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Riverside Educational Monographs
EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO
PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
THE TEACHING OF HISTORY
BY
ERNEST C. HARTWELL, M.A.
SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, PETOSKEY, MICH.
Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston, New York and Chicago
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1913
CONTENTS
I. SOME PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
II. HOW TO BEGIN THE COURSE
III. THE ASSIGNMENT OF THE LESSON
IV. THE METHOD OF THE RECITATION
V. VARIOUS MODES OF REVIEW
VI. THE USE OF WRITTEN REPORTS
VII. EXAMINATIONS AS TESTS OF PROGRESS
OUTLINE
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
This volume is offered as a guide to history teachers of the high schooland the upper grammar grades. It is directly concerned with the teachingmethods to be employed in the history period. The author assumes thelimiting conditions that surround classroom instruction of the presentday; he also takes for granted the teacher's sympathy with modern aimsin history instruction. All discussions of purpose and content aretherefore subordinated to a clear presentation of the details ofeffective teaching technique.
The reader into whose hands this volume falls will be deeply interestedin the ideals of teaching implied in the concrete suggestions given inthe following pages, for after all the value of any system of specialmethods rests, not merely on its apparent and immediate psychologicaleffectiveness, but also on the social purposes which it is devised toserve. It must be recognized at the outset that history has a socialpurpose. However much university teaching may be interested in truth forits own sake, an interest necessarily basic to the service of all otherends, the teaching of the lower public schools must take into accountthe relevancy of historical fact to current and future problems whichconcern men and women engaged in the common social life. So theelementary and secondary school teachers of the more progressive sortrecognize that the way in which historical truths are selected andrelated to one another determines two things: (1) Whether our groupexperiences as interpreted in history will have any intelligent effectupon men's appreciations of current social difficulties, and (2) whetherhistory will make a more vital appeal to youth at school.
Certainly children, whose interests arise not alone from their innateimpulses, but also from the world in which they have lived from thebeginning, will be eager to know the past that is of dominant concern tothe present. It is clear gain in the psychology of instruction