|
|
by Professor S.S. Laurie, University of Edinburgh
Volume 11, 1900, pgs. 1-8, 69-77
Language and literature are not more closely connected with the humanistic in education than history is. And this for obvious reasons. It is the introduction of the young mind to the record of the past of the race to which he himself belongs, and whose traditions it will be his duty to pass on to the next generation. It would be to waste words to endeavour to show how closely the study of this record is associated with moral training in the altruistic virtues, and with that kind of political instruction that best fits the rising generation for the discharge of their duties as citizens in one commonwealth. It strengthens the sympathy of man with men and binds more closely the social bond. By the study of past greatness, moreover, we learn to strive to be worthy of our forefathers, and, by the understanding of the causes which have so often led mankind astray, we learn to understand better the questions which arise in our own time, and to act during the brief period assigned to us on the stage of life with circumspection and under a sense of responsibility to those who are to succeed us. It is for these reasons that I might include history whereby, as Montaigne says, "We converse with those great and heroic souls of former and better ages," under the head of School Ethics.
To discuss here the importance of history in education would accordingly be superfluous. Opinions, however, may vary as to the age at which it ought to be studied, and the method of instruction which ought to be pursued. It has been too much the habit, I think, to speak of history as a school subject from the point of view of the adult and cultivated mind, and to forget that, if the young are to enter into the life of bygone generations, and to take a living interest in the past out of which they have grown, the teaching of history must be adapted to the age of our pupils. [*As an illustration of this tendency I may quote from Professor Dewey, "Everything depends on history being treated from a social standpoint as manifesting the agencies which have influenced social development, and the typical institutions in which social life has expressed itself"; and again, "It is necessary that the child should be forming the habit of interpreting the special incidents that occur, and the particular situations that present themselves in terms of the whole social life." All this is true; but to what age of pupil do these remarks apply?] The childhood of history is best for the child, the boyhood of history for the boy, the youthhood of history for the youth, and the manhood of history for the man. A similar misconception has existed with regard to most other subjects; and, hence, the attempt to convey adult conceptions to young minds in almost every department of instruction; a mode of procedure which, so far from promoting the growth of knowledge, checks growth by destroying interest. And, as educators, we must admit that, if the result of our teaching be not to stimulate activity of the mind, and to plant in the young an interest in the subjects taught that will outlast the school and influence the whole life, we have failed.
History is a very large and various study, and to deal with it as an educational instrument in all its bearings would occupy a volume. My sole interest, here and now, is in history for the young as a vehicle of moral training, a means of extending the sympathy of man with man and of strengthening the social bond, thereby confirming the feeling of the political unity and continuity of the commonwealth.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
When, now, we ask for a method in teaching history, we are first under obligation to explain to ourselves what we mean by history.
If history be the story of man's words and acts, the British Museum could not hold the history of a single day. By common consent, the history of mankind is limited to an account of the words and deeds of men as members of a co-operating society of men, words spoken and deeds done in the interests of the progress of the community as a whole. The record of the past is full of many minor histories, e.g., art, science, education, all of which throw a side light on history in its ordinary accepted sense; but we must not allow our attention to be diverted by these contributions to the history of humanity, however in themselves important, from the specific meaning of history as having for its chief subject-matter man as a political being; as political, law-abiding; and as law-abiding, moral.
(1) History is not antiquarianism [love of old things]. Antiquarianism has something childlike about it, in so far as it revels in the facts and little things of the past simply because of its interest in facts and things in and for themselves, without special regard to their wider relations. There, are, fortunately, minds of this type, and it is a good thing for the historian that they exist, just as it is a good thing for the biologist that there are investigators whose chief delight is in the accurate investigation of particular forms, and who not only fail and rise to the science of their subject in its true sense as a rational and causal presentation of a correlated series of the phenomena of life, but even satisfy their self-love by talking somewhat contemptuously of the "theorists." To such minds in the historical department, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, if it were published to-day, would be a great opportunity; they would fill columns with their "learned" criticisms and exposures of errors. But Gibbon remains; while they pass into foot-notes to be afterwards corrected by subsequent foot-notes. We condone this seeming pettiness in consideration of its uses. After all, an error should be corrected.
(2) History is the story of the long progress of political humanity in time. Consequently, the dating of events in accurate sequence and of the prominent actors round whom these events have chiefly gathered is essential. This however, is to be called chronology, not history.
