The Teaching of History 3

The Teaching of History 3

The preparation of answers to such questions as these will present to

the student some of the difficulties inevitable to his future library

work and will send him to class prepared to ask intelligent questions.

It will enable the teacher accurately to gauge how much his students

already know about a library and its uses.

 

The value and advantage of library work should be carefully explained to

the class. It is a great error to allow pupils to think of their

library work as drudgery, assigned solely to keep them busy or to make

the course difficult. There are too few boys to-day with a genuine love

of books, partly no doubt due to the fact that a reference library has

become for them, not a rich mine of interesting matter, but a

hydra-headed interrogation point. 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; if the

library requirements are reasonable and wisely directed; if he is given

an opportunity to _use_ the information he has gathered from his

reading, his interest in books will steadily increase.

 

The teacher should explain the value of remembering accurately the

titles and the authors of books used for reference. The silly habit of

referring to an authority as "the book bound in green" or "the large

book by what's his name" is easily prevented if taken in time.

 

The teacher should discover by assignments made in class what degree of

proficiency in the use of an index is already possessed by his pupils.

There are few classes where the use of an index is thoroughly

understood. Time should be taken to demonstrate the quickest possible

methods of finding what a book contains. The use of the catalogue and

card index should be carefully explained and illustrated.

 

Attention should be called to the best sources on the various phases of

the history to be studied. There ought to be no poor histories in the

library, but if there are any to which the students have access, warning

should be given against their use.

 

The value of periodicals and current literature for work in history

should be illustrated and the use of _Poole's Index_ and the _Readers

Guide_ explained.

 

The class should be acquainted with the rules of the library and

cautioned against the misuse of books. The necessity of leaving

reference books where all the class can use them should be made

apparent.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

III

 

THE ASSIGNMENT OF THE LESSON

 

 

_Careful assignment will reveal to the student the relation of geography

and history_

 

The recitation can never hope to achieve its maximum helpfulness unless

the lesson be intelligently assigned. The work required must be

reasonable in amount, and not so exacting as to discourage interest.

Daily direction to look up unfamiliar words, __EXPRESSION__s, and allusions

must be given until the habit becomes fixed. Warning against possible

geographical misconceptions should be given when necessary, together

with directions to use the map for places, routes, and boundaries. A few

questions asked in advance, with the purpose of bringing out the

relation of the geography to the history in the lesson, will be of great

assistance. For example, if the class are to study the Louisiana

Purchase, the full significance of that revolutionary event will be made

much clearer if the student is asked to prepare answers before coming to

class to such questions as the following:--

 

1. What States are included in the purchase?

 

2. What is its area? How does it compare with the area of the

original thirteen States?

 

3. What geographical reasons caused Napoleon to sell it?

 

4. What influence did the purchase have on our retention of the

territory east of the Mississippi? Why?

 

5. How many people live to-day in the territory included in the

purchase?

 

 

_His power of analysis and criticism will be stimulated_

 

A lesson should be so assigned that the student will read the text with

his eye critically open to inconsistencies, contradictions, and

inaccuracies. With a text of six hundred pages, and with a hundred and

eighty recitations in which to cover them, it is not too much to expect

that the average of three or four pages daily shall be studied so

thoroughly that the student can analyze and summarize each day's lesson.

The teacher should not make such analysis in advance of the recitation,

but he should so assign the lesson that the student will be prepared to

give one when he comes to class. A word in advance by the teacher will

prompt the student who is studying the American Revolution, to classify

its causes as direct and indirect, economic and political, social and

religious. There is no difficulty in finding good authorities who

disagree as to the effect on America of the English trade restrictions.

Callendar's _Economic History of the United States_ quotes five of the

best authorities on this point, and covers the case in a few pages. A

reference by the teacher to this or some other authority will bring out

a lively discussion on the justice of the American resistance. Let the

class be asked to account for the colonial opposition to the Townshend

Acts, when the Stamp Act Congress had declared that the regulation of

the Colonies' external trade was properly within the powers of

Parliament. Let the class be asked to explain a statement that the

Declaration of Independence does not mention the real underlying causes

of the Revolution. A few suggestions and advanced questions of this sort

will stimulate a critical analysis of the statements in the text, and

send the student to class keen for an intelligent discussion.

 

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. Furthermore such

instruction does nothing to develop the student's sense of historical

proportion, for it substitutes the judgment of the teacher for that of

the pupil.

 

Advance questions asking explanation of statements made in the text, or

by other authors dealing with the same period, insure that the lesson

will be read understandingly and that the author's statements will be

carefully analyzed. Such declarations as the following are illustrations

of statements whose explanation might profitably be required in

advance:--

 

1. "The Constitution was extracted by necessity from a reluctant

people."

 

2. "Oregon was a make-weight for Texas."

 

3. "The greatest evil of slavery was that it prevented the South

from accumulating capital."

 

4. "The day that France possesses New Orleans we must marry

ourselves to the British fleet."

 

5. "The cause of free labor won a substantial triumph in the

Missouri Compromise."

 

6. "The second war with England was not one of necessity, policy,

or interest on the part of the Americans; it was rather one of

party prejudice and passion."

 

 

_The conditions in other countries will add to his comprehension of the

facts in the lesson_

 

In so far as the next lesson requires an understanding of the history or

conditions of another country, the attention of the class should be

directed in advance to such necessity. Special references or brief

reports may be advisable. A few well-selected advance questions will

send the class to recitation prepared to discuss what otherwise the

teacher must explain. A few questions on the character of James II, his

ideals of government, the chief causes of the revolution of 1688, and

its most important results will do much to explain the colonial

resistance to Andros. A few questions designed to bring out the

imperative necessity of English resistance to Napoleon will make clear

the hostile commercial decrees, impressment, and interference with the

rights of neutral ships. Such questions reduce the necessity of

explanation by the teacher to a minimum.

 

 

_His disposition to study intensively will be encouraged_

 

If the teacher expects the class to deal more intensively than the text

with the matters discussed in the lesson, a few advance questions will

be of great assistance. Suppose, for example, that the text contents

itself with saying that for political reasons the first United States

Bank was not rechartered, and shortly after informs the reader that the

second United States Bank was rechartered because the State banks had

suspended specie payments. The student may or may not be curious about

the failure of the first bank to receive a new charter, the operation of

State banks, or why they suspended payment in 1814. If he has been

properly taught, he probably will be, but if the teacher wishes to

discuss these considerations in detail at the next recitation it will be

infinitely better to have the facts contributed by the class than for

the teacher to do the reciting. It is quite possible that the individual

answers to advance questions assigned with such a purpose will be

incomplete, but the interest of the class will be incalculably greater

if they themselves furnish the bulk of the additional matter required.

Collectively the class will usually secure complete answers to reasonable questions. The teacher has his opportunity in supplying such important facts as the students fail to find.