“The Old South Leaflets” Classified
BY REX W. WELLS, TEACHER OF HISTORY, EAST HIGH SCHOOL, TOLEDO, OHIO.
Municipal Civics in Elementary and High Schools[3]
BY JAMES J. SHEPPARD, PRINCIPAL OF HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE, NEW YORK CITY.
In an address at the dedication of an educational building at Albany a few days ago, Governor Hughes said: “I want to refer to the importance in this day of giving our teachers and of having them communicate to their pupils the proper sense of the responsibility of citizenship in this country. It is not enough to have patriotic songs sung. It is a fine thing to have the flag flying and to have it continuously before the youthful mind as a symbol of this great independent nation, of the land of the free and the home of the brave. But as a distinguished man once said, it is a very doubtful advantage to generate emotion which has no practical use, and the emotions of patriotism ought to be stimulated with regard to certain important and practical ends. Study of civics, the knowledge of the actual operation of our government is most important.”
In this statement the governor puts the case admirably. Civics should be taught in the schools, and it should be taught in a practical way. When your committee made its investigations some half dozen years ago into the matter of instruction in municipal government in elementary and high schools, it discovered two things: First, a lamentable lack of proper instruction in the subject in the schools of the country, and second, an earnest desire on the part of those in authority to remedy this lack. Advice and assistance were asked for by many who replied to our questionnaire. We were impressed with the importance of presenting something definite and concrete in the way of recommendations. It was easy enough of course to say that the subject should be taught in both elementary and high schools, that it should be so placed in the curriculum, as to reach all the pupils, and that it should be, as Governor Hughes puts it, a study of the actual operations of our government. But the schools wanted something more directly helpful than this. Few, if any, text-books suitable for the purpose were available. Practically all of them were written along the conventional lines of a scientific treatment of the framework of government with but slight and ineffective attempts to make the study other than one of broad generalizations of little direct and concrete meaning to the youthful student. Happily there has been some endeavor since the committee’s first report to make texts which really meet the need, and there are now on the market a few books which are genuinely helpful. There is every reason to believe that the production of this class of books is greatly to increase. However the committee believes that suitable texts can only help to solve the problem.
Governor Hughes is quite right in emphasizing “the importance of giving our teachers and of having them communicate to their pupils the proper sense of responsibility of citizenship in this country.” That sense of responsibility will hardly be strong and effective if it is to come from purely academic study of government. It will be powerful and helpful if it comes from an earnest and sympathetic study of government in operation, a study of what the government is actually doing for the student, what it ought to do and what he himself can do to improve it. A study of this kind can hardly fail to give the future citizen a feeling of pride in his own city, and a proper sense of his own responsibility in making its government honest and efficient. The municipal campaign recently concluded in New York seems to have been conducted largely on the idea that the average voter is more interested in personalities than policies. Such a campaign would be impossible before an electorate having even an elementary appreciation of the direct bearing upon its own personal interests of an honest and efficient administration of the city’s affairs. It is plainly the business of the schools to use their extraordinary opportunity and extraordinary power to equip the voters of to-morrow with a training in these vital affairs of government that shall make them intelligent critics of what their servants in office have done or what claimants for their ballots propose to do. Heretofore the schools have been generally content to give instruction on matters of state and national government, with but scantiest reference to municipal affairs, in spite of the fact that municipal government is of most direct and vital importance to the citizen, touching him in his daily life at every turn. If the schools could only establish firmly in the minds of the students just the one fact that party labels are of no importance in municipal matters, that honest and efficient administrators should be chosen regardless of party connection or endorsement that alone would be a tremendous gain. We have been going on the assumption that a knowledge of state and federal government will furnish enough insight into matters of administration to guide the voter in matters of municipal government. It would be far better if the choice were necessary to rely upon a proper knowledge and appreciation of municipal interests to guide the voter in the broader fields of government. The choice is of course not necessary. State and national government should still be studied, but in a more rational way. Much the same method may well be employed as in the study of municipal government.
