The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume IX, No. 4 [‎220v] (111/172)

428 THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY IN RELATION TO HISTORY.
The fact is that all practical teachers are, and rightly so, in great fear of fads
and faddists, but it is obviously absurd to carry this conservative and precautions
attitude too far. There can be little doubt that, without any radical change, and
with a slight addition to the time at present spent on history alone, the study of
history and geography in connection with each other would, in the hands of capable
teachers, produce a result of almost tenfold value to education. To obtain this, the
study of the physical geography of a country must precede and be coextensive
with the study of its history.
I think it will be generally admitted that the ideal of history teaching in Tuglish
schools should be to teach the student to reverence the great deeds of his
ancestors, to understand his responsibilities as a citizen of a great empire, and, above
ail, to appreciate the causes which have contributed to the making of England and
Greater Britain. As taught at present, even by the most able teachers, there is
what one may call a lack of perspective in the teaching of English history, owing
to the neglect of physical geography. It is true that good historians and teachers
of history have all, consciously or unconsciously, been geographers. It is perhaps
sufficient to allude here to Green’s admirable geographical work, especially on the
‘ Influence of the Forests in checking Invasions,’ and they have themselves appre
ciated the importance of physical factors; but they are apt to forget that the
student has not done so, and they consequently relegate what I may call the
physical side of history to special text-books or special lessons. There is, therefore,
this great difficulty to start with, in trying to obtain an adequate recognition of
the place of geography in the teaching of history, that there are no convenient
text-books to which the teacher of, for example, English history can refer for
information as to the geographical side of his work. He can, of course, obtain this
information from geographical text-books, but unless he deliberately takes this
trouble—which, unfortunately, seems to most teachers to lead them to work quite
outside their province—and can also induce his pupils to study geography, he will
of necessity almost entirely neglect the geographical side. Unless the teaching
and reading are systematic, they can be of little use.
The few isolated allusions to the physical geography of a country made by
history-teachers, or scattered through text-books, are, as a rule, of little practical
value, because the student has not sufficient knowledge of the subject to understand
their importance. It would be quite as unreasonable to expect any one to have a
clear idea of the relative position of peaks in a mountain range of which he has
only caught fleeting glimpses through the mist.
It may, perhaps, be objected that historical atlases—-and what could be more
geographical than an atlas ?—are always used by all good teachers in the teaching
of history. But if you examine what are usually called historical geographies and
historical atlases, you will find that they are almost entirely topographical; that
is to say, they deal with the distribution of names and the changes of political
boundaries. Some, such as ‘ Gardiner’s Student’s Atlas of English History,’ are
of immense value for the teaching of history, and I can imagine nothing more
instructive than to compare the maps of England of about 1400 with those of the
present day, and observe how few of the modern manufacturing towns of Lanca
shire were even marked at the earlier period. But teachers are apt to forget that
a topographical map is merely a diagrammatic method of showing statistics
referring to the relative positions of names.
It is true that a physical map is also a diagrammatic method of showing the
distribution of rivers, mountains, etc., and that it can be used equally badly, but
tortunately hardly any student attempts to learn a physical map by heart. To
know where places are and their distance apart has a distinct value in the