E. C. Hartwell

“ Until very recently in all our history teaching, battles have been exalted to a place immeasurably greater than their importance. We are coming to see that the fighting is one of the least important things in the war. The causes and results, the financial, political, and social effects now absorb our attention. One or two battles in a course may profitably be studied in detail, particularly in the history of our own country, but in the press of considerations far more interesting and vital, it is a waste of time to give more than a moment's notice to the remainder. ”

“ It would be interesting to secure a statement of how much of the teacher's time is ordinarily spent in doing for the student in recitation what he should have done for himself before coming to class. It substitutes for the pupil's snap judgment, given without much thought and too frequently influenced by the inflection of the teacher's voice, an opinion that has resulted from research and deliberation unbiased by the teacher's personal views.
It is too much to expect high school pupils to solve historical problems extemporaneously. ”

“ That a student should be expected correctly to answer a fair percentage of reasonable questions on work which has been properly taught is not a cause of complaint from anyone. But that children should be frightened into a state of nervous terror by the bugaboo of an impending examination, and then be forced to attempt a series of conundrums propounded by a teacher who takes pride in maintaining a high percentage of failures, is indefensible. An examination should not be conducted with the primary object of making it a thing to be feared. ”

“ The barren learning of names and dates has long since been supplanted by a study of sequences among events. The technical details of wars and political administrations have given way to a study of wide economic and social movements in which battles and laws are merely overt results reinforcing the current of change. History, once a self-inclosed school discipline, has undergone an intellectual expansion which takes into account all the aspects of life which influence it, making geographical, economic, and biographical materials its aids. ”

“ It would be as great an error to bend your questions continually away from the student's special tastes and abilities as to be perpetually guided by them. The bulk of the teacher's attention should be given neither to the few exceptionally able students nor to the few very poor pupils. It is to the average normal boy and girl that the most of the questioning should be directed. The brilliant student should be called on sufficiently to retain his interest and to set a standard of excellence for the class. ”

“ Direction in the use of the library, like instruction in the method of study, is a prerequisite to the best results in high school history classes, for no matter how conscientious the teacher, the recitation will be deadly if the student has no working knowledge of the library nor proper method of preparation. A class unable to ask intelligent questions about the work is not ready for the presentation of additional matter by the teacher. It is no difficult matter for a teacher to entertain his class for an hour with interesting incidents of the period in which the lesson occurs. ”

“ A history teacher who cannot talk interestingly for an hour on any of the great periods of history has surely missed his calling. But to keep a class quiet, to retain their attention, to amuse and entertain, is far from making history vital. If the recitation is to be really vital, the students must do most of the talking, the criticizing, and the questioning. There can be none of these worth while without proper preparation. ”

“ Review for the purpose of securing fluency is a consideration frequently lost sight of by high school history teachers. It may be too sanguine to expect fluency of the average student reciting on a topic for the first time. But when it is considered how very many important questions are never recited on but once, the wisdom of an occasional review to secure rapid, fluent, and complete answers to topics previously discussed is readily seen. ”

“ To summarize, reviews in history should consist of both oral and written work; they should be rapid enough to insure quick thinking, alert attention, and small expenditure of time; they should occur with increasing frequency as the year advances; they should stock the memory, fix in the student's mind the order of events, stimulate fluency, insure a permanent acquaintance with the personnel of history, and give to the student a better view of the subject as a whole and in its various phases. ”

“ It is assumed that the teacher of history has an adequate preparation to teach his subject, that he is in good health, and that his usefulness is unimpaired by discontent with his work or cynicism about the world. It is presupposed that he understands the wisdom of correlating in his instruction the geography, social progress, and economic development of the people which his class are studying. He is aware that the pupil should experience something more than a kaleidoscopic view of isolated facts. ”

“ A great good has been done the student who has been taught the pleasure of using books. Nor is such a thing impossible. Nothing gives greater satisfaction to the normal high school boy than to find an error in the text, the teacher's statements, or the map. He takes pleasure in confuting the statistics or judgments quoted in class, by others of opposite trend, encountered in his reading. He enjoys asking keen questions. If the student is told that the library work is for the purpose of cultivating his powers of investigation and adding to the matter in the text many interesting details ”

“ Has the United States ever resorted to a tax on incomes? Has the Federal Government ever attempted to restrict the power of the press? Is it illegal to-day for a railway to give a cheaper rate to one shipper than to another? ”

“ As to the few pupils whom the teacher deems exceptionally poor, it may be said that the effect of questioning should never be to discourage the pupil who has made an honest effort at preparation. During the early part of the course the efforts of the teacher may well be directed to asking the backward student questions to which he can make reasonably satisfactory answers. By saving the student from the daily humiliation of failure before the class, and by tactfully encouraging him to greater effort, the teacher may shortly discover that the poor pupil is far from hopeless. ”

