THE TEACHING OF HISTORY
A. The Teaching of American History
Function of the teacher of history
History as a science attempts to explain the development of civilization. The investigator of the sources of history must do his part in a truly scientific spirit. He must examine with the utmost scrutiny the many sources on which the history of the past has its foundation. He reveals facts, and through them the truth is established.
But history is more than a science. It is an art. The investigator is not necessarily a historian, any more than a lumberman is an architect. The historian must use all available material, whether the result of his own researches or that of others. He must weigh all facts and deduct from them the truth. He must analyze, synthesize, organize, and generalize. He must absorb the spirit of the people of whom he writes and color the narrative as little as possible with his own prejudices. But the historian must be more than a narrator; he must be an interpreter. As an interpreter he should never lose sight of the fact that all his deductions should be along scientific lines. Even then he will not escape errors. In pure science error is inadmissible. In history minor errors of fact are unavoidable, but their presence need not seriously affect the general conclusions. In spite of many misstatements of fact, a historical work may be substantially correct in the main things—in presenting and interpreting with true perspective the life and spirit of the people of whom it treats.
The historian must be more than a chronicler and an interpreter. He must be master of a lucid, virile, attractive literary style. The power of expression, indeed, must be one of his chief accomplishments. The old notion, it is true, that history is merely a branch of literature is quite as erroneous as the later theory that history is a pure science and must be dissociated from all literary form.
The teacher of history as the teacher of the evolution of civilization
The pioneer investigator who patiently delves into sources and brings to light new material deserves high praise, but far rarer is the gift of the man who sees history in its true perspective, who can construct the right relationships and can then reproduce the past in compelling literary form. A historian without literary charm is like an architect who cares only for the utility and nothing for the grace and beauty of his building.
The chronological point of view
The history teacher who slavishly follows old chronological methods has not kept pace with modern progress; but the teacher who has discarded the chronological method has ventured without a compass on an unknown sea. Chronology, the sequence of events, is as necessary in history as distance and direction in geography.