A Lesson in Geography: From Chicago to the Atlantic

Abstract

The relative merits of teaching geography from books alone or from, the earth itself is no, longer a debatable question in any body of intelligent teachers. "Things before words" has become axiomatic. But in education we are prone to, accept a principle in theory long before we put it into practice. If any teacher cares to test the principle for himself, let him take a class into the field for several weeks of study. The teacher as well as the pupil will meet with many surprises. The teacher will detect even his best students gazing with unintelligent eyes upon a rich and interesting landscape, while the student will find that many subjects with which he had an intimate friendship in textbooks are indifferent strangers when met in nature. Training in the ability to image from another's expression, to think through another's thoughts, to reason from premises established by someone else, does not develop initiative nor give power in action. It does not insure that a. student can recognize even the things which he has described with satisfaction to the instructor, nor give him power to, discover and organize a problem in the field-forming his own working hypotheses, discovering relevant data,. But after a few weeks in the field the students seize upon a problem and follow it up day after day with increasing interest and enjoyment. In reply to the question, "What of that called geography do the students learn on a field trip of a month or six weeks?" I submit the following superficial description of the region visited and the work done by a, class of college students, School of Education, University of Chicago, during the second term of the last summer quarter. The class was composed of fourteen teachers. Of the num-458