Uncle Roberts Geography | Page 2

agriculture and manufactures of the district.
This indicates a career of usefulness for the ambitious teacher of a rural school. There is a large field for the discipline of the directive power open even for the humblest of teachers in the land.
These books of Colonel Parker, if read by the school children, and especially by the elder youth who have left school, will suggest a great variety of ways in which real mental growth and increase of practical power may be obtained. The ideal of education in the United States is that the child in school shall be furnished with a knowledge of the printed page and rendered able to get out of books the experience of his fellow-men, and at the same time be taught how to verify and extend his book knowledge by investigations on his environment. This having been achieved by the school, nothing except his indolence, or, to give it a better name, want of enterprise, prevents the individual citizen from growing intellectually and practically throughout his whole life.
W. T. HARRIS.
WASHINGTON, D.C., August 12, 1897.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Fortunate are the children whose early years are spent in the country in close contact with the boundless riches which Nature bestows.
Amid these environments instinct and spontaneity do a marvelous work in the growing minds of children, arousing and sustaining varied and various interests, enhancing mental activities, and furnishing an educative outlet for lively energies.
Most fortunate are they to whom, at the moment when the unconscious teachings of Nature need to be supplemented by thoughtful suggestion, wise leadings, and judicious instruction, there comes one with a deep and loving sympathy with child life, an active interest in all that interests them, and a profound respect for all that children do well and for all that they know.
Such an one is Uncle Robert. He comes to the children at just the right moment. He directs the sweet strong streams of their lives onward into a channel of earnest inquiry and exalted labor, which is ever broadening and deepening.
Uncle Robert's aim in education is to fill each day with acts which make home better, the community better, mankind better; to take from God's bounteous and boundless store of truth and convert it into human life by using it. His method is simple and direct, founded upon the firm rock, Common Sense. It may be briefly stated as follows:
1. A strong belief in the sacredness of work--that work which inspires thought, strengthens the body as well as the mind, and develops the feeling of usefulness.
2. The images the children have acquired and the inferences they have made are used as stepping stones to higher and broader views.
3. So far as it is possible, each child is to discover facts for himself and make original inferences.
4. He understands the limits of children's power to observe and the demand on their part for glimpses into, to them, the great unknown. So he tells them stories of those things which lie beyond their horizon, in order to excite their wonder, intensify their love for the objects that surround them, and make them more careful observers. In this way a hunger and thirst for books is created.
5. He watches carefully the interests of each child, adapting his teachings to the differences in age and personality.
6. Some questions are left unanswered in order to stimulate that healthy curiosity which can be satisfied only by persistent study--the study that begets courage and confidence.
7. He makes farm work and farm life full of intensely interesting problems, ever keeping in mind that the things of which the common environments of common lives are made up are as well worthy of study as are those which lie beyond.
Uncle Robert's enthusiasm has for its prime impulse a boundless faith in human progress, brought about by a knowledge of childhood and its possibilities.
He believes that every normal child, under wise and loving guidance, may become useful to his fellows, moral in character, strong in intellect, with a body which is an efficient instrument of the soul; in other words, truly educated.
Those who read Uncle Robert's Visit should read through the eyes of Susie, Donald, and Frank. The reading, so far as possible, should be accompanied by personal observation, investigation, and experiment.
FRANCIS W. PARKER.
CHICAGO NORMAL SCHOOL, August 31, 1897.

CONTENTS.
I. UNCLE ROBERT'S COMING
II. FRANK DRAWS A MAP OF THE FARM
III. THE NEW THERMOMETER
IV. WITH THE ANIMALS
V. IN THE FLOWER GARDEN
VI. SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW
VII. THE BAROMETER
VIII. A WALK IN THE WOODS
IX. THE BIRDS AND THE FLOWERS
X. THE THUNDERSHOWER
XI. THE VILLAGE
XII. A DAY ON THE RIVER
XIII. A RAINY DAY
XIV. THE WALK AFTER THE RAIN
XV. THE BIG BOOK

TOPICAL ANALYSIS OF UNCLE ROBERT'S VISIT.
NOTE.--The direct study of earth, air, and water involves the study of plant, animal, and human life. Popular opinion has given the name of geography to these correlated subjects.

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