As has already been stated, your committee believes that instruction in municipal government should reach every pupil in the schools. That means that it should not be delayed in the elementary school till the last year of the course, or in the high school until the senior year, as is still generally the rule. A large percentage of elementary school pupils drop out before they have completed even the seventh year of the course, and a still larger percentage of high school enrollment is lost long before the graduation stage. The committee believes that there should be continuous instruction in civics during the last four years of the elementary course, moving along in easy and progressive fashion from a very simple study of municipal housekeeping to a fairly comprehensive notion of the city’s government activities. The course as outlined in the New York City program of studies for elementary schools has some admirable features. The course in its present form is due in no small measure to the work of your committee under the original chairmanship of Superintendent Maxwell. It provides in the fifth year for some study of the duties of citizens and public officials, and also of civic institutions. The study begins very logically with the most obvious form of municipal activity, the school itself, and goes on to other departments, such as charities, tenement house, and parks, in each instance emphasizing what good citizenship involves in the pupil’s relation to the department. In other words, the study is not merely descriptive, it is personal as well. In the sixth year the outline calls for instruction concerning the chief administrative office of the city. In the seventh year and the first half of the eighth year there is no definite provision for municipal civics, the time being devoted to national government. In the last half of the eighth year there is a return to the city government with “increasing emphasis upon the duties and responsibilities of a citizen, or as a member of a family, as pupil, as employer or employed, as voter or as office-holder.” The course would be greatly improved by making a study of the city’s municipal activities continuous throughout the four years. At present there is a break in the work from the end of the sixth year to the beginning of the last half of the eighth year. The difficulty is of course that of a crowded curriculum, but the very great importance of the study ought to win for it a definite place in the curriculum even at the expense of some other study.
Just how well the elementary course in municipal civics is administered in New York City or in other cities where it is prescribed it is impossible for the committee to say. A recent writer in the “Survey” seems rather skeptical of the results obtained in New York. From her own showing, however, I think the situation is not so bad as she seems to imagine it. We who teach know the difficulty of getting pupils to do themselves justice in examinations or tests. They really know more than their answers indicate. Patient, skillful, sympathetic questioning will often reveal intelligence where only ignorance seemed to exist. It would be a matter for surprise, however, if our civics teaching was at present all that it ought to be. It is a new thing in the curriculum. Both its content and its proper presentation must be worked out by experiment. It can only be well handled by teachers with a keen love for the subject, a genuine appreciation of its value and some taste for first hand investigation. Supervisory officers must give it cordial support and helpful direction.
For the immediate future we must look to the high schools, I think, to show the most marked development in the study of municipal activities. The conditions of teaching are more favorable and the teaching force better qualified to meet the problem. History and economics are both more generally taught and certainly much better taught than they were a decade ago, and it will not be difficult, I think, to interest instructors in these subjects in the new field of municipal government. Of prime importance is the place of the new study in the curriculum. The general custom hitherto has been to postpone all teaching of civics in secondary schools until the fourth year, when American history is taken up. This is a serious error, as it means no instruction whatever in the subject for the vast majority of high school students, a relatively small proportion of whom complete the full course. It should not be postponed till even the second year, but should be taken up at once by the student upon entrance into the high school as a serious and important study. Confessedly pupils of 14 or 15 are not well prepared to receive instruction in civics, as it is generally taught as a scientific study of state and national government, with a historical background. The latter may well continue to be a part of a well-rounded high school course, modified only by the inclusion of much more work on the municipal side and greatly improved by more rational methods of teaching. But your committee earnestly insists upon place being made in the very first year of the high school course for this new work. At present there is only one high school in New York which is doing this, but it is interesting to note that no less than three committees are now at work in that city upon plans for a program of study in this subject. And, moreover, two of these committees have been appointed by bodies of a public character who are asking and securing the cooperation of progressive teachers in the task of bringing about the desired change. It is a very reasonable hope that in a comparatively short time all the high schools in the Greater New York will be giving the civics instruction so urgently needed to all the boys and girls who enter their doors. Once New York or any other important educational center shows the way, we may confidently expect the movement to spread rapidly. Judging from the numerous communications the chairman of your committee has received there is already widespread interest in the subject.
