The History Teacher’s Magazine

Volume I.
Number 5.

PHILADELPHIA, JANUARY, 1910.

$1.00 a year
15 cents a copy

CONTENTS.

Published monthly, except July and August, by McKinley Publishing Co., Philadelphia, Pa.

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Harding’s Essentials in Mediaeval History

By Samuel Bannister Harding, Ph.D., Professor of European History, Indiana University, in consultation with Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Professor of History, Harvard University

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This text-book is designed for elementary college classes, having already proved successful as a basis of Freshman instruction in Indiana University. It gives a general survey of mediaeval history from Charlemagne to the close of the fifteenth century. It economizes time without sacrificing anything of real importance. The facts to be taught have been selected with great care. The continuity of the history has been preserved from beginning to end, and the fundamental features of mediaeval life and institutions are clearly brought out. The book affords a clear, scholarly, compact outline, which can be filled in in various ways. At the end of each chapter are suggestive topics and search topics, and numerous specific references to the best books for collateral reading. The aim of the book is to be accurate in substance and definite in statement, to seize the vital and interesting facts, and as far as possible to give that concreteness of treatment which is necessary in dealing with matters so remote and alien as those which fill the history of the Middle Ages.

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Books for the History Library

The Wars of Religion in France (1559-1576), The Huguenots, Catherine de Medici, and Philip II. By James Westfall Thompson. 648 pages, 8vo, cloth, net $4.50; postpaid, $4.84.

An authoritative, powerful, and original work based on much newly-discovered material and treating the great epoch after Henry II—the time of Vassy and St. Bartholomew, with new light on the underlying social and economic causes of the religious conflict.

“In describing that bitter turmoil of interests and ideals Mr. Thompson is scrupulously impartial.”—American Historical Review.

Russia and Its Crisis. By Paul Milyoukov. xiv + 589 pages, crown 8vo, net $3.00; postpaid, $3.20.

Broad, liberal, reasonable, and thoroughly informed, Professor Milyoukov is one of the foremost thinkers of his nation. His book is of inestimable value to every student of present-day Russia. Important chapters are those dealing with “The Nationalistic Idea,” “The Religious and Political Traditions,” “The Liberal and Socialistic Ideas,” and “The Urgency of Reform.”

“It is beyond doubt the best, most instructive, and most authoritative work on Russia ever published in English.”—Political Science Quarterly.

Dramatic Traditions of the Dark Ages. By Joseph S. Tunison. 368 pages, 12mo, cloth, net $1.25; postpaid, $1.36.

“The book is a mine of interesting facts about social, religions, and literary life, as connected with or influencing the stage during the centuries of the Christian era. Mr. Tunison has the skill and the liveliness of method which enable him to marshal this wonderful array of facts.”—New York Times Saturday Review of Books.

The Legislative History of Naturalization in the United States. By Frank George Franklin. x + 308 pages, 12mo, cloth, net $1.50; postpaid, $1.63.

“It is written not to defend or attack any theory of alien’s rights, but it gives clearly and impartially the various acts which have been passed by Congress, together with the causes leading to their adoption and the results following.”—The Interior.

The Development of Western Civilization. A Study in Ethical, Economic, and Political Evolution. By J. Dorsey Forrest. 420 pages, 8vo, cloth, net $2.00; postpaid, $2.17.

“A helpful exposition of the ethical, political, and economic facts of history in their relation to social evolution.”—The Outlook.

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The History Teacher’s Magazine

Volume I.
Number 5.

PHILADELPHIA, JANUARY, 1910.

$1.00 a year
15 cents a copy

Introductory Course in History[1] In Harvard College

BY PROFESSOR CHARLES H. HASKINS.

Perhaps the most difficult question which now confronts the college teacher of history is the work of the first year of the college course. The problem is comparatively new, and becomes each year more serious. Twenty-five or thirty years ago the small amount of history taught in American colleges came in the junior or senior year, and was not organized into any regular curriculum. With the recent development of historical courses, however, the teaching of history has worked down into the sophomore and often into the freshman year, so that the teacher of the first course in history is not only charged with introducing students to college work in history, but must also take his share of the task of introducing them to college work in general. At the same time the enlargement of the curriculum and the improvement of instruction in history in many of our secondary schools result in sending to the colleges a body of students who have already some familiarity with history and cannot be treated in the same way as the great mass of freshmen. Moreover, the first college course in history in all our larger institutions attracts a considerable number of students, in some cases as many as four hundred, so that the management of a large class adds another element to the problem; and matters are further complicated by the fact that while some of these will continue their historical studies in later years, others must get from this course all the historical training which they will receive in college. I take it that no one pretends to have found the solution of these difficulties, and that what is at present likely to prove helpful is not dogmatic discussion so much as a comparison of the experience of different institutions.

The introductory course at Harvard, History 1, is designed to be useful to those whose historical studies are to stop at this point, as well as to serve as a basis for further study. A period of the world’s history is chosen which is sufficiently large to give an idea of the growth of institutions and the nature of historical evolution, yet not so extensive as to render impossible an acquaintance at close range with some of the characteristic personalities and conditions of the age; and an effort is made to stimulate interest in history and to give some idea of the nature and purposes of historical study. The field covered is the history of Europe, including England, from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries. This period has generally received little or no attention in school, so that students come to it with a freshness which they could not bring to ancient history or American history, and are introduced to a new world of action and movement and color which easily rouses their interest. The year devoted to the Middle Ages bridges the gap between their ancient and modern studies, and not only gives a feeling of historical continuity, but by showing the remote origin of modern institutions and culture it deepens the sense of indebtedness to the past and furnishes something of the background so much needed in our American life.

Most introductory courses now give considerable attention to the Middle Ages; the point of difference is whether the attempt should be made to cover something of the modern period as well. Where a longer period has been chosen, it has been quite generally found impracticable in a single year to bring the course down to the present time, and such courses have ordinarily stopped somewhere in the eighteenth century, leaving to a subsequent year the study of the more recent period. Thus the course which was given at Harvard until 1903 stopped at the Treaty of Utrecht. Assuming that two years are necessary for the satisfactory treatment of mediæval and modern history for the purposes of the general student, the question then becomes one as to the point where the break shall come, and we believe that experience is in favor of placing this point fairly early. The pace should be slower in the first year than in the second, so that students may not be confused and hurried while they are learning new methods of work and being emancipated from habits of close dependence on the text-book. There should be time for reading and assimilation, as well as for thorough drill, in a way that is not possible when too much ground is gone over. Good training in the first year makes it easier to cover a considerable period in the second. Such at least has been the experience at Harvard, where about half of the students in History 1 go on to the survey of modern history given in History 2 in the following year, while most of the others go directly to modern English history or American history. It ought to be added that while about nine-tenths of the class of three hundred who elect History 1 are freshmen, students who have given a good deal of attention to history in school are permitted to go on immediately to more advanced courses; and for those who take only American history in their later years, the introductory course in government is accepted as sufficient preparation.

