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

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In Category - Historical Textbooks

Authors: Jacobs, Emilie Van Beil, 1875- Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2007 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Geography -- Textbooks Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 18,104

Reading time 79 min

Text sections 7

The source record for Where We Live A Home Geography — Story, Setting & Ideas measures this digital text at 18,104 words, 1 hr 19 min estimated reading time, and 7 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 13.4 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Geography -- Textbooks,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #22911

A 1913 geography textbook that uses direct observation and classroom exercises to teach children about their local surroundings, emphasizing firsthand experience over rote description.

Editorial Edition Score 4.6/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg22911

Read the Text

Why was this name given to our school?

On what street or road does our school stand?

How long have you been attending this school?

See how much you have noticed as you came here each day. Tell what you can remember of the different parts of the building which can be seen from the street or road. Describe each of these parts:

Walls Roof Windows Chimneys Doors Fire-escape

As you look at the school from the outside what materials do you see that the builders have used? Where have they needed stone, slate, glass, tin, iron, steel, wood?

Now let us think of the garden and playground. Tell about the different parts and the materials that have been used in making them.

What great numbers of workmen were needed before a school like ours could be built! Who procured the stone and the slate? Whose work was needed to obtain the iron, the steel and the tin? Who made the glass? Which workmen shall we thank for the wood?

Can you think how the bare lot looked before the school was built? Many men with shovels and pick-axes dug out the foundation, and numbers of horses and wagons were needed to carry out the earth. Then came the builders. How were so many materials brought here?

1. We will go outdoors together and look at the school building.

2. We will stand north of the school, south, east and west of it. Notice the position of the parts, their number, shape, size and color.

3. As we stand at each side, see whether there are any parts which you never noticed before or any parts which we forgot to mention yesterday.

Look at this drawing of a school building and grounds. It is called a plan. Before any school or church or home is built a plan must be drawn. This is to show the workmen what to do. See how much of the ground is used for the building. Find the garden. What are in the garden? Which is larger, the garden or the playground? What shape is the playground? How many doors are there to the building? In how many ways can you get into the playground?

Try to draw a plan of your school building and yard, showing the gates, the flagpole, the drinking fountain or pump, and any other parts you think of. Show which door you use most.

_Note to the Teacher._--The pupils should draw the plan upon paper while the teacher draws it upon the blackboard. Infinite care should be exercised to invest every line with its full meaning. Upon the proper interpretation of this first plan will depend much of the pupil's future ability to correctly read a map as the representation of a reality.

THE INSIDE OF THE SCHOOL

As you walk from the school door to your room what do you see? Tell all that you have noticed in the corridors, on the staircases, in the cloak-rooms and the class-rooms.

We will go on a little excursion through the school today, walking along all of the corridors and upon all of the staircases. Look especially to see anything that you never saw before, and notice anything that you forgot to mention in yesterday's description.

Answer the following questions:

1. How many stories high is our school?

2. How many class-rooms are on each floor?

3. How many other rooms are on each floor?

4. How many staircases does our school have?

5. What materials have been used in building the staircases?

6. What can be seen in the corridor nearest your room?

7. By how many doorways can the children leave the building?

8. How is your school heated and ventilated?

Describe everything that you can see in your class-room.

Look at this plan of a school-room. See if you can draw a plan of _your_ school-room.

Make a list of all the materials that have been used in building the inside of your school. Remember all of the following parts:

Floors Windows Corridor furnishings Ceilings Doors Class-room furnishings Walls Staircases

Now write a list of the kinds of workmen who gathered together these materials. Name as many of the kinds of workmen as you can think of who were engaged on the inside work of the building.

Write a letter to anyone whom you know who has never seen our school. Tell all about our building and the good workmen by whom it was planned and built.

THE STREETS AND ROADS

On what street or road does your school stand?

On what street or road do you live?

What streets or roads do you pass on your way home?

What do you think is the finest street or road that you have ever seen anywhere? What makes that so good a street or road?

Continue Reading →

Emilie V. Jacobs opens Where We Live with a parable of four blind men and an elephant, arguing that much geography teaching leaves children with “vague, incomplete and incorrect conceptions.” The book is her remedy: a series of exercises that send students to observe their school, streets, buildings, and neighborhood directly. Rather than lecturing, Jacobs poses questions and prompts actions—drawing diagrams on pavement, noting shadow directions at noon, or examining a weather vane on the way home. The text is built around the principle “from the known to the unknown,” but insists that a genuine “known” must be established through the senses.

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.