of the biographic element in historical instruction. That historical
material appeals to the child most completely and vividly when presented
in individual form, when summed up in the lives and deeds of some heroic
character, there can be no doubt. Yet it is possible to use biographies
so that they become a collection of mere stories, interesting, possibly,
to the point of sensationalism, but yet bringing the child no nearer to
comprehension of social life. This happens when the individual who is
the hero of the tale is isolated from his social environment; when the
child is not brought to feel the social situations which evoked his acts
and the social progress to which his deeds contributed. If biography
is presented as a dramatic summary of social needs and achievements,
if the child’s imagination pictures the social defects and problems
that clamored for the man and the ways in which the individual met the
emergency, then the biography is an organ of social study.
A consciousness of the social aim of history prevents any tendency to
swamp history in myth, fairy story, and merely literary renderings. I
cannot avoid the feeling that much as the Herbartian school has done
to enrich the elementary curriculum in the direction of history, it
has often inverted the true relationship existing between history and
literature. In a certain sense the motif of American colonial history
and of De Foe’s _Robinson Crusoe_ are the same. Both represent man
who has achieved civilization, who has attained a certain maturity of
thought, who has developed ideals and means of action, but suddenly
thrown back upon his own resources, having to cope with a raw and often
hostile nature, and to regain success by sheer intelligence, energy,
and persistence of character. But when _Robinson Crusoe_ supplies the
material for the curriculum of the third- or fourth-grade child, are
we not putting the cart before the horse? Why not give the child the
reality with its much larger sweep, its intenser forces, its more vivid
and lasting value for life, using the _Robinson Crusoe_ as an imaginative
idealization in a particular case of the same sort of problems and
activities? Again, whatever may be the worth of the study of savage life
in general, and of the North American Indians in particular, why should
that be approached circuitously through the medium of _Hiawatha_, instead
of at first hand? employing indeed the poem to furnish the idealized and
culminating touches to a series of conditions and struggles which the
child has previously realized in more specific form. Either the life of
the Indian presents some permanent questions and factors in social life,
or it has next to no place in a scheme of instruction. If it has such
a value, this should be made to stand out on its own account, instead
of being lost in the very refinement and beauty of a purely literary
presentation.
The same end, the understanding of character and social relations
in their natural dependence, enables us, I think, to decide upon
the importance to be attached to chronological order in historical
instruction. Considerable stress has of late been laid upon the supposed
necessity of following the development of civilization through the
successive steps in which it actually took place—beginning with the
valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile, and coming on down through Greece,
Rome, etc. The point urged is that the present depends upon the past and
each phase of the past upon a prior past.
We are here introduced to a conflict between the logical and
psychological interpretation of history. If the aim be an appreciation of
what social life is and how it goes on, then, certainly, the child must
deal with what is near in spirit, not with the remote. The difficulty
with the Babylonian or Egyptian life is not so much its remoteness in
time, as its remoteness from the present interests and aims of social
life. It does not simplify enough and does not generalize enough; or,
at least, it does not do so in the right way. It does it by omission
of what is significant now, rather than by presenting these factors
arranged on a lower scale. Its salient features are hard to get at and
to understand, even by the specialist. It undoubtedly presents factors
which contributed to later life, and which modified the course of events
in the stream of time. But the child has not arrived at a point where he
can appreciate abstract causes and specialized contributions. What he
needs is a picture of typical relations, conditions, and activities. In
this respect, there is much of prehistoric life which is much closer to
him than the complicated and artificial life of Babylon or of Egypt. When
a child is capable of appreciating institutions, he is capable of seeing
what special institutional idea each historic nation stands for, and what
factor it has contributed to the present complex of institutions. But
this period arrives only when the child is beginning to be capable of
abstracting causes in other realms as well; in other words, when he is
approaching the time of secondary education.
In this general scheme three periods or phases are recognized: first
comes the generalized and simplified history—history which is hardly
history at all in the local or chronological sense, but which aims at
giving the child insight into, and sympathy with, a variety of social
activities. This period includes the work of the six-year-old children
in studying typical occupations of people in the country and city at
present; of the seven-year-old children in working out the evolution
of inventions and their effects upon life, and of the eight-year-old
children in dealing with the great movements of migration, exploration,
and discovery which have brought the whole round world into human ken.
The work of the first two years is evidently quite independent of any
particular people or any particular person—that is, of historical data
in the strict sense of the term. At the same time, plenty of scope is
provided through dramatization for the introduction of the individual
factor. The account of the great explorers and the discoverers serves to
make the transition to what is local and specific, that which depends
upon certain specified persons who lived at certain specified places and
times.
This introduces us to the second period where local conditions
and the definite activities of particular bodies of people become
prominent—corresponding to the child’s growth in power of dealing with
limited and positive fact. Since Chicago, since the United States,
are localities with which the child can, by the nature of the case,
most effectively deal, the material of the next three years is derived
directly and indirectly from this source. Here, again, the third year
is a transitional year, taking up the connections of American life with
European. By this time the child should be ready to deal, not with social
life in general, or even with the social life with which he is most
familiar, but with certain thoroughly differentiated and, so to speak,
peculiar types of social life; with the special significance of each
and the particular contribution it has made to the whole world-history.
Accordingly, in the next period the chronological order is followed,
beginning with the ancient world about the Mediterranean and coming
down again through European history to the peculiar and differentiating
factors of American history.
The program is not presented as the only one meeting the problem, but
as a contribution; the outcome, not of thought, but of considerable
experimenting and shifting of subjects from year to year, to the problem
of giving material which takes vital hold upon the child and at the same
time leads on, step by step, to more thorough and accurate knowledge of
both the principles and facts of social life, and makes a preparation for
later specialized historic studies.
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