The time is therefore ripe, apparently, for us to offer definite recommendations in the make-up of a proper course of study in the new subject, whose value as a part of the curriculum will depend chiefly upon the manner in which it is presented. On the whole, it is fortunate that a text-book is hardly possible except as a supplementary aid, for there is grave danger that a study of municipal activities based upon a text-book would take too much of an academic character and interfere with or minimize the first-hand observation and investigation on the part of both pupil and teacher, which are of primary importance in realizing the aims of the work. However, there are some books with which the teacher should familiarize himself, among them such works as Baker’s “Municipal Engineering and Sanitation,” Eaton’s “The Government of Municipalities,” Fairlie’s “Municipal Administration,” Wilcox’s “The American City,” Zueblin’s “American Municipal Progress” and Shaw’s excellent books. These are useful in a broad, general way. The teacher should make copious use of the city charter and reports of the various city departments, such as health, tenement house, parks, schools, etc. The pupil’s chief reliance will be on the city charter apart from the teacher’s instruction and his own observation and investigation.
The course might well be outlined in the following general way:
I. A brief consideration of the way in which government in general arises, with a discussion of the rise of a village and its development into the city. The pupil will be led to note the extension of the coöperative idea from its simple manifestation in the primitive community to the comprehensive undertakings of a modern metropolis. The relation of the city to the State will be made clear in this discussion, and a proper understanding of what a city charter is be given.
II. Following immediately upon this brief introductory study, which will take on added meaning as the course progresses, should come a study of what may properly be considered the central element of city life—the street. Here we can appeal directly to the pupil’s own experience and observation in a marked degree, and we are sure of his interest when the work is related so closely to his daily life. It is probably worth while to give a pretty full outline of the topics to be taken up in a study of the city street. The one which follows has been in successful use for several years in the High School of Commerce in New York, and naturally covers some points of slight importance in other cities.
The Street the Central Element of City Life.
(a) How streets are made.
(b) To whom they belong.
(c) Who pays for their improvement?
(d) What they are used for and what they contain.
1. Roadways for traffic. 2. Sidewalks. 3. Gutters. 4. Sewers. 5. Water pipes. 6. Telegraph, telephone and electric light wires. 7. Car tracks. 8. Subways. 9. Gas pipes. 10. Conduits.
A. Which of these belong to the city government?
B. Who controls each of these? (Exact officials as found in city charter.)
C. How these public utilities came to be in the streets.
D. Franchises; what are they?
The Street.
(a) The proper arrangement of streets.
(b) The defects of the local system as compared with that of other cities.
(c) Why our street system was laid out as it is.
(d) The surface of the street.
1. Paving.
a. The various kinds, comparative advantages and costs.
b. The importance of good paving to the business interests, as shown in transportation charges.
c. Why the surface of the streets is not better, and who suffers from it.
(1) Poor paving at the beginning, and the reason for it.
(2) Constant tearing up of the streets and failure to replace properly.
(3) Remedy for these evils.
A. The conduit or subway.
1. Why we do not have it.
2. Additional evils resulting from its absence.
a. Waste of gas.
b. Waste of water.
c. Difficulty of making repairs.
d. Injury to health and vegetation.
Poisonous gases. Uncleanliness.
2. The cleaning of the streets.
a. Who has charge of it.
b. What it costs.
c. Why necessary.
d. How the department is run.
e. What is done with the refuse and what should be done.
f. Duties of the householder.
g. How we may keep the streets cleaner.
h. The sprinkling of the streets.
1. By whom done.
3. The regulation of traffic.
a. Who makes the regulations (ordinances, rules)?
b. Who enforces them, such as the direction and speed of traffic?
c. The encumbering of sidewalks and streets.
d. The restriction of certain streets.
e. Remedies for the congestion of traffic, as tunnels, belt lines, etc., for freight.
f. The growth of business limited by traffic.
