The Teaching of History | Page 4

correctly.
Students should be encouraged to keep their envelope of note paper always at hand during recitation and while reading. The habit of jotting down facts, opinions, statistics, comparisons, and contradictions while they are being read is most desirable and worthy of cultivation. The student should be taught the wisdom of keeping his notes in a neat, legible, and easily available form. Shorthand methods should be discouraged. With a little tactful direction early in the year, the student may be led to form a most useful habit. The greater the proportion of intelligent note-taking that is done without compulsion, the better. No more notes should be required than the teacher can honestly look over, correct, and grade. It is better to require no notes at all than to accept careless, superficial inaccuracies as honest work. One curse of high school history teaching is the tendency of young teachers trained in college history classes to assign more work than the student can honestly do or the teacher properly correct.
As has already been intimated, history notes should not be kept in a book. The required notes should be kept on separate sheets of paper. The topics should be clearly indicated at the top of each sheet. The authorities used in arriving at the answer should always be given, with the volume, chapter, and page. The notes on related topics should be put into an envelope and properly labeled. After the recitation the student can make any necessary corrections in his notes without spoiling their appearance. He will simply substitute a new sheet for the old. If the teacher discovers in his periodic examination of the notes that some of the matter asked for has not been properly covered or that errors have not been corrected, the notes needing revision can be detained for use in a conference with the student, while the others are returned. If at any time after completing his high school work the student desires to use the data contained in his notes or to add to them matter which he may later read, they are in available form. For convenience and neatness, for present use, and future reference this device is far superior to the formal notebook. It has the further advantage of accustoming the student to the method of note-taking which will be required of those who go to college.
It would save much valuable time, at present frequently wasted in writing useless notes, if the teacher constantly squared his notebook requirements with questions such as these:--
1. Is the notebook work as I am conducting it calculated to develop the habit of critical reading?
2. Does the time spent in writing up notes justify itself by fixing in the child's mind new and really relevant information not given in the text?
3. Is it teaching students to combine facts, opinions, and statistics, to form conclusions really their own?
4. Is the amount of work required reasonable when it is remembered that the child has three other subjects to prepare, that he is from thirteen to eighteen years of age, and more or less unfamiliar with a library?
5. Am I able carefully and punctually to correct all the notes required?
Whatever the method the teacher thinks best to be used should be explained early in the course and thereafter the student should be held scrupulously responsible for such requirements as are made.
Instruction in the use of the library and indexes Having discussed with the class the questions assigned on the day of enrollment and explained the method of study recommended for their use, it will be well for the teacher to devote some time to instruction in the use of the library. It is possible that the older classes will require very little of this, but there are few classes where an hour, at least, cannot well be spent in a discussion of indexes, titles, and relative value of the works on various subjects. This hour need not be the regular recitation period. A session before or after school could be devoted to the purpose. The teacher's instruction, however, will be greatly assisted if the students are asked to prepare answers before coming to class to such questions as the following:--
1. How much previous work have you done in the library?
2. Of what use do you think the library should be to you in the course you are just entering?
3. What is a source book? Of what use are source books?
4. What source books on this period of history are in the library?
5. What do you think will be the best references for questions on the artistic, industrial, political, social, economic, and military phases of the history you are about to study?
6. What encyclopedias and works of general reference are in your library?
The preparation of answers to such questions as these will present to