We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
First Steps in Study of Geography 23
engaged in fishing, or of the Eskimo children in the modern schools that our Government has established in Alaska.
If a truthful and characteristic motion picture film were available, it would teach more in a few minutes than any other illustrative material, and would serve as the basis for numerous discussions. It might suggest the construction of a model of an Eskimo home, or a miniature Eskimo boat, or the making of clothing like that of an Eskimo. If a group of children chose to take up the construction of a miniature Eskimo village, preparing it somewhat as the museum curators would prepare a habitat group, that work would call for careful study, for reading, and perhaps for the help of parents. The whole exercise would be educative, and probably as valuable for those at home as for those going to school. In the end, this group of children might succeed in preparing an exhibit of more than temporary value, at least one that could be loaned to other rooms in the school, or to other schools, so that it would serve a useful purpose beyond that of training those engaged in its construction.
Geography must be made vivid. It should be made dramatic. It would be appropriate for the children, while studying the homes of people in the Far North, to enact before another room in the school some scene illustrating the life of the people they have been studying.
Turn next to the life in a hot desert region. Make an imaginary journey to the Sahara. The route should be shown on a globe and on a flat map ; the child should follow that route in imagination and describe what he sees. The outfitting of a caravan at some trading post on the margin of the desert should be pictured. Nothing can do this so well as a motion picture film. The party then travels across the desert, through great sand dune areas, by bare rocky mountains, meets a group of Arab traders on the way, and in time approaches an oasis. The oasis, with its beautiful palm trees, presents an entirely new habitat for study. Lantern slides, pictures, products from that country, or a visit to a museum will help to build up a vivid picture of this home in the mind of the child. This visit should be continued throughout a year, so that the life of the people at various seasons may be understood.
Again the motion picture film would be an ideal way to illustrate this life. The people should be seen at work. Their activities are the things in which we are interested. Their everyday costumes and their dress on special occasions should be depicted.
The study of an oasis might arouse in another group of children the desire to construct a model of an oasis in the Sahara, to costume miniature forms that represent the people, and perhaps to construct a miniature caravan. That work would call for genuine research from all the sources available at school and at home. The little child is a natural research student and that investigative spirit must be kept alive; it should be cultivated, guided and trained so that it may become an asset throughout his life.
Visit next a home in a tropical forest where there is luxuriant vegetation. This may lead to a journey up the Amazon. Stop at. the mouth of the river and visit the city of Belem (Para) which is almost at the equator, and watch