4. Sidewalks.
a. Regulations as to laying, repairing.
b. Who has jurisdiction over them.
c. The stoop line.
d. Right of the citizen to demand good sidewalks.
e. Blocking the sidewalk.
5. Gutters.
a. Whose business to keep clear of ice, snow or dirt.
b. Whose business to enforce the law and who makes the law?
6. The sewer system.
a. How and by whom sewers are put in.
b. Who pays for them.
c. Who has charge of them.
d. How connected with the houses.
e. How the sewage is disposed of.
f. What is done in other cities and what should be done here?
g. The importance of a good sewer system to the health of the community.
7. The water supply.
a. Why the city and not the individual furnishes the supply of water in a great city.
b. Why the water supply conditions the growth of the city.
c. Where we obtain our present water supply and how it reaches us.
d. Who has charge of the water supply.
e. The total and per capita supply of water in the city.
f. How water is paid for.
g. The danger of a water famine.
1. How it can be averted.
(a) Saving the water by the repairing of leaks, using meters, etc., salt water for fires and cleaning streets.
(b) New sources of supply. The difficulties.
h. The advantages of city ownership over private company.
i. Cost of water supply.
8. Lighting the streets.
a. How it is done.
b. What it costs.
c. Who has charge of it.
d. Should it be done by the city or a private company?
e. The use of the streets for carrying pipes and wires.
f. Who controls this use?
g. The control over these companies by the city or state.
h. Ought the city furnish light to citizens for their private purposes?
i. How the furnishing of light and fuel differs from furnishing meat and groceries.
j. Who gives the right to place telegraph and telephone wires?
k. Why should they be underground?
(a) Appearance, (b) Light, (c) Fire.
9. Transportation by cars on the streets.
a. The giving of franchises, why?
b. What is paid for a franchise?
c. Who has jurisdiction over street railways and to what extent?
d. Should the city own them?
e. Importance of street passenger transportation in the life of the city.
f. What cheaper fares could do for the city.
10. The rights of citizens on the streets.
a. Laws and ordinances which secure these, as those against disorderly conduct, crowding, ball playing, excessive speeding and those regulating processions, banners, etc.
11. Licenses to use streets.
a. What businesses require to be licensed and why?
b. How licenses are secured.
III. Part III of the course takes up the matter of protection to life and property by the various departments of the city government, as follows:
Protection to life and property by
1. The Police Department.
2. The Department of Education.
3. Fire Department.
4. The Courts and Department of Correction.
5. The Health Department.
6. The Tenement House Department.
7. The Bureau of Buildings.
8. The Park Department.
9. The Charities Department.
1. Police.
Policing the Streets.—The organization and management of the police department. The duties of policemen. The importance of an honest and efficient police department. Why this department is so often criticized. The evils of graft and why it exists. State or county control of police. Should the head arise from the ranks? Should his position be permanent? The rights of citizens as against the police. How to make complaints. Serving warrants. The police control over street traffic, street crowds, push carts, etc.
2. Education.
The educational law and why it exists. Why the city furnishes free education. The organization of the department of education. The method of appointment of officials and the teaching force. The advantages of the system of appointments. Kinds of day schools. The total cost of education in the city. The cost per pupil in each class of schools. The cost in the high school. The cost of books and supplies. Is it worth while? Special schools and colleges: Evening schools, corporate schools. The lecture system. The vacation playground. Aims and advantages of each. Why they exist. What they accomplish. The excellences and defects of our system of education as compared with that of other cities and countries. Supplementary education.
1. The Natural History Museum.
2. The Botanical Gardens.
3. The Zoological Garden.
4. The Art Museum.
3. The Fire Department.
Protection against fire depends upon (1) the building laws, (2) the water supply, and (3) the efficiency of the fire department. How one becomes a fireman. The organization of the department.
(a) The influence of the insurance companies.
(b) The poor construction of buildings.
