Children love to read or hear of the people of other lands, and the
tactful teacher will wrap her information about the natural features of
a country in the "sugared pill of stories."
Books of travel are helpful and interesting in linking together fact and
story. From them the child comes to feel a sympathetic interest in the
ways of people unlike those he knows.
By emphasizing the idea of continuity of beliefs and customs, we impress
the child with the most important lesson history and geography hold for
him,--that all countries and peoples are closely related and have mutual
interests.
"The acquisition of this feeling of the inter-relationship of the
nations of the world, while starting the child out with a broad view of
life, will in no wise lessen his love for his own country."
Too often the lonely little stranger in our midst--the foreigner--is
viewed with heartless curiosity, or contempt, and subjected to ridicule.
Patriotism to many a child means nothing more than a belief that our own
country is the best, our own people the smartest, and that we can whip
any and every other nation on the globe.
Do the children know that the "blood that boils so hotly against other
countries is drawn from the very same sources that feed the veins of our
seemingly alien neighbors"?
If any teacher imagines that her pupils have a definite idea of the
meaning of patriotism because they are able to sing "America" and the
"Star-Spangled Banner," let her read Marion Hill's story, entitled "The
Star-Spangled Banner," in McClure's Magazine for July (1900).