How to study and teach history, with particular reference to the history of the United States

Front matter

Class 2/6 Book

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Copyright}! .

Contents

GHAPTJSB PAGE

Editor's Preface v

Author's Preface xiii

Chapter I. The Educational Value Of History

References. — Formal discussions of the educational value of history, or at least thorough ones, are hardly to be found in the English language. Valuable remarks, however, will be found in the following sources :

Bolingbroke : Letters on the Study and Use of History ; Diesterweg: Instruction in History (I. The Meaning of History, II. On the Use of History) ; Milton : Tractate on Education ; Locke : Thoughts on Education ; Carlyle : Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (History) ; Macaulay: Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (History, Hallam's Constitutional History of Europe, Mackintosh's History of the Revolution in England, 1688, and Mitford's History of Greece) : John Morley : Critical Miscellanies, Second Series (Popular Culture) ; Emerson: Essays (History); Dr. Thomas Arnold: Lectures on Modern History (Inaugural Lecture) ; Lecky : The Political Value of History, A Lecture ; Spencer : Education (I. What Knowledge is of most Worth ?) ; Wells : The Teaching of History in Schools, An Oxford Extension Lecture ; Stubbs : The Study of Mediaeval and Modern History (see particularly I. and II.) ; Howell : Education, I. (History in its Relation to Practical Life) ; Birrell : Obiter Dicta (The Muse of History) ; C. K. Adams : Manual of Historical Literature (Introduction, On the Study of History); Schaff: History of the Christian Church, I. (General Introduction), History of the Apostolic Church (General Introduction to Church History) ; Guizot : History of Civilization (passim) ; Jay : Papers of the American Historical Association, V., Nos. 1, 2 (The Demand for Education in American History).

The pedagogical writers deal with the subject from their own point of view. Bain : Education as a Science, VIII. ; Compayre : Theoretical and Practical Pedagogy, Part II., Chap. V.; Currie: Principles and Practice of Common School Education, XII. ; Fitch : Lectures on Teaching, XIII. ; Klemm : European Schools, II., III.

Why should we teach the history of the United States in the schools of the country ? The question is part of a larger one, Why teach history at all ? And this question can not be answered without taking some account of the uses and values of studies in general. These may be divided into four groups.

First, the instrumental studies are those that are used in carrying on other studies and in other similar mental work. Writing is an instrument of impartation, and also an instrument of record. It is the art preservative of arts. Reading, on the other hand, is an art of acquirement. It unlocks the printed page. Notation, numeration, and the other fundamental rules of arithmetic are also instrumental ; and the same may he said of drawing, musical notation, and the various kinds of symbolism employed for different purposes. These studies or arts have a certain value in themselves, but they are primarily tools for further acquisition or impartation.

Secondly, some studies give us knowledge that is directly useful in practical affairs. These are the guidance or information studies. While the instrumental studies look to further acquirement, these find their uses in the duties and activities of real life. As far as they go, they tell us what to do and what i ^t to do. They inform the mind. Some of them are preparatory to other studies, but this is only a secondary reason for carrying them on. They all have disciplinary value, but this fact does not determine their classification. Into this group fall such studies as geography, physiology and hygiene, and many more.

Thirdly, the disciplinary studies exercise and so develop or strengthen the mental powers. Some of them lead on to other studies, as arithmetic to algebra; but they are not pursued primarily for this reason. Some of them have guidance value, but this is not their characteristic function. The disciplines form the mind, and this fact determines their classification. Into this group fall the mathematics, science, and language.

Fourthly, culture is the slowly maturing fruit of a silent feeding of the soul upon nourishing ideas. While discipline looks to volume of mental power, culture looks to its kind. Culture is the tone of power rather than its amount or intensity. It is a qualitative rather than a quantitative word. And the culture studies are those that conduce to such results. Literature and art are typical studies of this group.

Of the many remarks that this mapping out of studies suggests, perhaps the most obvious is that the several groups overlap one another. There is discipline in the instrumental and information studies ; information and guidance in the disciplinary studies ; and so on. In fact, if we were to make a close analysis, we should base it on the elements of studies rather than on studies considered as units. A further observation is that studies belonging to the same group are by no means equal in respect to the amount of .value that they possess. They differ widely in this respect. It should also be remarked that the value of a study is relative to the pupil, as respects both the character of his mind and his stage of mental advancement. One person may get most discipline, for example, out of science, another most out of language ; while arithmetic belongs to an early stage of mathematical study, calculus to a late one. But the discussion of these questions belongs to a treatise on Educational Values. The division of studies into the instrumental, the) disciplinary, the guidance, and the culture groups, with the' explanatory observations offered, is all-sufficient for the ( present purpose.

