Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History

by Ontario. Department of Education

TYPE LESSONS

FORM IV

INTRODUCTORY

As described in the details of method for Form IV (see p. [28]), the ideal method of teaching in this Form is the oral method, which means not only the narration of the story, but the presentation to the pupils of problems connected with the lesson that the experiences of the class may help to solve. The full narration here of the lessons selected would be like doing over again the work of the text-book; accordingly, in the majority of the lessons, a topical analysis is all that is given. The value of a topical analysis is that it emphasizes the principal points that should be described or developed and, more important still, that it assists the pupils to understand the lesson better, that is, to see more clearly the relation of cause and effect. The topical analysis will also suggest to the teacher how to prepare a lesson. There is no better evidence that a period of history is understood by the teacher than the ability to make a clear, concise analysis of it. This analysis should then be used instead of the text-book in teaching the lesson, and the use of it will, after a little practice has made the teacher more expert, contribute, to a surprising degree, to increased interest in the class.

EGERTON RYERSON

One of the objects of instruction in civics is to create in the pupils ideals of citizenship that may influence their conduct in after life. The most powerful agency to use for this object is the life of some useful and patriotic citizen who gave his talents and energy to the bettering of his country. In using biography for this purpose the pupils should be given only such facts as they can comprehend, and these facts should be made as real, vivid, and interesting as possible by appropriate personal details and concrete description. The following sketch may serve as an example:

Dr. Ryerson, in speaking of his birth and parentage, said:

I was born on March 24th, 1803, in the township of Charlotteville, near the village of Vittoria, in the then London district, now the County of Norfolk. My father had been an officer in the British army during the American Revolution, being a volunteer in the Prince of Wales' Regiment of New Jersey, of which place he was a native. His forefathers were from Holland, and his more remote ancestors were from Denmark. At the close of the American revolutionary war, he, with many others of the same class, went to New Brunswick, where he married my mother, whose maiden name was Stickney, a descendant of one of the early Massachusetts Puritan settlers. Near the close of the last century, my father with his family followed an elder brother to Canada, where he drew some 2,500 acres of land from the Government for his services in the army, besides his pension.

Ryerson's mother had a very strong influence over him. She was a very religious woman with a great love for her children, and from her Egerton learned lessons that never ceased to influence him. After telling how she treated him when he had done something naughty, he says that "though thoughtless and full of playful mischief, I never afterwards knowingly grieved my mother, or gave her other than respectful and kind words."