Ancient History in the Secondary School
WILLIAM FAIRLEY, Ph.D., Editor.
EARLY GREECE
Scope of the Month’s Work.
In our larger city schools the work is so systematized that the teacher knows just how far along he should be at any season of the year. For teachers who are working by themselves in small schools and are not specialists in history a very useful guide may be found in the “History Syllabus for Secondary Schools,” issued by the New England History Teachers’ Association, and published by D. C. Heath & Co., of Boston. The “Outline of Ancient History,” in pamphlet form may be had by itself. One value of these outlines is that they divide the work into one hundred exercises, and then indicate the proportion of time this group of teachers have found it wise to devote to each section of the work. During October the teacher ought to carry his class down nearly to the Persian invasions, and at least as far as the development of Sparta.
Importance of the Greeks.
It is hard for the cultured teacher to feel the difference between his own attitude toward Greece and that of the child of fourteen or fifteen who is approaching the subject for the first time. To such a child Greece is simply a name as yet. And it would seem to be a good practice for the teacher in a simple talk to try to enlist the interest of his class by some statement of the reasons why we are going to devote nearly a half year to the study of a very little, and to-day very obscure, country. The teacher should show certain characteristics which make Greece of vast importance. Among these will be found the fact of the wonderful intellectual force of the Greeks, which led them into the same lines of thought and investigation which interest the modern world; their love of independence, in such marked contrast with the servility of the Oriental races at whose history we have been looking in the past month, and especially their artistic supremacy, which made them the great masters in the creation of beauty for all time; and their masterpieces in architecture and sculpture should be contrasted with the work of Egyptians and Mesopotamians, for the most part so grotesque and unlovely.
This article will not attempt to follow the month’s lessons at all in detail, but will emphasize the main things which the young student should carry forward with him as the early story of this people who made themselves in so many ways the forerunners of our modern life.