Syllabi.
Finally it is suggested that before taking up the medieval period with the class the teacher make a careful study of every available analysis, e. g., the Syllabus of the New England History Teachers’ Association, or the Syllabus of the Regents of the State of New York (which contains the same outline), or the History Syllabus of the State of New Jersey (in press) or the numerous outlines of college lecture courses which have appeared in printed form from time to time as Richardson, “Syllabus of Continental European History,” and Shepherd, “Syllabus of the Epochs of History.”
EXPLANATION OF CHART: EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT, 800 TO 962.
The vertical lines represent dates and important events; the horizontal lines, political divisions. Events of European importance as distinguished from those of purely local interest are indicated by lines intersecting the countries concerned.
In 800 there are two main divisions, England and the Empire. (Egbert and Charlemagne were contemporaries.) In 843, on account of the division of the Empire at Verdun, it becomes necessary to follow the fortunes of four units, England, Germany, France and the “Middle Kingdom,” sometimes called Lotharingia. The Middle Kingdom practically disappears by the Partition of Meersen (870). Soon after this event the empire of Charlemagne is temporarily reunited under Charles the Fat. At his deposition the two larger units, France and Germany, reappear with several smaller ones, the most important being Burgundy and Italy. In 962 the latter is absorbed in the new German empire of Otto the Great. Meanwhile England is working out its local problems, influenced as is the rest of Europe by the coming of the Northmen and the conditions attendant on the development of feudalism. Although Odo was elected king of France by the nobles as early as 887, the throne passed back and forth between his house and the Carolingians, so that Germany came under a permanent native dynasty much earlier than did France. As will be seen by the diagram, Germany and Italy, rather than France, are sacrificed to the ambition of the German rulers to restore and perpetuate the Roman empire in the West.
[English History in the Secondary School]
C. B. NEWTON, Editor.
I. Through the Norman Conquest[4]
I have just finished reading “A Centurion of the Thirtieth,” “On the Great Wall,” and “The Winged Hats”—all from Kipling’s “Puck of Pook’s Hill” and I now feel in the proper frame of mind to begin the year’s work in English History. By the proper frame of mind I mean that what I know, and what I would fain have my class know, is illuminated and enlivened by a sense of reality without which my teaching and their learning would be as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. The fundamental importance of beginning with this “proper frame of mind” is the first matter which I wish to emphasize, the starting point of the many matters which we may profitably consider together in our monthly discussions. For ponder the magnitude of the task before us, as we return from our vacation in this very modern world of ours to our very modern pupils. How shall we be true interpreters of the life of an early day, so remote, so utterly removed, so unreal, unless we can by some magic touch invest it all with reality? It is a solemn thing, fellow workmen in this noble field of English history, to think how many thousands of us shall endeavor, during the next few weeks, to impart some knowledge, some realizing sense of prehistoric man’s dwelling in the so different Albion which was the mother of England; of Celt and Roman and Saxon and Dane; of imperial Cæsar landing on the unknown barbarous coast of Britain; of Druids and of monks; and so on through those long, mysterious thousand years which bring us to a somewhat clearer day (though still remote enough for every exercise of the imagination!), when the great Duke became the last conqueror of the little island. A solemn thing, I say, for if we fail to illumine this mass of material with any ray of the imagination, if we merely cram facts and theories into the miserable minds of our victims until they are stuffed with names and dates, then are we become blind leaders of the blind of whom it may be said, as I once heard it said of a professor in one of our great colleges, “Think of the hundreds for whom he has ruined history.”
So I believe, in all seriousness, it shall profit us more to take down our Kipling or to cull out some of the very human episodes from our Green, or from Dr. Warren’s little book of selections, and to saturate our minds therein—insulating them, as it were, from the quick currents of the present—than to refresh our memories laboriously and conscientiously from sources and authorities until we are merely primed with facts. Need I say that this is no slur nor sneer at authorities and sources? Of course we have not neglected these—we must not, and we shall not, neglect them. My emphasis is simply on what is, too often neglected; my plea is for setting free the imagination, for letting the “magic” work which will help us to clothe the dry bones of fact with the flesh of life! We have all been taught to be conscientious and faithful and painstaking; that is the modern historian’s creed. But all conscience and no imagination make a mighty dull teacher! Let us never forget that.