Geography

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Geography was one of the requirements which Green School pupils had in order to be promoted to Middleborough High School. “Of Geography we would say particularly, that whatever concerns our own country should be most familiarly known by every scholar”, opined the 1872-73 School Committee.

Warren’s Geography was the favored text in the 1880s for teaching the subject. Superintendent Fitts characterized this area of study in 1886: “Excellent work has been done in geography, in modeling at the moulding board, and with outline maps drawn upon the slate and board.” With changes in technology, the printing of detailed colored maps became affordable and leant themselves admirably to this field of study. Wall maps were an important learning tool for pupils, though the rapidity with which the country grew during the period, was noted at the time as quickly making such maps out of date. Because of Superintendent Fitts’ pointed reminder regarding these maps, each school including the Green was “supplied with some good maps up to the present date."

Similarly, rapid changes in the world also quickly made redundant the geography texts used by pupils, and 1887 witnessed the gradual changeover from older to newer texts which also had the advantage of being “written in a more pleasing style.”

In 1904, the 4th grade geography text was dispensed with and “a new course treating more fully with the geography of the town, county and state substituted.” At the time, a map of Plymouth County was installed in the school.

With the changes in grading at the Green which housed grades one and two only after 1929, came a drastic reduction in the amount of time devoted to the subject, perhaps a fortunate circumstance as geography became an increasingly challenging topic to teach given the accelerating changes of the early twentieth century.