(c) The esprit de corps. Salaries and pensions.
4. The Courts and the Department of Correction.
1. Civil Courts.
A. Municipal Courts. Their jurisdiction, officers and district.
B. The City Court (county).
C. The Supreme Court.
2. Criminal Courts.
Under the study of courts comes the work of the court officers and the processes connected with the trial. The term of the office, selection and salary of the various officials. The meaning of the various terms used. Probation system.
The Department of Correction.—Its management and duties. Prison labor. The indeterminate sentence system.
5. The Health Department.
(a) In relation to the ordinary resident. (b) In relation to the landlord. (c) In relation to the business man.
A study of the actual regulations of this department as found in the code, and a description of its activities, together with comparison with the work done in other cities.
6. The Tenement House Department.
When and why formed? Who is subject to it? How organized? What it has accomplished. Why it needs a strong head. Illustrations from report of the Tenement House Department. Dictation of most important provisions of law.
7. Building Bureau.
How it differs in organization from other departments. The buildings subject to its jurisdiction. Why its inefficient management is so disastrous. The temptation to graft and what it costs.
8. The Park Department.
How it protects health. How our park system arose and what it has cost. How the parks are managed. The need of small parks. What parks have accomplished in New York. Boulevards as parks. The need and benefit of playgrounds as conducive to health, educative and preventive of crime. The desirability of school playgrounds. Dangers threatening parks.
9. Department of Charities.
The hospital and ambulance service. Out-door relief. Asylums. How the destitute may be aided. The city’s aid to private charitable institutions.
In this connection it is both desirable and feasible for the pupils to visit the more important departments and get some first-hand impressions of their work. Our experience has been that the city officials willingly and helpfully coöperate with the school. Not only have they furnished us much valuable material, but they have also facilitated the inspection of their departments, and have not infrequently themselves given helpful talks to the boys.
IV. Following close upon the study of the departments comes a consideration of the cost to the city. The pupil has noted the extensive activities of the municipality and the important question of how they are all paid for looms up before him. The budget must be studied, and the manner of levying and collecting taxes must be understood, as well as the raising of money by loans. Under proper guidance he will come to realize how extravagant and inefficient government affects him personally, how honest and economic government has a money value to every citizen. He will want to know what city officers determine the amount of money to be spent, and just what officers spend the money. New York City has had a Board of Estimate and Apportionment in control of its finances for a decade, yet it remained for the recent three-cornered fight for the mayoralty, with its resulting choice of a Democratic mayor and a Fusion Board of Estimate, to bring home to the average citizen what the professional politician had long understood, that this Board have really much more to do with the government of the city than the mayor, that in reality New York has a sort of government by commission.
V. We come finally in our study to a consideration of the citizen’s part in the administration of municipal affairs. Topics such as the following should be taken up:
Becoming a citizen. Becoming a voter. Registration. Voting. Voting but a part. The party organization. The cause of good or bad government. How the citizen may govern the city through the party organization. Enrollment. The district captain. The district committee. The district leader. The general committee. The leader of the organization. How the leader reaches his place. Organization the key to success in politics. Candidates for office, how selected, formally, actually. Why the high school graduate should work through an organization for an honest, business-like government.
The preceding part of the course will have failed of its purpose if it hasn’t established in the pupil’s mind certain elementary ideas and ideals concerning the purpose of government and a sense of the duty and responsibility which every citizen owes to the community in which he works and lives. He will be an intelligent reader of the numerous items in the daily press bearing upon the administration of city affairs, and he will know how as a voter he may take an active and effective part in that administration alike for his own best interests and that of the community.
The course outlined is not an artificial affair based upon pure theory. It has been successfully carried on in one high school for half a decade, winning the enthusiastic interest of first-year pupils as well as of the teachers charged with its conduct. It can be adapted to the high school of any community, and will fail of its purpose only if it is managed in a perfunctory fashion by instructors who have not a professional interest in their work, or a high sense of their great responsibility and their great opportunity. It would be a splendid thing if we could require of all teachers in the public schools a knowledge of the governmental activities of the municipality they are called upon to serve, for surely they of all citizens, ought to be familiar with the purpose and practice of government.
