1 May 2008
Hugh Fitzgerald

A posting, some time ago, at another website, but a propos:

"... if I were Czar of Education, and master of all I surveyed, in the lower grades I would require much greater attention to the following Lost Subjects: Geography. Public Speaking. And Penmanship.

And under Geography I'd take as a model, and merely update the names, of all those geography textbooks -- start with Jedidiah Morse in the early 19th century -- where, in simple no-nonsense form, a great deal is asked of students, even at a young age. They can do it. They aren't asked. Little is asked of them, and they are bored or depressed as a result. Fill their minds with things so that later on the smart ones will have something to be smart about, and the ones in the middle something to console themselves later on, and the dumb ones at least will be slightly less susceptible of being completely misled. In so many subjects, the 19th century textbooks are simpler, more intelligent, more demanding and yet more appealing, than anything produced by committees and layers of careful editors worried about sensibilities of everyone, from students to parents to schoolboards.

And Public Speaking is clear: how excruciating it is to listen to the young today. The young starlets or even actresses (compare them to standard Hollywood English of, say, 1934), or listen to how some Poet who Belives in the Saving Power of Poetry reads his or someone else's verse on NPR, in that monotononous, no expression-because-that-would-smack-of-silly-ladies-in-Browning-Societies voices, or the valley-girl affect, or Miss Porter's Lockjaw, or any of the other unpleasantnesses one's inoffensive ears have to endure. Teach them how to speak, by memorizing bits of poetry and prose, and practicing, and saying it alopud to an audience. This has to be taught. It can be taught. It was right up until, or possibly even after, World War II. Such a subject has to be taught. Most things do. If you can't get it by mimicking, or being taught by, your parents, then you will have to get it in school. Not enough time, I suppose, what with Sex & Relationships, Civics, Drivers Ed, and so on, but time in the busy school day will just have to be made. How about cutting back on Diversity Training or anything that smacks of social engineering?

As for Penmanship....

Posted by: Hugh at February 8, 2007 2:32 PM

1 May 2008
Mary Jackson

An excellent article.

I remember being very bored in geography lessons, and yet many of the topics taught would interest me now. I wonder if geography, like spinach, is something one appreciates more as one gets older.

Geography lessons were not helped by the fact that the teachers were invariably jolly-hockey-sticks and bossy.

5 May 2008
Anne Wingate

So true, so true, so true. My stepson was state geography bee champion when he was in the eighth grade; I'm sure his interest was stimulated by the maps all over the house. He and his father can talk for hours about mapes, and my husband and I often discuss geography (along with theology, political science, archaeology, and you name it).

An event without a place attached never feels real.

Geography is taught atrociously in the public school system. Of course so is everything else.

5 May 2008
HS
As a geography buff who has been to over a dozen countries, studied three foreign languages and loves to collect maps, I heartily agree with this article.  Indifference to foreign languages and terrain comes not only from low cognition, but an attitude and poor moral stance that I have always found incomprehensible.  Our society is impossibly tangled when it comes to educated intellectual capabilities, whether grammar, orthography or distant lands.  I don't know how it got this way ....