As to Dates and Discipline.
With the landing of Julius Cæsar the fog begins to lift, and certain clear headlands of knowledge appear. This may be brought out very sharply by reading to the class, or getting the class to read to you, an extract or two from “De Bello Gallico,” say Chapter 8 of Book V, or a chapter from the end of Book IV. This brings home to the class the “barbarianness” of the Britons in contrast with civilized Rome, and incidentally gives the average pupil a new and almost startling view of “Cæsar”! This done, the next task is to prevent the class from unanimously jumping at the conclusion that Cæsar began the Roman conquest. The only thing to do is to hammer in the four conquests or invasions with their dates as landmarks, and to try heroically to get straight the difference between Celt and Roman and Teuton. No imagination here, but the sterner side of the year’s work—the absolute definite learning by rote of the essential dates and facts which must in no wise be slurred or passed by. I do not believe history to be a “disciplinary study,” but there is plenty of discipline in it, as there is in all substantial work, and the boy or girl who has, perhaps, had only some smatterings of elementary history before, might as well realize in the beginning that entering this large field of English history means, not only large opportunities for the imagination and for abounding intellectual interest, but means also real work for the memory and for the understanding. How to bring this about against the inertia, inaccuracy, and inefficiency of the class? There is no royal road—patience, reiteration, insistence on accuracy, and finally, where necessary, the rod, or whatever substitute our American delicacy along punitive lines allows, are the only methods open to us. A good means of reiteration in the matter of dates is to have one pupil put a set of dates on the board each day—for example, the dates of the invasions (marking the approximate dates with a plus or minus sign), and of such landmarks as the Landing of Augustine, the Treaty of Wedmore, etc., may well be put on the board every day while the class is studying the period before the Normans. The same thing may well be done during each dynasty, keeping the dates of that dynasty before the class without spending much time on them. The recitation of the class should not, of course, be halted while the dates are being written; a glance will serve to correct them when they are done.