will not be a mere statement in a book without vitalizing force.

How the soil is formed from the rocks and how it is distributed over the surface can never be learned in-doors. The way in which soil and slope affect the occupations and distribution of people are facts open to observation in every district. The hills and valleys determine the position of homes, the