The Teaching of History

The Teaching of History

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Hartwell
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Title: The Teaching of History
Author: Ernest C. Hartwell
Release Date: January 3, 2005 [eBook #14577]
Language: English
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THE TEACHING OF HISTORY
by
ERNEST C. HARTWELL, M.A.
Superintendent of Schools, Petoskey, Mich.
Riverside Educational Monographs Edited by Henry Suzzallo Professor
of the Philosophy of Education Teachers College, Columbia University
Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, New York and Chicago The
Riverside Press Cambridge
1913

CONTENTS
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
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 school
and the upper grammar grades. It is directly concerned with the
teaching methods to be employed in the history period. The author
assumes the limiting conditions that surround classroom instruction of
the present day; he also takes for granted the teacher's sympathy with
modern aims in history instruction. All discussions of purpose and
content are therefore subordinated to a clear presentation of the details
of effective teaching technique.
The reader into whose hands this volume falls will be deeply interested
in the ideals of teaching implied in the concrete suggestions given in
the following pages, for after all the value of any system of special
methods rests, not merely on its apparent and immediate psychological
effectiveness, but also on the social purposes which it is devised to
serve. It must be recognized at the outset that history has a social
purpose. However much university teaching may be interested in truth
for its own sake, an interest necessarily basic to the service of all other
ends, the teaching of the lower public schools must take into account
the relevancy of historical fact to current and future problems which
concern men and women engaged in the common social life. So the
elementary and secondary school teachers of the more progressive sort
recognize that the way in which historical truths are selected and
related to one another determines two things: (1) Whether our group
experiences as interpreted in history will have any intelligent effect
upon men's appreciations of current social difficulties, and (2) whether
history will make a more vital appeal to youth at school.
Certainly children, whose interests arise not alone from their innate
impulses, but also from the world in which they have lived from the
beginning, will be eager to know the past that is of dominant concern to

the present. It is clear gain in the psychology of instruction if history is
a socially live thing. The children will be more eager to acquire
knowledge; they will hold it longer, because it is significant; and they
will keep it fresh after school days are over because life will recall and
review pertinent knowledge again and again. There can be no
separation between the dominant social interests of community life and
effective pedagogical procedure; the former in large part determines the
latter.
Such educational reforms in history teaching as have already won
acceptance confirm the existence of this vital relation between current
social interests and the learning process. The barren learning of names
and dates has long since been supplanted by a study of sequences
among events. The technical details of wars and political
administrations have given way to a study of wide economic and social
movements in which battles and laws are merely overt results
reinforcing the current of change. History, once a self-inclosed school
discipline, has undergone an intellectual expansion which takes into
account all the aspects of life which influence it, making geographical,
economic, and biographical materials its aids. All these and many other
minor changes attest the fact that a vital mode of instruction always
tends to accompany that view of history which regards the study of the
past as a revelation of real social life.
The author's suggestions will, therefore, be of distinct value to at least
two groups of history teachers. Those who believe in the larger uses of
history teaching, so much argued of late, will find here the procedures
that will express the ideals and obtain the results they seek. Those who
are not yet ready to accept modern