The Teaching of Geography, Part I.
by J. H. Raundrup, M.Sc.
Volume 12, 1901, pgs. 684-693
In this paper I shall attempt to give an outline of a system of teaching geography which can at least claim to have been put into actual practice, both with large classes of older boys, and small classes of very young boys, and which has seemed to me in both cases to bear satisfactory fruit. I cannot speak upon the system of teaching geography--that has yet to be discovered--but simply upon one system of teaching the subject, very different indeed from the system upon which probably most of the last generation were taught.
I find still in existence a very general tendency to pooh-pooh geography as a subject certainly not ornamental, and of very doubtful utility. The tendency to regard the subject thus is, I am convinced, due in no way to any inherent defects in the subject-matter, but entirely to the old methods of teaching geography--methods which, one is glad to believe, are dying fast.
Probably everyone of the last generation has similarly unpleasant recollections of geography as a school-subject--of long lists of counties or states, with the chief towns in each--all names, and nothing more, utterly devoid of meaning, life, or interest--of maps drawn with elaborate neatness, in which were marked the names of scores of towns and villages; and the more names, neatly printed, the better the map, even though the rivers crossed the mountain ranges like any Hannibal or Napoleon--of geography books, also full of names and figures--lengths of rivers, heights of mountains, populations of towns (given with the greatest exactness, as if they ever had been, and ever would be, precisely at some one figure), and especially complete lists of the principal capes of every country. I always feel that the manner in which the former teacher of geography, and the former school geography book, insisted upon an accurate knowledge of capes was peculiarly typical of the whole system. It had one merit--and one only--it exercised the memory, as it would also exercise the memory to learn many pages of a dictionary off by heart; but I do not think that even the most bigoted advocate of the good old days in matters scholastic would claim that geography, as it was then taught, raised any feeling of interest; rather a feeling quite the reverse. I once knew the exact position, relatively to one another, of the 86 Departments of France, with their chief towns; and I have no doubt that a similar misfortune, perhaps on a smaller scale, may have occurred to most of us. I am relieved to say that I do not know them now--they went far more quickly than they came--but think of the weary disgust of the boy of poor memory as he ground and ground away at the seemingly interminable list of names. Names--names--names and very little else; at best, certain "lists of imports and exports," but nothing to enable one to form any picture in one's mind of what a country was really like. If one had a fondness for drawing maps, one learnt a little from the atlas--but that little of doubtful value. The one fact firmly fixed in my mind as regards Italy was in no way connected with sunny skies, blue seas, luxuriant foliage, or glorious old cities--the one fact was that Italy was like a boot.
Above all, in geography as I was taught it, there was one great error--fundamental, overtopping all others, and rendering of very little value any desultory attempts to make the thing interesting--there was literally no answer to the question which should be ever on the lips of boy or girl--"Why?" Why was this product or that product on the list of imports and exports of some particular country? why were the towns so scattered here, so crowded there? and all the endless "whys" which should be, and can be, answered by a more rational method of teaching. Even in the case of their favourite capes, they vouchsafed no reason why an apparently partial Nature had scattered them so profusely upon the west coast, while almost entirely denying such an important gift to an unfortunate east coast.
If all the foregoing seem exaggerated to any who look back upon their own school days, I can only say that their experience was more fortunate than my own, and than that of most others with whom I have compared notes--than that, also, of the present Bishop of Wakefield, who, at the Missionary Exhibition held in Leeds last October, spoke as follows:--"I think you will agree that geography, properly understood, may be a subject of the greatest importance. In point of fact, if I go back to my own boyhood's days, I should be disposed to quarrel with those who were my teachers, because geography was then considered and also made a very uninteresting subject indeed. And when I regard it from a more experienced point of view, I am inclined to think that it might be made a most interesting study--perhaps the most interesting that could be put before a child."
So with the Bishop of Wakefield think we teachers who believe in our subject--and believe in it none the less for the unfortunate experiences of former days. At least, these may teach us what to avoid.
Well might it be said of the geography class of the old days, "Theirs is not to reason why," and, as a result, geography, in the estimation of both teacher and pupil, usually stood very far indeed down the list of subjects, whereas I have known it to be, when taught upon different lines, the favourite lesson of the week, both with masters and boys.
