Excerpt from Wisconsin Journal of Education, 1879, Vol. 9: Organ of the State Teachers' Association and of the Department of Public Instruction

If this process of education is to continue beyond the three R's, something should now be introduced that will impart the information needed. Can we do better than supply that need by the study of geography? It will find a foundation to build upon in the knowl edge the child has already acquired through his perceptions. It is true that the natural sciences will do the same; but they instruct, each in its special line; while geography properly taught, will bestow that general knowledge of which the child is now in need. It will also furnish an indispensable introduction to all study of civilization past or present, and will greatly aid in forming just estimates of social surroundings.

There is, then, a point in a child's intellectual development at which the study of geography becomes his best means to a larger mental life; and he has just cause of complaint against his teachers if they, through carelessness or lack of apprehension. Fail to put him in posses sion of its willing benefits. He has a right to every advantage it can confer; and it is their duty to have as clearly defined and correct aims in teaching him geography, as in teaching him writing or arithmetic.

An intelligent teacher once said. Give me outline maps and a daily newspaper, and I will teach geography. Whether or not that teacher had arrived at the best method of producing the desired result, he had at least risen to a conception of the importance and' purpose of the study in question.

Teachers should bear in mind that geography may be the only study in its line that many of their pupils ever pursue, and it should be their aim to make it yield those pupils as large a heritage of light as possible.

To be truly practical an elementary course in geography should keep two ends in view, first, to fit the pupil to read intelligently the current literature of the day; second, to give him a desire for inform ation and a knowledge of the means of getting it, so that he will not stop learning when the farm or the work-shop takes him from the school. The saying is trite, but like most trite sayings, very true, that no school instruction can complete the work of education. That teacher does his work best, who so imbues his pupils with a love of learning, and so trains them in the use of aids to learning. Of what ever sort, that they become, when they leave him, independent and loving searchers after truth. This student disposition can be planted and fostered in the elementary course of training, if the branches read ing and geography be properly taught. And the disposition, once given a vigorous start, will grow by what it feeds upon, until the tutored child developes into the self-instructed man, seeking to under stand life, interested in its varied activities, studying its complex and often opposite relations.

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