The Teaching of History Part 3

_Work at the blackboard_

The first five minutes may profitably be spent at the board, each member of the cla.s.s being asked to write a complete answer to one of the a.s.signed questions. Whatever may happen later in the recitation each student has had at least this much of an opportunity for self-expression, and his work should be neat, workmanlike, complete, and accurate. By this device the alert teacher will secure in the first five minutes of the recitation hour a fairly accurate idea of each student's preparation, the weak spots in his understanding of the lesson, and the errors to be corrected. He may even be able to record a grade for the work done.

_Special reports_

The cla.s.s having taken their seats, the next order of business should be the reports on special topics a.s.signed for the purpose of making the period of history under discussion more interesting and vital. As has been said, these reports should not be read, but delivered by the pupil facing the cla.s.s. The cla.s.s should be encouraged to ask questions on the report when finished and the student responsible for the report should be expected to answer any reasonable inquiry. If other students are able to contribute to the topics reported on, they should be encouraged to do so. Let the teacher be sure that he has sounded the depths of the students' information and curiosity before he himself discusses the report. If the device of reports delivered in cla.s.s is to justify itself, the matter contained in them must be so arranged and discussed that the whole cla.s.s receives real benefit. The ingenious teacher will be able to establish a tradition in his course for a careful preparation and critical discussion of these reports. The rivalry of students for excellence in this work is not difficult to stimulate. A premium should be put on criticism which finds mentioned in the characterization qualities inconsistent with the facts recorded in the text, or omissions which the facts of the text seem to justify.

_Fundamental principles of good questioning_

It is not likely that the teacher will find it advisable to require reports at every recitation nor that the reports and their discussion will consume, at the most, longer than ten or fifteen minutes of any cla.s.s period. There must always be time for direct oral questioning on the facts of the lesson; questioning that will test the student's memory, ability to a.n.a.lyze, and powers of expression. Certain principles are fundamental to good questioning in any recitation.

1. The questions should be brief.

2. They should be prepared by the teacher before coming to recitation. This will insure rapidity. A vast deal of time is lost by the unfortunate habit possessed by many teachers of never having the next question ready to use.

3. They should precede the name of the pupil required to answer it.

4. They should not be leading questions to which the pupil can guess the answers.

5. They should be grammatically stated with but one possible interpretation.

6. Except for purposes of rapid review they should not be answerable with yes or no.

7. They should be asked in a voice loud enough to be heard by all the cla.s.s, and only once.

8. They should be asked in no regular order, but nevertheless in such a way that every member of the cla.s.s will have a chance to recite.

_Some additional suggestions for teachers of history_

There are additional suggestions particularly applicable to the teacher of history.

1. In all the questioning remember the purposes of the recitation.

Ask questions knowing exactly what you wish as an answer. There is no time for aimless or idle questioning.

2. Inquire frequently as to the books used in preparation of the lesson. Let no allusion or statement in the text go unexplained.

Let none of the author's conclusions or opinions go unchallenged. Ask the student for inconsistencies, inaccuracies, or contradictions in the text. Put a premium on their discovery.

Insist on the student's authority for statements other than those given in the text.

3. Do not use the heavy-typed words frequently found at the head of the paragraph or the topical heads furnished by the text, if it can be avoided. The pupil should not be allowed to remember his history by its location in the text.

4. Be sure that the cla.s.s have an opportunity to recite on the questions a.s.signed for their advance preparation. Nothing is more discouraging to a student than carefully to prepare the work required and then fail of an opportunity either to recite upon or to discuss it.

5. Discover the tastes, shortcomings, and abilities of your individual students and direct your future questions accordingly. There will usually be in the cla.s.s the boy who is glib without being accurate. He should be questioned on definite facts. There will be the student whose a.n.a.lysis of events is good, but whose powers of description are poor. Adapt your questions to his special need. There will be the pupil with the tendency to memorize the text _verbatim_. There will be the student who knows the facts of the lesson, but who fails to remember the sequence of events--the kind who never can tell whether the Exclusion Bill came before or after the Restoration.

There will be the usual amount of specialized tastes, curiosity, timidity, laziness, and rattle-brained thinking. The questioning should probe these peculiarities, and stimulate the pupil's ambition to improve his preparation at its weakest point.

Needless to say the questions should not be asked with the daily idea of making the pupil fail. Like any other surgical instrument the question probe should be used skillfully and with a proper motive. It would be as great an error to bend your questions continually away from the student's special tastes and abilities as to be perpetually guided by them.

6. The bulk of the teacher's attention should be given neither to the few exceptionally able students nor to the few very poor pupils. It is to the average normal boy and girl that the most of the questioning should be directed. The brilliant student should be called on sufficiently to retain his interest and to set a standard of excellence for the cla.s.s. He should be given the most difficult of the a.s.signments of outside work and if necessary an additional number of them. As to the few pupils whom the teacher deems exceptionally poor, it may be said that the effect of questioning should never be to discourage the pupil who has made an honest effort at preparation. During the early part of the course the efforts of the teacher may well be directed to asking the backward student questions to which he can make reasonably satisfactory answers. By saving the student from the daily humiliation of failure before the cla.s.s, and by tactfully encouraging him to greater effort, the teacher may shortly discover that the poor pupil is far from hopeless.

