PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 215

great value in the effort to solve this difficult problem. Workingconditions are not of the best in the academy where this experi-ment is being made, and some improvements have been withheldbecause the academy is to be discontinued at the close of the pres-ent academic year. The Legislature of the state will be asked toestablish a model high school as a part of the School of Education,using the present academy as a basis.

THE PHYSICAL VERSUS THE HUMAN SIDE OF PHYSI-OGRAPHY.1

(ABSTRACT.)BY GRACE ELLIS,

Grand Rapids, Mich.

The purpose of physiography is first of all to educate thepupil, just the same as any other subject. Physiography is per-haps an uncommonly good subject for a pupil to learn to thinkstraight through a problem, and to talk to the point. While heis doing this he may well learn proper methods of study; how tostudy, how to work; how to reason from one thing to another;to get his data first, and get all the available data on the subject,and from them to form his conclusions; and not to make con-clusions too big for his data. It makes for intellectual honestyto reason straight.

If you can at the same time get students to see the partialnessof many conclusions, they reach a point where they do not neces-sarily want a yes or no; but may work for the truth, for the sakeof what may be done with it.

There are no dull moments in a subject which may at any timeturn up a fact which affects you even remotely. The results ofthe cutting of valleys in strata of horizontal rock is a very differ-ent thing when the theory of the book is to be applied to yourown river, in your own home, and the power it develops and theflour mills it can run. Latitude and day length are vital when itis they which determine whether or no the wheat to supplythese mills can be raised in your vincity.When the fundamental facts of any section of the subject

have been learned, then they should be applied to the place thechild knows most about, if such application is possible, and theirbearing on human life made evident.

^ead before the ^arth Science Section C. A. S. and M. T., Cleveland, 1910, meeting.

216 SCHOOL SCIENCE- AND MATHEMATICS

The geographic influences in the development of the child’shome; the position of a trading post on an old Indian portage;the subsequent development of trade and the growth of the city�all this is of absorbing interest to the child. From the geo-graphic influences in the development of his own home he worksout to the broader influences of geography on history.Water gaps open a way to discuss the strategic importance of

the Blue Ridge gaps and the Shenandoah Valley, and it is nothard to show a boy why the "Shenandoah Valley was a pistolpointed from the Confederacy toward Washington.7’One might illustrate at any length, but the real meat of the

matter is, it seems to me, the possession of the fundamental facts;the development of power to apply them, and an unclouded intel-lectual honesty.DISCUSSION BY GEO. D. HUBBARD^ Oberlin College, Oberlin, 0.The key to geography is the relation of the life element to the

environment, the organic to the inorganic. This puts the em-

phasis on the life and on the. human element. The,method of ap-proach is through the human interest.The question for us here then is how can high school geography

best sustain this point of view and at the same time make use ofthe pupil’s elementary training.

In the grades the theme has been political geography and theunit, the nation or state. Physical geography has been introducedby description. When our pupil is through the high school wewant him to have a sympathetic and informing knowledge of theregions of the world, which will help him to appreciate nationaland race differences, to understand something of the reasons fordifferences in production, and diversity of industrial developmentand the consequent necessity for commercial enterprise. We wanthim not only to grasp the fact of our interdependence but also tosee the reasons for it and’ respect them. In this the human ele-ment is decidedly the most important.A high school course then which gets together and organizes

what physical geography the pupil has had, and adds enough tomake him appreciate topographic and climatic diversity and thedistribution of types of features, and gives him the fundamentalsof the reasons for both diversity and distribution, and at the sametime (in the same lesson day by day) teaches him the uses of thediverse features of land, water, and air, their influence on life ingeneral and on man and nations in particular, is the course whichmay best meet his needs.