[“Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero.” W. Ward Fowler. The Macmillan Co. 1909. Pp. xiii, 362.]
History in the Grades
ARMAND J. GERSON, Editor.
COLUMBUS,—SPANISH EXPLORER.
A TYPE-LESSON.
If the lesson on Columbus is to be indeed a type-lesson, it behooves the teacher in preparing it to make a careful selection of such elements of the story as may properly form the basis for the subsequent teaching of other Spanish explorers. As was pointed out in this department in last month’s issue,[10] the truest economy in history teaching consists in the careful construction of a definite foundation of correct historical concepts upon which the detailed superstructure of later lessons may be rapidly and yet substantially reared.
Certain elements in the life, environment, and explorations of Christopher Columbus may well be used as the foundation for the teaching of all the Spanish explorations of the New World. These essential elements should be presented with great thoroughness, and the children’s interest in them made active and enthusiastic. Their knowledge of them must be concrete, many-sided, living; only then will it constitute what the psychologist likes to call the “apperceptive basis” for subsequent analysis, comparison, and generalization.
On the other hand, the teaching of Columbus will necessarily involve many facts which belong distinctively to his life and actions, and to which later Spanish explorations have little, or at the most a very remote relation. It is obvious that the teaching of such portions of our topic can hardly be said to constitute a “type-lesson.” These points serve a definite purpose of their own, and should be presented in their own way. Let us, therefore, in our practical consideration of the presentation of our lesson on Columbus, consider separately the “type-elements” and what for convenience we may call the “specific elements.”