hes, between the wheat in the field and
his loaf of bread. The town child has many links if he can use them: the
goods train, the docks, the grocer's, green-grocer's or draper's shop,
foreigners in the street, the vans that come through the silent streets
in the early morning; in big towns, such markets as Covent Garden or
Leadenhall or Smithfield; such a river as the Thames, Humber or
Mersey--from any one of these beginnings he can reach out from his own
small environment to the world. A town child has very confused notions
of what a farm really means to national life, and a country child of
what a big railway station or dock involves. All children need to know
what other parts of their own land look like, and what is produced; they
ought to trace the products within reach to their origin, and this will
involve descriptions of such things as fisheries at Hull or Aberdeen,
the coal mines of Wales or Lanarkshire, pottery districts of Stafford,
woollen and cotton factories of Yorkshire and Lancashire, mills driven
by steam, wind and water, lighthouses, the sheep-rearing districts of
Cumberland and Midlothian, the flax-growing of northern Ireland, and
much else, and the means of transit and communication between all these.
The children will gradually realise that many of the things they are
familiar with, such as tea, oranges, silk and sugar, have not been
accounted for, and this will take them to the lives of people in other
countries, the means of getting there, the time taken and mode of
travelling. They will also come to see that we do not produce enough of
the things that are possible to grow, such as wheat, apples, wool and
many other common necessaries, and that we can spare much that is
manufactured to countries that do not make them, such as boots, clothes,
china and cutlery. There will come a time when the need for a map is
apparent: that is the time to branch off from the main theme and make
one; it will have to be of the very immediate surroundings first, but it
is not difficult to make the leap soon to countries beyond. Previous to
the need for it, map-making is useless.

This working outwards from actual experiences, from the home country to
the foreign, from actual contact with real things to things of
travellers' tales, is the only way to bring geography to the very door
of the school, to make it part of the actual life.

The beginning of history, as of geography, lies in the child's
foundations of experie