The Teaching of History

THE METHOD OF THE RECITATION

Assumptions as to the recitation room

Let us now assume that the recitation will be held in a quiet room free from the distracting influence of poor light, poor ventilation, and inadequate seating capacity. The blackboard space is ample for the whole class, the erasers and chalk are at hand, the maps, charts, and globe are where they can be used without stumbling over them. The teacher can give his whole attention to the class. Discipline should take care of itself. The pupil who is interested will not be seriously out of order.

What the teacher should aim to accomplish

The problem, then, is so to expend the forty-five minutes in which the teacher and class are together that:—

1. So far as possible the atmosphere and setting of the period being studied may be reproduced.
2. The great historical characters spoken of in the lesson may become for the student real men and women with whom he will afterwards feel a personal acquaintance.
3. The events described will be understood and properly interpreted in their relation to geography, and the economic and social progress of the world.
4. Causes and effects shall be properly analyzed.
5. And that there shall be left sufficient time for the occasional review necessary to any good instruction.

Work at the blackboard

The first five minutes may profitably be spent at the board, each member of the class being asked to write a complete answer to one of the assigned questions. Whatever may happen later in the recitation each student has had at least this much of an opportunity for self-expression, and his work should be neat, workmanlike, complete, and accurate. By this device the alert teacher will secure in the first five minutes of the recitation hour a fairly accurate idea of each student's preparation, the weak spots in his understanding of the lesson, and the errors to be corrected. He may even be able to record a grade for the work done.

Special reports

The class having taken their seats, the next order of business should be the reports on special topics assigned for the purpose of making the period of history under discussion more interesting and vital. As has been said, these reports should not be read, but delivered by the pupil facing the class. The class should be encouraged to ask questions on the report when finished and the student responsible for the report should be expected to answer any reasonable inquiry. If other students are able to contribute to the topics reported on, they should be encouraged to do so. Let the teacher be sure that he has sounded the depths of the students' information and curiosity before he himself discusses the report. If the device of reports delivered in class is to justify itself, the matter contained in them must be so arranged and discussed that the whole class receives real benefit. The ingenious teacher will be able to establish a tradition in his course for a careful preparation and critical discussion of these reports. The rivalry of students for excellence in this work is not difficult to stimulate. A premium should be put on criticism which finds mentioned in the characterization qualities inconsistent with the facts recorded in the text, or omissions which the facts of the text seem to justify.

Fundamental principles of good questioning

It is not likely that the teacher will find it advisable to require reports at every recitation nor that the reports and their discussion will consume, at the most, longer than ten or fifteen minutes of any class period. There must always be time for direct oral questioning on the facts of the lesson; questioning that will test the student's memory, ability to analyze, and powers of expression. Certain principles are fundamental to good questioning in any recitation.

1. The questions should be brief.
2. They should be prepared by the teacher before coming to recitation. This will insure rapidity. A vast deal of time is lost by the unfortunate habit possessed by many teachers of never having the next question ready to use.
3. They should precede the name of the pupil required to answer it.
4. They should not be leading questions to which the pupil can guess the answers.
5. They should be grammatically stated with but one possible interpretation.
6. Except for purposes of rapid review they should not be answerable with yes or no.
7. They should be asked in a voice loud enough to be heard by all the class, and only once.
8. They should be asked in no regular order, but nevertheless in such a way that every member of the class will have a chance to recite.

Some additional suggestions for teachers of history

There are additional suggestions particularly applicable to the teacher of history.