The class meets three times a week, twice in a body for lectures, and the third hour in sections of about twenty. The lectures do not attempt to give a narrative, but seek to bind together the students’ reading, comment upon it, clarify it, reënforce the significant points, and discuss special aspects of the subject. The processes of historical interpretation and criticism are illustrated by a few simple examples, and from time to time the work is vivified by the use of lantern slides. The reading is divided into two parts, prescribed and collateral, and indicated on a printed “List of References” which each member of the class is required to buy. The prescribed reading, from seventy-five to one hundred pages a week, is made, as far as possible, the central part of the student’s work. At first this is selected largely from text-books and illustrative sources; later in the year text-books drop into the background, and narrative and descriptive works are taken up, although the student is urged to have at hand a manual for consultation and for securing a connected view of events. The effort is made to break away from high school methods of study and to teach students to use intelligently larger historical books. Stubb’s “Early Plantagenets,” Jessopp’s “Coming of the Friars,” Bryce’s “Holy Roman Empire,” Brown’s “Venetian Republic,” Day’s “History of Commerce,” Reinach’s “Apollo,” and Robinson and Rolfe’s “Petrarch,” are examples of the kind of books from which the required reading is chosen. Some sources are given in their entirety, such as the “Germania,” the “Life of St. Columban,” and Einhard’s “Charlemagne”; but reliance is placed mainly upon the extracts given in Ogg’s “Source Book” and Robinson’s “Readings.” It is found that the proper use and appreciation of sources is one of the hardest things for beginners to learn, and careful and explicit teaching is required both at the lectures and at the meetings of the sections. Each student is required to provide himself with two or three texts, a source book, and an historical atlas, and many buy a number of the other books used in the course. The books in which the reading is assigned are kept in a special reading-room, where the supply is sufficient to provide one copy of each for every ten men in the course. Duplicates of the works recommended for collateral reading are also furnished.

At the weekly section meetings the students are held responsible for the required reading and the lectures for the week. There is always a short written paper about twenty minutes in length, including usually an exercise on the outline map, and the rest of the hour is spent in explanation, review and discussion. No attempt is made at systematic quizzing, as the work of the week is much more effectively tested by the written paper. These sections are held by the assistants, four in number, who are chosen from men who have had two or three years of graduate study and generally some experience in teaching.

For the collateral reading certain topics are suggested each week, and every month each member of the class is required to read the references under at least one of the assigned topics. These topics have considerable range, and students are encouraged to select those which have special interest for them and to read freely upon them. Thus if a student takes the Northmen as his topic, he will read the greater part of Keary’s “Vikings,” and translated extracts from Norse poetry or sagas; if he chooses Henry II, he will have Mrs. Green’s biography and Stubb’s characterization in the introduction to Benedict of Peterborough; if he reads on monasticism, he will compare different views of the subject as found in specified chapters of Montalembert, Lecky, Taylor’s “Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages,” and in Harnack’s “Monasticism”; on castles and castle life he will read portions of Miss Bateson’s “Mediæval England,” and Viollet-le-Duc’s “Annals of a Fortress,” and examine the illustrations in Enlart’s “Manuel” and Schultz’s “Höfisches Leben”; on St. Louis he will have Joinville, certain pages of Langlois, and William Stearns Davis’s novel, “Falaise of the Blessed Voices.” A certain fixed minimum of such reading is set for each one in the course, and a higher minimum for those who expect distinction, and ambitious students will read from 1,500 to 2,000 pages in the course of the year.

The effort is constantly made to develop individual aptitudes and stimulate the better men. Every student has at least eight individual conferences with the assistant during the year. The conference is devoted mainly to a discussion of the collateral reading, but it also serves as an opportunity for examining note books, talking over difficulties, and in general for closer personal acquaintance between assistant and student. Sometimes small voluntary groups of men have been formed which meet the assistant weekly at his room for the reading and discussion of short historical papers written by students.

Considerable attention is given to well-reasoned note-taking upon both lectures and required reading, a matter respecting which the freshman is at first likely to be quite helpless. Here the personal supervision of the assistant is of the greatest value, and is often exercised weekly.

Special emphasis is put upon historical geography, not only by constant reference to wall maps and by special exercises involving the use of the principal historical atlases, but also by means of the regular use of blank outline maps. Members of the class are required to bring such a map to all meetings of the sections, and to be able to locate upon it important places and boundaries. The mid-year and final examinations also include a regular test of such geographical knowledge. More time than should be necessary is devoted to this work, but experience has shown that college students have at the outset only the vaguest ideas of European geography, and in this and in some other respects it is necessary to do in college, work that ought to have been done in the secondary or grammar school. If the ordinary freshman brought with him an elementary knowledge of geography and the ability to read intelligently, the task of the college teacher of history would be greatly lightened.

No attempt is made to require theses or formal written reports, as such work is useful rather for those who are to continue their historical studies, and as regular training of this sort is given in the second-year courses. Some attempts have, however, been made to coördinate the student’s work in history and in English composition by having the results of reading upon an historical topic embodied in a brief essay which is read and graded both by the instructor in history and the instructor in English. Such coöperative efforts are still in the experimental stage, but they are regarded favorably by those who believe that the occasion for writing good English is not confined to courses in English composition, and that a broader policy with regard to the student’s work is necessary if the American college is to give an education as well as to teach particular subjects.

Impressions of American History Teaching[2]

EXTRACTS FROM MISS BURSTALL’S RECENT WORK, “IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION.”

Miss Sara A. Burstall, head mistress of the Manchester (England) High School for Girls, traveled in the United States during the year 1908, studying and inspecting American educational systems. Miss Burstall has written out her experiences in America in a book entitled “Impressions of American Education in 1908.” The author was particularly interested in the teaching of history in American schools. The following extracts are printed in the belief that American teachers would desire “to see themselves as others see them.” In the chapter on “Method” occur the following statements:

“Recitation is indeed an accurate description of what one hears, sitting in an American class-room; the pupil stands up and recites what he has learnt, whether from the standard text-book or from other sources. The teacher may question some statement in order to make sure that the pupil understands what he has said, other pupils will also question it. A girl will put up her hand and (the teacher giving permission by looking in her direction) will say, ‘But I thought that I read in——’ and will proceed to give some other view of the subject. A general discussion will follow which the teacher will not authoritatively close by giving her correct opinion; she will pass on to another part of the subject and ask another pupil to recite what he or she has learnt about it. If the reciter makes an error the teacher will call upon another pupil to correct it; very rarely does the teacher make a correction herself, and still more rarely does she express her opinion. We were not struck by the good English or excellence of oral composition which we heard. The American boys and girls did not do any better in this respect than the English girls we know. One can hardly expect fluent, elegant oral descriptions and accounts except from practiced speakers. With a class of thirty or forty and a lesson period of forty-five minutes obviously not all in the class recite; quite half may take no share except as listeners. The presumption is that they have learnt up their work, that they are interested in listening to what others say about it; their turn will come next day, and in any case it is to their interest to follow carefully what goes on.

