London suburb, with no
particular characteristics:--

GEOGRAPHY

It grows out of the shops of the neighbourhood and the adjoining railway
system.

_Home-produced Goods_--

A. The green-grocer's shop.
Tracing of fruit to its own home source, or to a foreign country.
Home-grown fruit. The fruit farm, garden, orchard, and wood.
The packing and sending of fruit.--Railway lines.
Covent Garden; the docks; fruit stalls; jam factories.

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: somet