have far more lantern slides, for the cost of each is much less, storage is reduced to a minimum, and each picture is much more easy to find. One may not only have a greater number in stock, but may in a given lesson show very many more. It is almost as easy to show a dozen pictures on the lantern as it is to show one. Even as compared with the reality the lantern picture has certain advantages for class teaching: one can be quite sure that every one is looking at the same thing, whereas it is extremely difficult to point out a distant spot to a single individual, and practically impossible to make sure that all the members of a class are looking at the same object.

Whatever the method of exhibition the picture must be not merely looked at, it must be studied. The danger of the lantern is that too many pictures may be shown and no one studied. It is quite legitimate to show a number of pictures when the object is to give a general impression, but a most important use of pictures is to study the outward appearances of things, to practice seeing things. In this respect the lantern has advantages over the kinematograph, another valuable instrument in teaching geography. It is more difficult to see things on the kinematograph than on the fixed picture, on which appearances may be studied. at leisure.

see." Even

To a greater or less extent all pictures should be studied, and the children definitely trained to see things that are significant in pictures. They must be trained not only to "look at " but to "see." the grand tour is of little value to those who cannot see. It is for this reason that it is often well to show only a few pictures during the lesson, but to study intensively what is shown. In later work the picture

should be related to the map, the large-scale map. Each supplements the other. Unless a picture can be made from the map or a map from the picture it is doubtful whether either can be read intelligently or fluently. Such exercises are most helpful as training in looking with critical eyes, looking for things, looking through things, looking behind things. Looking at pictures, like the study of maps, is after all only a method. Even if we looked at everything visible to bodily eyes we see only a part of the matter of geography, the basal matter, no doubt. We must see things with the imagination; we must see things that cannot be seen with the eyes, and understand what they mean.

There is and learn

There is

Books. Of the use of books we need say less, not because they should not be used but because they are already used, both too much and too little. more than a tendency to accept the book what is stated instead of thinking about it. also a tendency to trust entirely to the text-book. The text-book, the reference-book, has its place. Without it the teaching tends to lack definiteness. The book provides a certain definite minimum of knowledge which may be insisted on, and supplies connective tissue for such pupils as happen to be absent from particular lessons. But the children should be trained gradually to supplement their text-books and classwork by general reading for a definite end. This does require training; it also requires suitable text-books. The single text-book is almost as harmful as the single map. A child who has been brought up on one textbook has unconsciously come to think that the one text-book is all that is necessary. By the very fact of changing text-books he comes to

think less of the

individual book and more of books in general. Textbooks which are suitable for one age and one stage of development are not suitable for another. Subjectmatter, treatment of subject-matter and language that are suitable for children of twelve are not suitable for children of ten or fourteen. As they grow older they are not merely learning more facts but they are learning, or ought to be learning, how to look at things from new points of view, and, of course, they are learning more and more how to use words. This presupposes that regions studied in successive years should not be treated on a uniform plan in the text-books used, but that each text-book should mark a definite advance on the preceding. At first the text-book may all be read aloud in class. Then portions may be omitted, but time given for reading silently in class. Then omitted portions may be lengthened and the private reading left more or less optional. Other books may also be recommended, and exercises set involving the use of some of them. The sources of statistics also which are used in class may at first be stated, while later the pupils may be referred to such books as give them.

Outline Curriculum.-In planning a course of geography, then, many considerations have to be taken into account. We have seen that the world must be studied regionally and that the physical geography must be worked into the regional course. The map course also requires to be fitted into the regional scheme. We must proceed from the simple to the complex, and we are confronted with the dilemma that the children cannot really know the world before they know the homeland, and cannot really know the homeland till they know the world. It is evident, then, that regionally the world must be gone over twice, at any rate.

The

first year's course has already been suggested. In the next year it seems necessary to extend the previous year's work and to take a rapid survey of the world, still from the point of view of the home. Thereafter Britain may be more intensively studied region by region in preparation for a study of the world, also taken region by region, and spread over three years or telescoped into two. In this scheme it is usually convenient to group the continents in three pairs giving north and south sections, the Americas, Asia-Australia and Europe-Africa. In these the geographical argument takes shape more and more evidently. At the end of a Secondary School course there is, in addition, time to take the world as a whole and consider world problems which can be studied with advantage only when knowledge of the individual regions of the world is combined with ability to use geographical material.

Conclusion.-Care must be taken so that at every stage the children have work to do, something to bite at that is difficult but just not too difficult for them, work that requires accuracy and imagination, for geography is at once a science and a humane study. It requires at once the accuracy of scientific work and the sympathy which comes from the humanities.

CHAPTER VIII

HISTORY

(a) By M. W. KEATINGE, M.A., D.Sc.

Of all the subjects in the school curriculum none has changed its aspect more of recent years than history. From being a chronicle of kings and of diplomacy, a list of battles and of statutes, of which so recently as fifty years ago Herbert Spencer could say that it was useless as a guide to political action, history is now becoming a sociological study. It is recognized that the growth of civilization and the progress of the community as a whole to culture, economic freedom and self-government is the bedrock of the subject. It is now clear that much that used to pass as history, those portions which are purely traditional or purely antiquarian, or, in more general terms, the chapters that throw no light on the problems of modern life and afford no assistance to the contemporary citizen, must be relegated to the rubbish heap.

And not only must the subject-matter of history be revised; the methods of teaching it need reconsideration. A great change has come over school method as a whole. All teachers recognize that their aim should be to lead their pupils to learn for themselves rather than to cram them with predigested information, that each pupil should have work to do