In all conferences of history teachers, much time is spent in considering how best to inculcate historical mindedness, accurate thought, cultivation of the imagination, and clear reasoning; primarily it is acknowledged that there must be acquired a stock of definite information, but the discussions seem to assume that the acquisition of the information is an easy matter, and that the exercise of observation, analysis and judgment, may occupy the greater part of the time of pupil and teacher. In the classroom, however, both teacher and pupil while trying to respond to the multiplicity of demands have been unable to divide the time into enough fractions to go round, and the teachers seem to have reached a consensus that the topic to be crowded out shall be geography. In spite of the fact that the requirements in history state that geographical knowledge will be tested by requiring the location of places and movements on an outline map, in spite of the fact that almost every set of questions for nine years has demanded map work, the papers of candidates have shown that instruction in geography, including the use of maps, has been signally neglected. Year after year answers in this subject have been marked uniformly low, seldom attaining a passing mark, being rated 1, 2 and 3, on a scale of 10. In answers to questions which asked that Philadelphia, Constantinople, Alexandria, Delos and Delphi, be marked on the map and their historical importance be explained in the answer book, Philadelphia was placed in North Dakota, Constantinople in India, Alexandria on the Adriatic, Delphi in Italy, and Delos near Genoa; and yet the answer books told correctly the historical importance of each. How completely geography may be divorced from map work was illustrated in a few answers to a question that asked for the marking on the map of the English frontier on the European continent in the time of William I, Henry II, and Henry V; several candidates wrote out their answers in addition to indicating them on the map, with the curious result of a correct list and an incorrect map, that is to say, the memorizing of French provinces had been carefully done, but there had been no practice in map work. A more vicious example of unintelligent memorizing it would be hard to find. Countries as well as cities have been misplaced; Ireland in Norway, Wales in Germany, China in Egypt. That the ignorance here is due to the teachers and not to the pupils is made apparent by the failure on this point in otherwise excellent papers. There could have been no instruction, or the intelligent pupil would have met the requirement. Another proof besides the mass of incorrect answers that map work is neglected in the schools is the fact that when the options permitted a choice between map work and an explanation of geographic control, the choice fell on geographic control. This choice was made not because the candidate was qualified to write about the effect of geographical conditions on the history of the early settlements in America, or on the Revolutionary struggle, but because guessing seemed easy.
As for the other “eye of history,” chronology, there is a respectable showing. The examination questions have not asked for lists of dates, though a knowledge of dates has been frequently demanded by the nature of the questions, and such demands have not found the pupils wanting. An occasional anachronism has occurred, and has served to enliven the reading, as the statements that the barons of the time of William the Conqueror spent most of their time smoking and drinking, and that Milton was effective by means of his efforts in the daily papers. Occasionally a candidate would show what he could do by prefacing or concluding his answer book with a chronological table for the whole subject.
Answers to what may be called sweeping questions such as “Trace the rise and fall of the naval power of Athens,” show a lack of practice in reviewing by topics; though meagre, they suggest more acquaintance with the subject than is written down, giving evidence of considerable drill on isolated points, if not on the continuous story. All the history papers since 1901 have had questions of this sort, and it would seem likely that teachers would take the hint and exercise their pupils in following a train of events from reign to reign, from administration to administration, from century to century. The general failure with this type of question and the general success in timing isolated events leads to the fear that the history is studied wholly by reigns or administrations without regard to the “ceaseless course” of Time.
The history examiners have also made a point of introducing questions characterized by their timeliness, about Alfred the Great in the year when the thousandth anniversary of his death was being celebrated, in 1904 on the Louisiana Purchase, in 1909 on Grover Cleveland, questions which it was expected would receive unusually full treatment. The expectation was disappointed, possibly because their “timeliness” did not exist for the candidate; because current events have had no share of his attention, though they might be taking the form of celebration of the past. As for current events pure and simple, those that belong to the present per se, any option on them is avoided. The only subject of current interest on which information has seemed to be widespread was the melodramatic experience of Miss Ellen Stone. Allied to this ignorance of current events, is the ignorance of the nineteenth century in Modern history and in English history. A candidate could write a passable account of Charlemagne and fail on Bismarck, could be accurate about Wolsey and yet state that Gladstone wrote standard law books. For this knowledge of the remote past and ignorance of the recent present, Dr. James Sullivan says that the text-books should be held responsible, as few teachers are any better than their text-books.
In biography, whenever the options made it possible to write on several persons rather than on one, the greater majority of the candidates found it easier to present a few meagre facts about several individuals than an extended account of one individual. Evidently biography in school is confined to the foot notes or the descriptive introductory paragraph on the page that mentions a new leader for the first time. In fact one student apologized for his limited knowledge of Pitt and Nelson on the ground that Montgomery gives no extended biographies. Like Dr. Sullivan, he blamed the text-book. It should not be implied that the reader finds no evidence of collateral reading. Indications of it do appear, but they are rarer than oases in Sahara. Far from hinting at collateral reading, many answers showed inadequate attention to the slender material offered in the text-book. It seems not unreasonable to expect that every student going up for examination in English history should be able to place Milton and Nelson correctly, yet their names have brought out such statements as, there is nothing recorded in history showing any personal service that Milton did for the Roundheads and that personally he was a Tory, that Milton wrote books of travel and wild improbable adventures of sea and land; that Nelson explored for England and went furthest north, that he sunk the Spanish Armada, that he defeated the combined French and Spanish navies at Waterloo, and that he signaled, “Don’t give up the ship.” The only satisfactory item to be credited to these statements is the fixed association of these names respectively with literature and the sea. Any hint as to the personality of the subject is seldom found, yet William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, and Cromwell, seem to have had some hold on the imagination.
To summarize experiences as a reader is not a happy task for the secondary school teacher. As regards what may be termed the New Learning in history—geographic control, economics, and the exercise of observation, analysis, and judgment, the teacher need not blush at his failure to render his pupil able to observe, analyze, and judge in clear and correct English in fifteen-minute sections of a two-hour examination, or to deal successfully even in an elementary way with subjects that have either only recently become part of a college course or are not generally studied by freshmen. But what history teachers do need to concern themselves with is the failure to supply their pupils with a reliable store of facts. If the statistics of the Board seem to imply that history teaching is inferior to teaching in most other subjects, it would be consoling to accept the suggestion that the poor returns are not the result of poor teaching, but of no teaching, since many candidates have tried the examination without instruction, an experiment they would make in no other subject.
The Study of Western History in Our Schools
BY PROFESSOR CLARENCE W. ALVORD, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.
The West has always been self-assertive. This may sound somewhat banal, but no adjective describes so exactly that principal characteristic of her vigorous youth. Commercially, politically, socially she has displayed her egoism and has continually demanded from her elder sister, the East, praise for her achievements. Youth is, however, passing away; over a century of political life has been left behind; age has brought with it a new pride in the consciousness of accomplishment. To-day the West realizes that she has had a history that is no mean part of the national story. The cry from the prairies is no longer: “See what we are doing;” but, “See what we have done.” Self-assertion again! Yes, perhaps bumptiousness, but such is the fact. On every side there are signs of this new phase of western self-consciousness. In no part of the Union is there such an interest in local history. State-supported departments of history, State historical societies, county and city historical societies, even women’s clubs and public schools, and larger unions such as the confederation of the societies of the Ohio Valley and the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, are all active in collecting material for and exploiting western history. Some of the efforts are misdirected, many of the papers presented before these learned societies are absurd; but even the aimless gropings of the historical amœbæ indicate the innermost yearnings for a knowledge of the past and the consciousness of deeds worth recording.