1. In all the questioning remember the purposes of the recitation. Ask questions knowing exactly what you wish as an answer. There is no time for aimless or idle questioning.
2. Inquire frequently as to the books used in preparation of the lesson. Let no allusion or statement in the text go unexplained. Let none of the author's conclusions or opinions go unchallenged. Ask the student for inconsistencies, inaccuracies, or contradictions in the text. Put a premium on their discovery. Insist on the student's authority for statements other than those given in the text.
3. Do not use the heavy-typed words frequently found at the head of the paragraph or the topical heads furnished by the text, if it can be avoided. The pupil should not be allowed to remember his history by its location in the text.
4. Be sure that the class have an opportunity to recite on the questions assigned for their advance preparation. Nothing is more discouraging to a student than carefully to prepare the work required and then fail of an opportunity either to recite upon or to discuss it.
5. Discover the tastes, shortcomings, and abilities of your individual students and direct your future questions accordingly. There will usually be in the class the boy who is glib without being accurate. He should be questioned on definite facts. There will be the student whose analysis of events is good, but whose powers of description are poor. Adapt your questions to his special need. There will be the pupil with the tendency to memorize the text verbatim. There will be the student who knows the facts of the lesson, but who fails to remember the sequence of events—the kind who never can tell whether the Exclusion Bill came before or after the Restoration. There will be the usual amount of specialized tastes, curiosity, timidity, laziness, and rattle-brained thinking. The questioning should probe these peculiarities, and stimulate the pupil's ambition to improve his preparation at its weakest point. Needless to say the questions should not be asked with the daily idea of making the pupil fail. Like any other surgical instrument the question probe should be used skillfully and with a proper motive. It would be as great an error to bend your questions continually away from the student's special tastes and abilities as to be perpetually guided by them.
6. The bulk of the teacher's attention should be given neither to the few exceptionally able students nor to the few very poor pupils. It is to the average normal boy and girl that the most of the questioning should be directed. The brilliant student should be called on sufficiently to retain his interest and to set a standard of excellence for the class. He should be given the most difficult of the assignments of outside work and if necessary an additional number of them. As to the few pupils whom the teacher deems exceptionally poor, it may be said that the effect of questioning should never be to discourage the pupil who has made an honest effort at preparation. During the early part of the course the efforts of the teacher may well be directed to asking the backward student questions to which he can make reasonably satisfactory answers. By saving the student from the daily humiliation of failure before the class, and by tactfully encouraging him to greater effort, the teacher may shortly discover that the poor pupil is far from hopeless.
7. Do not allow your questions to consume a disproportionate amount of time with details. Until very recently in all our history teaching, battles have been exalted to a place immeasurably greater than their importance. We are coming to see that the fighting is one of the least important things in the war. The causes and results, the financial, political, and social effects now absorb our attention. One or two battles in a course may profitably be studied in detail, particularly in the history of our own country, but in the press of considerations far more interesting and vital, it is a waste of time to give more than a moment's notice to the remainder. Student descriptions of battles are bound to be stereotyped. The ordinary textbook describes each of the thousand battles of the world in about the same fifty words.
8. Let some of the questions be directed towards cultivating the student's powers of oral description. History is not altogether a matter of analysis or generalization. There can scarcely be assigned a lesson in history that does not contain events which lend themselves to dramatic description. Their recital should be made the occasion of the student's best efforts in this direction. Let the pupils be taught to use adjectives and adverbs. Break down the barrier of listlessness or fear or self-consciousness which keeps the student from rendering a graphic and thrilling account of great events.
9. Let the questions from day to day develop the continuity of history. Avoid questioning that fails to unite the events of previous lessons with the one being studied. Bring out the connection of the past and the present. Slavery existed in America for two hundred years before the Civil War was fought. Your teaching of those two centuries of history should be so conducted that when the Civil War is finally reached, the class can tell the process by which anti-slavery sentiment was finally crystallized. The hiatus between the mobbing of Garrison in Boston and the extraordinary contribution of Massachusetts to the Northern army should be bridged, not by a heroic question or two when the war is finally reached, but by a daily attention to the events which effected the metamorphosis.
10. If the answer to your question requires the use of a map, ask it in such a way that the student can talk and use the map at the same time. The geographical provisions of a treaty, the routes of explorers, the grants of commercial companies, campaigns, or military frontiers should all be recited in this way. A wall map with simply the outline of the territory, with its rivers, will be of considerable assistance in testing the accuracy of the student's geographical knowledge. While reciting, let him locate with chalk or pointer the cities, arbitrary boundary lines, and routes he finds it necessary to mention in his recitation. It will require special attention early in the course to teach students the necessity for preparation of this sort. Like everything else, map work should be reasonable in its requirements. A knowledge of geography is imperative to the correct understanding of history, and the indifference or ignorance of teachers should never excuse inattention to this vital necessity. On the other hand, however, it is equally reprehensible to require of high school students the labored preparation of maps in the drawing of which hours of valuable time are spent in searching for places of trivial importance and small historical value. Map work in a high school history course should require no more than geographical accuracy in locating boundaries, routes, and places really vital to the history of the people being studied. If it does more than this it usurps time disproportionate to its value.