The further observation should be added that man's na-

V ture is complex ; lie lias not merely an intellect to be formed and furnished, but also a sensibility to be affected and a will to be energized.

It is now necessary to test history by these criteria — in other words, to determine the nature of its effects upon the mind. Nor will this be sufficient ; we must also estimate, approximately at least, the amount or quantity of educational value wherever it arises. But properly to reach these ends we must consider what history is.

1. The staple or subject-matter is facts. This staple does not differ in kind from the " practical knowledge "or " useful information " so much prized by the practical man. Serviceable knowledge about the things going on in the world when picked up by observation, gleaned from the press, or gathered in conversation, is what Dr. Fitch calls u fact lore" ; similar knowledge of what has gone on in the world, when learned from books and not from tradition, is history. A journal or newspaper presents a transcript of current life, a history a transcript of past life.

History, then, deals with man in his proper human sphere or capacity. It is knowledge of the workings of his intellect, feelings, and will, especially as these workings reveal themselves in objective facts — laws, cities, battles, religions, and the like/ (It is therefore moral knowledge — knowledge of the play and activity of man's spiritual nature.

Evidently, there is the widest difference between history and mathematics or logic in two respects. The first in its elementary form is a fact study ; the other two begin with definitions and axioms and proceed by logical deduction. History moves in the all-important field of moral freedom ; mathematics and logic, in the field of necessary inference.

2. Historical material must be elaborated and combined. Historical facts by themselves are not history. They must be worked up ; or, to use a better figure, they must be organized — that is, be brought together and integrated with reference to their relations.

3. History also tests its own results ; it seeks to verify its own facts and conclusions. In order to do this, it must take account of its methods and processes of investigation. The reflective treatment of historical method falls, indeed, to the philosopher; hut its essential nature and practical application must also engage the attention of the historical student.

I. From the foregoing account it is manifest that history has great guidance value. As information, we may well hesitate before we assign to any school study a higher rank. In a great number and variety of matters experience is the lamp to a man's feet and the guide to his path. No doubt oral knowledge immediately influences his conduct to a greater degree ; but in the long run history is the great channel that conveys to him the past experiences of the race. In politics, in religion,* in morals, in education, and in economical, social, and industrial life it is indispensable. This is why Cicero called history "the witness of times, the light of truth, and the mistress of life " ; and why Diodorus styled it " a handmaid of Providence, a priestess of truth, and a mother of life." Hereafter something will be said of the periods, epochs, and ages of history, and of the profound influence that the idea of evolution has recently exerted in modifying the ways in which it is written and taught;. here it is necessary to observe that no man, or generation, or nation begins life anew, but that historical movement is necessarily uninterrupted and continuous. In the words of Dr. Schaff : u The present is the fruit of the past and the germ of the future. No work can stand unless it grows out of the real wants of the age and strikes firm root in the soil of history. No one who tramples on the rights of a past generation can claim the regard of its posterity.

* " While of all studies in the whole range of knowledge the study of law affords the most conservative training, so the study of modern history is, next to theology itself, and only next in so far as theology rests on a divine revelation, the most thoroughly religious training that the mind can receive." — Bishop Stubbs.

History will disregard him who disregards her." That is, no man who sets at naught the lessons that history transmits to him can hope to transmit influence to the future.

Bolingbroke quotes Dionysius, " History is philosophy teaching by examples." Moreover, it is the only channel through which philosophy can directly instruct or influence a majority of mankind. The typical fact or story of the historian will make a lodgment in minds that the generalizations of the philosopher can never enter.

" Truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors."

It is the old distinction between the concrete and the abstract, the particular and the general, example and precept.

The practical value of history is a commonplace. A few of the many testimonies to its use may be transcribed.

Milton. Children are to know the beginning, end, and reasons of political societies, and to dive into the grounds of law and legal justice.

Quizot. History is a great school of truth, reason, and virtue.

