The material out of which the child pictures history lies all about
him. When he learns to handle objects or observes men and other beings
act, he is gathering material to form images for the stories you
tell him, or those he reads. So supple and vigorous is the child's
imagination that he can put this store of material to use in picturing
a fairy story, a legend, or a myth.
From this same source--his observation of the people and things about
him--he gathers simple meanings and ideas of his own. He weaves these
meanings and ideas, in part, into the stories he reads or is told. From
the cradle to the grave he should exercise this habit of testing the
men and institutions he studies by a comparison with those he has seen.
The teacher should use the stories in this book to impress upon the
pupil's mind the idea that life is a constant struggle against opposing
difficulties. The pupil should be able to see that the great men of
American history spent their lives in a ceaseless effort to conquer
obstacles. For everywhere men find opponents. What a struggle Lincoln
had against the twin difficulties of poverty and ignorance! What a
battle Roosevelt waged with timidity and a sickly boyhood! And what a
tremendously courageous and vigorous man he became!
In the fight which men wage for noble or ignoble ends the pupil finds
his greatest source of interest. Here he forms his ideas of right and
wrong, and deals out praise and blame among the characters. Hence the
need of presenting true Americans--patriotic Americans--for his study.
This book of American history includes the stirring scenes of the
world's greatest war. It shows how a vast nation, loving peace and
hating war, worked to get ready to fight, how it trained its soldiers
and planned a great navy, and how, when all was ready, it hurled two
million men against the Germans and helped our brave allies to crush
the cruelest foe that war ever let loose.
With the knowledge of American men and events which the study of our
history should give him, the pupil is ready to ask where the first
Americans came from. To answer that question, and many others, we
must go to European history. We must look at the great peoples of
the world's earlier history, and see how their civilization finally
developed into that which those colonists who pushed across the
Atlantic to America brought with them.
But the civilization brought to this country by earlier or by later
comers must not cease to grow. America has her part to add to its
development. With the close of the World War we must not forget one
fact which that conflict brought out--the vast number of people in the
United States almost untouched by the spirit of American institutions.
Teachers of history, the subject-matter of which is the story of
American institutions and American leaders, can do much to change such
conditions. This need for more thorough Americanization they can help
to fill by teaching in their classes not a mechanical patriotism but a
loyal understanding of American ideals.