The geographical aspects of history fall under ‘Geography’ as a subject. This course of historical reading is valued exceedingly by young people as affording a knowledge of the past that bears upon and illuminates the present. The writer recollects meeting a brilliant group of Oxford undergraduates, keen and full of interest, but lamentably ignorant, who said, “We want to know something about history. What do you advise us to read? We know nothing.” Perhaps no youth should go to College without some such rudimentary course of English, European, and, especially, French history, as is afforded by the programmes.[30] Such a general survey should precede any special course and should be required before the more academic studies designed to prepare students for ‘research work.’
It will be observed that the work throughout the Forms is always chronologically progressive. The young student rarely goes over old ground; but should it happen that the whole school has arrived at the end of 1920, say, and there is nothing for it but to begin again, the books studied throw new light and bring the young students into line with modern research.
But any sketch of the history teaching in Forms V and VI in a given period depends upon a notice of the ‘literature’ set; for plays, novels, essays, ‘lives,’ poems, are all pressed into service and where it is possible, the architecture, painting, etc., which the period produced. Thus questions such as the following on a term’s work both test and record the reading of the term,—“Describe the condition of (a) the clergy, (b) the army, (c) the navy, (d) the general public in and about 1685.” “Trace the rise of Prussia before Frederick the Great.” “What theories of government were held by Louis XIV? Give some account of his great ministers.” “Describe the rise of Russia and its condition at the opening of the eighteenth century.” “Suppose Evelyn (Form VI) or Pepys (Form V) in counsel at the League of Nations, write his diary for three days.” “Sketch the character and manners of Addison. How does he appear in Esmond?”
It is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in the background of one’s thoughts. We may not be able to recall this or that circumstance, but, ‘the imagination is warmed’; we know that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of every question and are saved from crudities in opinion and rashness in action. The present becomes enriched for us with the wealth of all that has gone before.
Perhaps the gravest defect in school curricula is that they fail to give a comprehensive, intelligent and interesting introduction to history. To leave off or even to begin with the history of our own country is fatal. We cannot live sanely unless we know that other peoples are as we are with a difference, that their history is as ours, with a difference, that they too have been represented by their poets and their artists, that they too have their literature and their national life. We have been asleep and our awaking is rather terrible. The people whom we have not taught, rise upon us in their ignorance and ‘the rabble,’—
“As the world were now but to begin
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
They cry,—‘Choose we!’”
(Hamlet.)