Locke. I recommend it to one who hath well settled in his mind the principles of morality, and knows how to make a judgment on the actions of men as one of the most useful studies he can apply himself to. There he shall see a picture of the world and the nature of mankind, and so learn to think of men as they are. There he shall see the rise of opinions, and find from what slight and sometimes shameful occasions some of them have taken their rise, which yet afterward have had great authority and passed almost for sacred in the world, and borne down all before them. There also one may learn great and useful instructions of prudence, and be warned against the cheats and rogueries of the world, with many more advantages which I shall not here enumerate.

Carlyle. Clio was prefigured by the ancients as the eldest daughter of Memory, and chief of the Muses; which dignity, whether we regard the essential qualities of her art, or its practice and acceptance among men, we shall still find to have been fitly bestowed. History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature, his earliest expression of what can be called thought. . . . Let us search more and more into the past ; let all men explore it as the true fountain of knowledge, by whose light alone, consciously or unconsciously employed, can the present or the future be interpreted or guessed at.

Macaulay. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in no other manner. As the history of states is generally written, the greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and which ordinarily proceed far, before their progress is indicated by any public measure. An intimate knowledge of the domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely necessary to the prognosis of political events. A narrative, defective in this respect, is as useless as a medical treatise which should pass by all the symptoms attendant on the early stage of a disease,, and mention only what occurs when the patient is beyond the reach of remedies.

Morley. It is the present that really interests us ; it is the present that we seek to understand and to explain. I do not in the least want to know what happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my way more clearly through what is happening to-day. I want to know what men thought and did in the thirteenth century, not out of any dilettante or idle antiquarian's curiosity, but because the thirteenth century is at the root of what men think and do in the nineteenth.

Mr. Morley goes too far. 'While history is at bottom a guidance study, it still does much more for the mind than simply to furnish it some practical lessons. Professor Seeley comes nearer the truth when he says, " History should not merely gratify the reader's curiosity about the past, hut modify his views of the present."

II. While slight attention suffices to show that history has disciplinary value, some well-directed thought is required to discover how great and varied this value is.

1. Taught even in the poorest way — that is, by dint of iterating and reiterating unorganized facts — it trains the 3 memory ; taught philosophically — that is, care being taken wisely to choose and properly to organize the facts — it yields to no other subject in mnemonic value. It has been said that history is a fact study ; it will be shown hereafter that its facts are readily capable of complete organization by means of those great associating activities — time, place, and cause and effect.

2. All that has been urged concerning the memory will be admitted. But that history is an equally valuable discipline of the imagination has not been as generally perceived. History is man-picturing, as geography is earthpicturing. At this point teachers and writers have made great mistakes. Only too often have they assumed that to teach this subject nothing more is necessary than to lodge in the memory masses of dry and unrelated facts — dates, names, statistics, and the like ; whereas, it is rather revealing to the mind's eye the whole movement that constitutes the life of a man, a city, or a nation, or some selected portion of such movement. No mind can take in such a scene as Caesar's death, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, or the appearance of Maria Theresa with her youthful son before the Hungarian nobles, without the active employment of his imaginative faculties ; and much less such complicated scenes and series of historical transactions as the Seven Years' War or the growth of the United States. For this purpose an active imagination is as necessary as in painting a battle- scene on canvas. What power is called for even to glance over the field surveyed by Gibbon in the Decline and Fall of the Eoman Empire, and how valuable is the resulting discipline ! To a pupil of a dull and wingless mind the river of time is but a name, as the Amazon is only a line of ink on a sheet of paper.

- 3. But history does far more for the mind than merely to exercise the powers of representation ; it is also a valuable discipline of the thinking faculties.

First, analysis is involved in the recognition of the facts with which we deal. Complex facts must be resolved into simple ones. Many facts called simple are really complex* and must be analyzed before they can be understood. Arnold's treason is a fact, but one composed of many minor facts. Our Civil War is a fact, but one that sums up volumes of history. History makes an equally strong appeal to the faculty of comparison or judgment. Events and characters are a constant challenge to the balancing power of the mind. This is strikingly true of such writings as Plutarch's Parallel Lives, and also in some degree of the simplest historical compositions. Then judgment passes into reasoning or thinking proper. . Here the characteristic mental act is inference, or the drawing of conclusions from premises. If the study consists of the mere committing to memory of facts, it will do little for any of the logical powers ; but studied philosophically, due attention being paid to the discovery of relations and the criticism of method, it becomes a noble exercise of thought. Nicely to observe chronological connections and geographical conditions, carefully to search out causes, is thinking no less than solving mathematical problems. This is why Bishop Stubbs contends that history is a good school of the judgment. Thus, while history is primarily a fact study and not a logical study, it is by no means destitute of valuable logical elements. The argument on this point can not, however, be fully stated, until we take account of the nature of historical subject-matter.

