Studies in the teaching of history

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In Preparation

AN INTRODUCTION

TO EDUCATIONAL THEORY

A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON.

STUDIES

IN THE

M. W. KEATINGE, M.A.

READER IN EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

i 9 i o

II 16

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Preface

The following pages are concerned with the teaching of boys and girls in the middle forms of secondary schools, and even for this stage deal with only a small number of the numerous problems presented by the teaching of history. They aim at bringing into strong relief a few fundamental positions, and make no claim to be an exhaustive treatment of the subject. If, therefore, certain methods and principles of proved value are not mentioned, it must not be concluded that they have been either overlooked or undervalued.

My thanks for valuable advice are due to my colleague Miss A. J. Cooper, to Mr. J. Wells, Fellow and Tutor of Wadham College, to Mr. J. B. Baker, Tutor to the Non- Collegiate Students, and to Mr. E. Barker, Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College. It must not be assumed that they are necessarily in agreement with my views. I have also to acknowledge the kindness of Prof. Foster Watson, who allowed me to see the proof-sheets of his book, The Beginnings of the Teaching of Modern Subjects in England, and of Messrs. A. &. C. Black in permitting me to use extracts from their publication, English History Illustrated from Original Sources,

M. W. KEATINGE.

Oxford,

October 1909.

Chapter I The Problems Of Method And Of Value

THOSE who write at large on Education seldom realise that the branches of knowledge commonly taught in schools vary greatly in the ease with which they lend themselves to manipulation. Indeed, this aspect of school studies does not interest them. Modes of handling a subject seem almost superfluous if that subject is evidently a good one. To the man who feels that there is a message of some kind to deliver to the younger generation, that there are departments of knowledge whose content is matter of vital import for the understanding of human character and of human society, the delay caused by discussions upon method is apt to be most irksome. " My subject," the historian will say, " is of acknowledged value. No one can be ignorant of it without grave injury to his social or commercial or religious relations. Let us force it into the curriculum at any cost and trust to fortune and to common sense that some method of handling it will be found."

Now fortune is a dependable ally only when steps have been taken to succeed without her aid, and the common sense of teachers, while it has dimly felt the problem, has tended to exclude history from the school precincts rather than to establish methods for its treatment. If for generation after generation schoolmasters have virtually refused to recognise the importance of history, the reason probably is that it has appeared too vast and untrodden a domain to venture upon without long consideration, and as the turmoil of a schoolmaster's life leaves no leisure for consideration even of a scanty kind, the old subjects hold the field. And they do so largely because they lend themselves to teaching, because as instruments for making boys think and work they are difficult to spoil or to render wholly useless.

What are the elements necessary in a subject which is to lend itself to manipulation ? It is easy to sketch in the qualifications. In the main they are four in number. The apparatus must be inexpensive and readily procured ; it must be easy to see what is the teacher's work on the one hand and the boy's work on the other ; there must be a facility for setting home work that shall be different in kind from the work done in class, and these exercises must be fairly mechanical (for too much refined judgment must not be expected from the average boy) ; it must be possible to attain to some generalisations, abstractions, or rules which can be applied to fresh matter. Indeed, it is upon the presence of this latter element that most of the others depend.

The older subjects fulfil these conditions well. Given a plain text of Caesar's Gallic War, a Latin Grammar and a dictionary, the boy can be set a great variety of work. The materials are not costly, each page provides a number of problems to be solved and the attack upon these and the unravelling of the meaning is a genuine preparation for the lesson which is to follow. The work of the teacher in testing preparation and in aiding interpretation is easily discerned. Syntactical generalisations in abundance can be derived from instances in the text, and the application of these in retranslation passages and composition is a genuine application exercise. Again in such a subject as arithmetic the conditions are all fulfilled. Definite generalisations or rules can be reached : " Invert the divisor and multiply." These can be applied to an indefinite number of examples or problems, and the boy's part of working examples can readily be distinguished from the teacher's part of developing arithmetical processes. Finally, in both cases the boy can be given a large amount of work to do apart from the teacher, or in other words the teacher need not be teaching all the time — an important consideration for a man who has a full teaching week.

