Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History

by Ontario. Department of Education

LOCAL MATERIAL

One of the chief uses of local history in the class-room is to make the study of general history more vivid and interesting (1) by making more real those facts of history associated with the locality in which we live, and (2) by providing suitable illustrations, from the pupil's own experience, of facts in general history. When a pupil has seen the place where an event of history has happened, he has an interest in that event that he could scarcely gain in any other way, and the history of that period may then be taught with more interest and profit to him. A pupil finds also in local history certain facts that he must understand in order to interpret the story of happenings, distant in time and place.

Some parts of Ontario are much richer in material than others, but in all historic spots may be found. On the St. Lawrence River, in the Niagara peninsula, in the Talbot settlement district, in York county, along the Ottawa River, in the Huron tract, there is no lack of useful material. But it is not necessary to confine such local history to the outstanding events of war or the larger happenings of civil progress. In every locality there are remains of the earlier Indian inhabitants, in the form of mounds, sites of villages, relics of war and the chase (arrow-heads, stone implements, beads, etc.); relics of the early settlers, in the form of roads and old log houses; relics of pioneer life consisting of furniture, household and outdoor implements, etc., that will serve as a basis for comparison with present-day conditions, and make real to the children the lives of the earlier inhabitants and settlers of Ontario.

CIVICS

The teaching of civics has a threefold aim:

1. To instruct in the mechanism of government. (Descriptive)

2. To instruct in the history of national institutions so as to show the line of development, and also to impress the fact that existing institutions are capable of development, are not fixed. (Historical)

3. "To show the cost of each institution in the efforts and sacrifices of past generations and to quicken and make permanent the children's interest in public life and their sense of responsibility to their fellows." (Patriotic and Ethical)

Two points stand out clearly—to teach the machinery of government and to instil ideals of public conduct. Of these the second is by far the more important and the more difficult to teach directly. The best way to attempt it is by means of biography and personal references. There are great men and women in history whose lives are worthy examples to the young: Sir John Eliot, Pym, Hampden, who stood for freedom of speech and debate; Gladstone, who helped to right historic wrongs in the East; Lincoln, who stood for union and the freedom of the individual; many eminent Canadians, such as Sir John Macdonald, George Brown, Alexander Mackenzie, Egerton Ryerson, Sir Oliver Mowat, and Sir James Whitney; women such as Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry, Laura Secord and Sarah Maxwell. Besides these eminent examples, there are in every locality men and women who give unselfishly of their energy and time for the good of the community.