The unsatisfactory character of these three values that have been
proposed for history--the utilitarian, the disciplinary, and the
cultural--is typical of the values that have been proposed for other
subjects. Unless the aim of teaching any given subject can be stated in
definite terms, the teacher must work very largely in the dark; his
efforts must be largely of the "hit-or-miss" order. The desired value
may be realized under these conditions, but, if it is realized, it is
manifestly through accident, not through intelligent design. It is
needless to point out the waste that such a blundering and haphazard
adjustment entails. We all know how much of our teaching fails to hit
the mark, even when we are clear concerning the result that we desire;
we can only conjecture how much of the remainder fails of effect because
we are hazy and obscure concerning its purpose.
Let us return to our original basic principle and see what light it may
throw upon our problem. We have said that the efficiency of teaching
must always be measured by the degree in which the pupil's conduct is
modified. Taking conduct as our base, then, let us reason back and see
what factors control conduct, and, if possible, how these "controls" may
be influenced by the processes of education working through the lesson
in history.
I shall start with a very simple and apparently trivial example. When I
was living in the Far West, I came to know something of the Chinese, who
are largely engaged, as you know, in domestic service in that part of
the country. Most of the Chinese servants that I met corresponded very
closely with what we read concerning Chinese character. We have all
heard of the Chinese servant's unswerving adherence to a routine that he
has once established. They say in the West that when a housewife gives
her Chinese servant an object lesson in the preparation of a certain
dish, she must always be very careful to make her demonstration perfect
the first time. If, inadvertently, she adds one egg too many, she will
find that, in spite of her protestations, the superfluous egg will
always go into that preparation forever afterward. From what I know of
the typical Oriental, I am sure that this warning is not overdrawn.
Now here is a bit of conduct, a bit of adjustment, that characterizes
the Chinese cook. Not only that, but, in a general way, it is peculiar
to all Chinese, and hence may be called a national trait. We might call
it a vigorous national prejudice in favor of precedent. But whatever we
call it, it is a very dominant force in Chinese life. It is the trait
that, perhaps more than any other, distinguishes Chinese conduct from
European or American conduct. Now one might think this trait to be
instinctive,--to be bred in the bone rather than acquired,--but this I
am convinced is not altogether true. At least one Chinese whom I knew
did not possess it at all. He was born on a western ranch and his
parents died soon after his birth. He was brought up with the children
of the ranch owner, and is now a prosperous rancher himself. He lacks
every characteristic that we commonly associate with the Chinese, save
only the physical features. His hair is straight, his skin is saffron,
his eyes are slightly aslant,--but that is all. As far as his conduct
goes,--and that is the essential thing,--he is an American. In other
words, his traits, his tendencies to action, are American and not
Chinese. His life represents the triumph of environment over heredity.
When you visit England you find yourselves among a people who speak the
same language that you speak,--or, perhaps it would be better to say,
somewhat the same; at least you can understand each other. In a great
many respects, the Englishman and the American are similar in their
traits, but in a great many other respects they differ radically. You
cannot, from your knowledge of American traits, judge what an
Englishman's conduct will be upon every occasion. If you happened on
Piccadilly of a rainy morning, for example, you would see the English
clerks and storekeepers and professional men riding to their work on the
omnibuses that thread their way slowly through the crowded thoroughfare.
No matter how rainy the morning, these men would be seated on the tops
of the omnibuses, although the interior seats might be quite unoccupied.
No matter how rainy the morning, many of these men would be faultlessly
attired in top hats and frock coats, and there they would sit through
the drizzling rain, protecting themselves most inadequately with their
opened umbrellas. Now there is a bit of conduct that you cannot find
duplicated in any American city. It is a national habit,--or, perhaps,
it would be better to say, it is an expression of a national trait,--and
that national trait is a prejudice in favor of convention. It is the
thing to do, and the typical Englishman does it, just as, when he is
sent as civil governor to some lonely outpost in India, with no
companions except scantily clad native servants, he always dresses
conscientiously for dinner and sits down to his solitary meal clad in
the conventional swallow-tail coat of civilization.
