No teacher of geography I ever had, except the master I referred to, took the pains to ascertain whether I had any sense of the facts for which the symbols stood.
Outside the study of maps, geography consisted of statistics: tables of population, imports and exports, manufactures, and degrees of temperature; dimensions of rivers, mountains, and political states; with lists of minerals, plants, and plagues native to any given part of the globe.

The only part of the whole subject that meant anything to me was the description of the aspect of foreign lands, and the manners and customs of their peoples.

The relation of physiography to human history--what might be called the moral of geography--was not taught at all, or was touched upon in an unimpressive manner.

The prevalence of this defect in the teaching of school geography is borne out by the surprise of the college freshman, who remarked to the professor of geology that it was curious to note how all the big rivers and harbors on the Atlantic coastal plain occurred in the neighborhood of large cities! A little instruction in the elements of chartography--a little practice in the use of the compass and the spirit level, a topographical map of the town common, an excursion with a road map--would have given me a fat round earth in place of my paper ghost; would have illumined the one dark alley in my school life..