“Three criticisms must occur to even a sympathetic English teacher: first, the possibility of what in England would be a probable waste of time to the listeners. Americans say that these, though they often look indifferent and inattentive, are really attending; they are used to the method and they play the game, so to speak, by listening attentively as well as by reciting readily when their turn comes. Second, the whole thing is very dull and slow; each pupil speaks very slowly, with very little grace of delivery or beauty of language, such as might be expected from the teacher, and nothing like the same amount of ground is covered as is the case in a lesson on the oral method. With the recitation method in England we should not arouse sufficient interest to get the best out of our pupils; we could not get through the work we have to do in the time, nor would English boys and girls be sufficiently quick and clever to understand the difficulties in geometry, for example, or in Latin or French grammar, unless they had clear and skilful explanations from the teacher, who presumably understands the art of making things clear. Americans would probably say that their students are quick enough and earnest enough to make progress without this careful exposition and without this atmosphere of interest and intellectual stimulus, and there is probably some truth in the reply. Our pupils too often do not want to work, and their minds do move more slowly. We have been obliged to find ways of making class-work attractive, either by intellectual stimulus and interest, or by rewards and punishments, since we have not that strong outside belief in education which makes the task of the American teacher much more easy. It is also true that the examination demand has forced us to explain clearly to the duller pupils in the class difficulties which the cleverer ones could see through for themselves. Probably here Americans are right and we are wrong; we make the work too easy by, as it were, peptonizing the lesson material, before giving it to the hungry sheep who look up to us to be fed. Our aim has been to help them to assimilate the knowledge required, not to develop in them the power to grapple with new material. This aim the American recitation system undoubtedly develops, and this is one of its great merits.

“Our third criticism is that the teacher appears to do too little; her share in the lesson is at a minimum; the new ideas do not come from her, her influence is indirect. Here, again, the American would say, so much the better. The democratic ideal is undoubtedly one cause for the existence and the popularity of the recitation method. The teacher and the pupils are very much on a level. She is not teaching them; she acts rather as chairman of the meeting, the object of which is to ascertain whether they have studied for themselves in a text-book, and what they think about the material they have been studying. Clearly, then, the master is the text-book, and here we strike on a vital peculiarity of American education. Its aim has been intellectually the mastery of books; with us education has always been very much more, always and everywhere, a personal relation. The children learn from the master or mistress with or without the aid of a book.”

“The rise of the method can be explained from historical causes; in the old ungraded rural school of America, meeting perhaps only for a few months in the year, taught, it may be, by a woman in the summer, and a man in the winter, there could be no classification or organization. Each pupil worked through an authorized text-book, much as in the old Scottish rural school, when a plowman might come back for a couple of months to rub up his arithmetic or English in the book if he did not finish before leaving school. The teacher went around and helped individual pupils over difficulties, or heard them ‘recite’ the lesson they had each learnt, while the others went on with their own tasks. Then when the schools came to be graded, a number of pupils at about the same stage could recite together out of the book, and so the recitation method developed, evolved by the American genius for invention to fit the necessities of the position. Among these conditions was the absence of a body of experienced and skilled teachers; much of the work was done by all sorts of people, many with very scanty qualifications, who would ‘teach school’ for a few months to earn enough to go on with some other occupation. Such people could not be in the true sense of the word teachers; they could ‘conduct recitations’ and engage in the friendly questioning and discussion as an equal, which the American method implies. When first-rate, highly qualified, skilled teachers come to play on this instrument they bring forth from it a wonderful result.

“The writer was fortunate enough to see some very fine work by a woman teacher, brilliant, systematized, full of interest and fire, the pupils really taking part and bringing their material which the teacher skillfully percussed so that it kindled. Indeed, the recitation method at its best and our own oral method are almost identical in effect; and far excel as educational instruments anything that can be attained by lectures. But how rarely is it seen at its best? At its worst, of course, it becomes mere memoriter repetition out of the text-book with very little intelligence anywhere; any teacher would do this who could keep order.

“It is hoped that this imperfect sketch may at least afford some idea of what is to be seen in the United States by a teacher of history, and of what we can learn from them. Probably there is more to be learnt in this subject by English students of American education than in any other, and the study is the more interesting and profitable since the evolution of the present condition of history teaching there is so recent. The present writer can only say that she has heard finer history teaching in more than one American institution than she ever heard in England, though her experiences here have been fortunate, and that such teaching has set for her an ideal standard of professional skill in our difficult art. England might learn, too, from the life and vigor of the subject in the common schools, the breadth and thoughtfulness and the self-reliance in the history classes of secondary schools, and the volume and power of the historical work in the colleges and technological institutes.

“The equipment is well worth our imitation if only we could get the money for it. Every good high school has a room or rooms for the history lessons; cases of maps to be drawn down when required—a product of the American skill in mechanical appliances—are universal, and an average high school has a better supply of these maps than some of our colleges. Pictures of every sort abound.

“It is the opinion of one of the leading American authorities on the teaching of history, herself a distinguished teacher, that there is a very real increase of intellectual interest; some of it may be superficial, but it is at least widespread. A nidus has been formed and there is a real advance in the subject.

“In England we have, as things are, the tradition of public service and the inner instinct of patriotism; formal teaching of civic duty is not so much needed among the wealthier and more cultivated classes, though more ought to be done than is done in the public elementary schools, and in some of the new secondary schools. In America this sociological teaching given in connection with history is the one thing they have to train citizens for citizenship; religious instruction has been excluded from their school system, personal influence and corporate life play but little part compared with the powerful one they play here. There is no universal military service as in Germany and France to teach by hard experience the duty and the need of patriotism; the tradition of unpaid public work so strong in England is not known in the United States. The teaching of history and of patriotism through history is the one force which America has in her schools and colleges to stimulate and train the sense of civic duty. One cannot but conclude that to a half-conscious conviction of this truth is due the system, the earnestness, the concentration, and the excellence that America achieves in the teaching of history throughout every grade of her education.”

“The Old South Leaflets” Classified

BY REX W. WELLS, TEACHER OF HISTORY, EAST HIGH SCHOOL, TOLEDO, OHIO.

Municipal Civics in Elementary and High Schools[3]

BY JAMES J. SHEPPARD, PRINCIPAL OF HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE, NEW YORK CITY.

In an address at the dedication of an educational building at Albany a few days ago, Governor Hughes said: “I want to refer to the importance in this day of giving our teachers and of having them communicate to their pupils the proper sense of the responsibility of citizenship in this country. It is not enough to have patriotic songs sung. It is a fine thing to have the flag flying and to have it continuously before the youthful mind as a symbol of this great independent nation, of the land of the free and the home of the brave. But as a distinguished man once said, it is a very doubtful advantage to generate emotion which has no practical use, and the emotions of patriotism ought to be stimulated with regard to certain important and practical ends. Study of civics, the knowledge of the actual operation of our government is most important.”

In this statement the governor puts the case admirably. Civics should be taught in the schools, and it should be taught in a practical way. When your committee made its investigations some half dozen years ago into the matter of instruction in municipal government in elementary and high schools, it discovered two things: First, a lamentable lack of proper instruction in the subject in the schools of the country, and second, an earnest desire on the part of those in authority to remedy this lack. Advice and assistance were asked for by many who replied to our questionnaire. We were impressed with the importance of presenting something definite and concrete in the way of recommendations. It was easy enough of course to say that the subject should be taught in both elementary and high schools, that it should be so placed in the curriculum, as to reach all the pupils, and that it should be, as Governor Hughes puts it, a study of the actual operations of our government. But the schools wanted something more directly helpful than this. Few, if any, text-books suitable for the purpose were available. Practically all of them were written along the conventional lines of a scientific treatment of the framework of government with but slight and ineffective attempts to make the study other than one of broad generalizations of little direct and concrete meaning to the youthful student. Happily there has been some endeavor since the committee’s first report to make texts which really meet the need, and there are now on the market a few books which are genuinely helpful. There is every reason to believe that the production of this class of books is greatly to increase. However the committee believes that suitable texts can only help to solve the problem.