When we turn to history we find the conditions very badly fulfilled. It is difficult to devise preparation for the boy other than the learning from a text-book of the facts of the lesson that is to be given or the revising of the facts of a lesson that has been given. In school work it is not always possible to arrive at historical generalisations and apply them to fresh matter. In other words, apart from essay-writing, of which with middle-school boys it is not easy to vary the form, exercises are difficult to find. It needs all the devices of a practised schoolmaster to make the class contribute much to the development of the lesson. The limits of change appear to be the short lecture, the lecture interspersed with questions, the v expansion of the text-book, the occasional setting of problems, the written answer of fact and the essay ; while the latter exacts much time from the master who looks it over. In this subject more than in any other it seems as if the maximum of work were demanded from the teacher and the minimum from the pupil. The old relations are reversed ; the teacher prepares his lessons and the pupil hears them.

Now a subject to the development of which the pupil is not himself always contributing soon ceases to excite his interest. Experience shows that the best lectures, although at first listened to with respect, engender listlessness and inattention as term advances ; and yet lecturing in some modified form is the first method that suggests itself in history teaching. Thus as far as its form is concerned, history appears to be a bad school subject, and if its content were unimportant, it might well be left on one side as too exacting for practical purposes. If, however, it can be shown that the content of history is of value for educational ends it will be worth while to spend some pains upon it. If, further, it can be shown that for educational purposes no other complex of ideas is of such real importance, no trouble will be too great, if only we can succeed in getting into order this somewhat unmanageable subject.

It is not easy to make a brief statement of the advantages to be derived from the study of history, for, indeed, their number is overwhelming. Without some acquaintance with origins no man can understand the civilisation into which he is born, and not understanding it he will take no interest in its problems. His social and political vision will be dim and uncertain, his horizon will not extend beyond his own immediate needs. Unlike the sufferer from cataract the mentally blind can find no surgeon to cure him by a speedy operation, for his ignorance begets prejudices whose growth is proportional to the efforts to heal him. Lack of interest in human factors is a serious deficiency, and its seriousness is especially felt in the modern self-conscious democracy. The individual has not only to realise that problems exist ; he is asked in addition to have definite views upon them, and the definiteness required is that which arises out of knowledge rather than that born of ignorance. The voter of the present day is asked to come to a decision upon matters of foreign and home politics. He is expected to have views upon social matters, and to act upon them at the polling booth ; and he will criticise the report of the Poor Law Commission. He may belong to a religious community, or he may not ; in either case he has his share in making legislation that decides the relation between the State and the Churches. He is not surprised if asked to choose between Free Trade and Protection, and is in no way deterred from doing so by his ignorance of both. He will decide that more Dreadnoughts are necessary, or fewer, as the case may be, hoping to find out at a later date what exactly a Dreadnought is and its importance to his country. He swells with pride at our position in India, and criticises the action of the Viceroy or the attitude of the Home Government from the lofty standpoint of the voter who ultimately controls both.

And yet how many of the ordinary citizens of this country, men, let us say, prospering in business or professional life, have either acquired at school or received the stimulus which would lead them later on to acquire for themselves the knowledge that is required for sound judgment in these matters ? If the relations between this country and others is in question, how many adults have a sound understanding of the political factors in Europe and the manner in which they arose ? How many could even give an account of the causes which led up to the war of 1870-71 ? In home politics how many of the people who look upon the Irish as a race of irreconcilables perpetually occupied in making irrational demands have the slightest acquaintance with Irish history or with the genesis of the Irish character and conditions? How many have even a fair acquaintance with the history of the working classes between the reign of Edward I. and the present day, or of the separation of the Anglican Church from Rome and the growth of Nonconformity, or of the various attempts made to aid trade by restricting it from the fourteenth century to the present day, or of the development of the navy from Henry VIII. onwards? How many could give even a slight sketch of the history of India, of the diverse races to be found there and of the peculiar political problems that arise out of this diversity ?

A very slight acquaintance with men in different stations of life shows that in spite of the increased attention paid to history in schools during the last decade (for it is apparently only those who write to the daily papers on matters of education who can venture to neglect the changes that have taken place in schools since their own school-days), a lamentable ignorance is everywhere to be found. Men who would be ashamed of mistakes in classical scholarship, or of mathematical inaccuracy, will readily confess their ignorance as regards the history of an institution as well as their indifference to it. In many societies to be ill-read in the cricket or football news may be a source of real discomfiture, to be ill-informed as to the history of a movement which is of vital importance to the community need not cause anxiety to any one.

