political constitution, as of our physical body, only when it is out
of order, and that the study of preventive politics, like preventive
medicine, has a proper place. The fault of all early writers and
teachers of history was not in the consideration, but in the exclusive
consideration of military and political affairs. He errs in like degree
who teaches that these phases of a nation’s life can be ignored. He is
wise who sees them in their proper relation to other phenomena of society.
These four dangers, the loss of the individuality of history in, first,
the scientific tendencies, and, second, the philosophical aspirations of
the times, the attempted transplanting of foreign methods to American
soil, and the recent ignoring of certain vital portions of history, all
grow out of the proneness in the human mind to seize half of a truth and
remain content with it. We have learned in medicine, but, alas! not yet
in pedagogy, the fallacy of the argument that if a little of a thing is
good, more must be better. Each of these methods of teaching history is
half right, but wholly wrong. A scientific method in its study we must
have; but to treat history as an exact science is to degrade it from its
own exalted position, since all imitation is demeaning. The relation of
cause and effect every beginner in history must be able to see; but to
introduce Hegel, Schlegel, or Lotze into the class-room of the average
academy or college is to caricature both history and philosophy. The
German seminary is good—in Germany; and the adaptation of many of its
methods may be good for us, in so far as it teaches us to subordinate
rhetoric to fact and to consult original documents. The history of
peoples we must have, but of peoples concerned in war and politics as
well as in literature and industries.
If we are to avoid these and similar dangers, we must clearly understand,
first, the general principles that should control all teaching of
history, and, second, the line of demarcation between history as taught
in the secondary school, in the normal school, and in the college and
university.
History, wherever taught, should ever keep in mind, as regards the
choice of subject-matter, the practical end. Perhaps we come late in
life to realize that history, like virtue, is its own reward, as we
learn to appreciate Mr. Lowell’s definition of a university as a place
where nothing useful can be learned. But the practical end must come
first and lead up to it. This end must be the creation of an intelligent
understanding of American history, American institutions, American
ideals. This does not imply that we are to teach American history
exclusively—far from it; but our national history is to be at once the
beginning and the climax of all historical study. The necessity for
this is the greater since we have but recently come to recognize the
importance of historical study. Not until the Civil War had made possible
a true national life did we dare to bid defiance to sectional and local
jealousies and study our own past. On the other hand, the study of
European institutions was neglected, for the Monroe Doctrine took root
educationally as well as politically. When the centennial anniversary of
our independence lessened our prejudices and removed somewhat our insular
character, a new interest came in the study of European history and
politics. We have thus come to realize that both American and European
history must be taught, in view of the large number of foreigners
annually coming to our shores, the early age at which many American boys
and girls leave school, and the grave political problems yet unsettled
and demanding the serious attention of every mature mind. Bishop Potter,
in his recent Phi Beta Kappa address on “The Scholar and the State,” has
shown the necessity of keeping ever present, even in the higher paths
of learning, the plain truths that history teaches, if we are not to be
wrecked on the shoals where other nations have gone down. From strange
localities the encouragement comes to begin and to continue this work.
On Rivington Street, in the slums of New York, in a district from which
comes one-tenth of the criminals of New York City, a college settlement
has been established, and in connection with it a free library. The
librarian reports that the first demand of every boy is for a life of
George Washington, and that when the biographies have been exhausted,
the second choice is for a history that has “something about George
Washington.” If a recent magazine article on “Why an Irish boy should
make a good American citizen” could teach, not only our friends from the
Emerald Isle, but immigrants from other nations as well, their duties as
citizens of the Republic, and if Bishop Potter’s address could be placed
in the hands of every native American, the teaching of history would
receive greater encouragement than has yet been vouchsafed to it.
If the practical end should be our objective point, three general
principles should lead us to it.
The first step in beginning any historical work is to give a bird’s-eye
view of the whole subject. What Bunker Hill Monument is to Boston, the
Brooklyn Bridge to New York, and the Eiffel Tower to Paris, that the
general outline is in all historical study. One school of writers has
often of late urged the theory that historical study should begin with
local history, that the town and county should come first, the nation
last. But this is much like attempting to draw a map of the United States
by locating New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Key West, and then
drawing the coast-lines. It is the historical Cuvier, not the novice, who
can take an isolated portion of local history and reconstruct from it an
historical whole.
