B. A grocer’s or corn-chandler’s shop. 
      Flour and oatmeal traced to their sources. 
      The farm.  A wheat and grain farm at different seasons.  A dairy farm
          and a sheep farm. 
      A mill and its processes. 
      Woollen factories. 
      A dairy.  Making of butter and cheese
      Distribution of these goods.

  C. A china shop, leading to the pottery district and making of pottery.

  Foreign Goods—­

  Furs—­Red Indians and Canada. 
  Dates—­The Arabs and the Sahara. 
  Cotton—­The Negroes and equatorial regions. 
  Cocoa—­The West Indies. 
  The transit of these, their arrival and distribution.

[The need for a map will come early in the first part of the course, and the need for a globe in the second.]

HISTORY

This grows naturally out of the geography syllabus and might be taken side by side or afterwards.

  The development of industries. 
  The growth of spinning and weaving from the simplest processes, bringing
      in the distaff, spinning-wheel, and loom. 
  The making of garments from the joining together of furs. 
  The growth of pottery and the development of cooking. 
  The growth of roads and means of transit.

[This will involve a good deal of experimental and constructive handwork.]

CHAPTER XXVI

EXPERIENCES RECORDED AND PASSED ON

Reading and writing are held to have lifted man above the brute; they are the means by which we can discover and record human experience and progress, and as such their value is incalculable.  But in themselves they are artificial conventions, symbols invented for the convenience of mankind, and to acquire them we need exercise no great mental power.  A good eye and ear memory, and a certain superficial quickness to recognise and apply previous knowledge, is all that is needed for reading and spelling; while for writing, the development of a specialised muscular skill is all that is necessary.  In themselves they do not as a rule hold any great interest for a child:  sometimes they have the same puzzle interest as a long addition sum, and to children of a certain type, mechanical work such as writing gives relief; one of the most docile and uninteresting of little boys said that writing was his favourite subject, and it was easy to understand:  he did not want to be stirred out of his commonplaceness; unconsciously he had assimilated the atmosphere and adopted the standards of his surroundings, which were monotonous and commonplace in the extreme, and so he desired no more adventurous method of expression than the process of writing, which he could do well.  Imitation is often a strong incentive to reading, it is part of the craving for grown-upness to many children; they desire to do what their brothers and sisters can do.