(3) Since history is the long record of time, it must present events and the acts of the men who specially influenced them in an accurate, sequent series. Now this is to be properly called historical annals. Annals may consist of bald, colourless statements as in China, or they may be vivid and picturesque, and contain an attempt to portray the actors. So far from such picturesque annals being less accurate presentations than a bald record because of their dynamic character, they are, in truth, more accurate because they are a fuller presentation of human life; and human life is always dramatic. All depends on the objectivity of the mind of the writer. It is evident that annals well written are substantially narrations or stories, and furnish the raw material of all history. Mr. Birrell would tell us that this itself is history, "To keep the past alive for us is the pious function of the historian. Our curiosity is endless; his the task of gratifying it. We want to know what happened long ago. Performance of this task is only proximately possible, but, none the less, it must be attempted, for the demand is born afresh with every infant's cry. History is a pageant, not a philosophy." Carlyle looks at history also as a picture. And, certainly, in so far as history rests on annals, it must be a moving picture, and include the domestic and social life and the personal relations of men and women. I say "women," because, in the picturesque annals of the human race, women have played no insignificant part. There have been great female rulers, but it is not this I refer to. It is the silent, and because it is silent and always personal, the potent influence of women on the motives of men. So with literature. Men are the poets, but women have been the living stimulators of poetry.
(4) History, however, in the strict sense (and I do not speak of philosophy or so-called science of history which, again, is a distinct subject) contains both antiquities, chronology and annals,--all the elements to which I have referred; but these so treated as to exhibit the causal relations of the series of events in their relation to the life of the community as a public ethical policy a life of progress or of decay as it may be. To write history in this sense demands a combination of the highest powers, both intellectual, imaginative and ethical. By the very nature of the case, such a treatment of events must be the most instructive and attractive of all studies, for what can transcend in importance the history of man to men?
(5) The history of a nation as distinguished from world-history is the history of a particular race; that is to say of a significant, if not specific, type of man working towards a social policy under certain conditions of physical environment. [It may be said that it is often a history of a political organization embracing many races. But when it is so, there is always a leading race which determines the policy and gives colour to the social life.] The chief factor is, doubtless, the racial type; but, inasmuch as man lives by the earth and its products, it follows that his relations to his environment must be of vast importance in the history of a nation, and will be found to explain much of its political activity and growth. The material and economic conditions can never, indeed, be lost sight of by a historian. In an advanced and complex civilization, these material considerations may seem to have given place to "ideas" as determining the acts and ambitions of a people, but they are always at work silently; and, when they are urgent, ideas, whether moral, political, or religious, may be swept away before them. The prima vitae will ultimately push their claims to the front. Geography, them, in its large sense, is indispensable to the understanding of history.
(6) At the back of the sequence of events and the human drama which we call annals have been thought, i.e., ideas and purposes. These, again, have, for the most part, been closely connected with thinkers and with makers or transformers of politics; although it is true that tendencies often exist and will move a whole people which cannot be traced to any one personality. Thus the series of events as determined by external conditions, but, above all, by thoughts and ideals of social life, constitutes history a philosophy; that is, a reasoned account of the progress of civilization.
If we reflect for a moment, we shall see that the writer of the history even of a single nation in the above large and true sense, much more the historian of the world, ought to be possessed of an intense sympathy with humanity, the imagination of a poet, the thoughtfulness of a philosopher, the knowledge of an encyclopaedist and the gifts of an orator. For the historian has to deal with the largest generalization of generalizations in every field of human activity, and, by dwelling on these, to lay bare the secret springs of events and motives, and all the causal relations, of the growth or decay of nations. Hence, we may say, that a historical grasp of the life of man through the ages is the last and richest result of a man's culture.
I have dwelt on the various elements that enter into history partly to show that even if you have had a boy under tuition up to the end of the secondary school period, it would be little that he could know of history; but the instruction which he receives may always be such as will prepare him for the ultimate comprehension of the subject in its widest significance. It is certain of the elements that go to constitute history a subject of humane culture which a boy must be taught. As in all other subjects, we can do nothing in the school period but lay foundations. What we have to attend to is this:--so to teach as to give a sound foundation for ultimate knowledge in every department that we admit to the school curriculum; but much more have we so to teach as to feel assured that we have already attained an education purpose, at whatever stage the pupil may cease his attendance at school. What is that purpose generally?