Governor Hughes is quite right in emphasizing “the importance of giving our teachers and of having them communicate to their pupils the proper sense of responsibility of citizenship in this country.” That sense of responsibility will hardly be strong and effective if it is to come from purely academic study of government. It will be powerful and helpful if it comes from an earnest and sympathetic study of government in operation, a study of what the government is actually doing for the student, what it ought to do and what he himself can do to improve it. A study of this kind can hardly fail to give the future citizen a feeling of pride in his own city, and a proper sense of his own responsibility in making its government honest and efficient. The municipal campaign recently concluded in New York seems to have been conducted largely on the idea that the average voter is more interested in personalities than policies. Such a campaign would be impossible before an electorate having even an elementary appreciation of the direct bearing upon its own personal interests of an honest and efficient administration of the city’s affairs. It is plainly the business of the schools to use their extraordinary opportunity and extraordinary power to equip the voters of to-morrow with a training in these vital affairs of government that shall make them intelligent critics of what their servants in office have done or what claimants for their ballots propose to do. Heretofore the schools have been generally content to give instruction on matters of state and national government, with but scantiest reference to municipal affairs, in spite of the fact that municipal government is of most direct and vital importance to the citizen, touching him in his daily life at every turn. If the schools could only establish firmly in the minds of the students just the one fact that party labels are of no importance in municipal matters, that honest and efficient administrators should be chosen regardless of party connection or endorsement that alone would be a tremendous gain. We have been going on the assumption that a knowledge of state and federal government will furnish enough insight into matters of administration to guide the voter in matters of municipal government. It would be far better if the choice were necessary to rely upon a proper knowledge and appreciation of municipal interests to guide the voter in the broader fields of government. The choice is of course not necessary. State and national government should still be studied, but in a more rational way. Much the same method may well be employed as in the study of municipal government.

As has already been stated, your committee believes that instruction in municipal government should reach every pupil in the schools. That means that it should not be delayed in the elementary school till the last year of the course, or in the high school until the senior year, as is still generally the rule. A large percentage of elementary school pupils drop out before they have completed even the seventh year of the course, and a still larger percentage of high school enrollment is lost long before the graduation stage. The committee believes that there should be continuous instruction in civics during the last four years of the elementary course, moving along in easy and progressive fashion from a very simple study of municipal housekeeping to a fairly comprehensive notion of the city’s government activities. The course as outlined in the New York City program of studies for elementary schools has some admirable features. The course in its present form is due in no small measure to the work of your committee under the original chairmanship of Superintendent Maxwell. It provides in the fifth year for some study of the duties of citizens and public officials, and also of civic institutions. The study begins very logically with the most obvious form of municipal activity, the school itself, and goes on to other departments, such as charities, tenement house, and parks, in each instance emphasizing what good citizenship involves in the pupil’s relation to the department. In other words, the study is not merely descriptive, it is personal as well. In the sixth year the outline calls for instruction concerning the chief administrative office of the city. In the seventh year and the first half of the eighth year there is no definite provision for municipal civics, the time being devoted to national government. In the last half of the eighth year there is a return to the city government with “increasing emphasis upon the duties and responsibilities of a citizen, or as a member of a family, as pupil, as employer or employed, as voter or as office-holder.” The course would be greatly improved by making a study of the city’s municipal activities continuous throughout the four years. At present there is a break in the work from the end of the sixth year to the beginning of the last half of the eighth year. The difficulty is of course that of a crowded curriculum, but the very great importance of the study ought to win for it a definite place in the curriculum even at the expense of some other study.

Just how well the elementary course in municipal civics is administered in New York City or in other cities where it is prescribed it is impossible for the committee to say. A recent writer in the “Survey” seems rather skeptical of the results obtained in New York. From her own showing, however, I think the situation is not so bad as she seems to imagine it. We who teach know the difficulty of getting pupils to do themselves justice in examinations or tests. They really know more than their answers indicate. Patient, skillful, sympathetic questioning will often reveal intelligence where only ignorance seemed to exist. It would be a matter for surprise, however, if our civics teaching was at present all that it ought to be. It is a new thing in the curriculum. Both its content and its proper presentation must be worked out by experiment. It can only be well handled by teachers with a keen love for the subject, a genuine appreciation of its value and some taste for first hand investigation. Supervisory officers must give it cordial support and helpful direction.

For the immediate future we must look to the high schools, I think, to show the most marked development in the study of municipal activities. The conditions of teaching are more favorable and the teaching force better qualified to meet the problem. History and economics are both more generally taught and certainly much better taught than they were a decade ago, and it will not be difficult, I think, to interest instructors in these subjects in the new field of municipal government. Of prime importance is the place of the new study in the curriculum. The general custom hitherto has been to postpone all teaching of civics in secondary schools until the fourth year, when American history is taken up. This is a serious error, as it means no instruction whatever in the subject for the vast majority of high school students, a relatively small proportion of whom complete the full course. It should not be postponed till even the second year, but should be taken up at once by the student upon entrance into the high school as a serious and important study. Confessedly pupils of 14 or 15 are not well prepared to receive instruction in civics, as it is generally taught as a scientific study of state and national government, with a historical background. The latter may well continue to be a part of a well-rounded high school course, modified only by the inclusion of much more work on the municipal side and greatly improved by more rational methods of teaching. But your committee earnestly insists upon place being made in the very first year of the high school course for this new work. At present there is only one high school in New York which is doing this, but it is interesting to note that no less than three committees are now at work in that city upon plans for a program of study in this subject. And, moreover, two of these committees have been appointed by bodies of a public character who are asking and securing the cooperation of progressive teachers in the task of bringing about the desired change. It is a very reasonable hope that in a comparatively short time all the high schools in the Greater New York will be giving the civics instruction so urgently needed to all the boys and girls who enter their doors. Once New York or any other important educational center shows the way, we may confidently expect the movement to spread rapidly. Judging from the numerous communications the chairman of your committee has received there is already widespread interest in the subject.

The time is therefore ripe, apparently, for us to offer definite recommendations in the make-up of a proper course of study in the new subject, whose value as a part of the curriculum will depend chiefly upon the manner in which it is presented. On the whole, it is fortunate that a text-book is hardly possible except as a supplementary aid, for there is grave danger that a study of municipal activities based upon a text-book would take too much of an academic character and interfere with or minimize the first-hand observation and investigation on the part of both pupil and teacher, which are of primary importance in realizing the aims of the work. However, there are some books with which the teacher should familiarize himself, among them such works as Baker’s “Municipal Engineering and Sanitation,” Eaton’s “The Government of Municipalities,” Fairlie’s “Municipal Administration,” Wilcox’s “The American City,” Zueblin’s “American Municipal Progress” and Shaw’s excellent books. These are useful in a broad, general way. The teacher should make copious use of the city charter and reports of the various city departments, such as health, tenement house, parks, schools, etc. The pupil’s chief reliance will be on the city charter apart from the teacher’s instruction and his own observation and investigation.

The course might well be outlined in the following general way:

I. A brief consideration of the way in which government in general arises, with a discussion of the rise of a village and its development into the city. The pupil will be led to note the extension of the coöperative idea from its simple manifestation in the primitive community to the comprehensive undertakings of a modern metropolis. The relation of the city to the State will be made clear in this discussion, and a proper understanding of what a city charter is be given.