It is precisely in respect of the type of historical information above alluded to — information of an almost crudely utilitarian kind — that we might have expected to find a widely-diffused sense of its value. It is on this aspect of history-values that it is wise to lay stress when appealing to the common sense of the average citizen, and if we receive an unsympathetic hearing it is perhaps useless to display the other values of our subject. Yet it is as an introduction to the world of human nature that history is chiefly to be prized. If stress is laid on the biographical side, history is a panorama of character in action in every conceivable situation, it widens indefinitely the circle of our acquaintances, it provides abundant material for the analysis of motive, it gives opportunity for cultivating restraint in the admiration of pleasant personalities and chanty in the judgment of unpleasant ones. By bringing the learner into contact with civilisations and societies unlike his own it; lessens race and class prejudice. In its chronological aspect it introduces us to the gradual development of civilisation in time. In all these and in other directions the value of history is difficult to overrate, and impossible to express in a few words. With no subject does the teacher stand in closer connection, since it is he who should pass on to the younger generation the sacred flame from previous ages. The State, when it passes on the material possessions of one generation to the next, claims as its due a substantia] death-duty, the price of the security that it affords to this transmission of personal rights. Similarly the teacher has on the State no stronger claim than this, that he hands on to the young the possession of their fathers' hard- won experience, and by the integrity of his presentation ensures the continuity of historical interest.

Writers on education since the Renaissance (quoting Cicero in support of their views) have held opinions which agree closely with those expressed above. In his Essay, De Ingenuis Moribus, written in 1392 for the son of Francesco Carrara, the lord of Padua, Vergerius says : " Among liberal studies I accord the first place to history, on grounds both of its attractiveness and its utility. History gives us the concrete examples of the precepts inculcated by philosophy." l Lionardo D'Arezzo expresses himself similarly in 1405 : " First among such studies I place history, a subject which must not, on any account, be neglected by one who aspires to true cultivation. For it is our duty to understand the origins of our history and its development." 2 In 1450 vEneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.), after recommending the study of Livy, Sallust, Quintus Curtius, Valerius Maximus, and Arrian (in a translation), together with portions of the Old and New Testament, e.g. parts of Genesis, Kings, Maccabees, Judith, Esdras, and Esther ; and of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles (advice that is rather unexpected as coming from a Pope), adds : " It is most important to be thoroughly versed in the works of the chief historians, and from their study learn practical wisdom in affairs. But I would add here a most serious

caution. Beware of wasting time over such a subject as the history of Bohemia or the history of Hungary. For such would be but the productions of mere ignorant chroniclers, a farrago of nonsense and lies, destitute of attraction in form or style or in grave reflections." x

It is evident that the history which these writers had in mind was rather that of their ancestors, the Romans, than the history of mediaeval Europe, and it must not be forgotten that to the schoolboy of the Renaissance the Latin lesson, with Livy for a reading-book, was a lesson in history quite as much as in linguistics. While, no doubt, it was as difficult for the Italian as for the English schoolboy to become a finished scholar, it must have been far easier for him to read Livy quickly and thus to master its historical content intelligently than for the German boys on the other side of the Alps who brought to the task no stock of similar works in the vernacular, and therefore had to spell out the content laboriously with the aid of a dictionary. For this reason it is unlikely that in the post-Renaissance schools in Germany and England, where the classical authors were read more for their style than for their matter, the historical content was realised so fully as by the Italian boys.

