A second crying need is for better equipment of the historical department. The development of school libraries has not yet made much progress, and the use of public libraries by large classes has obvious practical limitations. Schools which willingly spend money for scientific apparatus decline to spend money for books, pictures, and other illustrative material. The equipment of wall-maps is often exceedingly poor, historical maps being often lacking altogether except in the field of ancient history. Until this lack is supplied, we must expect that the teacher will from necessity rely mainly upon the textbook, at the cost of failing to meet the most fundamental condition of the newer methods of history teaching.
Perhaps the most serious charge that is lodged against the new method is that it fails to give the pupil exact knowledge, and even discriminates against exactness and precision. My observation as an examiner of applicants for admission to college leads me to believe that there is force in this charge. Undoubtedly the amount of ground which is expected to be covered by those who take any one of the four fields recommended by the Committee of Seven is very great, in the field of medieval and modern European history quite too great. Where the time allotted to the course in the curriculum is insufficient, as it often is, or where the teacher is incompetent, or where the facilities of the department are inadequate, it is inevitable that the work should be slighted and the results upon examination appear unsatisfactory. Undoubtedly, also, in our zeal for the broad view and the vivifying treatment, we have tended unconsciously to depreciate the value of exact knowledge, and have allowed ourselves to think that because the function of memorizing may easily be overworked, the memory has no place in the study of history at all.
The examiners in history for the College Entrance Examination Board have learned that, unless they ask for dates, no dates will be given; that the treatment of specific questions of limited scope is prevailingly slovenly, indicative of loose thinking and tolerated looseness of expression; and that the simplest questions will often be carelessly misread. I am sure that we have not yet solved the problem of examining in history either in school or in college, but I am also compelled to think that the greatest weakness of history teaching at present, in those schools in which the new program is being applied, is that it so often fails to give the pupil a definite knowledge of anything. I do not despair, however. There are signs of improvement, growing in number and significance every year; and with the increased employment of skilled teachers, the provision of better facilities for teaching, and the more generous recognition of the importance of the subject, we may, I think, confidently look for results commensurate with those admittedly attained in other branches of the school curriculum.
Training the History Teacher
The Organization of His Field of Study
BY NORMAN MACLAREN TRENHOLME, PROFESSOR OF THE TEACHING OF HISTORY, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.
Provided that the text-books have been selected and the courses to be given arranged for by some higher power, the first problem that faces the history teacher in the fall is that of properly organizing the field or fields of study. Now we all know that many teachers do not realize this problem or that if they do they shirk it and adopt a sort of go-as-you-please plan of so many pages each day, irrespective of topical or any other sort of unity, that usually results in careless recitation work and an incomplete course. In some cases the teacher seeks aid and guidance from a printed syllabus or outline of the course to be covered, and if these are available and properly constructed in connection with the text-books used, they can be of great service, but they cannot wholly relieve the teacher of responsibility as to the length and character of topics to be considered.[1] Even the best teachers are inclined to adopt a day-to-day plan of organization and so work blindly, not knowing how much of the text-book will, in the end be left unstudied. Such unsatisfactory conditions as are here referred to are totally unnecessary if history teachers will only learn to organize their courses in advance of giving them and thus be able to round out their work in a thoroughly satisfactory manner. The reason that this is not done is that most of our high school teachers of history have had little or no training in the teaching of their subject and have not learned how to handle and interpret the subject matter to the best advantage. What some lack in training they make up for in enthusiasm and interest in their work, but there are, unfortunately for the profession, many teachers of history who have neither training nor enthusiasm. On the other hand, the number of trained, earnest and enthusiastic teachers of history is constantly increasing, and there are opportunities offered for every teacher to improve his or her methods and enter more understandingly and more successfully into the work of teaching the subject. The greatest danger in history work in schools is the prevalence of matter over spirit, of facts over thoughts and ideas, of mechanical memory work over constructive thinking and reasoning. If teachers of history will learn to enter into their work with more spirit and understanding the subject will soon be regarded with respect on account of the vital interest that the development of the present out of the past must always have. One way of emphasizing historical unity or continuity is by a well-planned series of recitation or discussion topics based on the text-book used in the course, and it is the question of such organization of the field of study that I wish to discuss in this article.
General Suggestions as to the Organization.
The history teacher who wishes to make a success of the courses given must plan the work in advance according to certain common sense rules and conditions. In the first place, the extent of the subject matter to be covered must be carefully considered in connection with the time allotted for its completion, and the relative emphasis to be placed on the different portions of the period to be covered. Instead of a haphazard assignment of so many pages each day irrespective of time and subject matter, the length and character of the lesson assignments should be plotted out in advance. If the number of pages of text-book subject matter be accurately ascertained (many text-books have pages of outlines, review questions, references, and so forth), and compared with the number of recitation hours available, from which it is well to deduct one-third or one-fourth for reviews, a mechanical basis of assignments can be had. But a mechanical basis is not alone sufficient, a topical one is necessary also. This is the most difficult and at the same time the most vital part of organization and the part in which most teachers fail on account of poor perspective as to important and unimportant topics and a failure to realize the inner meaning and significance of the external events with which they are dealing. Fortunately most history text-books have been constructed on a skeleton of topics, and even a poorly-trained teacher can, with a little care, discover the proper lesson divisions. Some of the newer text-books go so far, indeed, as to give a series of lesson topics which the teacher can follow.[2]