Primarily for Secondary and Elementary Schools.
Allen, F. J.—“Topical Outline of English History.” Boston, D. C. Heath & Co. 25 cents.
Allen, W. F.—“History Topics for High Schools and Colleges.” Boston, D. C. Heath & Co. 25 cents.
Barnes, Mary S.—“Studies in American History: Teachers’ Manual.” Boston, D. C. Heath & Co.
Barnes, Mary S.—“Teachers’ Manual to General History.” Boston, D. C. Heath & Co. 85 cents.
Committee of Eight, The.—“The Study of History in the Elementary Schools.” New York, Scribners’. 50 cents.
Cornman, O. P., and Gerson, O.—“Topical Survey of United States History.” Boston, D. C. Heath & Co. 60 cents.
Dodge, S. S.—“Outlines of English History.” New York, A. S. Barnes & Co. 25 cents.
Ensign, S. Laura.—“Outlines of Ancient, Medieval and Modern History.” New York, A. S. Barnes & Co. 75 cents.
Ensign, S. Laura.—“Outline Tables and Sketches in United States History.” New York, A. S. Barnes & Co. 25 cents.
Fleming, Walter L.—“Syllabus of High School Course in History,” in “State Course of Study for High Schools of Louisiana.” Baton Rouge, La., Department of Education.
Heckel.—“Topics and References for Ancient History (based on Morey and West).” Indiana, Pa., State Normal School.
Gordy, W. F., and Twitchell, W. I.—“A Pathfinder in American History.” New York, Lee and Sheppard.
Kemp, E. W.—“An Outline of History for the Grades.” Boston, Ginn & Co.
Knowlton, D. C.—“Studies in English History Prepared for the Use of High Schools and Academies.” New York State Teacher, Ithaca, N. Y. 35 cents.
Leadbetter, Florence E.—“Outlines and Studies to Accompany Myers’ Ancient History, and Medieval and Modern History,” 2 volumes. Boston, Ginn & Co. 35 cents each.
Lewis, L. B.—“Pupil’s Notebook and Study Outline in Oriental and Greek History.” New York, American Book Co. 40 cents.
McMurray, Charles A.—“Special Method In History.” New York, the Macmillan Co.
New England History Teachers’ Association.—“Outlines for Ancient, Medieval and Modern European, English and American History,” four parts. Boston, D. C. Heath. 15 cents each.
New England History Teachers’ Association.—“Syllabus in Civil Government.” Macmillan. (Ready late in 1909.)
New Jersey Department of Public Schools.—“History Syllabus.” (In press.)
Newton, C. B., and Treat, E. B.—“Outlines for Review in History for American, English, Greek, Roman History.” New York, American Book Co. Each 25 cents.
New York, City of—“Course of Study and Syllabuses In Ethics, English History and Civics for the Elementary Schools of the City of New York.” Department of Education, New York City.
New York, Regents of the State of—“History Syllabus” (outline similar to that of the New England History Teachers’ Association, with the exception of English History).
Riley, Franklin L.—“Methods of Teaching History in Public Schools.” University of Mississippi. Published by the author. 25 cents.
Trenholme, N. M.—“Syllabus for the History of Western Europe (Medieval and Modern).” Boston, Ginn & Co. 60 cents.
Wilson.—“Compendium of United States and Contemporary History.” Boston, D. C. Heath & Co. 40 cents.
An Historical Laboratory[1]
BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM MacDONALD, BROWN UNIVERSITY.
It would seem to be a truism that the facilities which are to be regarded as indispensable to the proper study of a subject, and which ought, therefore, to be provided as a matter of course, should, like the methods of teaching, be determined by the nature of the subject, or, in other words, by the kind of material with which it has to deal; but the disparity in the equipment of the various departments of study and research commonly to be observed in even the best and richest American colleges and universities seems to indicate that, so far at least as the so-called “humanities” are concerned, little provision of appliances, save modest shelter from the weather and seats enough for the class, is generally thought absolutely necessary.
