This ignorance extends to our
statesmen, as we know by the painful experience of some of our
treaties, which can only have been drawn up by men grossly ignorant of
the parts of the world about which they were supposed to be
negotiating. I quite admit that geography is almost ignored in our
schools, and yet no branch of knowledge can be made so attractive to
the young, and, taught in conjunction with history, as it should be,
none is of higher educational value. At the request of two clerical
friends, I gave some geography lessons last year to the little boys in
their schools. My methods were admittedly illegitimate. In the course
of the last fifteen years I have sent hundreds of coloured
picture-postcards of places all over the world, in Asia, Africa,
Europe and America, to a small great-nephew of mine, now of an age
when such things no longer appeal to him. Armed with my big bundle of
postcards, and with another parcel as well, I tackled my small pupils.
I never spoke of them of a place without showing them a set of views
of it, for I have a theory that the young remember more by the eye
than by the ear. In this way a place-name conveyed to them a definite
idea, for they had seen half-a-dozen somewhat garishly coloured
presentments of it.
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