None the less when schoolmasters of any eminence expressed their views on education they frequently demanded history, and plenty of it, in the curriculum. " An acquaintance with history," said Comenius, " is the most important element in a man's education, and is, as it were, the eye of his whole life. This subject, therefore, should be taught in each of the six classes (of the grammar school), that our pupils may be ignorant of no

io TEACHING OF HISTORY

event which has happened from ancient times to the present day. Our idea is that each class should have its own handbook dealing with some special branch of history. Class I. An Epitome of Scripture History. Class II. Natural History. Class III. The History of Arts and Inventions. Class IV. The History of Morals. Class V. The History of Customs treating of the Habits of Different Nations. Class VI. The General History of the World and of the Principal Nations, but especially of the boys' native land, dealing with the whole subject tersely and comprehensively." x Locke also, who, though probably not representative of scholastic views in the seventeenth century, has strongly influenced subsequent opinion, lays stress on chronology, " that the pupil may have in his mind a view of the whole current of time and the several considerable epochs that are made use of in history. Without this, history, which is the great mistress of prudence and civil knowledge, and ought to be the proper study of a gentleman or a man of business in the world, will be very ill retained." 2

In education the gulf between theories and practice is great. Sturm laid no stress on history in his Strasburg school, neither did the Jesuits in their establishments, nor Calvin in his grammar school at Geneva, nor the schools in Scotland founded on his model by John Knox. In English schools a manual of English History was actually ordered by the Privy Council in 1582 to be read in schools, 3 but for the sake of the boys of the period it may be hoped that the order was disobeyed.

1 The Great Didactic, chap. xxx.

2 Thoughts on Education, sec. 182.

3 A?iglorum Proelia, ab a.d. 132J usque ad ann. 1558. Ghristophero Oclando authore, London, 1580. Ocland was master of St. Olave's School, Southwark.

METHOD AND VALUE n

Here is a taste of it dealing with that old friend of the text-books, the Wars of the Roses : —

In 1650 Alexander Ross brought out an abridgment of Raleigh's History of the World under the title The Marrow of History, and as he was a schoolmaster the book may have been read by his pupils, but of this there is no evidence. From this time onwards there is a continuous stream of text-books, but absolutely no indication that the subject was treated in schools as of any real importance ; indeed such text-books seem to have been used as material for Latin prose composition quite as much as for their historical value. 1

It was not wholly through inadvertence that history was thus degraded to be a menial accessory of linguistics. The object of history was considered to be the illustration of abstract moral maxims, and as Aristotle had considered " moral philosophy " unsuited for the young, history was similarly thought to be beyond the grasp of schoolboys. 2 In his inaugural lecture Degory Wheare, the

1 New Thoughts concerning Education, by M. Rollin. Eng. Trans., 1735, P- 7 2 > note by translator upon a History of England recently published for schools " which may be of great benefit to the youth who may make their Latin exercises by it."

2 The Method and Order of Reading both Civil and Ecclesiastical Histories, by Degory Wheare, Cambden Reader of History first Camden Reader of History at Oxford, discusses the matter, and wonders that Voss, " who deserves to be numbered among the princes of learning in this age, should in his elegant book, De Arte Historica, maintain that this sort of study is fit for young men." 1

Of theoretical writers on Education during the last century, only two have objected to history as a school subject. Herbert Spencer, writing before i860, found that the history of the text-book of his day was educationally valueless, and he was probably right ; while Bain considered the subject too easy and too full of contentious matter for inclusion in the school curriculum. 2

in Oxford, 17 10, p. 15. "History is the register and explication of particular affairs, undertaken to the end that the memory of them may be preserved and so universals may be the more evidently confirmed, by which we may be instructed how to live well and happily."

1 The Method and Order of Reading both Civil and Ecclesiastical Histories, p. 299. Wheare gives succinctly the arguments used on each side by Keckermann and Voss. According to Keckermann, histories contain nothing but examples of precepts, and method should precede, just as it is absurd for a man to desire to know and observe the examples of grammar, logic, or rhetoric, before he has learned the rules of those sciences ; thus one cannot read history, which is nothing but examples of morality and politics, till one has learned the rules and methods of morality and policy. On the other side Voss points out that languages may be learned without grammar rules, and that Keckermann confounds the naked and simple history of things with the historical perfection which inquires curiously into the circumstances and causes of events.

2 H. Spencer, Education, pp. 30, 31. — "The information commonly given under this head is almost valueless for purposes of guidance. Scarcely any of the facts set down in our school histories, and very few of those contained in the more elaborate works written for adults, illustrate the right principles of political action." A. Bain, Education as a Science, 1878. — "The fact that history presents no difficulty to minds of ordinary education and experience, and is, moreover, an interesting form of literature, is a sufficient reason for not spending much time upon it in the

As will be seen, both modern opinion and modern practice in schools tend greatly to undervalue the importance of history ; but before proceeding to consider this, it will be well to learn the views of the only historians during the last two hundred years who have combined with their expert knowledge a great interest in, or a thorough acquaintance with, the problems of education and of school-life — Rollin the historian, and Dr. Arnold of Rugby.