Purpose.--We may sometimes be disposed to think that language is somewhat strained when it is said that the object we have in view, even in the formal discipline of intellect, is ethical. We see that it is so, however, as soon as we understand the meaning of the world "ethical" as marking the issue of personal life and conduct of the Rational and Emotional, which so curiously and subtly blend to make a man. To say that the end is ethical is practically to say that the end of man is the Humanity in him--not this or that specific knowledge or faculty. But, however the world may demand explanation or justify restriction, as denoting the end of disciplinary studies, its application to the teaching of school history "leaps to the eyes."
Generally, we would say that we attain our ethical purpose in teaching history by connecting the life of the boy with the life of the past humanity of which he is the most recent outcome. Thus we make it possible for him to become a "being of large discourse looking before and after"; for the afterlook brings with it the forward look. We prolong his experience and his life thereby. Instead of three-score years and ten, he lives thousands of years. All the past of man's life pours into him, and he reaches forward also into the future of the race.
The supreme purpose, then, which we have in view in teaching school history is, I hold, the enriching of the humanity of the pupil with a view to an ethical result in life and character.
But no man, were he to give his whole life to history, can sum up in his own thoughts the past of humanity, save in the form of the most generalized characteristics of nations, and of their influence on each other for progress or decline. And, further, if he does not rest all his experience on a home basis, the true significance of events in world history will not touch him; their interpretation will lie outside his acquired knowledge; his imagination, on which true appreciation of men and movements depends, will fail him. What has been is what now exists around him, and what has been and is, is what will be. Accordingly, his historical appreciation and historical imagination must rest on the comparatively narrow basis of his own national history. If this be so with the professed historian, how much more is it true of the average man. This gives us our second proposition:
The history of the school must be national history, and its primary aim is the knowledge of the past of our own country as a portion of the human family, with a view to the evoking of that personal attachment in our past and present and future which we call Patriotism.
A true patriot as distinguished from a jingo is full of history, though it may be somewhat vague at times. The history of the past and the probable history of the future of his country animate him, although he may be a poor hand at a history examination paper. His whole life as a man is stimulated and broadened by something much greater than himself, and that something is the idea of humanity. This idea, no doubt, is narrowed down to the community of which he forms a part, the part with which he is most intimately connected; but it is none the less operative educationally, operative as a formative force.
In educating the boy to nationality and patriotism, we do not mean for him to stop short at this; but we may be assured that the vague and watered cosmopolitanism which some affect can be genuine only in so far as it rests on a patriotic national feeling. If we do not love those of our own household, the less we talk about loving Humanity with a big h the better. It is in respecting ourselves that we respect others. The youth of the country, then, must grow up in a knowledge of their own national record of arts and arms just as they must grow up in and through their own tongue and their own literature; and this they must do, if they are intelligently and sympathetically to comprehend the life of other nations, past or contemporary. Education fails to attain its moral and civic ends if it does not connect a boy with his own national antecedents and all that has made him and the present possible, and it equally fails to attain the ends of culture in its larger sense.
But while this is our first aim; we must never lose sight of our supreme purpose--the enriching of the humanity of the pupil with a view to an ethical result in him as a member of the human race.
Instruction in History and Citizenship, Part II
pg. 69
General Method.--Having defined our aim, how are we to proceed? Can we not find some general rule of procedure which shall govern all school history from infancy to the age of 18--the age which marks the termination of secondary instruction? I think we can, if we consider the historical elements of which we have spoken, and the form in which these first of all present themselves to us, viz., as annals furnishing material for true history. The general method is to claim the chronology and annalistic materials of history for the school up to 15 or 16.
Now as annals, history is a series of related events in time connected with certain communities of persons and particular localities, the even tenor of events being occasionally disturbed by outbursts of passion and emotion. That is to say, it presents itself to us as an epic made up of dramatic situations with interludes of lyrical raptures--all connected with persons and the aims or ideas which they represent. Or we might say, "it is a prosaic epic every now and then, passing into drama, and accompanied by a lyrical chorus. History cannot be reasoned history to a boy; even at the age of 16 or 17 it is only very partially so; but it can always be an epic, a drama and a song. The general principle of procedure is thus revealed.