A second general principle is that in history, as well as in pure and
applied science, the student must become familiar with the terminology
employed. The words _state_, _constitution_, _law_, _pure democracy_,
_representative government_ must be as clearly understood as straight
line and angle, base and salt. In this way much local history and
many political principles can be, indeed must be, taught by way of
illustration. “Taxation without representation” is a glittering
generality; but it has meaning when the principles of taxation are
understood, and when it is evident why we never pay a direct tax without
complaining, and why some persons can look with equanimity upon the
payment—by others—of an indirect tax of 20 per cent. on foreign books.
A third general aim should be to train the student to do independent
work. This can be done by putting into the hands of the students, even of
high-school boys and girls, a certain amount of original material. The
amount as well as the kind must vary with the nature of the school and
the time given to the subject; but to pupils of even the lowest grade the
Constitution of the United States must be something more than “what is in
the back part of the book;” the Declaration of Independence must teach
him why the colonies revolted, and his Iliad must show him the condition
of society in the Homeric age. The best working outfit for every grade is
a text-book containing a brief outline of facts, supplemented by original
documents, selected with reference to the needs of special classes.
Publishers are ever ready to meet such demands, and have already given
us the _Old South Leaflets_, _The National Library_, _English History
from Contemporaneous Writers_, and _Documents Illustrating American
History_, while the instructor can find compensation for one of his
trials in the large number of old English chronicles made available
in the Bohn edition. Some persons indeed have cried out in alarm
against the free use of original documents, even in our colleges, as an
introduction of “university methods.” Such criticism, however, is due to
a failure to understand what is meant by university methods, and to a
lack of discrimination between _independent_ work, which should be done
everywhere, and _original_ work, which properly belongs to the university.
These general principles we believe should govern all historical
teaching; but there are certain specific principles that must be
applied to the teaching of history in special grades. We may lay down
the general proposition that in the secondary schools the distinctive
aim should be the accumulation of historical knowledge, in the normal
school the classification of such knowledge, in the college independent
investigation, and in the university original investigation. This
expresses, however, only the leading characteristic in each form of
instruction, since in every grade must be found to a certain extent the
distinguishing features of every other grade.
It has been said that in the secondary schools the distinctive aim
should be the accumulation of historical knowledge. A German university
professor was once asked the first step in historical study. His brief
reply was “_Lesen_.” “And the second?” “_Viel lesen_.” “And the third?”
“_Sehr viel lesen_.” The principle applies to work in the secondary
schools. But here the instructor must be like the skilful engineer who
constructs a tunnel by beginning at opposite sides of the mountain,
knowing that the two ends of the tunnel will ultimately meet without the
variation of a hair’s breadth. At one end of the historical tunnel must
be the reading, the much reading, the very much reading; at the other
end, careful, systematic, dry—if you please—tedious drill. There must
be the much reading, or the student early forms the pernicious habit
of generalizing from one particular. There must be careful guidance to
furnish a receptacle for this knowledge, or it is like water poured
upon the ground. There must be general information, or the student
becomes narrow; but general information alone is a jelly-fish, brilliant
in coloring, but formless and without use. In the secondary schools
everything is grist that comes to the historical mill, but it is here
also that the student must learn that “there is no northwest passage to
the intellectual world.”
The special province of the normal school is to emphasize the
classification of historical knowledge. To the average normal-school
student a fact is a fact. His knowledge is a Chinese painting, an
historical crazy-quilt. He never sees that in history, as well as in
mathematics, 2+2=4. He has often much general information, especially
concerning his own country, but it is an information and a zeal for
information that leads him to ask “How many Presidents have died in
office?” “Who was President for a single day?” “Who fired the first gun
in the Civil War?” “Who was the youngest soldier in the Revolution?” and
to affirm, in the same breath, “the reconciliation of the contradiction
between its inner aim and life with its _actual_ being is the _process_
of the history of a nation. The collision between the _ideal_ of a nation
and the _actual_ produces the process of history.” The normal-school
student must first of all be taught historical perspective, and, second,
that there is no historical multiplication-table or system of mechanical
memorizing either of details or of general principles that can be applied
to the solution of historical problems.
If the secondary school is to encourage the accumulation of historical
knowledge, and the normal school the classification of historical facts,
it is the college and the university that is to be the investigator
of historical subjects. It is said that every lawyer owes a debt of
gratitude to his profession. So the obligation rests upon every special
teacher and student of history to contribute something to the sum of
historical knowledge. This contribution cannot be made during a college
course, but the college student must be an investigator for himself, the
tools must be put into his hands, and he must learn their use. Like the
high-school boy, he must be an omnivorous reader, but he must also be a
critical reader. Hume and Freeman are to be to him not merely names of
historians, but of historians representing different schools of thought.
