Geography.

A great fault in our schools lies in the teachers frequently taking for granted that a pupil has a satisfactory knowledge of a subject of which in truth he knows only the first rudiments. The teacher does not feel sufficiently called upon to become acquainted with the exact state of his pupil's knowledge. So it comes about that or promotion into a higher class, a boy is allowed to give up entirely some branch of study which is strictly relegated to the "elementary" departments. A study which suffers more than any other from this absurd neglect is geography. Because "reading, writing and geography" are the first things a boy is taught in school, he naturally gets to consider them as elementary and childish as he grows up; but this notion ought not to be fostered by the school system itself. The vast majority of men in college who are not blind to their own faults and deficiencies, will be found to admit that their knowledge of geography is in a woeful plight. In this point as in all other matters, we have a great deal to learn from the Germans. There this study is taught right through the school course for two hours a week, excepting in some gymnasia, where the last two years are devoted to other subjects. In the preliminary stage of instruction, no text book is used except by the teacher; the pupils are encouraged to obtain their ideas from actual observation and practice. They are told in a more or less general way about the cardinal points and the course of the sun and earth in the heavens. A mastery of this subject is given them, not by forcing them to commit the compass card to memory, but by telling them to find the direction of their own homes from the school room, and many other such practical ways. The teachers make tours with the pupils in the surrounding country, map in hand, and thus the meaning of the various geographical signs used on the maps is almost plastically impressed upon them. Such devices as making relief maps of sand and drawing charts of given districts are resorted to in no small measure. Gradually a wider view of the world's geography is given them, but without that ridiculous heaping of dry facts and statistics so common in our teaching. The brain is not loaded down with long lists of names; no tables of statistics of populations of cities, lengths of rivers and heights of mountains are employed. A view of the following programme of a "realschule" of the first order at Leipzig, as given in a recent number of Science (from which many of the points of this article are taken) may show how thoroughgoing the instruction is:

Sexta (lowest class) - Leading principles of physical geography, general view of the earth, geography of Saxony, exercises in map reading and drawing.

Quinta. - Advanced instruction in the above branches, Germany taking the place of Saxony as the special subject.

Quarta. - Revision of the work of the two previous years, extra-European continents.

Tertia. - Germany, both physical and political, map drawing.

Unter Secunda. - Foreign European countries and their colonies.

Ober Secunda. - Extra European continents, especially as to their physical conditions.

Unter Prima. - Astronomical Geography.

Ober Prima - Revision of the whole field, astronomical geography.

Here are eight years spent in instructing a branch which we are ready to throw aside after two or three years. Might not our University try to remedy this evil by applying some severe test in this branch of study at the admission examinations?