We must teach history to the young as an epic, a drama and a song. A certain number of dates connected with great crises of national history, or with great characters, must, of course, be known for the sake of the time-sequence, and certain prosaic facts must enter as connecting links of the epic, as the pupils increase in years. But the younger our pupils are, the more must the epic and dramatic and lyric idea of history be kept in view, and the more indifferent must we remain to causal explanations. Thus, the history of the school will be full of humanity, and so be a humane study; thus will it connect itself with literature; thus will it stir ethical emotion; thus, in short, will it be the true matter of history; and when history, in the larger philosophic conception of it, comes within the range of the cultured adult mind, this epic view of it will contribute to a true-reasoned comprehension--a comprehension, that is to say, which will take full account of human character, feeling, and motive.
History taught in accordance with this method shows itself to be, above all other studies, a humane study, and to be rich in all those elements which go to the ethical culture of the young. All subjects, when properly taught, contribute, it is true, to this ethical culture, for even science can be humanized; but language (in its larger significance) and history contribute most of all, and these two play into each other's hands. Together they constitute, along with morality and religion, the humanistic in education, and furnish the best instruments for the ethical growth of mind.
The general principle of procedure naturally suggests the true method of instruction in particular lessons. Let the period be the Scots' wars of independence. Round Wallace and Bruce this story chiefly gathers. The boy with the map before him must have conveyed to him a conception of the conditions, physical, social, and political of the period, in so far as these are intelligible at the age which he has reached. The story should be, then, first of all told to him, and only thereafter read to him. He should finally read it himself. This is the epic: the dramatic and the lyrical enters by reading to him, or with him, all the national poetry and song that has gathered round the period. He then, as in other subject, is invited to express himself in the construction of a narrative of the leading events.
So in the history of England, the periods of the French wars and the Spanish Armada, for example, are to be treated in like manner. The boy must strike his roots deep into the national soil, or he will never come to much. It matters nothing that the poetry you give contains much that is legendary. A national legend is a far truer element in the inner history of a people than a bald fact.
This, I conceive, is the true method of school history in general. The minor details of method will be suggested by the Rules of Method applicable to all subjects.
A few words regarding three of these rules of detail may be added by way of illustration:--
(1) We are met at the threshold by this principle, viz., new knowledge must rest on knowledge already acquired, if it is to be a living and intelligible growth. In other words, we must always begin from a child's own mind-centre, if we wish to extend his area of knowledge effectively. Consequently, if he is to learn intelligently about past men and events, he must have some knowledge of existing men and events. He must have seen and talked and read about things present to his own experience before he can have the imaginative material at his service for comprehending the past and remote. This he gradually acquires from his every-day contact with people and things, the general course of instruction in the school, and from the reading of simple fables, stories, and narratives in his text-books and the school library. His arithmetic, meanwhile, is teaching him to stretch his conception of time, and his geography to localize his own and other countries, and to become alive to the fact that he belongs to a distinct nationality. The only historical imaginative material which I would directly give before the age of ten complete is the learning by heart of national ballads.
(2) At ten complete I may begin history proper, and I am now confronted with the rule, "Turn everything to use." The "use" is determined by the end or purpose. I have already spoken of this, but I may say further:--Geography we teach with a view to extensiveness of mind; arithmetic and geometry with a view to intensiveness of faculty; history, not merely with a view to lengthening the brief span of man's life into the past, but as the basis of social ethics. Unless I stir a boy or girl through the emotions, I do not know how I am to get hold of them. We wish the boy, as he grows into a youth, to be so taught that the national life and character in so far as it is worthy of admiration, and the achievements of his forefathers, shall form part of himself, enter into his judgments on present affairs, and stimulate him to maintain and advance society by the memory of what has been done before he was born. It was as citizens of a particular nation, and by a high sense of the duties of citizenship, that our ancestors accomplished all that has made the present desirable as an advance on their own time. My object, then, is to lead the boy to consider himself as a continuation of the past, as handing on during his lifetime of activity, a tradition of life and character while aiming to make things better than he found them by keeping before him the highest ideal of the citizen, and recognizing above all the need of self-restraint and self-sacrifice in the interest of the commonwealth.
If this is not our aim, what is? Why do I not give him the chronology and annals of Peru instead of England and Scotland?
The detail of our procedure is significantly indicated; but I may say in further exposition:
Up to the eleventh year, I confine myself to the ballads and few graphic stories of heroes. In the eleventh the course of instruction may begin to be continuous, but history is always a story to be told, and the wandering minstrel of old is our model teacher. The childhood of history, I have said, is the history for children. Textbooks are out of place. The tale has to be narrated by the teacher just as the minstrels used to sing the deeds of heroes at the courts of princes. The teacher's mind must be full of matter and he must cultivate dramatic and graphic narration. Preserve the human interest of the narrative and point the morals as you go without impressing them. Narrations should always be given in the presence of a map, and geographical references constantly made. Certain facts and dates should be put on the blackboard and copies made by the pupils.
