Report of the Committee of Eight.
This report on history in the elementary grades has been prepared by a committee of the American Historical Association, Professor James A. James, of Northwestern University, chairman, and will be published this fall by “Scribner’s.” The work for each of the eight grades is treated in detailed topics accompanied by reading lists for teachers and for pupils. The object of the course for the first two grades is “to give the child an impression of primitive life and an appreciation of public holidays.” Grade three deals with Heroes of Other Times, Columbus, and the Indians. In the fourth and fifth grades emphasis is placed on Historical Scenes and Persons in American History. The object sought in grade six is to impress on the child’s mind that “the beginnings of American ways of living are to be sought far back in the story of the world.” The topics, therefore, seek to bring out the contributions made by Greeks, Romans, and the people of medieval Europe, especially England, closing with the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The seventh grade topics deal with the exploration and settlement of North America and the growth of the colonies to 1763. The eighth grade topics bring United States history down to the present time, and suggest subjects for supplementary talks on European history.
The report also contains a chapter on Methods, an “Outline for Teaching the Development of a Constitutional Government in the Eighth Grade in Three Lessons of Forty Minutes Each,” contributed by Miss Blanche A. Cheney, of the Lowell, Mass., State Normal School; an “Outline for Teaching the Birth of the German Nation in the Eighth Grade,” by Miss Blanche E. Hazard, of the Brockton, Mass., High School; an article on elementary civics, and appendices on history teaching in German, French and English elementary schools.
The subject of history in the elementary grades has also been treated in a stimulating manner in a course prepared by Superintendent W. F. Gordy for the schools of Springfield, Mass. The work is here outlined for nine grades, the last being devoted to English history as related to the history of our own country.