“ It makes it possible for the teacher to hold the class responsible for definite preparation, very much as the teacher in algebra is able to do with the problems assigned in advance. It forces the students to do most of the talking. It encourages an intelligent use of the library in a manner calculated to develop the student's powers of investigation. If the pupil forgets most of his history, but retains the ability to investigate carefully, thoroughly, and critically, the plan has more than justified itself. ”

“ He recognizes the folly of requiring four years of high school English for the purpose of cultivating clear, fluent, and accurate expression, only to relax the effort when the student comes into the history class. He knows that the precision, logic, and habit of definite thinking exacted by the pursuit of the scientific subjects should not be laid aside when the student attempts to trace the rise of nations. Let us go so far as to assume a teacher who is both pedagogical and practical; scholarly without being musty ”

“ And beyond the obvious advantages of a carefully assigned lesson it must be remembered that in the assignment of special topics, in private conferences with the student, in the correction of notes, in giving assistance in the library, the teacher has an opportunity to cultivate a sympathetic relation between himself and the class of inestimable service in securing the best results. ”

“ Certainly children, whose interests arise not alone from their innate impulses, but also from the world in which they have lived from the beginning, will be eager to know the past that is of dominant concern to the present. It is clear gain in the psychology of instruction if history is a socially live thing. The children will be more eager to acquire knowledge; they will hold it longer, because it is significant; and they will keep it fresh after school days are over because life will recall and review pertinent knowledge again and again. ”

“ Ordinarily, when a class is averaging three or four pages of the text daily, it is an error for the teacher to point out in advance certain dates and statistics that need not be memorized. Such selection should be left to the student. During the recitation the teacher will discover what dates, statistics, and other matter the student has selected as worthy to be memorized, and if correction is necessary it may then be made. It dulls the edge of the pupil's enthusiasm to be told in advance that some of the text is not worthy to be remembered. ”

“ On the other hand, however, it is equally reprehensible to require of high school students the labored preparation of maps in the drawing of which hours of valuable time are spent in searching for places of trivial importance and small historical value. Map work in a high school history course should require no more than geographical accuracy in locating boundaries, routes, and places really vital to the history of the people being studied. ”

“ Early in the year, with four lessons to prepare daily, the pupil cannot afford an hour simply to search for a book. He needs that hour for preparation of other work, and if by some fortunate conjunction of circumstances his other work is not sufficiently exacting to require it, he cannot hope to appear in history class with a well-prepared lesson if an hour of his time has been spent in simply looking for a book. ”

“ In assigning a lesson it is sometimes desirable to require certain matter to be learned verbatim. In American history the Preamble to the Constitution, the principles of government contained in the Declaration of Independence, the essential doctrine in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, certain clauses of the Constitution, and extracts from other historical documents may well be required to be memorized accurately. It is scarcely to be supposed that the student can improve on the clarity and definiteness of the English in such documents. ”

“ It is not likely that the teacher will find it advisable to require reports at every recitation nor that the reports and their discussion will consume, at the most, longer than ten or fifteen minutes of any class period. There must always be time for direct oral questioning on the facts of the lesson; questioning that will test the student's memory, ability to analyze, and powers of expression. Certain principles are fundamental to good questioning in any recitation. ”

“ The average high school student will not read the fine print at the bottom of the page, or use a map for the location of places mentioned in the text without special instruction to do so. He will set himself no unassigned tasks in memory work. It is the first business of the good instructor to teach the student how to study. The first step in this process is to impress on the student's mind that systematic preparation in the history class is as necessary as in Latin, physics, or geometry. ”

“ That a student should remember sufficient dates to fix in his mind the sequence of important events is hardly open to question. That he can never do so without some special attention to dates is equally indisputable. Without doubt, drill in important dates is necessary, but it should be so conducted as to take but little time. Each day the teacher has indicated the dates worthy to be remembered and has been careful to select the landmarks of history. ”

“ What are the functions of money? What determines the amount of money needed in a country? What has been used for money at various periods of our history? What is meant by doing business on credit? What is cheap money? What is Gresham's Law? What is the effect of large issues of paper money on prices? What is the effect of large issues of paper money on wages? Why does the wage-earner suffer? At what periods in American history have large issues of paper money been emitted? What were the objects of the first United States Bank? ”

“ It is frequently worth while to spend a few minutes of the recitation in characterizing the epoch in which the events of the lesson take place or in listening to a brief character sketch of the men contributing to these events. Care should of course be taken that biography does not usurp the place of history, but it materially adds to the interest of the recitation if the kings, generals, and statesmen cease to be merely historical characters and become human beings. ”