II THE HISTORY TEACHER'S PATRIOTIC OPPORTUNITY The last quarter century has brought some momentous changes in elementary and secondary school curriculums. So radical have many of these changes been that in some cases they have amounted to a violent purging. Subjects have come and gone. Emphasis has shifted from this to that. The trend has been away from the classical ideals of the New England grammar school toward the more practical ideals of the modern school. In fact, in many schools today any subject which does not give promise of immediately functioning in the life of the immature student is so far out of favor that it is dropt from the course or, at best, merely tolerated. In all of these ups and downs in the courses of study it is interesting to note that history remains. But few of our most radical educators have the temerity to even suggest that it be dropt or curtailed. On the other hand, the great majority of our teachers merely take it for granted that some history should be taught to children and are unable to give the several sound reasons for retaining it. Like geography and civics, history has been over-formalized. It has been slow to respond to modern demands. It is safe to say that history is as poorly taught as any subject in our school curriculums. Among the reasons for this I would cite the following: 1. A lack of appreciation of history as the throbbing record of the thoughts and feelings of people, rather than a mere chronological outline of facts, dates and empty names. 2. Lack of preparation on the part of teachers, and their consequent dependence upon a single textbook. 3. Textbooks which are mere outline-narratives, and which over-emphasize political phases of life to the neglect of other very important aspects of the real life of the people. 4. Textbooks which are written from the wrong point of view. Many of our Atlantic seaboard writers have failed to see that the true point of view in American history is not the growth of institutions on the Atlantic coast, but rather the westward movement and development, just as in English history the true point of view is not the life of a few millions of Europeans on a little island but rather the expansion of England to the ends of earth. 5. Textbooks which ignore the importance of sectional develop ment. Nevertheless, history, tho responding but slowly to the spirit of renaissance which is sweeping thru our whole social fabric, is surely responding. History teachers—especially those who have come into the ranks of late years-are looking up and around. They are not satisfied. They know that history has within it elements which may be made powerful factors in the work of socialization and nationalization of our people. They know that biased and incompetent writers and teachers of this subject have either hidden or warped its truths, or else smothered them with a multiplicity of bare, chronological facts. They realize and more than ever realize in this time of international conflict-that the responsibilities of the historian and teacher have not been appreciated, and that the time has come when the incompetent and unsocialized and unnationalized members of their group must be brought to the bar and made to "show cause." They see more clearly every day that history must be rejuvenated -that in our polyglot population it must be made a great socializer and that the spirit of nationality which was born in the hearts and minds of Americans long ago and which has swept into the consciousness of all true Americans since, must be injected into the brain and blood of every new crop of native-born, foreign-born and children of foreign parents. They see history as a "great necessity," rather than as a dead thing to be tolerated merely. But as yet these writers and teachers are not of one opinion as to what needs to be done to rejuvenate the subject, and make that subject perform its great functions. Some of the new thinkers are urging that we Americanize all history as the Germans have Germanized it in their schools. Some urge that we go so far as to bend the truths in the story of our national development in the direction of a false pride in American institutions and achievements. Some would reveal all of the truth in that story, but reveal it with such spirit and vigor that into the minds of the pupils would be built a real conception of our great weaknesses as well as the great, virile forces which have given birth to the institutions in which we justly take pride. Furthermore, the present war is clearing our vision. Along with others, writers and teachers of history are becoming aware of a widening of our American horizon that is nothing short of tremendous. Professor Fish (University of Wisconsin) was right in his statement at the recent meeting of the Wisconsin Teachers' Association. "This war has forced us to change our point of view in dealing with the history of the Monroe Doctrine. The policy of American isolation and freedom from European entanglements is gone. History teachers must not ignore that." As urged by Professor M. M. Ames of Stevens Point (Wis.) Normal School, in a recent conference of normal school history teachers, the time is now ripe for putting into our schools live courses in World History which shall emphasize especially the history of our relations with other nations. Mr. Ames contended, and rightly so, that many of our history teachers and writers have made the grave mistake of teaching that our United States has usually been sorely mistreated by such countries as England. Points of clash have been over-strest. Our international relations should by all means be truthfully revealed. This means that our development as a world power shall be strest and that we shall point out how other nations such as England have proven themselves friends of ours rather than emphasizing them as our enemies, as history teachers have been prone to do. Along with these forward-looking teachers and historians are those who believe that the work of rejuvenation must in clude more and more detail of the life-story of the American people. They feel, and feel rightly, that many teachers and writers, either thru ignorance or thru slavery to custom, or thru a desire to save time and space, have failed to get the most interesting, most virile, most important conceptions emphatically to the student. They feel that our textbooks and our teachers' minds are full of generalizations understandable to the scholar only. They feel that the westward movement, which, by the way, has been really the greatest single factor in the making of America, has been sorely neglected, that the simpler economic and social details of our history have often been all but omitted, and that, therefore, the student has been denied the knowledge of the rich heritage which the past has given him. What we want, we say, is more of the story of the plain people given with such vivid picturing that any child of America may easily place himself in the life of the past in the home, on the street, in the town meeting, in the legislative assembly, in the church, in the battle, on the farm, on the untamed frontier or in the surging currents of modern city life. History is of value chiefly because of the light it throws upon the present. If we are to understand the present and appreciate the privileges of the present we must live again the struggles, the sorrows, the hardships, the dangers, defeats and mistakes, the joys, the victories and the works of achievement out of which the present has come. In order to thus re-live history we must have brought before us vividly pictures of the people and the country in which they lived. These pictures must first of all be true pictures, and they must cover the wide range of activities in which the people engaged. They will tell us what folks were doing for a living; what they ate; what they wrought with their hands and tools; how they drest; how they fought enemies within and without the group; how they worked, played, worshipt, married, hewed, built, bought, sold, argued, traveled and cooperated in satisfying common needs-in short, how they lived. In and thru this story of how the plain people have subdued a raw continent and brought its great resources into the channels of trade in varied form and quality, runs the strong thread of the development of American Democracy and the jealous guarding of those priceless civil and political rights and privileges which ten generations of Americans have preserved to us. If American life is revealed in rich detail, instead of in the usual bare-boned fashion, American youth, foreign born or not, will learn to love it, with all its faults, and even fight for it not only in times of peace, but in such times of danger from without as that in which we now live. Lastly, there are those who believe that history may be rejuvenated by shaping up and teaching definite courses in state and local history. They believe that thru such history a paved path may be built into the larger past. This has much to commend it, especially in the material which it furnishes for stories in elementary history. These materials lie near at hand and are, therefore, more understandable to the child than stories of life in other sections, especially if the geographic and economic conditions in those other sections differ widely from those found in the home region. But commendable and desirable tho this may be, it should not be forgotten that there are pit-falls to be avoided in working up such a course. Not the least important is the danger that the student may fail to see that the state whose history he reads or hears is a political unit with artificial boundaries within which life developed not very differently-if differently in any important respects-from the life in other states in the same geographic region. Must we not see the necessity of building more national patriotism rather than more state patriotism? Must we not see that state history, as such, has no place and should have no place separate and apart from sectional history, but that state and local history as a segment of sectional and national history has a great place and function? The need of a real rejuvenation of history teaching in this country is a crying need. It is a crying need in every state. Its rejuvenation must come at the hands of the younger men |