VARIOUS MODES OF REVIEW

The place of drill in the history recitation

We have long since learned the folly of spending very many of the minutes of a recitation in drilling students in dates, outlines, and charts. Work of this sort never made a recitation vital; never inspired a student with enthusiasm for historical inquiry; never really dispelled the fog which surrounds, for the student, the cabinets and constitutions, battles and boundaries, declarations and decrees, so briefly treated in the text.

Good reviews will develop a knowledge of the sequence of events

But it may be seriously questioned whether many teachers, in their zeal to escape the over-emphasis of dates, have not gone to the extreme of neglecting them altogether. That a student should remember sufficient dates to fix in his mind the sequence of important events is hardly open to question. That he can never do so without some special attention to dates is equally indisputable. Without doubt, drill in important dates is necessary, but it should be so conducted as to take but little time. Each day the teacher has indicated the dates worthy to be remembered and has been careful to select the landmarks of history. He has called attention to the various collateral circumstances which might assist to fix the dates in the child's mind. The student has kept his list of dates in the back of his text or in some convenient place of reference. Once a week for three minutes the teacher gives the class a rapid review on the dates contained in the list. Occasionally the class are sent to the board and asked to write the dates of the reigns of the English monarchs from William down to the point which the class has reached, or the Presidents in their order, or some other similar exercise calculated to give a backbone to the history being studied. The class will know that such a review is liable to be given at any time. They will endeavor to be prepared. The result will be that with the expenditure of a few minutes at intervals in rapid review, history will cease to be a spineless narrative and become for the student an orderly procession of events. Drill in dates is only one method to this end. There may be a rapid review in battles, generals, wars, treaties, proclamations, and inventions. Such exercises encourage the classification of facts and stimulate fluency of expression. It is of the highest importance for the student so to arrange in his mind what he has learned in recitation that he can call to his command at a second's notice the fact, date, or illustration he desires. There will be many times in his school and college career when such an ability will be indispensable; in business or the professions it is an invaluable asset, infinitely more useful than the history itself. It will be well for the teacher to inquire: "What am I doing to cultivate such an ability in my students?"

They will give a view of the whole subject

Few teachers will deny that too little time is spent in giving the student a general view of the whole subject, either in its entirety or in its various phases. The text has been studied by chapters or by months or by movements. The history as a whole has never been seen. By the time the student has reached the "Aldrich Currency Plan" in American history he has forgotten all about the experiments with the first United States Bank. He could no more outline the financial history of the United States as given in his text than he could outline the industrial or political history of the American people. And yet he has studied the facts given in his textbook; he has supplemented the text by his work in the library, and in the recitation; he has done everything that may reasonably be expected of him, except to assemble his historical information and review it as a whole.

If the student in American history is asked to go to the board at intervals and write an outline for the work covered on such topics as the following, he will come much nearer understanding the progress of our people:—

1. History of the tariff.
2. Political parties and principles for which they stood.
3. Things that crystallized Northern sentiment against slavery.
4. Reasons for the unification of the South.
5. Diplomatic relations of the United States.
6. Additions of territory.
7. Financial legislation.
8. Growth of humanitarian spirit.

There will easily be sufficient topics so that each member of the class will have a different one. They can all work at the board, simultaneously. The amount of time used for exercises of this sort need not be great, and the value received is incalculable.

If the teacher wishes to review briefly on the military, diplomatic, social, political, or economic history of the people the class have been studying, it is no difficult matter to arrange a set of questions, the occasional review in which will clinch in the student's mind what otherwise would surely be forgotten. Such questions as the following on the financial history of the United States are each answerable with a few words and will serve as an illustration of the method which may be employed in reviewing any other phase of history:—