Now the way in which a Chinese cook prepares a custard, or the way in
which an English merchant rides in an omnibus, may be trivial and
unimportant matters in themselves, and yet, like the straw that shows
which way the wind blows, they are indicative of vast and profound
currents. The conservatism of the Chinese empire is only a larger and
more comprehensive expression of the same trait or prejudice that leads
the cook to copy literally his model. The present educational situation
in England is only another expression of that same prejudice in favor of
the established order, which finds expression in the merchant on the
Piccadilly omnibus.
Whenever you pass from one country to another you will find this
difference in tendencies to action. In Germany, for example, you will
find something that amounts almost to a national fervor for economy and
frugality. You will find it expressing itself in the care with which the
German housewife does her marketing. You will find it expressing itself
in the intensive methods of agriculture, through which scarcely a square
inch of arable land is permitted to lie fallow,--through which, for
example, even the shade trees by the roadside furnish fruit as well as
shade, and are annually rented for their fruit value to industrious
members of the community,--and it is said in one section of Germany that
the only people known to steal fruit from these trees along the lonely
country roads are American tourists, who, you will see, also have their
peculiar standards of conduct. You will find this same fervor for
frugality and economy expressing itself most extensively in that
splendid forest policy by means of which the German states have
conserved their magnificent timber resources.
But, whatever its expression, it is the same trait,--a trait born of
generations of struggle with an unyielding soil, and yet a trait which,
combined with the German fervor for science and education, has made
possible the marvelous progress that Germany has made within the last
half century.
What do we mean by national traits? Simply this: prejudices or
tendencies toward certain typical forms of conduct, common to a given
people. It is this community of conduct that constitutes a nation. A
country whose people have different standards of action must be a
divided country, as our own American history sufficiently demonstrates.
Unless upon the vital questions of human adjustment, men are able to
agree, they cannot live together in peace. If we are a distinctive and
unique nation,--if we hold a distinctive and unique place among the
nations of the globe,--it is because you and I and the other inhabitants
of our country have developed distinctive and unique ideals and
prejudices and standards, all of which unite to produce a community of
conduct. And once granting that our national characteristics are worth
while, that they constitute a distinct advance over the characteristics
of the other nations of the earth, it becomes the manifest duty of the
school to do its share in perpetuating these ideals and prejudices and
standards. Once let these atrophy through disuse, once let them fail of
transmission because of the decay of the home, or the decay of the
school, or the decay of the social institutions that typify and express
them, and our country must go the way of Greece and Rome, and, although
our blood may thereafter continue pure and unmixed, and our physical
characteristics may be passed on from generation to generation unchanged
in form, our nation will be only a memory, and its history ancient
history. Some of the Greeks of to-day are the lineal descendants of the
Athenians and Spartans, but the ancient Greek standards of conduct, the
Greek ideals, died twenty centuries ago, to be resurrected, it is true,
by the renaissance, and to enjoy the glorious privilege of a new and
wider sphere of life,--but among an alien people, and under a northern
sun.
And so the true aim of the study of history in the elementary school is
not the realization of its utilitarian, its cultural, or its
disciplinary value. It is not a mere assimilation of facts concerning
historical events, nor the memorizing of dates, nor the picturing of
battles, nor the learning of lists of presidents,--although each of
these factors has its place in fulfilling the function of historical
study. The true function of national history in our elementary schools
is to establish in the pupils' minds those ideals and standards of
action which differentiate the American people from the rest of the
world, and especially to fortify these ideals and standards by a
description of the events and conditions through which they developed.
It is not the facts of history that are to be applied to the problems of
life; it is rather the emotional attitude, the point of view, that comes
not from memorizing, but from appreciating, the facts. A mere fact has
never yet had a profound influence over human conduct. A principle that
is accepted by the head and not by the heart has never yet stained a
battle field nor turned the tide of a popular election. Men act, not as
they think, but as they feel, and it is not the idea, but the ideal,
that is important in history.