Has History a Practical Value?[4]
BY PROFESSOR J. N. BOWMAN, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
This question of the practical value of history rises not out of a theory but out of existing social and educational conditions. In a practical age where “doing things” receives such generous applause, and “ends” are held in high estimation; when “results,” and very frequently material “results,” are the norms of success, and “efficiency” widens its meaning beyond the physical world,—then history, as well as other subjects is called into question to render an account of itself before the judgment bar of the present. Life looms up great beyond all the parts of the school system. The eighth grade has its graduation into life as well as the high school and college. The grades feel their responsibility to the great majority of their pupils who go directly into life. In the East the high schools are breaking from the “preparatory status” to the college, and are looking to the good they can do for their pupils who get no more schooling. Trade schools are growing up within and beside the high schools, as the professional schools grew up within and beside the colleges. The college itself is in question by labor union committees and inaugural addresses. The university is becoming professional; even Arts and Letters in preparing teachers and general practitioners of arts and letters. The industrial movement has now the economic interpretation of history. The “Market Reports”[5] of the university have brought the “ticker” within the college walls. Students and parents are asking more and more insistently, “What is the use?” and “What is the practical value?”
The question is not new; the questioners are not new; the things questioned are new. In olden days when schools existed primarily for the Latin professions, the question was answered: these things prepare for law, medicine, and the ministry. Schools now prepare for other professions and also for the trades; but the question is not yet answered without condition, amendment or dissent. In those old days the members of the Latin professions were the bearers of the highest culture; but now with our ideas of democracy and opportunity, and the general diffusion of knowledge, these members are but a small fraction of the bearers of the highest culture. The school system has grown from the school of the professions into the school of the people; but do the schools prepare for the people as the older schools prepared for the professions? A healthy, growing institution—like Webster’s mariner—must constantly take its bearings relative to life to know how far the elements of fads, specialization, and scholarly isolation are driving it from its true course.
Practical relates to action, use, practice; it refers to ends or means to ends; it is opposed to theoretical, speculation or ideal. But there is nothing in the word to debar its use in mental as well as physical fields. It may be used as the German uses übung in his university courses. Value is the quality that makes something suitable for ends or purposes. It permits the wildest limit of “art for art’s sake”; and equally permits one part of the “art” to be suitable to the ends and purposes of another part or of another “art.” Practical value, then, is the quality that renders a thing useful or desirable in meeting ends. It does not by any means alone imply “for revenue only.”
Has history a practical value? It depends on the ends. The narrowest specialist as well as the broadest humanitarian will both agree upon the usefulness and desirability of history to meet their respective ends, but they disagree upon what the ends are. The specialist is interested in history for its own sake; to him the element of history is the fact; the tradition of the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries has forced him to select his facts in the fields of politics, war and diplomacy; the method he uses is rather a one-sided use of the natural-scientific method. He is interested in the facts for their own sake: he is often too little interested in their value, importance and inter-relations. He has performed a great service in the nineteenth century in correcting old facts and in finding new ones. But now he has such mountains of facts that he is overawed by their mass, and long practice in his method prevents him from using them. So a great Harvard professor is reported as saying, “Keep on piling up facts, their weight will squeeze out some kind of order.” In his attempt to be scientific the specialist has used only one side of the scientist’s method; he has forgotten that the scientist works not only with matter, but with the activities and relations of matter. He loves to brush the mold off the dry bones of the past. Perhaps he even has a dream of articulating a few of the bones into a cross section of the skeleton of the political past. This is a rightful part of the work in the university and graduate school, unfortunately often the all-dominating part. I have spoken at length of this work for the reason that in this state there is required of all high school teachers a year of graduate work in some university of the American Association. The specialist’s method received there is all too often taken, without adaptation into the high school and occasionally even into the grades. So “art for art’s sake” is perpetuated. The boy is prepared for carrying on research when he expects to carry on business, and the girl is drilled in turning out monographs when she expects to turn out biscuits. Here is where the parents, and others, raise the question, what is the use? The answer and the reform must come from the top downwards.