II. Following immediately upon this brief introductory study, which will take on added meaning as the course progresses, should come a study of what may properly be considered the central element of city life—the street. Here we can appeal directly to the pupil’s own experience and observation in a marked degree, and we are sure of his interest when the work is related so closely to his daily life. It is probably worth while to give a pretty full outline of the topics to be taken up in a study of the city street. The one which follows has been in successful use for several years in the High School of Commerce in New York, and naturally covers some points of slight importance in other cities.

The Street the Central Element of City Life.

(a) How streets are made.

(b) To whom they belong.

(c) Who pays for their improvement?

(d) What they are used for and what they contain.

1. Roadways for traffic. 2. Sidewalks. 3. Gutters. 4. Sewers. 5. Water pipes. 6. Telegraph, telephone and electric light wires. 7. Car tracks. 8. Subways. 9. Gas pipes. 10. Conduits.

A. Which of these belong to the city government?

B. Who controls each of these? (Exact officials as found in city charter.)

C. How these public utilities came to be in the streets.

D. Franchises; what are they?

The Street.

(a) The proper arrangement of streets.

(b) The defects of the local system as compared with that of other cities.

(c) Why our street system was laid out as it is.

(d) The surface of the street.

1. Paving.

a. The various kinds, comparative advantages and costs.

b. The importance of good paving to the business interests, as shown in transportation charges.

c. Why the surface of the streets is not better, and who suffers from it.

(1) Poor paving at the beginning, and the reason for it.

(2) Constant tearing up of the streets and failure to replace properly.

(3) Remedy for these evils.

A. The conduit or subway.

1. Why we do not have it.

2. Additional evils resulting from its absence.

a. Waste of gas.

b. Waste of water.

c. Difficulty of making repairs.

d. Injury to health and vegetation.

Poisonous gases. Uncleanliness.

2. The cleaning of the streets.

a. Who has charge of it.

b. What it costs.

c. Why necessary.

d. How the department is run.

e. What is done with the refuse and what should be done.

f. Duties of the householder.

g. How we may keep the streets cleaner.

h. The sprinkling of the streets.

1. By whom done.

3. The regulation of traffic.

a. Who makes the regulations (ordinances, rules)?

b. Who enforces them, such as the direction and speed of traffic?

c. The encumbering of sidewalks and streets.

d. The restriction of certain streets.

e. Remedies for the congestion of traffic, as tunnels, belt lines, etc., for freight.

f. The growth of business limited by traffic.

4. Sidewalks.

a. Regulations as to laying, repairing.

b. Who has jurisdiction over them.

c. The stoop line.

d. Right of the citizen to demand good sidewalks.

e. Blocking the sidewalk.

5. Gutters.

a. Whose business to keep clear of ice, snow or dirt.

b. Whose business to enforce the law and who makes the law?

6. The sewer system.

a. How and by whom sewers are put in.

b. Who pays for them.

c. Who has charge of them.

d. How connected with the houses.

e. How the sewage is disposed of.

f. What is done in other cities and what should be done here?

g. The importance of a good sewer system to the health of the community.

7. The water supply.

a. Why the city and not the individual furnishes the supply of water in a great city.

b. Why the water supply conditions the growth of the city.

c. Where we obtain our present water supply and how it reaches us.

d. Who has charge of the water supply.

e. The total and per capita supply of water in the city.

f. How water is paid for.

g. The danger of a water famine.

1. How it can be averted.

(a) Saving the water by the repairing of leaks, using meters, etc., salt water for fires and cleaning streets.

(b) New sources of supply. The difficulties.

h. The advantages of city ownership over private company.

i. Cost of water supply.

8. Lighting the streets.

a. How it is done.

b. What it costs.

c. Who has charge of it.

d. Should it be done by the city or a private company?

e. The use of the streets for carrying pipes and wires.

f. Who controls this use?

g. The control over these companies by the city or state.

h. Ought the city furnish light to citizens for their private purposes?

i. How the furnishing of light and fuel differs from furnishing meat and groceries.

j. Who gives the right to place telegraph and telephone wires?

k. Why should they be underground?

(a) Appearance, (b) Light, (c) Fire.

9. Transportation by cars on the streets.

a. The giving of franchises, why?

b. What is paid for a franchise?

c. Who has jurisdiction over street railways and to what extent?

d. Should the city own them?

e. Importance of street passenger transportation in the life of the city.

f. What cheaper fares could do for the city.

10. The rights of citizens on the streets.

a. Laws and ordinances which secure these, as those against disorderly conduct, crowding, ball playing, excessive speeding and those regulating processions, banners, etc.

11. Licenses to use streets.

a. What businesses require to be licensed and why?

b. How licenses are secured.

III. Part III of the course takes up the matter of protection to life and property by the various departments of the city government, as follows:

Protection to life and property by

1. The Police Department.
2. The Department of Education.
3. Fire Department.
4. The Courts and Department of Correction.
5. The Health Department.
6. The Tenement House Department.
7. The Bureau of Buildings.
8. The Park Department.
9. The Charities Department.

1. Police.

Policing the Streets.—The organization and management of the police department. The duties of policemen. The importance of an honest and efficient police department. Why this department is so often criticized. The evils of graft and why it exists. State or county control of police. Should the head arise from the ranks? Should his position be permanent? The rights of citizens as against the police. How to make complaints. Serving warrants. The police control over street traffic, street crowds, push carts, etc.

2. Education.

The educational law and why it exists. Why the city furnishes free education. The organization of the department of education. The method of appointment of officials and the teaching force. The advantages of the system of appointments. Kinds of day schools. The total cost of education in the city. The cost per pupil in each class of schools. The cost in the high school. The cost of books and supplies. Is it worth while? Special schools and colleges: Evening schools, corporate schools. The lecture system. The vacation playground. Aims and advantages of each. Why they exist. What they accomplish. The excellences and defects of our system of education as compared with that of other cities and countries. Supplementary education.

1. The Natural History Museum.
2. The Botanical Gardens.
3. The Zoological Garden.
4. The Art Museum.

3. The Fire Department.

Protection against fire depends upon (1) the building laws, (2) the water supply, and (3) the efficiency of the fire department. How one becomes a fireman. The organization of the department.

(a) The influence of the insurance companies.

(b) The poor construction of buildings.

(c) The esprit de corps. Salaries and pensions.

4. The Courts and the Department of Correction.

1. Civil Courts.

A. Municipal Courts. Their jurisdiction, officers and district.

B. The City Court (county).

C. The Supreme Court.

2. Criminal Courts.

Under the study of courts comes the work of the court officers and the processes connected with the trial. The term of the office, selection and salary of the various officials. The meaning of the various terms used. Probation system.

The Department of Correction.—Its management and duties. Prison labor. The indeterminate sentence system.

5. The Health Department.

(a) In relation to the ordinary resident. (b) In relation to the landlord. (c) In relation to the business man.

A study of the actual regulations of this department as found in the code, and a description of its activities, together with comparison with the work done in other cities.

6. The Tenement House Department.

When and why formed? Who is subject to it? How organized? What it has accomplished. Why it needs a strong head. Illustrations from report of the Tenement House Department. Dictation of most important provisions of law.

7. Building Bureau.

How it differs in organization from other departments. The buildings subject to its jurisdiction. Why its inefficient management is so disastrous. The temptation to graft and what it costs.

