The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-02
SCHOOL TEACHING ISN'T
 WHAT IT USED TO BE

board. Even the pump was shown, with water triclxling from the spout into the pail under the leverage exterted at the handle by the figure of a boy.
 All these things inside the school house yard had place at the extreme corner of a quarter section of farm land Following the drawings of the school house and it's enyirons, the lesson involved outlines of this quarter section of farm fencing, showing in proportion the outline of the school house fence and of the school house, with the name of the owner of that particular quarter section farm print ed across the square. The geography idea was beginning to materialize.
 Work Increases In Scope.
 Paper and pencils about this time were distributed to the most proficient drafts men, and from the pupils first location of his own desk inside the school house sud- denly he had a map of that particular sec- ton of farming country, with road bound- aries indicated on the margins, north. east, south and west. with the names of the farm owners printed in.
 Together with all this went the acreage in the quarter section and of the whole section, the courses of the small draws and ravnes, and the location of trees, farm houses. and barns-anything and ev- erything that the keenness of observa- tion in the pupil prompted.
 Gradually the map enlarged. Finally, when the four sections of $40 acres each which "cornered" at the school house were done, explanations were made show ing that 36 of these constituted the town ship, and as far as possible each pupil added these sections to the completion of the geographical portion of the county map. When the map of the county was complete most of the creeks and rivers were outlined from memory, with the towns and villages placed more or less accurately as the knowledge of the pupil made possible. Then the teacher scrutin- ized the efforts of the individuals In ex- animation and made corrections.
 But when the state had been mapped in like manner the teacher was fronting a problem. Geography lessons must go on as they had begun, progressively. and the pencils and the increasingly large sheets of paper were about the limit of tax upon lis slender salary. What should he do?
 That way which inevitably opens to the will came after Q little thought. The railroads of the country were issuing maps with red and blue and pink and green designations of the states, each of them showing it's particular line taking the shortest possible cut from terminal to terminal. The teacher began to write for railroad maps. He wrote under his own name and under those of his pupils, and he wrote to widely divergingl points of distribution for these folder maps.
 Map Making Has Difficulties.
 Then the map making of the country began, using scissors and paste and piec- ing together the constituent common- wealths into United States whole The best of them were not particularly &C., curate as a map of the country owing to the disposition of the railroads to fore shorten or lengthen or widen state maps in order to bring the short line effect into each one.
 But it was not an insuperable difficulty. If certain map were unusually out of kelter it made opportunity for the teacher u ln interested attentions to just what was the matter with it. Pupils themselves often made corrections in the process of cutting and pasting State capitals were learned from the map. the manufacturing cities pointed out, the topography of the country discussed and from chance vol ume of the census reports population fig- ures were added
 That was a class in geography when l was done with it at the end of that four months term,'' said the professor, gazing meditativeiy into the smoke of his cigar. "SAyeral years ago I went back into that