The Teaching of History | Page 5

the student some of the difficulties inevitable to his future library work and will send him to class prepared to ask intelligent questions. It will enable the teacher accurately to gauge how much his students already know about a library and its uses.
The value and advantage of library work should be carefully explained to the class. It is a great error to allow pupils to think of their library work as drudgery, assigned solely to keep them busy or to make the course difficult. There are too few boys to-day with a genuine love of books, partly no doubt due to the fact that a reference library has become for them, not a rich mine of interesting matter, but a hydra-headed interrogation point. A great good has been done the student who has been taught the pleasure of using books. Nor is such a thing impossible. Nothing gives greater satisfaction to the normal high school boy than to find an error in the text, the teacher's statements, or the map. He takes pleasure in confuting the statistics or judgments quoted in class, by others of opposite trend, encountered in his reading. He enjoys asking keen questions. If the student is told that the library work is for the purpose of cultivating his powers of investigation and adding to the matter in the text many interesting details; if the library requirements are reasonable and wisely directed; if he is given an opportunity to use the information he has gathered from his reading, his interest in books will steadily increase.
The teacher should explain the value of remembering accurately the titles and the authors of books used for reference. The silly habit of referring to an authority as "the book bound in green" or "the large book by what's his name" is easily prevented if taken in time.
The teacher should discover by assignments made in class what degree of proficiency in the use of an index is already possessed by his pupils. There are few classes where the use of an index is thoroughly understood. Time should be taken to demonstrate the quickest possible methods of finding what a book contains. The use of the catalogue and card index should be carefully explained and illustrated.
Attention should be called to the best sources on the various phases of the history to be studied. There ought to be no poor histories in the library, but if there are any to which the students have access, warning should be given against their use.
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