1. By what means was trade accomplished before the use of money?
2. What are the functions of money?
3. What determines the amount of money needed in a country?
4. What has been used for money at various periods of our history?
5. What is meant by doing business on credit?
6. What is cheap money?
7. What is Gresham's Law?
8. What is the effect of large issues of paper money on prices?
9. What is the effect of large issues of paper money on wages?
10. Why does the wage-earner suffer?
11. At what periods in American history have large issues of paper money been emitted?
12. What were the objects of the first United States Bank?
13. Did the bank accomplish them?
14. Why was it not rechartered?
15. When was the second United States Bank chartered?
16. Why?
17. What case decided the constitutionality of the bank?
18. Did the second United States Bank accomplish the purpose for which it was formed?
19. Why was the second United States Bank rechartered?
20. What is meant by "Wildcat Banking"?
21. What are the dates of our greatest panics?
22. What were the chief causes?
23. What was the effect on prices?
24. What on wages?
25. Under what President was the independent treasury first established?
26. Is it in existence to-day?
27. When were greenbacks issued?
28. To what amount?
29. Who was responsible for the issue?
30. Were they legal tender for private debts contracted before their issue?
31. When was the Resumption Act passed?
32. Are the greenbacks in circulation to-day?
33. What is free silver?
34. What was the "Crime of '73"?
35. What was the "Bland-Allison Act"?
36. What was the Currency Act of 1900?
37. What is Bimetallism?
38. What is meant by "Mint Ratio"?
39. What is meant by "Market Ratio"?
40. What is meant by "Free Coinage"?
41. What is meant by "Gratuitous Coinage"?
42. What is meant by "Standard Money"?
43. With the market ratio at 30 to 1 and the mint ratio at 16 to 1, which money would tend to disappear from circulation if both metals are freely coined and made full legal tender?
44. Why is silver not the standard to-day?
45. What is the "Aldrich Plan"?
46. What is a United States bond?
47. Is it a secure investment?
48. What is its average rate of interest?
49. By whom is a national bank chartered?
50. May it issue paper money?
51. When was the first National Banking Act passed?
52. Why?
53. Why should banking business be profitable under the act?
54. What advantage did the Government expect to receive in passing the act?
55. Are deposits guaranteed?
56. May States emit bills of credit?
57. Is it constitutional for banks chartered by the State to emit bills of credit?
58. Do they do so to-day?
59. Why?

Obviously as the year advances, the list of questions for review grows longer. An increasing amount of time should therefore be devoted to work of this sort.

They will insure a better acquaintance with great men and women

The most superficial observation will suffice to convince anyone that high school graduates know very little about the great men and women of history. The character sketches suggested earlier in the chapter, supplemented with occasional reviews, will do much to improve this condition. These drills may be conducted by asking for brief statements on the greatest service or the most distinguishing characteristic of the great men and women met with in the course. The same thing is accomplished by reversing the process and asking such questions as,—"Who was the American Fabius"? or "The Great Compromiser"? or the "Sage of Menlo Park"? etc. Questions on the authorship of great documents, the founders of institutions, the organizers of movements, reformers, philosophers, artists, statesmen, generals, accomplish the same purpose.

They will be economical of time

There are a vast number of review questions answerable with yes or no. The student's knowledge of the subject may be quickly discovered and a rapid review conducted by a series of such questions. The following list on American history will illustrate the method:—

