nchise and
the use of the ballot; the work of the postal system; the making and
enforcing of laws,--these and similar topics suggest what the child
should come to know from the study of civics. The great problem here is
to influence conduct in the direction of upright citizenship, and to
give such a knowledge of the machinery, especially of local government,
as will lead to efficient participation in its activities.

_Geography and nature study._ The rural school has a great advantage
over the city school in the teaching of geography and nature study. For
the country child is closer to the earth and its products than the city
child. The broad expanse of nature is always before him; life in its
multiple forms constantly appeals to his eye and ear. He watches the
seeds planted, and sees the crops cultivated and harvested. He has a
very concrete sense of the earth as the home of man, and possesses a
basis of practical knowledge for understanding the resources and
products of his own and other countries.

Geography should, therefore, be one of the most vital and useful
branches in the rural school. It is to begin wherever the life of the
child touches nature in his immediate environment, and proceed from this
on out to other parts of his home land, and finally to all lands.

But the geography taught must not be of the old catechism type, which
resulted in children committing to memory the definitions of
geographical terms instead of studying the real objects ready at hand.
It must not concern itself with the pupil's learning the names and
locations of dozens of places and geographical forms of no particular
importance, instead of coming into immediate touch with natural
environment and with the earth in the larger sense as it bears upon his
own life. The author has expressed this idea in another place as
follows:--

"The content of geography is, therefore, synonymous with the content of
the experience of the child as related to his own interests and
activities, in so far as they grow out of the earth as his home. Towns
and cities begin with the ones nearest at hand. The concept of rivers
has its rise in the one that flows past the child's home. Valleys,
mountains, capes, and bays are but modifications of those that lie
within the circle of personal experience. Generalizations must come to
be made, but they must rest upon concrete and particular instances if
they are to constitute a reality to the learner.

"What kind