On the other hand the humanitarian is often so broad that his work contains but little of history; it is so thin and transparent that it may justly be called culturine. His pupils learn answers, but not the steps to the answers; or they learn the fashion phrase of the “example,” but not the steps of solution. At every point in their journey through the past they are dependent on their Bædecker. Here again is where the question is raised, what is the use?
It is not necessary to make a choice of either of these for the history work in the schools. Where the fact-hunter ends his work the historian may begin his. More important than either fact or generalization is the method of getting at each so that the pupil may become self-active. If he learns these methods he can use the facts in finding other facts, in explaining and interpreting other facts, or in understanding other departments of life. He can use facts inductively and through a process of analysis and classification reach generalization; or like Kepler, Newton and Faraday he can work on the facts deductively. He can follow lines of interest, threads of activity; he can view them from one view point or from different view points. On the other hand he can learn and use the method of working a fact after the Seignobosian “rules of the game.” So even within the narrower and professional field there is the practical value.
But the end is still in question. The pupil goes from the grades, high school and college into life to take his part as a workman some eight hours of the day and as a citizen all twenty-four; as an active, creative worker through the prime of his life, and as a member of society to his grave. The parents and the people out in life ask the question of the practical value, and they answer it from the standpoint of life and social efficiency. Does history stand the test?
From this point of view the specialist fails; the storehouse of facts is static, efficiency is active; the method of facts results only in another static fact. The culturine teacher fares somewhat better; he is active, but unfortunately with empty symbols. He deals with answers and not with problems, with his Bædecker and not with the thing itself. It is the long stretch between the two that is wanting—the process, the use. The history work must be adapted to the life needs of the pupils as members of society: those facts, those generalizations, and especially those processes of reaching from one to the other, that can make him an efficient member of society. Isolated facts will be soon forgotten, generalizations will perhaps stick longer, but methods of generalization can be used throughout life on new facts to reach new generalizations.
What are some of the things in life and society for which history may be used,—the ends to which it may be adapted in study and teaching? Someone has pointed out four ends, but I should like to add another, fully conscious of the excepting and varying relations between them: reading, studying, teaching, writing, and I should like to add living. Writing is justly the work of the professional, i. e., the graduate school; yet if history ever becomes a science it is not at all impossible that living may not usurp this position in graduate work. Teaching, in this state, is also the work of the graduate school and the last years of the college. This leaves, then, reading, studying and living that touch the history work from the grades to the college; these also underlie the other two.
The basis on which all these rest is life itself, and the interest one takes in life. Since one is here in this world he is interested in it, to get as much out of and put as much into it as he can; if he has no interest he at least exerts himself either to be a parasite or to shuffle off its weight. This interest is the starting point of the interest in the past of this life; the basis of the ascending scale from reading onward.
Reading runs through all history work from the stories—told and read—in the grades to the reading after dinner by the evening fireside. Interest in life as it was, is, and is becoming: the problems and policies, the activity and struggle, the peaceful life of the cotter or the demon life of the battlefield, the growth of trade and the sailing of Columbus, or the work of Bach or Paracelsus. From some life interest now one travels back to chosen places and times, and under the lead of some Virgil and Beatrice does more than Dante in taking up temporary habitation then and there. From a purely commercial point of view, also, the historian can here benefit himself—and his publisher—in preparing a public to demand his books.
Studying is a step beyond reading; Virgil and Beatrice are here dismissed. It explores some field of interest and follows some thread; it reads pages and chapters and not volumes or series. The books may be stories, texts or documents—the story must be pieced together from many sources. In reading, the books lead the reader; in studying, the student leads the books. It is the transitory inquisitiveness of the child become somewhat constant in the later grades and high school, and fixed in the university in the professional study of “ut clauses.” Reflection and study go hand in hand,—the latter to answer the questions of the former. For the very great majority of people this is the nearest they ever get to professional history work. It is of the greatest practical value to those who use history for other than the pleasant hour’s reading.
