aper read before the State Teacher's Association, Dec. 26, 1878, by Miss ROSE C. SWART, Teacher of Geography in the Oshkosh Normal School.

It is the disposition of intelligent thinking to take nothing for granted. The realization that human life, in all its departments, should ever be a living toward what is more truly good and largely useful, gives to mind a quality that questions the wisdom of the established past, and searches the present and the future for the possibilities of better things. That a custom exists is not a proof that it is wise and right. That a bygone generation believed this or did that, is not a sufficient reason why a succeeding age should think or act in the same way, to the same end. In these latter days, particularly, life crowds, and there is more than ever before, the necessity to "prove all things, and hold fast only to what is good."

This is peculiarly the duty of the teachers. They are the keepers of the gates that open into active life. It is largely under their training, that children are fitted or unfitted to live their lives in happiness and usefulness. If teachers would meet the demand their profession puts upon them, it is imperative that they consider the child's future needs in that busy life to which the school is the portal, and shape their instruction to the end of preparing him for the duties and enjoyments that await him. In addition to knowing what they teach, it is incumbent upon them to know why they teach it.

These thoughts bring me, as a teacher of Geography, to ask: First, what right has this branch to a place in a course of study? Second, what can it be made to do toward equipping a child against future need, or fitting him for future service?

1- Vol. IX. - No. 1