No one who knows at close range the “plant” of a typical American university will be at a loss for striking and even painful illustrations of the unequal distribution of material equipment. Broadly speaking, the departments of physical and natural science and engineering do not seriously lack the primary facilities which the nature of their work demands. Upon these departments, in the last twenty years, the wealth of the State and of individuals has been poured out like water, while more than one institution, spurred by a demand for “practicality” and “efficiency,” has gone to the length of drawing upon its capital to supply what was wanting. Our institutions of learning abound in well-contrived laboratory buildings for physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering, containing not only lecture rooms for the various instructors and laboratories for students elementary and advanced, but also private laboratories and offices for the professors, exhibition and photographic rooms, libraries, lockers, and other special apartments. The rooms themselves are commonly well supplied with apparatus and material, distributed and apportioned according to the number of students and investigators, and increased by regular appropriation, and as a matter of course, as the number of users grows. There is usually a special janitor or caretaker for the building, and often one or more skilled persons regularly employed in making or repairing apparatus, preparing or caring for specimens or stock, and the like. It has long been a matter of common observation that the cost of maintaining the scientific departments of a university, or even of a small college, is out of all proportion to the cost of the other departments of instruction, that it is met by governing boards with comparative readiness, and that it is often afforded, it must bluntly be said, at the cost of deplorable and systematic niggardliness in other directions. Other things being equal, no scientist to-day would consider for a moment a call to an institution which could not afford him all of these things, nor would the scientific world reckon the instruction of an institution not so equipped as worth while.
When, however, we turn to those other departments of study still graciously referred to as the “humanities,” departments which older graduates and commencement orators still tell us embrace the subjects of the deepest human interest, the disparity in material equipment is commonly so great as to be almost ludicrous. Who, of the thousands that yearly are driven or besought to drink deep at the wells of literature, or history, or philosophy, in our American colleges or universities, can fail to recall the desolate class-rooms, their bare and dingy walls, relieved at the most by a few old maps, or a faded photograph or two in heavy wooden frames, the floors swept once a week and washed once a term, the hand-carved chairs and benches, the chalk-dusted platform and desk, and the foul air, which, in the majority of such institutions, enshrine the daily life of academic culture? Where the teacher of science is freely accorded a lecture room for his department alone, the teacher of language, history, or economics must, as a rule, share his quarters, poor as they are, with those of his colleagues whose principal apparatus is books, and must vacate his room promptly to make way for another class at the next hour. Many a high school does better for its teachers than this; indeed, the best of our modern high schools, bearing in mind the grade of their work, offer almost infinitely superior facilities for work in these departments than does the average college or university.
Widespread and depressing as this condition is, in general, in all of the departments named, the particular illustration which I wish to use at this time is that afforded by history and the related subjects of political and social science and political economy. Applying the test that the equipment of a department should be determined by the nature of the material with which the department deals, it is obvious that we have here a subject in which printed matter of a variety of forms, manuscripts, maps and charts, pictures and casts, and actual historical objects or reproductions, form the material basis for the student’s work. Where the chemist uses books and apparatus, the historical student uses books and other material as apparatus. For the modern study of history, even of the elementary sort, one must be enabled to examine not only single books, such as may be got from a library and perused at leisure in one’s home, but also extended sets and collections of books and papers, and this under conditions which will admit of comparison and note-taking and the use of the volumes in the actual work of the class-room. For the preparation of maps and charts, facilities in the way of tables and instruments are required entirely beyond what the student can fairly be expected to have in his own room; while especially is there need of abundant space for the permanent display of wall-maps, charts, pictures, and illustrative material, like coins, casts, and models, if the active use of such aids is to be secured.
Acquaintance with a considerable number of colleges and universities, large and small, in this country fails to disclose any appreciable number in which the material equipment of the historical department has passed much beyond the stage of crude beginnings. With exceptions so few as almost to be counted on the fingers, the most generous provision, always excepting the general library of the institution, goes no further than the use, prevailingly in conjunction with other unrelated departments, of one or more lecture-rooms; a “seminary room,” furnished with a table and some chairs, and housing such odds and ends of books as the industry of the instructors or the intermittent generosity of friends has got together, reënforced by loans from the main library; and possibly an office frequently shared by all the members of the department, where students may come for consultation. If, as seems rarely to be the case, the department has any adequate supply of maps, they have often to be kept in some out-of-the-way place, and carried about from room to room as needed; and almost never are there tables and instruments for the drawing of maps and charts. Meagre as is such equipment, some of our leading institutions do not have even this. If it be true, as it seems to be, that student interest, particularly among men, in literature, history, and philosophy, has declined markedly in recent years, may not something of the cause be found, not in the inherently greater attractiveness of mixing chemicals or dissecting cats and birds, but in the utter poverty and bareness of the quarters in which students of the humanities are commonly asked to do their work? If professors of history have fallen too much into the habit of lecturing, instead of teaching, may it not be due in part to the failure of the university to give even the ablest of them facilities for doing anything else?
