The last two years of the common
school may be spent upon a large, complete geography; which, with
larger, fuller maps and more names, gives also a more detailed account
of cities, products, climate, political divisions, and commerce.
Finally, physical geography is permitted to spread over much the same
ground from a natural-science standpoint, giving many additional and
interesting facts and laws concerning zones, volcanoes, ocean-beds and
currents, atmospheric phenomena, geologic history, etc. The same
earth, the same lands and oceans, furnish the outline in each case, and
we travel over the same ground three or four times successively, each
time adding new facts to the original nucleus. There is an old proverb
that "repetition is the mother of studies," and here we have a
systematic plan for repetition, extending through the school course,
with the advantage of new and interesting facts to add to the grist
each time it is sent through the mill. It is an attractive plan at
first sight, but if we appeal to experience, are we not reminded rather
that it was dull repetition of names, boundaries, map questions,
location of places, etc., and after all not much detailed knowledge was
gained even in the higher grades? Again, is it not contrary to reason
to begin with definitions and general notions in the lower grades and
end up with the interesting and concrete in the higher?
In language lessons and grammar it has been customary to learn the
kinds of sentence and the parts of speech in a simple form in the third
and fourth grades and in each succeeding year to review these topics,
gradually enlarging and expanding the definitions, inflections, and
constructions into a fuller etymology and syntax.
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