Where We Live A Home Geography — Story, Setting & Ideas

Directing the Senses

Jacobs repeatedly instructs children to use sight, touch, and movement. In the chapter on direction, she writes: “Face the sun. We are facing the south.” Then she asks: “Where was it early this morning when it arose? That was east.” The lesson continues with students drawing compass lines on their desks with chalk and identifying what lies north, south, east, and west of their own seats. The language is imperative and concrete: “Walk toward the north, toward the east, toward the south, toward the west.” There is no abstract definition of cardinal points; instead, the child learns by turning his or her own body. This insistence on physical orientation recurs throughout the book, making the classroom itself a laboratory for geographic concepts.

The Neighborhood as Textbook

Jacobs treats the local environment as the primary source of geographic knowledge. She asks students to observe “the streets and roads,” “the buildings,” “the town as a whole,” and “the people.” In the chapter on islands and peninsulas, she writes: “Notice on the map of our neighborhood whether a river with islands in it is shown.” The child is expected to connect the textbook’s definitions to actual local features. When discussing peninsulas, Jacobs uses a boat metaphor: “If you take a boat and try to go all around it, you will come to a place where the boat cannot go because there is land there.” The language is plain and procedural, avoiding technical jargon. The goal is not memorization but recognition of geographic forms in the child’s own surroundings.

Questions Without Answers

A striking feature of Jacobs’s method is her reliance on unanswered questions. In the direction lesson, she asks: “Can you make your shadow fall east or west or south? Why not? When only will shadows fall north? Can you think of any time when the shadows would fall east or west? Could they ever fall south? Why not?” The teacher is not given a scripted answer; the child must experiment. Similarly, in the islands chapter: “If you were on a large island, how could you prove that it was an island? If you wanted to leave it, how could you do so?” These questions are designed to provoke thought and discussion, not to be answered in the text. The book thus functions as a prompt for active inquiry rather than a repository of facts.

Voice of the Supervising Principal

Jacobs’s professional role as a supervising principal in Philadelphia shapes the book’s tone. The foreword speaks of “the author’s actual experience in the class-room studying the children at their geography tasks.” The exercises are practical and tested, not theoretical. The book is organized into two parts: first, the immediate neighborhood; second, the earth as a whole. This structure reflects a deliberate pedagogical sequence. Jacobs also includes maps of the Western and Eastern Hemispheres, North America, and the world, but these appear only after the child has studied local geography. The authorial voice is that of an experienced educator who trusts children to learn by doing, and who writes with the authority of someone who has watched them struggle with vague concepts.

Readers approaching Where We Live should expect a workbook more than a narrative. The book is best used as Jacobs intended: with a teacher or parent guiding outdoor observations and classroom discussions. The questions are not rhetorical; they are invitations to investigate. The text’s value lies in its method, not its facts, which are deliberately minimal. For modern readers, it offers a window into early twentieth-century progressive education and a reminder that geography begins at the doorstep.

I remember how Where We Live asked children to know their own streets first. That quiet trust in the familiar lingers in another old friend, Learning to Spell: A Manual for Teachers Using the Aldine Speller — Text and Context, which also believed words belong to those who touch them daily. Both simply trusted the near at hand.