Our Geographical Ignorance MARTHA WILSON, B.SC., (NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY), T A:WCHE age of geographical exploration will never end until further discovery is made "of America by by England, and of England by America," said Mr. Baldwin in a recent address before an Anglo-American gathering in London. This statement should not be confined to the Island of Britain and her prosperous offspring, but should include all America and all Europe, whose people never seem to thoroughly understand each other. The differences existing between them may be attributed to wrong geographical conceptions and an inability of both to think in the terms of the other. It is ignorance of physical United States (commonly alluded to as "America") which makes Europeans misjudge her. Little do they realize that she is a country capable of holding within her borders the combined area of inhabitable Europe, or that the problems necessarily arising from such a great physical body are as numerous as those of Europe might be, were she, instead of twenty-seven countries, a United States with but a single government. Could England inflate her island sixty times its normal size, she would then be as large as the United States. Her educational, political and economic problems would increasingly develop, and she would be possessed of a country as broad as the Atlantic to travel over, which takes just as long and is just as expensive as to sail from New York to Liverpool. Were this the case she would doubtless become less skeptical of the number of American universities (over 600). It may be true that the generosity of citizens has created an oversupply, but that number, if applied to the same area occupied by Europe, would be less proportionate to the four hundred million people thereon than the ten English universities, located in an area not equal to the State of Illinois, are to their British subjects. The scale of criticism weighs none too lightly on the other side. It is only natural that Americans should look at Europe through their political eye-pieces, which reflect as many opinions as there are countries. They unconsciously eliminate the fact that she is a single geographical unit, made so by her natural barriers—the Sahara, the Caucasus, the ice-lands of the north, and the Atlantic Ocean. Because of these barriers she lived within herself for a thousand years prior to the time of Columbus, and evolved into a race, which, in spite of dreadful family quarrels, is as deeply mingled in history and tradition as in blood. This single blood is similar to that which America might develop were her ocean barriers to hold her secure from invasion for the same duration of time. Many of these erroneous ideas find their source in the hard and fast methods of map projection, which often mislead the student by indicating with severe border lines the end of national influence. France does not perish where Germany begins; Polish sentiment and influence is not lost forever by the black line which rigidly divides her from Russia; the United States certainly exerts an unconscious power in Canada. In truth, they so dovetail into one another that, were it not for customs officers and language, one might pass through the various countries mindful of little sensation other than that derived when passing through the different States. A professor in an English university recently deplored the fact that a Scandinavian map had represented England as "an island off the coast of Norway." This desire of every country to occupy the center of the world's stage is only human. Through national pride and love of homeland, all nations are considered satellites around the favored one. But it leads to discrepancies in space. How many people realize that the distance across the English Channel from Dover to Calais is only equal to the distance of that lake shore area along which Chicago stretches, or that the famous Woolworth building might be dragged across and still have visible over half her structure. Before Atlantic waves wash harmoniously along the eastern and western shores, the complexity of the United States and the unity of Europe must be realized through that ever increasingly important subject of Geography. It leads to an intimate understanding and appreciation of the races of mankind whose progress has been manifested only in proportion to the bounties bestowed by nature. It bears that relation to the student of world problems which the human body does to the physician-no existing ill can be remedied without a proper diagnosis. "The world is as a ladder, up which men climb in search of knowledge." At the bottom is the earth which governs all human activity. A Knowledge of Statistics Indispensable to the Modern School Principal A. M. SALONE, A. M., PRINCIPAL LANGSTON UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL, LANGSTON, OKLAHOMA. F the modern school principal is to succeed as such, he must have, besides good health and a general knowledge of the fundamental branches of academic instruction, a determined purpose, a broad vision, and a general and practical knowledge of such other educational subjects as general and educational psychology, educational history and educational sociology. Equally important with him should be a knowledge of educational measurements and educational statistics, the last item being the subject of this article. Aside from using statistics to determine the physical conditions of his school plant and to compare these conditions with similar conditions of school plants the country over, the principal may utilize educational statistics for three other most useful ends, viz: 1. He may determine through them the central tendencies of series of various measures; 2. He may show through them the amount and quality of variability between or among the measures of a simple or grouped series; 3. He may determine and exhibit the degree of relationship of one quality of a measure or series of measures to another. The art, therefore, of collecting facts on educational conditions, of classifying, tabulating and averaging these facts and correlating them is indispensable to the principal. I repeat that, in order that the principal may have definite knowledge as to the solution and disposition of specific problems that may require his attention as such, he must know the science and the art of examining, personally, all sorts of school records and reports and of building and sending out questionnaires-the science and the art of collecting specific data and of classifying, tabulating and treating same otherwise if he would obtain results at all comparable with some standard outside criterion. Specific problems or conditions require specific diagnoses and treatment and these are the ends that the trained principal keeps rigidly in mind in his application and utilization of statistical processes. The success of one's school system, of one's school, class, or pupil may be determined very largely through that one's ability to make the proper use of these devices and through his ability to apply efficiently the necessary remedies for the ills that he may discover through their use. If the principal should wish to determine the physical valuation of his school plant, or the cost of operating his school as compared with the valuation or operating expenses of the standard schools of the country and to be able to collect such facts and publish them in a graphic, concise, and convincing manner, item for item, or as a whole, nothing could be of greater value to him than a working knowledge of statistics. If he should wish to make a comparative study of the conditions of school systems as they prevail the country over, urban and rural, and be able to construct a scale of same for the specific comparison of his own, a knowledge of statistics would still be more indispensable to him. There is a progressive increase in the matter of school surveys. All the current educational literature, such as educational and experimental psychology, educational magazines, school journals and various sorts of educational reports and records are all phrased in terms of statistics. Thus, like medicine, law, and the other professions, the teacher's vocation is developing a language of its own and statistics is the mother of that language. Hence it is obvious that in order to be a successful principal or teacher one must acquaint himself with the nomenclature or terminology of statistics. |