As remarked above, historical knowledge is moral knowledge. Mathematical studies deal with certain data and their method is demonstration. They start with definitions and axioms that are intuitively perceived, and proceed by necessary inference to inevitable conclusions. There is no gathering of facts, no balancing of opposite arguments, no halting or hesitation. There can be no looking at the other side, because there is no other side. Uncertainty is an impossible state of mind. Very different are the problems of practical life, springing out of the relations of human beings. Very different the transaction of human business. Here we accumulate data, weigh the force of opposing evidence, reconcile contradictory views, and at last reach probable conclusions. No merchant, manufacturer, or ship-owner can demonstrate that a given venture will be successful. Generals can not certainly predict the issue of battles and campaigns ; if they could, battles would not be fought or campaigns be waged. Politicians are not absolutely sure that canvasses and elections will turn out so and so. And so it is with the teacher, the preacher, and the moralist.

In historical matters the process of making up one's mind is a kind of moral bookkeeping : some items are entered on the credit side and some on the debit side of the ledger, and then a balance is struck between them. Hence it is that, as one has said, " the most important gift, after all, of a citizen in such a profession as politics, or law, or medicine, or teaching, or war, is ability in the selection of the premises from which the solution of the various problems of life is to be extracted. In fact, soundness of judgment and clearness of perception in collecting and arranging these premises is a large part of each man's or woman's work in the world." The moral world is, indeed, governed by laws fixed and unalterable : what a man sows, that he also reaps, is the fundamental fact ; but a large majority of its situationsjand problems, and all its difficult ones, combine opposite and confusing elements.

Now, mathematical and scientific discipline enables the mind to deal with those subjects, both numerous and important, into which demonstration enters, but does not necessarily enable it to handle the elements of probability, or human questions. On the contrary, it may even unfit the mind for such work. As the writer just quoted remarks : " The mathematician's data are all provided for him with the utmost precision, and he is forbidden to add thereto or take away therefrom one jot or tittle. Consequently, it is possible to be a great mathematician indeed, and be at the same time a very ordinary person in most other fields of mental activity, and especially in what may be called, using the term in its largest sense, the transaction of human busi-

THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY. H

ness." It has also been said that an exclusive study of biological science "may incapacitate one for what is of all things most practical, namely, historical reasoning." Hence we must resort to some other source than mathematics or science for this kind of discipline. And when we remember that historical knowledge is moral knowledge ; that its subject-matter is the doings of human beings ; in a word, that it moves in the wide field of freedom and so of probability, we discover that we have in history the very discipline that we need.

As the author of several well-known historical text-books says, " The object of teaching history is not to cram with facts and dates (useful and indeed necessary as these are), but to awaken thought, and especially to teach the habit of thinking intelligently about the political events of our own and other countries." A second writer speaks of "that insight into character, that training of judgment and sympathy to which the detailed study of a historical special subject may help " the student. Still a third tells us that history embraces " to a great extent the principles on which the every-day life of the world around us is being conducted. "

But there is even more involved in the matter than has yet appeared. To the mere perception of an object — that is, its recognition as present to the mind — apperception adds its inward digestion and assimilation; or, as one has said, " We identify the object, or those features of it which were familiar to us before; we recognize it; we explain it; we interpret the new by our previous knowledge, and thus are enabled to proceed from the known to the unknown, and make new acquisitions ; in recognizing the object we classify it under various general classes ; in identifying it with what we have seen before, we note also the differences which characterize the new object, and lead to the definition of new species or varieties." * It is impossible to exaggerate

* Dr. W. T. Harris. Preface to A Text-Book in Psychology, by Herbart, International Education Series.

the importance of our present knowledge as a means to further acquisition ; and yet many teachers seem not to appreciate, or not fully to appreciate, the relation between the two.