But enough of the old methods. I will turn now to methods based upon quite different ideas and objects; not upon the accumulation of solid facts arranged in ready-made lists, but upon deduction from one or two necessary facts, from which small beginning the whole description of the country or district in question must be built up, as a proposition in geometry is built up, with "why" and "because" and "therefore," and built up by the pupils themselves, the teacher acting the part of questioner and prompter, but as little as possible that of informant. Needless to say, that lies at the bottom of all rational teaching--to make the boys or girls extract, by proper reasoning, as many facts as possible from as few as possible; to tell them nothing which they can discover for themselves (a far more difficult thing than it may seem to be), and in no way to deprive the child of what Froebel (I think it was) called "its sacred right of discovery."
Taken in this way, the geography of any country becomes a problem--a problem of the first book of Eucid. Very few data are given. Merely the position of the country upon the globe, the arrangement of mountain and plain (obtained by examination of a coloured, contoured map), and the prevalent wind. Given these data, to deduce the climate, scenery, products, industries, even the social condition and national characteristics, perhaps even something of the history, of the inhabitants, and to deduce it rationally and logically, building up fact upon fact--not to guess it.
But, it may be asked, is the young pupil in a position to make such deductions, unless helped by the teacher to an extent which would destroy the educational value of the subject? The answer to this is "No--not until after some preliminary work upon the influence of climate upon geography"--the natural point from which to begin a child's first work in the subject.
It is very important, in beginning any such work, to have some one familiar, concrete object upon which to build as foundation, and my invariable foundation is the rain. First come the questions, which the boys will ask without any prompting. Rain falls: "Why does it fall?" Don't answer the question, ask another in return: "Have you ever seen any other water falling?" Then will come many examples of water falling--out of a tap, from a house-gutter, down a waterfall--and from these it is easy to arrive at our first rule, not perhaps strictly scientific, but simple and useful for the present. "Water always tries to get as low down as possible."
Someone will promptly suggest a fountain in contradiction to this, and possibly someone else will explain that in that instance some water is compelled to act against its will by a larger quantity of water, trying to follow the law; and that therefore the fountain does not contradict our law but proves it.
So law No. 1 answers the first question, "Why does the rain fall?" Next, "Whence does it come?" From the clouds. "How did it get there?" In answer to this, using many homely illustrations, a second unscientific but useful and simple law may be obtained. "Water-vapour tries to rise up into the air." Very soon the class will have got at a fair idea of the pumping work done by the sun in raising water from sea to clouds; and, as the course of the water's movement is sketched on the blackboard--which cannot be too constantly and freely used--an almost matter-of-course inquiry is, "How will the water move from above the sea, whither it has been drawn up, to above the land, upon which it is to fall?" Answer by another question, "What moves the clouds?" And now the work of the wind comes to the front.
By this time the class will probably be beginning to feel that the path of learning is remarkably smooth, a fact which is apt to tell upon boys in two undesirable ways--by producing either lack of interest or lordly self-complacency. It is always a useful tonic, under such circumstances, to shake their faith in their own arguments by some sudden shock, only in the end to prove that the arguments are after all correct, but the shock may do something to induce caution, and to prevent what Mr. Gladstone considered the chief failing of a quarter century ago, "cocksuredness." (He expressed the tendency by words far more classical and elegant). So, in the case with which we are dealing, suggest suddenly that, if the reasoning has been correct, the seas must infallibly in time dry up. The result would be expressed by a newspaper reporter by the word "sensation," in brackets--then will follow a more or less short interval of puzzling, and then a burst of protest--and there is nothing that a class enjoys more than recovering its threatened mental complacency by pitilessly demolishing a remark such as that about the sea drying up--and in this demolition, there will be built up a fairly clear idea of the course of the water from the mountain-tops to the sea, and so of the whole water circulation of the world--"the great water-wheel," as my boys generally call it. And here is an excellent chance, without going beyond the capacity even of a slow and very young boy, of pointing out the wonderful beauty and perfection of Nature's workings; the continuity, the absence of waste, the work to be done by everything--winds, sun, rain, rivers--and the absolute necessity of that work being done. Boys are often much impressed by the picture of what would result if any one agent in "the great water-wheel" were to neglect its particular work--by the picture of the drying up of the streams, the withering away of all green things, the end of all animal and human life, and the dreary, stony, lifeless desert that would remain--and all because, somewhere, some work had been neglected. Some slight glimmering may really be brought into a boy's mind of an idea that the work of everything, of every man, of every boy, is not merely something that must be done because it is best for himself to have it done, but because it is a minute part of a general scheme of work in which all must join for the benefit of all; and I think no teacher can ever over-emphasize the idea of the reason of the existence of everything being some work which it has to do--admitting, of course, that it by no means follows that either the boys, or himself, or any human being can always point out what that work is. But I am wandering from my subject.
