A Guide to Methods and Observation in History | Page 4

by professors of philosophy in most of the universities from their founding.
(b) Yale had a professorship of ecclesiastical history in 1778-1795.
(c) Harvard established the first professorship in history (in the general sense of the term) in 1839, Jared Sparks being the first incumbent.
(d) Columbia University and the University of Michigan established chairs of history in 1857.
(e) Yale established a chair of history in 1865.
(f) The first seminary in history was established at the University of Michigan in 1869 by Prof. C. K. Adams.
(g) General history and ancient history were found in normal schools after about 1850.
(h) In secondary schools (first in academies, then later in high schools) history was taught as a separate study from about 1830. General history or ancient history received almost the sole emphasis, though English history was sometimes taught. In 1847 Harvard first began the practice of requiring history for admission.
(i) History work in elementary schools grew out of the study of geography, and became a separate study about 1845.
(j) Until about 1893 the only course given really serious attention in the high school was that of Ancient History in the classical course. The courses in General History, English History and American History were, for the most part, bookish, superficial, and devitalized.
(k) The Madison Conference (instituted by the N. E. A. in 1892) gave the first concerted impetus to the serious study of history in American public schools.
(l) The Report of the Committee of Ten of the N. E. A. in 1893 contains extensive and almost revolutionizing suggestions for improving the organization, study, and presentation of history in the schools.
(m) The Report of the Committee of Seven of the American Historical Association in 1896 supplemented the contemporary efforts at reform.
(n) The Report of the Committee of Five of the American Historical Association in 1907 embodied the best ideas which the decade had developed looking to further improvement of historical study and teaching.
(o) The Committee of Eight has still more recently sought to perfect the art of studying and teaching the subject.

VII. Values and Aims of History.
1. Psychological.
(a) It develops the power of constructive imagination through the visualizing of scenes, events, and characters, and the effort to put oneself back into the past.
(b) It trains the reasoning faculty through the necessity of analyzing data, seeking causes and effects, and following historical development wherever it may lead.
(c) It develops the power of associative memory through the necessity of bringing facts into their essential and definite relations.
(d) It trains the judgment, through requiring the mind to make estimates respecting
(1) The probability of the fact recorded.
(2) The possibility and probability of accurate statement on the part of the one recording the event.
(3) The efficiency of the adjustment of means to ends.
(4) The righteousness of the act.
(5) The motives and ideals that dominated the act.
(e) It develops the power of comparison through demanding attention to similarities and differences in motives, agents, means, processes, events, places, dates, and results.
(f) It develops the power of classification--of co?rdinating and subordinating data.
(g) It develops the habit of forming generalizations from detailed facts.
(h) It gives a real conception of the meaning of time, through the considerations of man's slow evolution in social relations.
(i) It gives ability to take a large view of life's affairs and interests,--to see things in their essential relations.
2. Social, Political, and Civic.
(a) It gives habits of analyzing the aims and motives of men, and the means they employ to attain their ends, i.e., it gives insight into character and hence makes social adjustment easier.
(b) It develops tolerance for the opinions, convictions, and ideals of others, and tends to prevent hard, dogmatic, and uncompromising judgments and attitudes.
(c) It gives appreciation of the civic and political institutions of to-day--their origin, development, and purposes--and hence teaches the rights and obligations that are inherent in citizenship.
(d) It inspires patriotism "through arousing noble emotions that revolve about inherited responsibilities." ["A study of the times that tried men's souls tends to form souls that are capable of enduring trial."--Hinsdale.]
(e) It reveals the slow evolutionary processes that operate in social life, and hence tends to encourage one to put himself in harmony with the laws of social evolution and to strive for social betterment while he at the same time is patient with existing conditions.
(f) It breaks down provincialism through revealing the relations, common traits, and interdependence of one community with another, and one nation with all other nations.
3. Moral and Religious.
(a) It habituates to weighing motives and actions as regards their righteousness.
(b) It implants ideals of personal character by disclosing the personal qualities and moral accomplishments of men and women who have, in large ways, affected history, and who have in consequence received lasting honor and renown.
(c) It teaches us to see something of the intangible forces that override personal preferences and hinder the direct application of principles