From the Twelfth to Fifteenth Year.--It is now chiefly that we begin teaching the time-sequence of events; within a narrow period, of course, at first. Boys do not object to learn these by heart if the events themselves have been first narrated. A chronological sheet, containing not more than 20 of the principle dates in British history, should be hung up and committed to memory. In teaching the time-sequence, the gathering of great incidents round kings and emperors has been strenuously objected to. I do not concur with these objectors. It is quite natural, it seems to me, to consider events in their relation to the chief magistrate of the country for the time being, and it is an aid to memory. So also, the record of wars and battles has been denounced. But these interest boys, and, moreover, illustrate the great crises of national and world history. But while this extension of knowledge is necessary, history cannot be made interesting, even at this period, in any other way than that which I have explained; and if it is not made interesting, it is quite useless in the school. That is to say, it is of moral and intellectual value to a boy only in so far as it gathers round persons and dramatic situations, thereby enriching his ethical nature and furnishing food for his imagination. In the thirteenth year a text-book may be put into the pupil's hands for the first time; but it should be a historical reading-book, not a history.
I do not think that pupils should be questioned much in history, except with a view to the language of the text-book, when they have been introduced to one; but, unquestionably, no lesson is complete which does not include a conversation on the substance of what has been read. The ends of examination in narrative, except where words demand explanation, are always best attained by a familiar interchange of opinion, and by requiring the pupils to reproduce in their own words, first orally, and then on slate or paper, what they have read in their books or heard from their teacher.
The text-book, I repeat, should not be an epitome of history, but a historical reading-book. [As to examination papers in history, these should be confined in schools to dates and to the calling for the narrative reproduction of events. Although it is true that we have, in the secondary school, been gradually introducing the boy to reasoned history, he can absorb much more than he can give out. If you insist on his dealing with political causes, he will simply get by rote what he has read or been told. To get dates by heart is in accordance with sound psychology; to get generalizations by heart is to flaunt the plainest teachings of psychology. Boys can understand reasonings and gather in this way materials for the future, but to expect them to reason is another matter.] Epitomes are merely arid tables of contents; we ask boys to "get them up," and are surprised that they should dislike the task! Chronological connections will be furnished by the teacher orally, written on the black-board, and entered in the pupil's own note-book. Chronological charts (I have indicated) should be hung up, but these should avoid much detail. The best chart for my study is the worst possible for a school. In history, as in all school subjects, eye-memory is too much ignored. The poets will be largely utilized, and, if not read by the boys, then read to them. Portraits of great men and pictures of great historical scenes or monuments will be shewn. Lantern slides might be effectively used. You may be sure of this that the young can be interested only in so far as it is (in the words of a French writer) "a living resurrection of the past." Human character, motive, passion, are the true attraction, and this is attained by, (to use Carlyle's phrase) " giving a picture of the thing acted."
The earlier stages of history-teaching are thus, as will be seen,--annalistic, epic, pictorial, ethical--and only in the later period didactic. Oral instruction by the teacher is chiefly relied on. To say that there is no training in such teaching of history is absurd. That there is little discipline as compared with that given by formal studies is true. But training, though not discipline, is often something much better.
From Fifteenth to Eighteenth Year.--During this period of secondary instruction, the pupil may begin his history over again, as a reasoned or rational history, in some such book as Green's Short History of England or Hume Brown's History of Scotland. In the course of these years, he will be much exercised in writing historical narratives. Every advantage will, meanwhile, continue to be taken of the general literature of the country, the master reading prose and poetical pieces to the pupils, constantly substituting such readings for the ordinary lesson. When speaking of the Wars of the Roses, he would stop and read Shakespeare's plays, one or more. In the dramas of Tennyson and Sir Henry Taylor, and, perhaps, also Browning and others, we find admirable aids to a vital reproduction of the past. Historical novels, if good, such as Sir Walter Scott's, should be in the school library and freely given out. In the last year of his course, the pupil should read along with the master (not as lessons in the technical sense) a book on the "making of England." The occasional acting also of great historical events by the pupils would do much to give life and meaning to the past. Books written on special periods, of which there are now many, and biographies such as those of Warwick, Wolsey, Clive, Nelson, Cromwell, should be in the school library, and the boys should be encouraged to read them. Few will do so, you say. I answer, this largely depends on how you have taught; and also, I would say, it is only a few that ever go beyond the "beggarly elements " of any subject; but these few are worth all the rest put together. Just as in Society, it is a few men, and, above all, a few women, that maintain the standard of culture and make life worth living.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Before the boys leave school, a course of conversational lectures should be given on the history of the world, with constant reference to a large wall map and a "Stream of Time." These conversational lectures will connect the civilization of the ancient with the modern world. Very general notions only will be conveyed, but the culture and impulse to know which are given by general notions are unquestionable. In fact, there is little of real value anywhere save general ideas.
