Norwich bulletin., 1919-08-12
SCHOOLS TEACHING GEOGRAPHY
 BY SIGHTSEEING METHOD

Announcement of a new department of the work of the National Geo. graphic society, whereby it's immense reservoir Of geographic photographs will became available to public schools is made in a bulletin issued from it's Washington headquarters.
 If 90 United States senators were keenly concerned about exact details of the peace treaty; some 100000 school teachers who teach geography are just as anxious to see the new the signing. of that epochal docu ment," the bulletin says.
 'sBut why worry about maps?
 'Maps are necessary, but before they can glow with fire and meaning the things that grow and live and move inside the boundaries they indicate must be impressed upon a child's mind.
 If the schools had to go without maps for a year, and had pictures in stead. perhaps the children would be the gathers. Anyway maps or no maps, The Society has arranged to take 20.e0o, GOO America school cilii- dren-enoush to fill four magnificent -on a sight seeing picture tour of the world.
 "A picture gives the inkling of what volcano is like, and avoids such amusing. and yet pathetic. answers to examinations as sVesuyius is a noun tain which continually enits saliva, or 'boulevards are churches in Paris -thronged with gayly dressed people or E -an isthmus is bottle with a mar row neck Recent work in geography has made tremendous strides in this re- spect. Adults will remember the defi- nitions they had to learn, and some of us were kept in sunny afternoons be- cause we could not make them stick in our minds. For example, 'an is- land is body of land completely surrounded by water. or ponds and lakes are bodies of water that occupy. Impressions in the land.' Whatever depressions in the land might be it was beyond us to fathou1, but woe to us if we could not tell that lakes occupied them.
 "As we read over and over the pages of our books. few of us ever got the picture of the Rocky Noun tains with their lofty ranges, the wonders of the Yellowstone, the spec tacle Of Niagara Falls pouring out it's rainbow spray.
 If students of one of our best known universities would write, as they did in a test recently, that Japan is a country of T50 square miles. and Alas ka is southwest of the North Pole and knew not the country of Buenos Aires. the largest city of the southern Hemisphere; what hope is there of teaching grade pupils anything of their new world neighbors, the Czechs, the Poles. or the Jugo Slavs?
 What indeed. but pictures of the people. the trees. the plants and the animals of those places? The in terest of boys and girls caner in the world about them. They are full of curiosity about those punches of yell low and green bananas at the corner grocery. The huckster seems a far cry from the map of Central America and study Of the surface, climate population. products and capital cities listed in the geogra phies; yet pictures make the magic connection. With them the children go on a journey to Costa Rica. visit the banana planta- tions. see how the fruit grows, and meet the black boys and men who gather the luscious food.
 Washington. D. C.. is not hazy abstraction where something called