[The Field of the Magazine]
DISCUSSED IN A LETTER FROM PROFESSOR ANDREW C. McLAUGHLIN, HEAD OF HISTORY DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Editor The History Teacher’s Magazine:
A magazine devoted to the interests and the problems of the history teacher ought to be of service. We all have so much to learn, our tasks are so perplexing and trying, that we can profit much by the experience of others and gain something by discussion and exchange of opinions. This is true even if we admit that all can not follow the same route and use the same methods, and that, in history teaching, success depends in a peculiar degree on character, aptitude, and native skill. We are in special need of helpful discussion, because we are still considering the elementary phases of our profession; we are not confident of the curriculum; we have no clear common opinion as to the purpose and end of historical instruction; we are pondering dubiously the problems that have long since been solved for other studies in the program. In such respects we are notably far behind the teachers of the classics, mathematics or physics; in fact, we are probably behind the teachers of all other subjects commonly taught in the schools, for, despite the grumblings and complaints of the ubiquitous critic, English itself, our former companion in unhappiness, has found a régime and a method and is gaining in confidence and self-respect. We are further along, it is true, than we were a decade ago; but we are far from agreement and still further from perfection.
I sometimes think when I grow weary of the interminable discussion of the history curriculum that there is no need of our trying to establish anything like uniformity, and that the safest and easiest way is to tell every program-maker to go his own way and every teacher to do what he likes; but I know that such despondency is weakness, that in all probability we can reach substantial agreement, and that, until we have a general, if incomplete, consensus concerning the sequence of studies from kindergarten to university, we cannot discuss, as we should, many other topics that demand consideration. We must remember, too, when we find ourselves involved in wearying argument about the mere framework of the curriculum, that history as an educational subject is but a child of yesterday—or to-morrow; and that it has to find its place and justify itself by results, in competition with subjects like Latin, which have been taught ever since the Renaissance, or indeed ever since flogging Orbilius applied the stimulating birch to Horace. And so, we must be patient as well as eager and appreciate the difficulties of our problem.
There are so many topics pressing for immediate consideration that I am tempted to prolong what I mean to be a brief letter into a catalogue of our necessities; but I will allow myself only one word. There is a wide-spread complaint that, with all the time given to history, much more time than was commonly given ten years ago, pupils leave the high schools with indefinite knowledge—I had almost said with indefinite ignorance—of the subject. College teachers are perplexed and discouraged by the frailty and inaccuracy of the students’ attainments when the students first appear in their classes; perhaps there is like cause for discouragement when they disappear from their classes. The cold fact is that our boys and girls too often do not have distinct, decided, accurate information; but have aptitude in guessing, supposing, and approximating. The first thing, then, that we need to consider is this: Can we make the most and get the best from the newer methods of teaching? Can we teach students to handle books and to think as well as remember? Can we give them the historical idea and the historical point of view? Can we stimulate them to read and arouse their imagination? Can we do these things, and still be sure that this information is exact, that they have reverence for truth, and that what they have learned is firmly fastened in their minds? If we cannot, I fear that sooner or later we shall all slip back quickly into the old rote method and make each day’s lesson an unalloyed grind on an unvarying modicum of unadorned and unadorning fact; and when we do slip back thus far, we might as well slip out of the school room altogether, for there is no time or place in the school for history instruction that is content with stuffing minds with dates and names. Our task, then, is to get and to give all the educational value of history; and experience proves that the task is a heavy one. We all hope that the new journal will help us lift the load and carry it.
Cordially, A. C. McLaughlin.