It is at the advanced secondary stage alone that history can be taught as a rational sequence, also that the moral instruction suggested by almost every page can be directly and of set purpose enforced. At the earlier stages, this moral teaching is very much taken for granted by the teacher--adverted to, but not prelected on. "It is the office of historical science," says Lord Acton, "to maintain morality as the sole impartial criticism of men and things, and the only one on which honest minds can be made to agree." Pictorial illustrations of distant countries and of their great works of art should be available in every school.
In classical schools, the boys will, of course, obtain a fair knowledge of the histories of Greece and Rome. These histories should be short and full; that is to say, full in their treatment of a few things, and always free from details not essential to the comprehending of the general course of the story of these nations. Such books as Smith's school histories are models of what a school history ought not to be, (Read Smith's England, page 29, for example, which page I name at random.)
Towards the end of the secondary period, historical reading, such as the selection edited by Mr. Green, should be read, and literary and historical instruction in this way combined.
You will now, I hope, see that history contributes in a very direct way to the ethical purpose of the school, while contributing largely to the acquisition of English and to literary training generally.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Citizenship.--But this is not all: In the secondary stage, and to some extent even in the primary stage, history must be made to teach citizenship, and as much of the Constitution as may be thought necessary to the equipment of a citizen politician. Surely this is important in a democratic country.
Social and civil relations and the forms of our constitutional polity, including local or municipal organization should be taught in all secondary schools; but only in its general outlines. We are not educating boys to be constitutional lawyers. The duty of subjects to the state ought to be impressed. But it is quite useless to do this in a formal and text-book way. All that can be taught with effect must arise out of the history teaching from day to day and be in close relation to it, and given orally. Such teachings, if incidental and associated with persons and events, take effect; if formal and detached, they are wholly ineffectual for their purpose. Their great value consists, not in the knowledge they give, but in their effect in deepening the sense of national continuity and social unity, and so preparing the young for patriotic citizenship.
The amount of instruction aimed at should be studiously restricted in its range--text-books of "civics" should be religiously avoided. But quite at the end of the secondary period, the pupil may be encouraged to write narratives of constitutional changes and to draw his own conclusions. Professor Seeley goes so far as to say that history has to do only with the "State." This is too narrow a view; although we may concede that the development of the State must be the central interest of the professed historian. By the "State," I presume, is meant the organization of the common life under law written or unwritten; and the story of it is how this came about. Such instruction, in any full and true sense, is evidently the prerogative of the University; but in the later period of the secondary school, the pupils may be introduced to it in the form of familiar conversations on their historical reading in the way we have suggested.
For the masses who do not go to secondary schools, instruction in citizenship must be given in evening continuation schools, but not disjoined from general historical reading. If formal and technical, I repeat, it loses its effect. Even the adult mind learns best from the concrete. There is only one interest that is universal, and that is Life.
When we contemplate the close relationship that exists between history, geography, literature, civil relations and ethics, we see how one subject of study, properly taught, aids and confirms the acquisition of knowledge in other departments--indeed, cannot be taught according to sound method without doing so. It has been often urged against educational reformers, and with some truth, that they desire to teach too much during the school period. But the moment we begin to get a glimpse of method and of the organization and inter-relation of studies, we see that much may be taught with ease and simplicity, if only the teacher himself be properly equipped and understands the scope and purpose of his vocation. We may seem to demand much of him; but not more than the future will demand, if he is to be educator as well as instructor.
Proofread July 2011, LNL
| Top | Copyright © 2002-2021 AmblesideOnline. All rights reserved. Use of these resources subject to the terms of our License Agreement. | Home |