Now, a young person on admission to the world of man is immersed in a sea of facts wholly different in their nature from the facts of the material world. They are facts of the human mind, facts of the intellect, and, what are still more difficult, facts of the sensibility and the will ; and the most important question concerning his education is, How has this education prepared him for this new world? Reference is made, of course, to the time when the youth assumes a separate place in the social body, independently of parent or tutor. It may be said that this step is progressively taken, and not all at once ; also, that antecedent life is the best possible training for work in the new sphere, which is in fact but an extension of the old sphere ; but the fact still remains that the youth requires a careful discipline under the hand of a competent teacher in those studies which look immediately to social activities. And among these studies history must be inscribed.

It may be objected that historical questions are not practical questions ; that they come from books and documents, and not from the haunts of living men instinct with thought, passion, and will. There is truth in this view ; no proper school subject is just like real life, while history can be made almost as abstract as mathematics itself. The reply is, that no other school subject, save possibly certain forms of literature, comes so near to real life, and that the dry abstractne£3 so often complained of is mainly the fault of the author and the teacher. If the teacher deals with human beings, and not merely with names, dates, and other items of fact, there will be no lack of interest. It should also be observed that the fact just maintained is to a degree a point of advantage. Both history and politics are great educative powers, but history has this advantage over politics, that it enlists less passion and prejudice, and so is a better school of the judgment. On a similar ground Bishop Stubbs argues that ancient and mediaeval history surpass modern and recent history as such a discipline. And yet he truly says, " The subject-matter of modern historical inquiry has peculiar advantages for the training of the powers most constantly in exercise in a practical generation.' 1

III. On this division of the subject a few words will suffice. Mr. Matthew Arnold tells 11s that the great source of culture is the best things that have been thought and said. Why not add, " and done " ? But whether we include deeds as well as words and thoughts in the formula or not, argument is not necessary to show that history enriches and adorns the mind with noble ideas. Its natural affiliations are not with mathematics or science, but with literature, which the great writer just named considered the true source of culture. There is a truth lurking in the Greek conception of the Muse of History.

The idea that there are studies which, on account of their peculiar influence on the mind, may appropriately be called humanity, or the humanities, originated in antiquity. Says Aulus Gellius: " Humanitas — that is, instruction in good arts, the which whosoever truly take to and seek after are in very deed most human. For the caring for this knowledge and its discipline out of all living things is given to human beings only ; and therefore hath it been called humanitas." The humanities are the man-studies; they liberalize the mind, freeing' it from prejudice, narrowness, selfishness. History is one of the group, and in some aspects the noblest of the group. " The real use of traveling to distant countries and of studying the annals of past times," says Macaulay, " is to preserve men from the contraction of mind which thqse can hardly escape whose whole communion is with one generation and one neighborhood, who arrive at conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently copious, and who therefore constantly confound exceptions with rules and accidents with essential properties." And again: "The student, like the tourist, is transported into a new

14 HOW TO STUDY AND TEACH HISTOEY.

state of society. He sees new fashions. He hears new models of expression. His mind is enlarged by contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, and of manners."

IV. History furnishes motive power as well as guidance. It is oar or sail, and not merely chart and rudder. Men who are chosen as models, or who are imitated without conscious choice, furnish impulse as well as a pattern to those who imitate them. This is the great reason why moral example is so effective. To the common mind, there is far more energy in a man or a life than in an idea or a creed.

One of the best known forms of motive power is the patriotic sentiment or love of country. And it is mainly at the altar of history that patriotism feeds her fires. The patriotic orator or poet indeed invokes the inspiration of the mountains and rivers, the vales and hills, the firesides and battlefields, of the fatherland or the mother country; but this is only because these material monuments are the imperishable symbols of the deeds and thoughts of men that are associated with them. It was not the plain of Marathon that expanded the soul of Demosthenes, but the generous souls that perished there in the tremendous struggle that Greece waged against the barbaric power of Asia. It is not the Concord turf that fires the heart and brain of the patriot, nerves his will, strengthens his purpose, or renews his hope, but the memory that

" Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world."

As Mr. Lincoln said at Gettysburg, what the soldiers who fell in that great strife did, and not what he or others might say about it, makes that name immortal. The flag, be it the Union Jack, the tricolor, or the Stars and Stripes, is not the piece of parti-colored silk ; it is the national emblem for which patriots have suffered and died. What charms the traveler visiting foreign countries is not always, or perhaps commonly, the scenery considered as plain or valley, sea or mountain, but the human associations with which these are invested. As a great geographer * has said : •