I venture to suggest the following as the minimum equipment of an historical department in a university or large college. First, two or more suitable lecture-rooms, with ample blackboard space, map racks or cases, book shelves, and a lantern and screen. The rooms should be contiguous to the other rooms of the department and reserved exclusively for its uses. It is time that there were opportunity for a professor to put up a map without having to take it down again at the end of the hour. Second, a combined seminary room and library, available for study when not in use as a class-room; equipped, like the lecture-room, with adequate blackboard and map space, and housing a permanent library of duplicates reënforced by such temporary loans from the main library as are from time to time needed. Included in the furnishings of the room should be a sufficient number of small tables to accommodate each individual student, and file cases for photographs, cards, newspaper clippings, and temporary notes. For the supervision of this room, there should be provided a special attendant, preferably a trained library assistant, responsible to the librarian of the university as well as to the head of the department. Third, a room for map drawing and chart-making, with tables and instruments for draughting. Fourth, a typewriting room, supplied with machines for the use of instructors and students. Fifth, private offices or studies for the instructors.
Elaborate as such a provision of apartments may well seem to the teacher who to-day, like the wandering scholar of the Middle Ages, lectures wherever he can find a vacant room, it nevertheless is smaller than that generally allowed to the chemist or physicist. Of all the evils which present-day criticism of the college has brought to light, none is more serious than the evil of waste. The history teacher who, under the conditions common to most American institutions of higher learning, should teach his subject as he would like to teach it and as he knows it ought to be taught, would spend in useless mechanical drudgery more hours than he spent in lecturing. Most institutions with endowment enough to entitle them to a place on the “Carnegie list” have ceased to expect this waste from professors of science, and there is no reason why the time of the professor of history, political science, or political economy should not be regarded as equally valuable. If under the influence of a general demand for at least the minimum of what is due, the governing authorities of all our universities could even be brought to realize that a ground plan of the city of Rome and a Rand-McNally map of North America are not a sufficient equipment for the teaching of modern history and diplomacy, one might face the future with a new hope.
Of the many advantages to the teaching and study of history which might be expected to accrue from the general provision of such facilities as have here been indicated—economy of physical effort, more accurate study of texts, improved note-taking and care of material, wider use of books and illustrative helps, general compulsory map-drawing, and many others—one in particular deserves more than passing mention. I refer to the change which would thereby be furthered in the prevailing conception of the nature and function of the university library. With only the exceptions that prove the rule, our libraries are supported and administered on the assumption that one copy of a book is sufficient for the needs of the whole institution, and that every one who has occasion to use the book must seek it at the main or central repository. It would seem to be obvious, however, that wherever books form the fundamental material for study, and, from the nature of the case, cheap reprints of selected texts or a few duplicates of inexpensive volumes will not suffice, the library has need of as many copies of a book as there are departments to use it; and that if, with but a single copy available, resort must be had by every one to the central library, the conflicting and often irreconcilable demands of different departments present one of the most serious barriers to the development of proper methods of instruction in non-laboratory subjects. No modern department of biology is asked to get along with one microscope, and that, perhaps, of ancient pattern and in bad order. Scientific apparatus in all lines is freely duplicated as a matter of course, the adequacy of the supply being not seldom used as an advertising argument to attract students; though, as a matter of fact, there is but little greater need for duplicate apparatus than there is for duplicate books. Practical considerations, of course, will preclude extensive duplication of large or costly sets, but a multiplication of copies far beyond what is now usual, and their distribution among the various departments having constant need of them, are necessities to be met if waste is to be stopped.
I hope that I do not make the mistake of supposing that, given such historical laboratories as have here been briefly described, the universities would forthwith produce historians. I make no plea for the application of the specific methods of any science to the study of history. But the student of history, like the scientist, has to collect and classify his material, examine and criticise his sources, compare and weigh his authorities, and study his locale. What a proper equipment can give him is, not the intellectual power and insight of the great historical writer, but the opportunity to do a student’s indispensable work under the best conditions and with effective guidance, instead of doing it, as is too often the case to-day, under conditions of great disadvantage. That provision of such equipment would also stir the teacher to a more telling presentation of a subject to his class, and enable him to vitalize and dignify a department which, in this country especially, is too often thought of as but little related to current human interests, is not the least of its advantages.