1. Was Cromwell's colonial policy helpful to the American colonies?
2. Did the Revolution of 1688 have any effect on the colonies?
3. Were the Huguenots excluded from Canada?
4. Were the Writs of Assistance used in England?
5. Did America ever have a theocracy?
6. Did the rule of 1756 affect the people of the colonies?
7. Was the Sugar Act legal?
8. Was there any effort to amend the Articles of Confederation?
9. Does funding a debt lessen it?
10. Did Hamilton's measures tend to centralize power?
11. Did the members of the Constitutional Convention exceed their instructions?
12. Is a cabinet provided for in the Constitution?
13. Does the Constitution of the United States prevent a State from establishing a religion?
14. Is it possible for a State to repudiate its debts?
15. Does the constitutional provision for uniform duties protect the Territories?
16. Was impressment practiced in England?
17. Did the Whigs favor internal improvements?
18. Did the North favor the Force Bill of 1833?
19. Did Massachusetts favor the Tariff of 1816?
20. Did the Republican party stand for the abolition of slavery in 1860?
21. Did the Emancipation Proclamation free all the slaves in the United States?
22. Did the working-men of England favor the South during the Civil War?
23. Was it necessary for the South to resort to the draft?
24. Could a man in 1860 consistently accept both the Dred Scott decision and the doctrine of popular sovereignty?
25. Did Lincoln's assassination have any effect on the reconstruction policy?
26. Does the Federal Constitution compel negro suffrage?
27. Was the Anaconda System successful?
28. Was a President of the United States ever impeached?
29. Were the claims for indirect damages in the Alabama claims allowed?
30. Did Calhoun favor the Compromise of 1850?
31. Did Thaddeus Stevens favor the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution?
32. Did Lincoln favor the social equality of the white and black races?
33. Did Grant favor the Tenure of Office Act?
34. Did Lee make more than one attempt to invade the North?
35. Was the "Ohio Idea" ever strong enough to affect legislation?
36. Did Spain have any part in calling out the Monroe Doctrine?
37. Has the United States any control over the debts of Cuba?
38. Has a joint resolution ever been used to acquire territory other than that included in Texas?
39. Has the United States ever resorted to a tax on incomes?
40. Has the Federal Government ever attempted to restrict the power of the press?
41. Is it illegal to-day for a railway to give a cheaper rate to one shipper than to another?
42. Has the Republican party ever reduced the protective tariffs of the war?
43. Did the Civil Service Act passed in 1883 include postmasters?
44. Did the Wilson-Gorman Act reduce the tariff to a revenue basis?
45. Can a railway engaged solely in intra-state business carry a case, involving a reduction of their rates by the State legislature, to the Supreme Court of the United States?
46. Is Utah a part of the Louisiana Purchase?
47. If the mint ratio is 16 to 1 and the market ratio is 17 to 1, will the gold dollar be the standard if there is full legal tender and free coinage for both gold and silver?
48. Is the Canadian frontier fortified?
49. Are the functions of government in this country increasing?
50. Is it possible for a man to be defeated for the Presidency if a majority of the people vote for him?

The great disadvantage of this kind of review is that the students have for their answer a choice between two words, one of which is bound to be correct. Knowing nothing whatever of the subject, they will still stand a fifty per cent chance of answering correctly. The alert teacher should be able to reduce this haphazard answering to a minimum, while still reaping the advantages of rapidity and thoroughness which the plan possesses. Few other methods will cover as much ground in as short time. On the Federal Constitution there are infinite possibilities for "yes and no" questioning, which afford a brief and effective means of review in the principles of American government.

They will secure fluency

Review for the purpose of securing fluency is a consideration frequently lost sight of by high school history teachers. It may be too sanguine to expect fluency of the average student reciting on a topic for the first time. But when it is considered how very many important questions are never recited on but once, the wisdom of an occasional review to secure rapid, fluent, and complete answers to topics previously discussed is readily seen. Select a list of topics that will at one and the same time cultivate fluency and strengthen the memory for the important considerations of history. Fluency in itself does not possess sufficient value to justify the expenditure of recitation time. Facility of expression needs to be cultivated in discussion of the conclusions reached in class which need to be clinched in the student's mind. Such questions as the following will serve as illustrations of the kind adaptable for such purpose, at the middle of a year course in American history:—

1. Give three distinct characteristics of French colonization in America; three of Spanish; three of English.
2. What things did the English colonies possess in common?
3. What were the results to the colonies of the French and Indian War?
4. To what extent was the Revolution brought about by economic causes?
5. What were the defects in the Articles of Confederation?
6. Account for the downfall of the Federalist party.
7. In what ways has democracy advanced since 1789?
8. What were the results of the struggle over the admission of Missouri?
9. Discuss the growth of the sentiment for internal improvements?
10. Describe the social life of the Western pioneer?

What the student may do with "problems" in history

Still another kind of review of great value in strengthening the student's ability to generalize and analyze, consists of what might be called "problems in history." They are given out in much the same way as original problems in geometry, assuming that the student is acquainted with the facts from which to deduce the answers to the question. The object of such a review is to give the student practice in original thinking. He is not supposed to use a library, but only the facts which are in his text or which have been previously brought out in class recitations.