Rollin, in his time an educational authority of undoubted weight, speaks with certainty and conviction : " I look upon history as the first matter to be given to children, equally serviceable to entertain and instruct them, to form their hearts and understandings, and to enrich their memories with abundance of facts as agreeable as useful. It may likewise be of great service, by means of the pleasure inseparable from it, towards exciting the curiosity of that age which is ever desirous of being informed and inspiring a taste for study. Thus in point of education it is a fundamental principle, and constantly observed at all times, that the study of history should precede all the rest and prepare the way for them." 1

Dr. Arnold's views, though only one hundred years

curriculum of school or college. When there is any doubt we may settle the matter by leaving it out. A very searching inquiry into modern events brings out such a variety of opinions in practical politics and still more in religion as to make an obstacle to the introduction of the subject into higher schools."

1 The Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles-Lettres, by M. Rollin, late Principal of the University of Paris, translated in 4 vols., 1734, p. 6. Further on Rollin lays stress on four points. We should (1) endeavour to find out the causes of events ; (2) study the character of the people and great men mentioned in history ; (3) observe in history what relates to manners and the conduct of life ; (4) carefully take knowledge of eveiything that bears any relation to religion.

later, show a great advance in the stress laid upon the formal element in history, but in the main he agrees with Rollin. In one of the few specific essays on education that he wrote he begins by dealing with a possible misunderstanding. 1 " In the statement of the business of Rugby school, which has been given above, one part of it will be found to consist of works of modern history. An undue importance is attached by some persons to this circumstance, and those who would care little to have their sons familiar with the history of the Peloponnesian War are delighted that they should study the campaigns of Frederick the Great or of Napoleon. Information about modern events is more useful, they think, than that which relates to antiquity ; and such information they wish to be given to their children." After cavilling at the suggestion that it is desirable to fill boys with useful information, and giving some brief hints as to a method of teaching history in the elementary stage, he proceeds : " Supposing a boy to possess that outline of general history which his prints and his abridgments will have given him, with his associations, so far as they go, strong and lively, and his desire of increased knowledge keen, the next thing to be done is to set him to read some first-rate historian whose mind was formed in, and bears the stamp of, some period of advanced civilisation analogous to that in which we live. In other words, he should read Thucydides or Tacitus or any writer equal to them, if such can be found belonging to the third period of full civilisation, that of modern Europe since the Middle Ages. The particular subject of the history is of little moment so long as it can be

1 An article contributed to the Quarterly Journal of Education in 1834.

taken neither from the barbarian nor from the romantic, but from the philosophical or civilised stage of human society ; and so long as the writer be a man of commanding mind, who has fully imbibed the influences of his age, yet without bearing its exclusive impress. And the study of such a work under an intelligent teacher becomes indeed the key of knowledge and of wisdom : first it affords an example of good historical evidence, and hence the pupil may be taught to notice from time to time the various criteria of a credible narrative, and by the rule of contraries to observe what are the indications of a testimony questionable, suspicious or worthless. Undue scepticism may be repressed by showing how generally truth has been attained when it has been honestly and judiciously sought ; while credulity may be checked by pointing out, on the other hand, how manifold are the errors into which those are betrayed whose intellect or whose principles have been found wanting. Now, too, the time is come when the pupil may be introduced to that high philosophy which unfolds ' the causes of things.' Let him be taught to analyse the subject thus presented to him ; to trace back institutions, civil and religious, to their origin ; to explore the elements of the national character, as now exhibited in maturity, in the vicissitudes of the nation's fortune, and the moral and physical qualities of his race ; to observe how the morals and minds of the people have been subject to a succession of influences, some accidental, some regular ; to see and remember what critical seasons of improvement have been neglected, what besetting evils have been wantonly aggravated, by wickedness or folly. In short, the pupil may be furnished as it were with certain formulae, which shall enable him to read all i6 TEACHING OF HISTORY