Macaulay’s every school-boy knows that taxation without representation
was the cause of the Revolution, but the college student must know, if
the school-boy does not, why but one of the twenty-seven complaints
in the Declaration of Independence refers to the subject of taxation.
The college student must know that Magna Charta is the corner-stone of
English liberty, not because Bishop Stubbs and all the historians say
so, but because he has himself studied that great instrument and the
subsequent development of constitutional liberty. The college student
must learn the condition of the Church before the Reformation, not from
Fisher, Hausser, and Alzog, but from Chaucer, Dante, Sir Thomas More,
and Erasmus. He must know that history is not a simple substance, but a
compound. He must be able to see that into it enter, as component parts,
politics, economics, statistics, finance, sociology, jurisprudence,
archæology, philanthropy, comparative philology—every subject that
concerns itself with the life of the individual or the nation. He must
be familiar not only with the process of analysis, but also with that of
composition.
What results are we justified in thinking should follow our best efforts
in secondary school and college?
In the first place, history can do more than any other subject except
science to break down the barrier that too often rises between the
instructor’s desk and the class-room seats. No subject except science
lends itself so readily to co-operative methods of work. Professor
and student, teacher and pupil are alike seekers after truth, and the
library door swings outward for all. If, as has been said, aristocratic
politics broke down with the French Revolution, and aristocratic
economics are fast disappearing in the light of the economic discussions
of the day, so aristocratic pedagogics must yield to that spirit which
makes students of both instructor and instructed.
Again, history is pre-eminently adapted to teach the fact that knowledge
is singular in fact as well as in form. To the ordinary mind Greek
is Greek, geology is geology, and history is history. Cæsar’s “first
impressions” of Britain, and Cicero’s arraignment of Verres, which must
have exhausted all the editions of the Roman _Herald_ and _Evening Post_,
are to the average school-boy not history, politics, and literature,
but Latin. The average college student turns for his history, not to
his Cæsar, but to Mommsen’s chapter on the “Subjugation of the West,”
which in its narrative portion is but a paraphrase of the Commentaries.
Nothing is more difficult to overcome than this belief that each branch
of knowledge is isolated. History, more than any other subject except
literature, must show how every study in the school or college curriculum
dovetails into every other study, making from seemingly isolated
parts a compact whole. History must show that, while it itself works
by scientific methods, science works by the historical method; that
mathematics and music are first cousins; that art and philosophy are
related; and that the study of Sanscrit roots has made “the whole world
akin.”
These are but suggestions of what history can and should do. History does
not wish to supersede any or all other subjects in the academic or the
college curriculum. It asks only a fair place and reasonable treatment.
1890.
THE PRIVATE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS.
BY ANNA C. BRACKETT.
There is no science of education. There are many theories, and there is
an art of education. Every true teacher is and must be an artist, working
on the most plastic of materials, and changing her methods as the state
of the material gives notice to her practised mental eye that change
is needed. It is this fact which makes experience of so much value in
the profession, and this which makes the problem of normal schools so
difficult. It is only the quickened insight of a mind originally fit
for the work which can determine the mental state to be dealt with at
the moment, and can then select, out of all the means at command, the
very question or the very explanation that will enable the child’s mind
to take hold of the truth to be conveyed. The maker of Damascus blades
cannot tell you how he knows that the steel has had exactly the required
amount of heat. He sees the color and he knows; that is all there is of
it. If you do not see it, he cannot help you, any more than the laundress
can tell you how hot the iron must be for the material she is going to
put it on. She holds it to her face, or touches it with wet finger, and
decides. The cook puts her hand into the oven and says that we must
wait a little longer before setting the bread in, and she is right.
The problem of real teaching is of this order, only more complicated
because of the material; for steel and cloth and dough can be depended
on to answer a certain quantity of heat with a certain reaction, while
the human mind has left to it freedom in its way of working, and no two
human minds are alike. There are no unfailing rules which can be given
to the incipient teacher, and no patent methods will avail. All depends
upon the circumstances at the very time when she has to act, and those
her instructors cannot by any possibility know. The only rule without
exception that occurs to me is that she should never punish when she is
angry; but this would be a very slender stock to go into business with,
and the imparting of it would hardly justify a legislature in building
normal schools.