The following are examples of questions adaptable for this purpose:—

1. Why can the American people be regarded as the world's greatest colonizers?
2. Why could Washington be regarded as only an Englishman living in America?
3. Is it true that the South lost the Civil War because of slavery?
4. In what particulars did Andrew Jackson accurately reflect the spirit or the ideals of the new West?
5. What is illustrated by the attempt to found the State of Franklin?
6. What considerations made the secession of the West in our early history a likely possibility?

Questions of this kind, not answered directly in class or in the text, may be given out a day in advance and the answers collected at the next recitation.

THE USE OF WRITTEN REPORTS

The purpose of theme work should change as the course continues

A method frequently employed by teachers of history is to require written reports or themes on various phases of the history as the work progresses. This plan is particularly valuable for the students in the first two years of high school history, for the reason that their library requirements are less exacting and their need of fluency greater during that time than later in their course. The objects of theme work in history courses are usually to arouse the pupil's powers of observation, description, and narration, and to provide means of drill in the exercise of these powers. These should not be the sole purposes of theme work, however. As the year advances, an increasing amount of the written work should be on subjects requiring some generalization or analysis of the facts brought out in the text or in the recitation. The pupil who has written a theme describing the appearance of the Pyramids has completed an exercise in history less valuable than that of the student who writes a theme on the errors of the Athenian Democracy.

To summarize, reviews in history should consist of both oral and written work; they should be rapid enough to insure quick thinking, alert attention, and small expenditure of time; they should occur with increasing frequency as the year advances; they should stock the memory, fix in the student's mind the order of events, stimulate fluency, insure a permanent acquaintance with the personnel of history, and give to the student a better view of the subject as a whole and in its various phases.

EXAMINATIONS AS TESTS OF PROGRESS

The examination should determine how much the student has progressed

The time is coming, if it is not already here, when the public will cry out against the nervous fear and sleepless nights with which their children approach the semi-annual torture of our inquisitorial examinations. That reasonable examinations are essential and beneficial is hardly open to question. That a student should be expected correctly to answer a fair percentage of reasonable questions on work which has been properly taught is not a cause of complaint from anyone. But that children should be frightened into a state of nervous terror by the bugaboo of an impending examination, and then be forced to attempt a series of conundrums propounded by a teacher who takes pride in maintaining a high percentage of failures, is indefensible. An examination should not be conducted with the primary object of making it a thing to be feared. However desirable such a questionable asset may seem to certain college professors, it is a serious fault in a high school teacher to have any considerable number of normal children fail. The ambition of the good instructor is to give an examination which shall at once be thorough, reasonable, and intelligently directed toward finding what the student has really learned. His purpose is to test accurately the various abilities which he has endeavored to encourage in the student during his course. He wishes to ascertain how much the student has really progressed.

Specific suggestions on formulating questions

In order to do this the examination must be on the really material considerations of the history. Questions on unimportant details should be omitted. The student should not be expected to burden his memory with the limitless mass of petty isolated facts contained in the average history text. The questions should be on considerations that have been carefully discussed, and not on facts that have received but cursory attention.

The examination should not require too much time for writing. The several hours' continuous nervous tension sometimes exacted by too ambitious teachers does the average child more harm than the examination can possibly do him good.

The examination should consist of questions that will jointly or severally test the student's powers of description, generalization, and analysis. They should test his knowledge of the sequence of events, his ability to use a library or a map, his knowledge of the various phases and the various periods of the history studied. In every examination there should be at least one question dealing with the time and the order of events, one each on the geographical, political, and social history, one that is analytical, one that requires generalization, one that will test his knowledge of the library, and one that will test his powers of description. It is not necessary to limit the questions to the customary number of ten. It is frequently advisable to give a class some degree of choice in the selection of their questions by requiring any ten out of a larger number asked. Certainly such a plan gives the student a more favorable opportunity to demonstrate his ability without in the least diminishing the value of the examination.

Examination questions, like all other questions, should be definite, clean-cut, and reasonable. If possible, each student should be supplied with a copy, instead of having the set written on the board. They should cover only those portions of the subject that have been properly taught. The teacher should not expect the boy who has kept no useful notes, whose library work has been haphazard, and whose methods of study have not been supervised, to perform at examination time the miracle of accurately remembering what he has never been properly taught.