I venture to suggest the following as the minimum equipment of an historical department in a university or large college. First, two or more suitable lecture-rooms, with ample blackboard space, map racks or cases, book shelves, and a lantern and screen. The rooms should be contiguous to the other rooms of the department and reserved exclusively for its uses. It is time that there were opportunity for a professor to put up a map without having to take it down again at the end of the hour. Second, a combined seminary room and library, available for study when not in use as a class-room; equipped, like the lecture-room, with adequate blackboard and map space, and housing a permanent library of duplicates reënforced by such temporary loans from the main library as are from time to time needed. Included in the furnishings of the room should be a sufficient number of small tables to accommodate each individual student, and file cases for photographs, cards, newspaper clippings, and temporary notes. For the supervision of this room, there should be provided a special attendant, preferably a trained library assistant, responsible to the librarian of the university as well as to the head of the department. Third, a room for map drawing and chart-making, with tables and instruments for draughting. Fourth, a typewriting room, supplied with machines for the use of instructors and students. Fifth, private offices or studies for the instructors.
Elaborate as such a provision of apartments may well seem to the teacher who to-day, like the wandering scholar of the Middle Ages, lectures wherever he can find a vacant room, it nevertheless is smaller than that generally allowed to the chemist or physicist. Of all the evils which present-day criticism of the college has brought to light, none is more serious than the evil of waste. The history teacher who, under the conditions common to most American institutions of higher learning, should teach his subject as he would like to teach it and as he knows it ought to be taught, would spend in useless mechanical drudgery more hours than he spent in lecturing. Most institutions with endowment enough to entitle them to a place on the “Carnegie list” have ceased to expect this waste from professors of science, and there is no reason why the time of the professor of history, political science, or political economy should not be regarded as equally valuable. If under the influence of a general demand for at least the minimum of what is due, the governing authorities of all our universities could even be brought to realize that a ground plan of the city of Rome and a Rand-McNally map of North America are not a sufficient equipment for the teaching of modern history and diplomacy, one might face the future with a new hope.
Of the many advantages to the teaching and study of history which might be expected to accrue from the general provision of such facilities as have here been indicated—economy of physical effort, more accurate study of texts, improved note-taking and care of material, wider use of books and illustrative helps, general compulsory map-drawing, and many others—one in particular deserves more than passing mention. I refer to the change which would thereby be furthered in the prevailing conception of the nature and function of the university library. With only the exceptions that prove the rule, our libraries are supported and administered on the assumption that one copy of a book is sufficient for the needs of the whole institution, and that every one who has occasion to use the book must seek it at the main or central repository. It would seem to be obvious, however, that wherever books form the fundamental material for study, and, from the nature of the case, cheap reprints of selected texts or a few duplicates of inexpensive volumes will not suffice, the library has need of as many copies of a book as there are departments to use it; and that if, with but a single copy available, resort must be had by every one to the central library, the conflicting and often irreconcilable demands of different departments present one of the most serious barriers to the development of proper methods of instruction in non-laboratory subjects. No modern department of biology is asked to get along with one microscope, and that, perhaps, of ancient pattern and in bad order. Scientific apparatus in all lines is freely duplicated as a matter of course, the adequacy of the supply being not seldom used as an advertising argument to attract students; though, as a matter of fact, there is but little greater need for duplicate apparatus than there is for duplicate books. Practical considerations, of course, will preclude extensive duplication of large or costly sets, but a multiplication of copies far beyond what is now usual, and their distribution among the various departments having constant need of them, are necessities to be met if waste is to be stopped.
I hope that I do not make the mistake of supposing that, given such historical laboratories as have here been briefly described, the universities would forthwith produce historians. I make no plea for the application of the specific methods of any science to the study of history. But the student of history, like the scientist, has to collect and classify his material, examine and criticise his sources, compare and weigh his authorities, and study his locale. What a proper equipment can give him is, not the intellectual power and insight of the great historical writer, but the opportunity to do a student’s indispensable work under the best conditions and with effective guidance, instead of doing it, as is too often the case to-day, under conditions of great disadvantage. That provision of such equipment would also stir the teacher to a more telling presentation of a subject to his class, and enable him to vitalize and dignify a department which, in this country especially, is too often thought of as but little related to current human interests, is not the least of its advantages.
The Organization of the Recitation
BY NORMAN MACLAREN TRENHOLME, PROFESSOR OF THE TEACHING OF HISTORY, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.
The Importance of the Recitation.
The most vital thing in history teaching is the recitation, for no matter how well the teacher has been prepared in the subject matter or how admirably the field of study has been mapped out, poor work in the class room will mean general failure. The reason for this is not hard to discover; the recitation is that part of the work of the teacher in which closest relations are established with the minds of the pupils, and it is above all things important that teachers should realize this and make the most of their opportunities to guide and direct the pupils’ thought and study. Too often the recitation is made a mere repetition of facts in the text-book, poorly organized and presented in an uninteresting and unconvincing way. History that is taught without understanding and enthusiasm and without proper organization of the subject matter had better not have been taught at all, as it results in dislike and contempt for the subject as being nought but a catalogue of meaningless names, dates and events. Yet how few history teachers seem to realize their opportunity to make history mean more than this. How frequently one sees even well-meaning teachers plodding along in the same old rut, painfully extracting unrelated facts from boys and girls, emphasizing the external events and neglecting what lies beneath, asking direct questions and getting “yes” and “no” answers, and being generally satisfied that they are good history teachers and fulfilling their mission in life. The recitation conducted by such a teacher usually will begin abruptly with some question on the assignment for that day and will probably end abruptly by the gong sounding its warning and a hurried assignment for next day being made as the class prepares to leave. All the important qualities of a good recitation, relation to the previous day’s lesson, careful study by teacher and class of the new lesson, and a well-considered assignment of work for the next day are in whole or part absent. It is not as if it were difficult to make the recitation a success, or meant more work for the teacher, for, on the contrary a well-organized recitation is easier to handle than one conducted without organization, and the work of the teacher is made pleasanter through the interest of the pupils in the work. History when properly taught is bound to hold the interest and attention of the average boy or girl. If it does not do so, then the presumption is that it is not being properly taught and that the teacher needs to bring more understanding and method into the work.