8. The Park Department.

How it protects health. How our park system arose and what it has cost. How the parks are managed. The need of small parks. What parks have accomplished in New York. Boulevards as parks. The need and benefit of playgrounds as conducive to health, educative and preventive of crime. The desirability of school playgrounds. Dangers threatening parks.

9. Department of Charities.

The hospital and ambulance service. Out-door relief. Asylums. How the destitute may be aided. The city’s aid to private charitable institutions.

In this connection it is both desirable and feasible for the pupils to visit the more important departments and get some first-hand impressions of their work. Our experience has been that the city officials willingly and helpfully coöperate with the school. Not only have they furnished us much valuable material, but they have also facilitated the inspection of their departments, and have not infrequently themselves given helpful talks to the boys.

IV. Following close upon the study of the departments comes a consideration of the cost to the city. The pupil has noted the extensive activities of the municipality and the important question of how they are all paid for looms up before him. The budget must be studied, and the manner of levying and collecting taxes must be understood, as well as the raising of money by loans. Under proper guidance he will come to realize how extravagant and inefficient government affects him personally, how honest and economic government has a money value to every citizen. He will want to know what city officers determine the amount of money to be spent, and just what officers spend the money. New York City has had a Board of Estimate and Apportionment in control of its finances for a decade, yet it remained for the recent three-cornered fight for the mayoralty, with its resulting choice of a Democratic mayor and a Fusion Board of Estimate, to bring home to the average citizen what the professional politician had long understood, that this Board have really much more to do with the government of the city than the mayor, that in reality New York has a sort of government by commission.

V. We come finally in our study to a consideration of the citizen’s part in the administration of municipal affairs. Topics such as the following should be taken up:

Becoming a citizen. Becoming a voter. Registration. Voting. Voting but a part. The party organization. The cause of good or bad government. How the citizen may govern the city through the party organization. Enrollment. The district captain. The district committee. The district leader. The general committee. The leader of the organization. How the leader reaches his place. Organization the key to success in politics. Candidates for office, how selected, formally, actually. Why the high school graduate should work through an organization for an honest, business-like government.

The preceding part of the course will have failed of its purpose if it hasn’t established in the pupil’s mind certain elementary ideas and ideals concerning the purpose of government and a sense of the duty and responsibility which every citizen owes to the community in which he works and lives. He will be an intelligent reader of the numerous items in the daily press bearing upon the administration of city affairs, and he will know how as a voter he may take an active and effective part in that administration alike for his own best interests and that of the community.

The course outlined is not an artificial affair based upon pure theory. It has been successfully carried on in one high school for half a decade, winning the enthusiastic interest of first-year pupils as well as of the teachers charged with its conduct. It can be adapted to the high school of any community, and will fail of its purpose only if it is managed in a perfunctory fashion by instructors who have not a professional interest in their work, or a high sense of their great responsibility and their great opportunity. It would be a splendid thing if we could require of all teachers in the public schools a knowledge of the governmental activities of the municipality they are called upon to serve, for surely they of all citizens, ought to be familiar with the purpose and practice of government.

Has History a Practical Value?[4]

BY PROFESSOR J. N. BOWMAN, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.

This question of the practical value of history rises not out of a theory but out of existing social and educational conditions. In a practical age where “doing things” receives such generous applause, and “ends” are held in high estimation; when “results,” and very frequently material “results,” are the norms of success, and “efficiency” widens its meaning beyond the physical world,—then history, as well as other subjects is called into question to render an account of itself before the judgment bar of the present. Life looms up great beyond all the parts of the school system. The eighth grade has its graduation into life as well as the high school and college. The grades feel their responsibility to the great majority of their pupils who go directly into life. In the East the high schools are breaking from the “preparatory status” to the college, and are looking to the good they can do for their pupils who get no more schooling. Trade schools are growing up within and beside the high schools, as the professional schools grew up within and beside the colleges. The college itself is in question by labor union committees and inaugural addresses. The university is becoming professional; even Arts and Letters in preparing teachers and general practitioners of arts and letters. The industrial movement has now the economic interpretation of history. The “Market Reports”[5] of the university have brought the “ticker” within the college walls. Students and parents are asking more and more insistently, “What is the use?” and “What is the practical value?”

The question is not new; the questioners are not new; the things questioned are new. In olden days when schools existed primarily for the Latin professions, the question was answered: these things prepare for law, medicine, and the ministry. Schools now prepare for other professions and also for the trades; but the question is not yet answered without condition, amendment or dissent. In those old days the members of the Latin professions were the bearers of the highest culture; but now with our ideas of democracy and opportunity, and the general diffusion of knowledge, these members are but a small fraction of the bearers of the highest culture. The school system has grown from the school of the professions into the school of the people; but do the schools prepare for the people as the older schools prepared for the professions? A healthy, growing institution—like Webster’s mariner—must constantly take its bearings relative to life to know how far the elements of fads, specialization, and scholarly isolation are driving it from its true course.

Practical relates to action, use, practice; it refers to ends or means to ends; it is opposed to theoretical, speculation or ideal. But there is nothing in the word to debar its use in mental as well as physical fields. It may be used as the German uses übung in his university courses. Value is the quality that makes something suitable for ends or purposes. It permits the wildest limit of “art for art’s sake”; and equally permits one part of the “art” to be suitable to the ends and purposes of another part or of another “art.” Practical value, then, is the quality that renders a thing useful or desirable in meeting ends. It does not by any means alone imply “for revenue only.”

Has history a practical value? It depends on the ends. The narrowest specialist as well as the broadest humanitarian will both agree upon the usefulness and desirability of history to meet their respective ends, but they disagree upon what the ends are. The specialist is interested in history for its own sake; to him the element of history is the fact; the tradition of the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries has forced him to select his facts in the fields of politics, war and diplomacy; the method he uses is rather a one-sided use of the natural-scientific method. He is interested in the facts for their own sake: he is often too little interested in their value, importance and inter-relations. He has performed a great service in the nineteenth century in correcting old facts and in finding new ones. But now he has such mountains of facts that he is overawed by their mass, and long practice in his method prevents him from using them. So a great Harvard professor is reported as saying, “Keep on piling up facts, their weight will squeeze out some kind of order.” In his attempt to be scientific the specialist has used only one side of the scientist’s method; he has forgotten that the scientist works not only with matter, but with the activities and relations of matter. He loves to brush the mold off the dry bones of the past. Perhaps he even has a dream of articulating a few of the bones into a cross section of the skeleton of the political past. This is a rightful part of the work in the university and graduate school, unfortunately often the all-dominating part. I have spoken at length of this work for the reason that in this state there is required of all high school teachers a year of graduate work in some university of the American Association. The specialist’s method received there is all too often taken, without adaptation into the high school and occasionally even into the grades. So “art for art’s sake” is perpetuated. The boy is prepared for carrying on research when he expects to carry on business, and the girl is drilled in turning out monographs when she expects to turn out biscuits. Here is where the parents, and others, raise the question, what is the use? The answer and the reform must come from the top downwards.

On the other hand the humanitarian is often so broad that his work contains but little of history; it is so thin and transparent that it may justly be called culturine. His pupils learn answers, but not the steps to the answers; or they learn the fashion phrase of the “example,” but not the steps of solution. At every point in their journey through the past they are dependent on their Bædecker. Here again is where the question is raised, what is the use?

