What the Schools Teach and Might Teach - John Franklin Bobbitt

GEOGRAPHY

Geography in Cleveland is given the customary amount of time, though it is
distributed over the grades in a somewhat unusual way. It is exceptionally heavy
in the intermediate grades and correspondingly light in the grammar grades. As
geography, like all other subjects, is more and more humanized and socialized in
its reference, much more time will be called for in the last two grammar grades.

    TABLE   9.—-TIME    GIVEN   TO  GEOGRAPHY

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                                                |   Hours   per year    |   Per cent    of  grade   time|

                Grade   |———————————————————————-

                                                |   Cleveland   |   50  cities| Cleveland   |   50  cities  |

    —————————————————————————————-

                    1    |   0   |   16  |  0.0 |   1.8 |

                    2    |   0   |   7   |  0.0 |   0.8 |

                    3    |   28  |   50  |  3.2 |   5.4 |

                    4    |   101     |   83  |  11.4    |   8.5 |

                    5    |   125     |   102     |  14.3    |   11.2    |

                    6    |   125     |   107     |  14.3    |   11.0    |

                    7    |   57  |   98  |  6.4 |   9.9 |

                    8    |   57  |   76  |  6.4 |   7.6 |

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            Total   |    493     |   539     |  7.2 |   7.1 |

    —————————————————————————————-

As laid out in the manual now superseded, and as observed in the regular
classrooms, the work has been forbiddingly formal. In the main it has consisted
of the teacher assigning to the pupils a certain number of paragraphs or pages in
the textbook as the next lesson, and then questioning them next day to ascertain