Having got at the idea of the great water-circulation, the boys can now be led to the consideration of the work done by one set of agents in it--the streams and rivers--and especially of the way in which, aided by frost and the weather generally, they cut out valleys, create mountain peaks and ranges, impoverish the mountain sides, enrich the low, flat plains, build up new land in the river deltas, and generally play a principal part in producing and altering the geography of a district.
Of course, this is not a matter of an hour or two--it is by no means a matter to be hurried over--but its careful treatment will repay all the time spent upon it. Here, as everywhere, use every possible practical illustration. A mountain of sand upon a tray, with a copious shower descending upon its summit from a pepper-pot, will give a rather unsatisfactory, but not altogether useless, illustration; the gradual deposit of silt, and formation of land thereby, as water decreases in velocity, may be well shown merely by vigorously stirring up some sand and small stones in a tumbler, and noticing the gradual deposit, first of the heavier stones, and next of the finer sand. The aid of modelling clay, in which valley formation can be very clearly illustrated, may also be called in; but the best illustrations are provided by Nature. Illustrations of river-systems and valley-carving in miniature are always easy to find; any sloping gravel path, after a heavy shower of rain, will provide a beautiful little example of streams and rivers, valleys cut out or deepened, currents turned out of their courses by masses of rock, waterfalls, plains with their sandy alluvial deposits, and all the phenomena of land-destruction and land-building. From this, in the neighbouring of Leeds, one would naturally lead on to such a very inviting example of river-action as is to be seen in the Meanwood Valley, and so to river-action in the county generally, and especially in the Pennines. And, to give the boys an idea of the grand scale upon which such works may be carried out, and of how much may be done by the combined work of many tiny forces, especially by never-resting, patient work--show them pictures of some of the great valleys--of one of the tremendously deep and precipitous canyons of the Colorado, for instance, with the comparatively tiny stream which has cut it out flowing in apparent powerlessness down at the bottom of the mighty gorge--and the contrast can hardly fail to impress them with thoughts which again may possibly have their moral value.
I may perhaps hint here at the great utility of pictures in improving the teaching of geography, though the point is too self-evident to need emphasis. It is by the eye, not the ear, that children, and not children only, can be taught most easily, most pleasantly, and most effectively; and therefore more can be done by one picture or rough sketch-map than by much elaborate explanation in words.
We have now arrived at the point at which the study of some special district may be taken up; and here, in my opinion, there is no choice of districts--it must first be the district in which the boys are at the time. The importance of this cannot be overestimated, for it at once removes all risk of geography becoming a matter of names, and brings it immediately into the sphere of realities--streams, hills, towns known to the boys as familiar objects; and at the same time it invests these familiar objects with life, interest, and meaning.
In this respect--perhaps, recollecting where I am, I ought to say in all respects--Yorkshire boys are fortunate in their county; and I find that a careful study of this county, with its fine mountain system, its moors and wolds, its fertile plain, its coast, and its very complete river system--that the careful study of this will prepare boys to attack the larger and more complicated problems of geography with confidence and success.
In this work I make constant use of a small model of Yorkshire, which I have made in modelling clay, and which I find of the greatest value in giving the boys a general idea of the arrangement of mountain and plain in Yorkshire.
In attacking the geography of Yorkshire, the natural starting point is the Pennines. Almost all the boys know them, and associate them with free, breezy, happy holidays; and it needs no prompting to obtain a very full description of them--in fact, rather than prompt, one finds it necessary to restrain an eager flow of anecdote, more or less to the point. Having discussed the climate, scenery, soil, vegetation, and animal life of the Pennines, always, of course, going into the question of why they are what they are, and letting the boys derive them from known facts, step by step, as they easily can, the next question I put to them is, "What use can men make of the Pennines?" This leads at once to the necessity for some rough classification of the chief human industries--say into manufacturing, mining, hunting, fishing, and farming, dividing the latter into agriculture and the rearing of stock. Taking the different classes of industries, get the boys to test the fitness of the Pennines for each. Hunting and fishing are dismissed as of small importance; mining is admitted where there is anything to be mined, though difficulties of transport are noticed; against manufacturing many reasons are brought forward, largely connected again with difficulties of transport, since in the Pennines roads and railways are difficult to make and to maintain, and rivers are useless for traffic; a reference again to the scanty vegetation, and to the poor soil and climate which are its causes, will bring out the unfitness of mountains like the Pennines for agriculture, and also for the breeding of the more delicate domestic animals, cattle and horses. Comparing their habits and wants with those of the hardier sheep, the issue is at last narrowed down to the use of the Pennines as a sheep-rearing district.