It is not necessary to make a choice of either of these for the history work in the schools. Where the fact-hunter ends his work the historian may begin his. More important than either fact or generalization is the method of getting at each so that the pupil may become self-active. If he learns these methods he can use the facts in finding other facts, in explaining and interpreting other facts, or in understanding other departments of life. He can use facts inductively and through a process of analysis and classification reach generalization; or like Kepler, Newton and Faraday he can work on the facts deductively. He can follow lines of interest, threads of activity; he can view them from one view point or from different view points. On the other hand he can learn and use the method of working a fact after the Seignobosian “rules of the game.” So even within the narrower and professional field there is the practical value.

But the end is still in question. The pupil goes from the grades, high school and college into life to take his part as a workman some eight hours of the day and as a citizen all twenty-four; as an active, creative worker through the prime of his life, and as a member of society to his grave. The parents and the people out in life ask the question of the practical value, and they answer it from the standpoint of life and social efficiency. Does history stand the test?

From this point of view the specialist fails; the storehouse of facts is static, efficiency is active; the method of facts results only in another static fact. The culturine teacher fares somewhat better; he is active, but unfortunately with empty symbols. He deals with answers and not with problems, with his Bædecker and not with the thing itself. It is the long stretch between the two that is wanting—the process, the use. The history work must be adapted to the life needs of the pupils as members of society: those facts, those generalizations, and especially those processes of reaching from one to the other, that can make him an efficient member of society. Isolated facts will be soon forgotten, generalizations will perhaps stick longer, but methods of generalization can be used throughout life on new facts to reach new generalizations.

What are some of the things in life and society for which history may be used,—the ends to which it may be adapted in study and teaching? Someone has pointed out four ends, but I should like to add another, fully conscious of the excepting and varying relations between them: reading, studying, teaching, writing, and I should like to add living. Writing is justly the work of the professional, i. e., the graduate school; yet if history ever becomes a science it is not at all impossible that living may not usurp this position in graduate work. Teaching, in this state, is also the work of the graduate school and the last years of the college. This leaves, then, reading, studying and living that touch the history work from the grades to the college; these also underlie the other two.

The basis on which all these rest is life itself, and the interest one takes in life. Since one is here in this world he is interested in it, to get as much out of and put as much into it as he can; if he has no interest he at least exerts himself either to be a parasite or to shuffle off its weight. This interest is the starting point of the interest in the past of this life; the basis of the ascending scale from reading onward.

Reading runs through all history work from the stories—told and read—in the grades to the reading after dinner by the evening fireside. Interest in life as it was, is, and is becoming: the problems and policies, the activity and struggle, the peaceful life of the cotter or the demon life of the battlefield, the growth of trade and the sailing of Columbus, or the work of Bach or Paracelsus. From some life interest now one travels back to chosen places and times, and under the lead of some Virgil and Beatrice does more than Dante in taking up temporary habitation then and there. From a purely commercial point of view, also, the historian can here benefit himself—and his publisher—in preparing a public to demand his books.

Studying is a step beyond reading; Virgil and Beatrice are here dismissed. It explores some field of interest and follows some thread; it reads pages and chapters and not volumes or series. The books may be stories, texts or documents—the story must be pieced together from many sources. In reading, the books lead the reader; in studying, the student leads the books. It is the transitory inquisitiveness of the child become somewhat constant in the later grades and high school, and fixed in the university in the professional study of “ut clauses.” Reflection and study go hand in hand,—the latter to answer the questions of the former. For the very great majority of people this is the nearest they ever get to professional history work. It is of the greatest practical value to those who use history for other than the pleasant hour’s reading.

In living, life and history unite. This, of course, touches the live question of what is history. The specialist and his methods are adaptable practically alone to a past not coming within eighty to twenty years of the present. But the parent and the man in life deal on the one hand with human beings, institutions, matter, etc., and on the other with life forces and energies. All these exist in different and modified forms in the specialist’s past. If this breach between the past and present cannot be bridged, then the laboring man is right in asking that history be displaced by things that can bridge it. The man in life is busy with the art of living—can history help him in this? If history is ever to be a science and be scientific, it must consider, as do the sciences, the consequent question of being an art—of reaching desired effects with known causes.

Those who ask the question, has history a practical value, go from the present life into history. From that viewpoint they see its workings, and from life and society they draw their norm by which they judge it, accept it in the curriculum and pay taxes for the history teacher’s salary. For such a purely selfish note as this history should not wait; but should search out in society and life how it may be of service some way and somehow, and through its teaching supply these needs. It can then make itself indispensable and forestall all question of its practical value.

The practical value of history to life depends on a complex of race, age, country, locality and the individual. Some phases of this value might be stated thus: an ease in observing, analyzing and classifying the life activities of to-day. No other subject taught in the schools touches life at so many points and in so many of its activities. Through seeing in history the close interrelation of activities in the past the student can be led to see the close interrelation of the activities of his own day. Again, he learns to see life as a historic whole—his contemporaneous life in connection with the life of the race. He thus learns valuations and norms for judging character. He learns that Jeffries and Johnson are less valuable in life than Pasteur and Eucken; that even in the history of pugilism they perhaps are less noteworthy than either Sullivan or Corbett. Again, history can help him to save experience. He can learn to apply with due modification to present problems not the answers of the past to past problems, but the ways of solving those problems. Material and social environments exist now as they existed in the days of the Greeks; hunger and socialization, love and ambition, the desire to know and to feel, are as effective now as in the days of Socrates. The combination and the emphasis change. The past cannot answer the problem of the present, but can help him to answer it. Again, history can help him to be tolerant, since our day demands tolerance. In studying some struggle of the past he learns to see that question from two or more sides; this practice helps, with the practice in other subjects taught in the schools, to consider a present question from its many sides.

Historical impartiality is frequently misused: impartiality plays its part in the consideration of questions, but should not be allowed to mar decisions when once made. The specialist and his pupils can easily stand off from and out of present, active life like men from Mars. Tolerance, then, is desirable in the consideration of questions, and of the activities acknowledged by society; for tolerance, like liberty, does not mean license. Again, history has a practical value in connecting the present almost as intimately with the past as hope does the present with the future. It gives two or more points together with the present from which direction and tendency may be seen. It can thus help to break down the loneliness of the present.

The life of each succeeding present must dictate its own norms of efficiency: whether citizenship or patriotism, character or individuality, socialization or socialism, etc. The practical value of history is like the practical value of all other subjects—it must adapt itself to life needs, and by its leadership make itself indispensable to life and society. Also it must be of practical value to the individual for his pleasure, his use, and his business; by its adaptability to these ends it makes itself indispensable to him. It has this practical value for the pupils in the grades, high school, and college, in contributing something for themselves and for their parts in life.

An Idaho cow-puncher last summer defined life as “just one d—— thing after another.” It has also been pointed out that this is the best definition of history, as all too often taught and written. The “cow-puncher” forms a small class, and is rapidly disappearing; history will soon be forced to adapt itself to another class and to a life otherwise defined. In doing so it is hoped that it will not be by this chance and unconscious adaptation, but that it will consciously and deliberately adapt itself to the new class and its life.

I believe history has a practical value in life, and a place in the school system; and also that it can prove this value so efficiently that its critics will not wish to relegate history to the position of Greek and Latin.

“A Source History of the United States”

BY PROFESSORS CALDWELL AND PERSINGER.

