Uncle Roberts Geography

Uncle Robert's Geography

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Robert's
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Title: Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3)
Author: Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6441] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 14,
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Language: English
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ROBERT'S GEOGRAPHY ***

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UNCLE ROBERT'S VISIT
BY FRANCIS W. PARKER AND NELLIE LATHROP HELM

PREFACE BY THE EDITOR OF THE HOME-READING BOOKS.
The publishers take pleasure in offering to the public, in their
Home-Reading Series, some books relating to the farm and other
aspects of country life as the center of interest, written by Colonel
Francis W. Parker, the President of the famous Cook County Normal
School, in Chicago. For many years the teachers of the common
schools of the country have been benefited by the inventions of Colonel
Parker in the way of methods of teaching in the schoolroom. His
enthusiasm has led him to consider the best means of arousing the
interest of the child and of promoting his self-activity for reasonable
purposes.
The Pestalozzian movement in the history of education is justly famed
for its effort to connect in a proper manner the daily experience of the
child with the school course of study. The branches of learning taught
to the child by the schoolmaster are necessarily dry and juiceless if they
are not thus brought into relation with the child's world of experience.

Almost all of the school reforms that have been proposed in the past
one hundred years have moved in this line. The effort to seize upon the
child's interest and make it the agency for progress has formed the
essential feature in each. In this reform movement Colonel Parker has
made himself one of the chief influences.
The rural school has held a low rank among educational institutions on
account of the inferior methods of instruction which have prevailed by
reason of the fact that the children were too few and their qualifications
too various to permit the forming of classes. Children in various
degrees of advancement from ABC's to higher arithmetic, and yet
numbering only ten, twenty, or thirty in all, are enrolled under one
teacher. Most branches of study could muster only one or two pupils in
each class: Five to ten minutes a day is all that can be allowed in such
cases for a recitation. No thoroughness of instruction on the part of the
teacher is possible, nor is there much improvement to be expected in
the method of instruction where classes can not be formed. The
benefactor of the country school therefore looks to other devices than
class instruction, and the author of this book has shown in what ways
the teacher of one of these small schools may extend his influence into
the families of his district, encourage home study initiate practical
experiments.
It is expected that the teacher, besides his daily register in which he
records the names and attendance of his own pupils, will keep a list of
the youth of the district who have been in attendance on the school but
have left to take up the work of the farm, and that he will endeavor by
proper means to persuade them to enter upon well-planned courses of
reading. Occasional meetings in the evening at central places, or on
some afternoons of the week at the schoolhouse itself, will furnish
occasions for the discussion of the contents of the books that have been
read, and experiments will be suggested in the way of verifying the
theories advanced in them.
Not only can the mind of the country youth be broadened and enlarged
in the direction