Part 4

The value of periodicals and current literature for work in history should be illustrated and the use of Poole's Index and the Readers Guide explained.

The class should be acquainted with the rules of the library and cautioned against the misuse of books. The necessity of leaving reference books where all the class can use them should be made apparent.

Direction in the use of the library, like instruction in the method of study, is a prerequisite to the best results in high school history classes, for no matter how conscientious the teacher, the recitation will be deadly if the student has no working knowledge of the library nor proper method of preparation. A class unable to ask intelligent questions about the work is not ready for the presentation of additional matter by the teacher. It is no difficult matter for a teacher to entertain his class for an hour with interesting incidents of the period in which the lesson occurs. A history teacher who cannot talk interestingly for an hour on any of the great periods of history has surely missed his calling. But to keep a class quiet, to retain their attention, to amuse and entertain, is far from making history vital. If the recitation is to be really vital, the students must do most of the talking, the criticizing, and the questioning. There can be none of these worth while without proper preparation.

III

THE ASSIGNMENT OF THE LESSON

Careful assignment will reveal to the student the relation of geography and history

The recitation can never hope to achieve its maximum helpfulness unless the lesson be intelligently assigned. The work required must be reasonable in amount, and not so exacting as to discourage interest. Daily direction to look up unfamiliar words, expressions, and allusions must be given until the habit becomes fixed. Warning against possible geographical misconceptions should be given when necessary, together with directions to use the map for places, routes, and boundaries. A few questions asked in advance, with the purpose of bringing out the relation of the geography to the history in the lesson, will be of great assistance. For example, if the class are to study the Louisiana Purchase, the full significance of that revolutionary event will be made much clearer if the student is asked to prepare answers before coming to class to such questions as the following:--

1. What States are included in the purchase?

2. What is its area? How does it compare with the area of the original thirteen States?

3. What geographical reasons caused Napoleon to sell it?

4. What influence did the purchase have on our retention of the territory east of the Mississippi? Why?

5. How many people live to-day in the territory included in the purchase?

His power of analysis and criticism will be stimulated

A lesson should be so assigned that the student will read the text with his eye critically open to inconsistencies, contradictions, and inaccuracies. With a text of six hundred pages, and with a hundred and eighty recitations in which to cover them, it is not too much to expect that the average of three or four pages daily shall be studied so thoroughly that the student can analyze and summarize each day's lesson. The teacher should not make such analysis in advance of the recitation, but he should so assign the lesson that the student will be prepared to give one when he comes to class. A word in advance by the teacher will prompt the student who is studying the American Revolution, to classify its causes as direct and indirect, economic and political, social and religious. There is no difficulty in finding good authorities who disagree as to the effect on America of the English trade restrictions. Callendar's Economic History of the United States quotes five of the best authorities on this point, and covers the case in a few pages. A reference by the teacher to this or some other authority will bring out a lively discussion on the justice of the American resistance. Let the class be asked to account for the colonial opposition to the Townshend Acts, when the Stamp Act Congress had declared that the regulation of the Colonies' external trade was properly within the powers of Parliament. Let the class be asked to explain a statement that the Declaration of Independence does not mention the real underlying causes of the Revolution. A few suggestions and advanced questions of this sort will stimulate a critical analysis of the statements in the text, and send the student to class keen for an intelligent discussion.

Ordinarily, when a class is averaging three or four pages of the text daily, it is an error for the teacher to point out in advance certain dates and statistics that need not be memorized. Such selection should be left to the student. During the recitation the teacher will discover what dates, statistics, and other matter the student has selected as worthy to be memorized, and if correction is necessary it may then be made. It dulls the edge of the pupil's enthusiasm to be told in advance that some of the text is not worthy to be remembered. Furthermore such instruction does nothing to develop the student's sense of historical proportion, for it substitutes the judgment of the teacher for that of the pupil.

Advance questions asking explanation of statements made in the text, or by other authors dealing with the same period, insure that the lesson will be read understandingly and that the author's statements will be carefully analyzed. Such declarations as the following are illustrations of statements whose explanation might profitably be required in advance:--

1. "The Constitution was extracted by necessity from a reluctant people."

2. "Oregon was a make-weight for Texas."

3. "The greatest evil of slavery was that it prevented the South from accumulating capital."

4. "The day that France possesses New Orleans we must marry ourselves to the British fleet."

5. "The cause of free labor won a substantial triumph in the Missouri Compromise."

6. "The second war with England was not one of necessity, policy, or interest on the part of the Americans; it was rather one of party prejudice and passion."

The conditions in other countries will add to his comprehension of the facts in the lesson

In so far as the next lesson requires an understanding of the history or conditions of another country, the attention of the class should be directed in advance to such necessity. Special references or brief reports may be advisable. A few well-selected advance questions will send the class to recitation prepared to discuss what otherwise the teacher must explain. A few questions on the character of James II, his ideals of government, the chief causes of the revolution of 1688, and its most important results will do much to explain the colonial resistance to Andros. A few questions designed to bring out the imperative necessity of English resistance to Napoleon will make clear the hostile commercial decrees, impressment, and interference with the rights of neutral ships. Such questions reduce the necessity of explanation by the teacher to a minimum.

His disposition to study intensively will be encouraged

If the teacher expects the class to deal more intensively than the text with the matters discussed in the lesson, a few advance questions will be of great assistance. Suppose, for example, that the text contents itself with saying that for political reasons the first United States Bank was not rechartered, and shortly after informs the reader that the second United States Bank was rechartered because the State banks had suspended specie payments. The student may or may not be curious about the failure of the first bank to receive a new charter, the operation of State banks, or why they suspended payment in 1814. If he has been properly taught, he probably will be, but if the teacher wishes to discuss these considerations in detail at the next recitation it will be infinitely better to have the facts contributed by the class than for the teacher to do the reciting. It is quite possible that the individual answers to advance questions assigned with such a purpose will be incomplete, but the interest of the class will be incalculably greater if they themselves furnish the bulk of the additional matter required. Collectively the class will usually secure complete answers to reasonable questions. The teacher has his opportunity in supplying such important facts as the students fail to find.

Until the student may reasonably be expected to know the books of the library having to do with his subject, the teacher in giving out an advance lesson should mention by author and title the books most helpful in the preparation of assigned questions; otherwise the student in a perfectly sincere effort to do the work assigned may spend an hour in search of the proper book.

It may be urged that this search is a valuable experience, but it is obviously too costly. As the year advances and the pupil learns more and more about the uses of books and methods of investigation increasingly less specific instruction as to sources should be given by the teacher. Early in the year, with four lessons to prepare daily, the pupil cannot afford an hour simply to search for a book. He needs that hour for preparation of other work, and if by some fortunate conjunction of circumstances his other work is not sufficiently exacting to require it, he cannot hope to appear in history class with a well-prepared lesson if an hour of his time has been spent in simply looking for a book.