Many of the literary histories written in the last half century have carefully avoided quotations or reprints of documents. In the early historical literature of America documents were inserted or appended to almost every history; but this style gave way to the literary ideal of expressing the thought of the documents in the historian’s own words. There are many volumed histories written toward the close of the nineteenth century which make no pretence of reproducing the form or words of the source-material. It was but natural, therefore, when the study of history came to be taken up seriously in colleges and schools, that teachers and scholars should desire to get away from the insipid literary generalizations, and taste the freshness of the original sources. It was this insistence upon a certain literary style which created the source-book; and to-day we have therefore the literary history and the source-collection side by side. Early source-books contained simply highly significant documents, or documents which might be treated as types. We have advanced far from this, and now our editor aims to give the narrative of history in the language of the original documents.

Casting aside all reverence for the document as a completed whole, Professors Caldwell and Persinger have cut and trimmed out every unnecessary phrase and sentence, taking a few words from one document, a few paragraphs from another, a few pages, perhaps, from another. By this process, the volume is made to approach nearly to the consecutive development of thought and arrangement shown in the narrative histories. The language and spelling of the originals are in all cases preserved, and all omissions are indicated by the usual typographical means.

The work is divided into four chapters; the first on “The Making of Colonial America,” occupies 165 pages; the second, “Revolution and Independence, 1764-1786,” fills 100 pages; the third, “The Making of a Democratic Nation,” 131 pages; and the fourth, “Slavery and the Sectional Struggle, 1841-1877,” 86 pages. Or, to put it in other words, the period before 1789 is allotted 284 pages, while that under the constitution to 1877 is given 200 pages. Each chapter is subdivided into sections, and these into smaller groups of sources. Taking for granted that the plan of the editors is a practical one, the test as to whether they have done it well is to be found in the proportions assigned to the several topics, and in the character of the extracts given or excluded. The first thought which comes to mind is that too much space has been given to the colonial and revolutionary periods, and too little to the constitutional period. An inspection of the several sections shows that the colonial period lends itself best to the form of treatment adopted by the authors, and naturally they have emphasized that period. The documents upon recent history, particularly the civil war and reconstruction, have not fitted so readily into the narrative. Yet it must be admitted that the editors have resolutely carried on their method to the close; they give extracts from Lincoln’s public papers and letters respecting slavery and reconstruction, and arrange them in the same analytical form adopted for the extracts bearing upon the Stamp Act or on Bacon’s Rebellion. One cannot but wish, however, that the editors had been as generous in their excerpts for the later period as they were for the earlier; perhaps five pages of quotations is not too much for the “Effects of the English Revolution of 1688” upon America, but surely two pages is too short for Lincoln’s attitude toward slavery; we welcome the ten pages of extracts from Washington’s letters bearing upon the Revolutionary War, but we wish for more than two very short quotations treating of the Civil War.

The method of the editors can best be shown by noting the character of the illustrative material gathered by them upon several topics. For instance in Chapter I there is the sub-topic, “Colonial Constitutional Development, 1689-1763,” occupying 17 pages. Within this space we have quotations from the ordinance of 1696 creating the Board of Lords of Trade and Plantations, and from the additional instructions of 1752 respecting the board. There are as many as fourteen extracts showing the increased parliamentary regulation of colonial affairs in the period 1696 to 1751. These include parts of the navigation act of 1696, Edmund Burke’s account of the sugar act of 1733, extracts from the woolens act of 1699, the hat act of 1732, and the iron act of 1750; excerpts showing the bounties on naval stores, rice and indigo; and quotations from the act regulating colonial coinage (1707), the post-office act of 1710, the debt recovery act of 1732, the naturalization act of 1740, the land-bank act of 1741, and the paper money act of 1751. Next there are four quotations showing the desire of the English authorities to reduce all the colonies to one form of government; and the same number of extracts from plans for colonial union. Then follow three extracts showing the desire to establish an Anglican episcopate in the colonies, and the section closes with papers illustrating the “growing assertion of colonial rights.” Under the latter heading we have four extracts relating to conflicts between the governors and the assemblies; an account of the trial and acquittal of John Peter Zenger; John Adams’ account of James Otis’ speech against writs of assistance; and a report of Patrick Henry’s speech in the Parson’s Cause. Such an array of quotations shows not only wide reading and intensive knowledge of the documents, but it also implies a keen judgment as to their pedagogical value, and an ability to arrange the extracts into a working analysis.

In such a work one would naturally look for the treatment of Culturgeschichte, and indeed the editors have not neglected this side of their story. An interesting section is that describing the industrial, social, and religious condition of the country in 1840. The subject is analyzed minutely,—like all other parts of the work,—into such topics as “business characteristics,” “means of communication,” “the standard of living,” “democracy,” “the South,” and “American Morals.” The sources for quotation are almost exclusively the accounts of European—mainly English—travelers in the country at the period. These accounts are well known to students of the period, but it has been difficult heretofore for teachers to bring the flavor of these criticisms to the scholars of high school or even college classes. The editors of the “Source-history” have selected and arranged a series of accounts from Buckingham, Martineau, Chambers, Dickens, Grund, Lyell, de Tocqueville and others which will be of service in both college and secondary school classes.

The two sections here mentioned show the method of the editors. Not only have they selected their material with skill, but they have also arranged it under such a scheme of topics that it may be used by the tyro in the study of history. He does not need to dig the historical jewels out from the midst of documentary rubbish; that has been done for him. In addition the editors have placed extended series of questions upon the text at the close of each section, and references to the standard text-books. There is an analytical table of contents, but no index. There are some typographical errors in the book which should be corrected in a later edition. It is also to be hoped if we are to have any more of such collections, that a simpler typographical device may be invented to mark omitted matter.

The work is a valuable pedagogical device; it marks the climax of the source-method. It should very widely extend the knowledge of sources in our high schools and colleges. We shall watch its use with interest.

[A Source History of the United States from Discovery (1492) to End of Reconstruction (1877), by Howard Walter Caldwell and Clark Edmund Persinger, pp. xvi, 484. Chicago, Ainsworth & Co., price $1.25.] A. E. M.

The History Teacher’s Magazine

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EDITORS

Managing Editor, Albert E. McKinley, Ph.D.

History in the College and the School, Arthur C. Howland, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of European History, University of Pennsylvania.

The Training of the History Teacher, Norman M. Trenholme, Professor of the Teaching of History, School of Education, University of Missouri.

Source Methods of Teaching History, Fred Morrow Fling, Professor of European History, University of Nebraska.

Reports from the History Field, Walter H. Cushing, Secretary, New England History Teachers’ Association, South Framingham, Mass.

Current History, John Haynes, Dorchester High School, Boston, Mass.

American History in Secondary Schools, Arthur M. Wolfson, Ph.D., DeWitt Clinton High School, New York.

The Teaching of Civics in the Secondary School, Albert H. Sanford, State Normal School, La Crosse, Wis.

European History in Secondary Schools, Daniel C. Knowlton, Ph.D., Barringer High School, Newark, N. J.

English History in Secondary Schools, C. B. Newton, Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, N. J.

Ancient History in Secondary Schools, William Fairley, Ph.D., Commercial High School, Brooklyn, N. Y.

History in the Grades, Armand J. Gerson, Supervising Principal, Robert Morris Public School, Philadelphia, Pa.

CORRESPONDENTS.

Henry Johnson, Teachers’ College, Columbia University, New York.

Mabel Hill, High School, Lowell, Mass.