and heating, making implements for war and for hunting, and making of shelters, that prehistoric man has a real contribution to give:  but for the beginnings of social life, for realisation of such imperishable virtues as courage, patriotism and self-sacrifice, children must go to the lives of real people and gradually acquire the idea that certain things are, so to speak, from “everlasting to everlasting,” while others change with changing and growing circumstances.

The prehistoric history should be largely concerned with doing and experimenting, with making weapons, or firing clay, or weaving rushes, or with visits to such museums as Horniman’s at Forest Hill.  The early social history may well take the form best suited to the child, and not appeal merely to surface interest.  And the spirit in which the lives of other people are presented to children must not be the narrow, prejudiced, insular one, so long associated with the people of Great Britain, which calls other customs, dress, modes of:  living, “funny” or “absurd” or “extraordinary,” but rather the scientific spirit that interprets life according to its conditions and so builds up one of its greatest laws, the law of environment.

The geography syllabus, even more than the history one, depends for its beginnings at least on the surroundings of the school—­out of the mass of possible materials a very rich and comprehensive syllabus can be made, beginning with any one of the central points already suggested.  Above all there should be plenty of pictures, not as amplification, but as material, by means of which a child may interpret more fully; a picture should be of the nature of a problem or of a map—­and picture reading should be in the junior school what map reading is in the upper school.

In both history and geography the method is partly that of discovery; especially is this the case in that part of history which deals with primitive industries, and in almost the whole of the geography of this period.  The teacher is the guide or leader in discovery, not the story-teller merely, though this may be part of his function.

The following is a small part of a syllabus to show how geography and history material may grow naturally out of the children’s experiences.  It is meant in this case for children in a London suburb, with no particular characteristics:—­

GEOGRAPHY

It grows out of the shops of the neighbourhood and the adjoining railway system.

  Home-produced Goods—­

  A. The green-grocer’s shop. 
      Tracing of fruit to its own home source, or to a foreign country. 
      Home-grown fruit.  The fruit farm, garden, orchard, and wood. 
      The packing and sending of fruit.—­Railway lines. 
      Covent Garden; the docks; fruit stalls; jam factories.