A Syllabus in Civil Government for Secondary Schools.
Considerable interest has been aroused in the forthcoming syllabus in Civil Government prepared by a special committee of the New England History Teachers’ Association, for whom it will be published late in the fall by the Macmillan Company.
There will be two parts to the book: An introduction of about twenty pages given to a discussion of the general subject and representing in a limited field the relation that the report of the Committee of Seven bore to the History Syllabus; and the syllabus proper consisting of approximately one hundred and twenty pages, with topics, diagrams, general and specific references and bibliographies. Specimen pages of the syllabus have been tried in the class-rooms of schools in widely different parts of the country, and the subject was discussed at the April meeting of the association.
Many problems confronted the committee at the outset, and at least a working agreement had to be reached upon the following questions:
1. What should be the position of the study and what time allotment should it reasonably expect?
2. What should be the aims of instruction in government in secondary schools?
3. What should be the scope and what should be the places of emphasis?
4. What should be its relation to other subjects of the curriculum?
5. What should be the point of attack and order of topics?
6. What should be the method?