In living, life and history unite. This, of course, touches the live question of what is history. The specialist and his methods are adaptable practically alone to a past not coming within eighty to twenty years of the present. But the parent and the man in life deal on the one hand with human beings, institutions, matter, etc., and on the other with life forces and energies. All these exist in different and modified forms in the specialist’s past. If this breach between the past and present cannot be bridged, then the laboring man is right in asking that history be displaced by things that can bridge it. The man in life is busy with the art of living—can history help him in this? If history is ever to be a science and be scientific, it must consider, as do the sciences, the consequent question of being an art—of reaching desired effects with known causes.
Those who ask the question, has history a practical value, go from the present life into history. From that viewpoint they see its workings, and from life and society they draw their norm by which they judge it, accept it in the curriculum and pay taxes for the history teacher’s salary. For such a purely selfish note as this history should not wait; but should search out in society and life how it may be of service some way and somehow, and through its teaching supply these needs. It can then make itself indispensable and forestall all question of its practical value.
The practical value of history to life depends on a complex of race, age, country, locality and the individual. Some phases of this value might be stated thus: an ease in observing, analyzing and classifying the life activities of to-day. No other subject taught in the schools touches life at so many points and in so many of its activities. Through seeing in history the close interrelation of activities in the past the student can be led to see the close interrelation of the activities of his own day. Again, he learns to see life as a historic whole—his contemporaneous life in connection with the life of the race. He thus learns valuations and norms for judging character. He learns that Jeffries and Johnson are less valuable in life than Pasteur and Eucken; that even in the history of pugilism they perhaps are less noteworthy than either Sullivan or Corbett. Again, history can help him to save experience. He can learn to apply with due modification to present problems not the answers of the past to past problems, but the ways of solving those problems. Material and social environments exist now as they existed in the days of the Greeks; hunger and socialization, love and ambition, the desire to know and to feel, are as effective now as in the days of Socrates. The combination and the emphasis change. The past cannot answer the problem of the present, but can help him to answer it. Again, history can help him to be tolerant, since our day demands tolerance. In studying some struggle of the past he learns to see that question from two or more sides; this practice helps, with the practice in other subjects taught in the schools, to consider a present question from its many sides.
Historical impartiality is frequently misused: impartiality plays its part in the consideration of questions, but should not be allowed to mar decisions when once made. The specialist and his pupils can easily stand off from and out of present, active life like men from Mars. Tolerance, then, is desirable in the consideration of questions, and of the activities acknowledged by society; for tolerance, like liberty, does not mean license. Again, history has a practical value in connecting the present almost as intimately with the past as hope does the present with the future. It gives two or more points together with the present from which direction and tendency may be seen. It can thus help to break down the loneliness of the present.
The life of each succeeding present must dictate its own norms of efficiency: whether citizenship or patriotism, character or individuality, socialization or socialism, etc. The practical value of history is like the practical value of all other subjects—it must adapt itself to life needs, and by its leadership make itself indispensable to life and society. Also it must be of practical value to the individual for his pleasure, his use, and his business; by its adaptability to these ends it makes itself indispensable to him. It has this practical value for the pupils in the grades, high school, and college, in contributing something for themselves and for their parts in life.
An Idaho cow-puncher last summer defined life as “just one d—— thing after another.” It has also been pointed out that this is the best definition of history, as all too often taught and written. The “cow-puncher” forms a small class, and is rapidly disappearing; history will soon be forced to adapt itself to another class and to a life otherwise defined. In doing so it is hoped that it will not be by this chance and unconscious adaptation, but that it will consciously and deliberately adapt itself to the new class and its life.
I believe history has a practical value in life, and a place in the school system; and also that it can prove this value so efficiently that its critics will not wish to relegate history to the position of Greek and Latin.