The truth is that education, having no principles of its own, must
use those furnished by the sciences, especially by psychology. But the
conclusions and the generalizations of psychology, so far as it is an
empirical science, are drawn from observations on the adult mind, and
therefore are not always to be depended on in our dealings with the child
mind, which is, as Professor Royce says, “possessed by an incapacity of
a relatively diseased sort;” and he adds, “the wise teacher is a sort of
physician who is to help the child towards getting that kind of health
which we call maturity.” He says wisely that the mind of the child is
a “chaos of unreason.” It is the part of the teacher to create from
this chaos a world which shall no longer be without form and void, and
to brood over the face of the deep. She is not without assistance from
within, for the spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters and
waits to answer to her call. But does she know how to call? That is the
question, the answer to which determines whether she be a teacher or not.
The problem in the education of every child’s mind is like the problem
with the deaf-mute Laura Bridgman, only that we have with common children
more means of reading it than Dr. Howe had of reaching hers, and so of
putting it into communication with the rest of the race. He says that
the first efforts at her instruction were like letting down lines one
after another into the bottom of the deep sea in which her silent soul
lay, and waiting the moment when she should seize hold of them and be
drawn up into the light. In teaching we are continually doing this. We
let down our lines and wait. We have more lines than Dr. Howe had with
her; that is all the difference; and when we see the light flash along
the face, we know, as he did, that we have reached the intelligence we
were feeling for. Perhaps the best training any ambitious girl could have
for teaching would be found, not in a normal school, but for one year in
an asylum for idiots, one year at Hampton, and one in a school for the
blind. She would learn in such work as this how to reach the intelligence
which lies waiting. The greatest teachers, as a rule, have not been those
who have had most special training for their profession. They have been
the broadest men and women who have learned of the doctrine by doing the
work, and who have found their greatest pleasure and reward in the doing
of it.
When it is distinctly seen that education is not a science, but an art,
it is perceived why so many so-called normal schools fail of their
purpose, and why the educational journals which appear from time to time,
only to return to the silence from which they arose, are for the most
part such very useless reading. Of course the education of the child is
obtained only in a limited sense in school. She is educated in general by
every circumstance of her life from the time when her eyes first open to
the light. But in this article the word “education” will be understood
as meaning only that portion of the “conscious direction by mature
persons of the growth and development of the young” which takes place
in school. The girl gains information at home or in travelling, very
varied information, but all this comes to her not in definite order, not
in definite relation, and with the important and the unimportant thrown
together haphazard. She cannot be said to be educated unless her mind has
been worked upon in a systematic way, the proper food for its natural
growth given to it at the suitable time, its activity rendered orderly,
and itself supplied with categories under which it can arrange any
information afterwards acquired. As it is now, the so-called education
of many American girls has produced a mere hodge-podge of bits of
information, of no use to themselves, and, what is of more consequence,
of no use to any one else. She would be thought a strange woman who
should administer medicine to her children merely because it happened to
turn up in some house where she was passing the summer, or because it
had been left over in her own hands, the remnant of what had been years
ago administered to herself. Yet this is exactly what the mother does
who arranges lessons in German for her children only because a German
lady happens to be spending her summer in the same hotel, or who insists
upon a teacher’s giving her child the same subjects, in the same way, as
those used by her own teachers when she was a girl. The old medicine may
have been good in the old time, and the old physician may have been quite
right in prescribing it for a headache, but it does not follow therefore
that we are to keep the bottle on the table and give it whenever there is
a headache in the family. It is only the skilled physician who can say
whether it is the medicine proper at another time or for another patient.
Many people seem to imagine that it is only the number of beats in a
minute that the physician considers when he feels the pulse. If it were
so, the science and art of medicine would be reduced to the level of a
trade. What the physician learns from the pulse is the very thing which
his experience has rendered him, and not you, capable of learning, and
the thing which you can acquire only as he did. To him the pulse speaks,
and he knows what its quality and its quantity mean. Then the temperature
and the respiration also speak, and combining all the information that
these and many other signs give him, he prescribes intelligently for
the trouble which is the cause of all. This is medical insight, and, as
Professor Royce says, “The teacher who can make out what the child’s
actual state of mind is, has developed the true sort of psychological
insight.”