A new question follows:--"Why rear sheep?" The ordinary boy will assign greater importance to mutton than to wool; but, while by no means sneering at mutton and its uses, the consideration of the class is directed to the question of wool and its uses. Without going into details, I am sure that it will be evident that a rich and most interesting field of investigation is at once opened up--the origin and growth of the English wool trade, and all that it has meant to English life in the past; and with this, of course, the origin and growth of those great towns which West Riding boys know so well, and which they may so easily have assumed to be things which came into existence accidentally, as it were, and ready-made, much in their present condition. The history of the English woolen industry, from the days when we sent our wool abroad for the Flemings to manufacture, through the gradual inversion of things which has ended in our huge imports of colonial wool, to be manufactured in the West Riding, is a most interesting one, touching on many side questions in which all boys delight--from the old days with the perilous journeys across the sea, to and from the old port of Beverley, placed far inland up the River Hull, to be well out of the way of the pirates--to these modern days, with their huge mills full of fascinating machinery. And a feeling of patriotism, utterly unconnected with khaki, may be aroused by the consideration of the changes in this important woolen trade and manufacture which have been brought about by English industry and enterprise, and of all in our national life that has resulted from those changes.
Having chosen--a most important matter, this--the best sites for our mills and for the towns which will grow up round them, with regard to water supply, coal and iron supply, food supply, wool supply (before the days of importation), and means of communication with the coast, the boys will soon appreciate the natural advantages which led Leeds and the other West Riding towns to become such great woolen centres--the Pennines near at hand to supply them with wool, the Cleveland district with iron, and their own district with coal, while two great ports, Hull and Liverpool, are within easy reach by rail and canal.
The importance of coal and iron in these days of steam and machinery is dwelt upon, and leads up to the consideration of mining in Yorkshire, with engineering work and the great cutlery manufacture of Sheffield--famous in the old days when the forges got their fuel from the great Hallamshire forests around, and famous now in the remotest corners of the world--and after this, one is sure to see the boys examining the blades of their knives; and the name of Sheffield, probably found there, produces a touch of complacent satisfaction which is not only amusing but valuable, for the complacent satisfaction has its origin in a feeling that their work is real, about real things, and true. This may seem to some to be nothing; but anything is valuable which lifts the work out of the region of words into the region of things.
But in the midst of all this industrial enthusiasm, one suggests another great want in the life of large towns--plenty to eat--a near and rich source of food supply; and, here again, Yorkshire has its excellent example in the fertile plain of York. The natural comparison with the Pennines, and the description which the boys will be able to give of its cornfields, gardens, and orchards, will soon show its superior qualifications as a centre of agriculture, horse and cattle breeding, dairy-farming, &c. An equally interesting comparison will be made between the great, busy, ugly manufacturing towns of the West Riding, and the pretty villages and quaint, quiet, little market towns of the flat country, awaking from their sleep once a week to the comparative bustle of market day. Here one may dwell upon the functions of such towns, as middle-men, so to speak, between the farmer and the manufacturer, not, of course, in the dry and learned words of political economy, but merely by considering what the farmer and his wife bring to market, and where what they bring goes to; what they buy, and where what they buy comes from. And, by the way, this can scarcely be done without some passing hint as to the value of our Colonies to us, for the boys will certainly not let the farmer's wife go home without sugar, coffee, cocoa, tea, and even oranges and bananas. And, in return for all the articles of food which the North or East Riding farmer send to Leeds and Sheffield, it will satisfy a child's sense of fairness to see that Leeds and Sheffield send the farmer his clothes, his tools, and much else of manufactured goods; while, if Leeds and the plain of York combine to feed and clothe Hull, Hull must repay them by working hard as their carrier of raw wool and colonial food stuffs inwards, and of manufactured goods outwards.
And Hull must supply them, as must many a familiar holiday town along the Yorkshire coast, with fish. And now the boys are on their beloved coast, at Whitby and Scarborough and Filey, and facts and description are plentiful, and enthusiastic anecdote harder to restrain than ever. And a new life, the life of the deep-sea fisherman out on the Dogger Bank, also comes within our subject; and so on, one industry leading to another, until every part of our county is considered--every part has to face the question "What use are you?" "What do you do for the general good?" And each part is found to have its answer, whether it be Swaledale or Sheffield, Middlesborough or Malton; and I certainly think that every boy ends his work upon the geography of Yorkshire with that pride in his county which it is perhaps, after all, scarcely necessary to use such elaborate means to instil into a Yorkshireman.
(To be continued.)
Proofread by LNL, Mar 2009