7. Do not allow your questions to consume a disproportionate amount of time with details. Until very recently in all our history teaching, battles have been exalted to a place immeasurably greater than their importance. We are coming to see that the fighting is one of the least important things in the war. The causes and results, the financial, political, and social effects now absorb our attention. One or two battles in a course may profitably be studied in detail, particularly in the history of our own country, but in the press of considerations far more interesting and vital, it is a waste of time to give more than a moment's notice to the remainder. Student descriptions of battles are bound to be stereotyped. The ordinary textbook describes each of the thousand battles of the world in about the same fifty words.

8. Let some of the questions be directed towards cultivating the student's powers of oral description. History is not altogether a matter of a.n.a.lysis or generalization. There can scarcely be a.s.signed a lesson in history that does not contain events which lend themselves to dramatic description. Their recital should be made the occasion of the student's best efforts in this direction. Let the pupils be taught to use adjectives and adverbs. Break down the barrier of listlessness or fear or self-consciousness which keeps the student from rendering a graphic and thrilling account of great events.

9. Let the questions from day to day develop the continuity of history. Avoid questioning that fails to unite the events of previous lessons with the one being studied. Bring out the connection of the past and the present. Slavery existed in America for two hundred years before the Civil War was fought.

Your teaching of those two centuries of history should be so conducted that when the Civil War is finally reached, the cla.s.s can tell the process by which anti-slavery sentiment was finally crystallized. The hiatus between the mobbing of Garrison in Boston and the extraordinary contribution of Ma.s.sachusetts to the Northern army should be bridged, not by a heroic question or two when the war is finally reached, but by a daily attention to the events which effected the metamorphosis.

10. If the answer to your question requires the use of a map, ask it in such a way that the student can talk and use the map at the same time. The geographical provisions of a treaty, the routes of explorers, the grants of commercial companies, campaigns, or military frontiers should all be recited in this way. A wall map with simply the outline of the territory, with its rivers, will be of considerable a.s.sistance in testing the accuracy of the student's geographical knowledge. While reciting, let him locate with chalk or pointer the cities, arbitrary boundary lines, and routes he finds it necessary to mention in his recitation. It will require special attention early in the course to teach students the necessity for preparation of this sort. Like everything else, map work should be reasonable in its requirements. A knowledge of geography is imperative to the correct understanding of history, and the indifference or ignorance of teachers should never excuse inattention to this vital necessity. On the other hand, however, it is equally reprehensible to require of high school students the labored preparation of maps in the drawing of which hours of valuable time are spent in searching for places of trivial importance and small historical value. Map work in a high school history course should require no more than geographical accuracy in locating boundaries, routes, and places really vital to the history of the people being studied. If it does more than this it usurps time disproportionate to its value.

V

VARIOUS MODES OF REVIEW

_The place of drill in the history recitation_

We have long since learned the folly of spending very many of the minutes of a recitation in drilling students in dates, outlines, and charts. Work of this sort never made a recitation vital; never inspired a student with enthusiasm for historical inquiry; never really dispelled the fog which surrounds, for the student, the cabinets and const.i.tutions, battles and boundaries, declarations and decrees, so briefly treated in the text.

_Good reviews will develop a knowledge of the sequence of events_

But it may be seriously questioned whether many teachers, in their zeal to escape the over-emphasis of dates, have not gone to the extreme of neglecting them altogether. That a student should remember sufficient dates to fix in his mind the sequence of important events is hardly open to question. That he can never do so without some special attention to dates is equally indisputable. Without doubt, drill in important dates is necessary, but it should be so conducted as to take but little time.

Each day the teacher has indicated the dates worthy to be remembered and has been careful to select the landmarks of history. He has called attention to the various collateral circ.u.mstances which might a.s.sist to fix the dates in the child's mind. The student has kept his list of dates in the back of his text or in some convenient place of reference.

Once a week for three minutes the teacher gives the cla.s.s a rapid review on the dates contained in the list. Occasionally the cla.s.s are sent to the board and asked to write the dates of the reigns of the English monarchs from William down to the point which the cla.s.s has reached, or the Presidents in their order, or some other similar exercise calculated to give a backbone to the history being studied. The cla.s.s will know that such a review is liable to be given at any time. They will endeavor to be prepared. The result will be that with the expenditure of a few minutes at intervals in rapid review, history will cease to be a spineless narrative and become for the student an orderly procession of events. Drill in dates is only one method to this end. There may be a rapid review in battles, generals, wars, treaties, proclamations, and inventions. Such exercises encourage the cla.s.sification of facts and stimulate fluency of expression. It is of the highest importance for the student so to arrange in his mind what he has learned in recitation that he can call to his command at a second's notice the fact, date, or ill.u.s.tration he desires. There will be many times in his school and college career when such an ability will be indispensable; in business or the professions it is an invaluable a.s.set, infinitely more useful than the history itself. It will be well for the teacher to inquire: "What am I doing to cultivate such an ability in my students?"

_They will give a view of the whole subject_

Few teachers will deny that too little time is spent in giving the student a general view of the whole subject, either in its entirety or in its various phases. The text has been studied by chapters or by months or by movements. The history as a whole has never been seen. By the time the student has reached the "Aldrich Currency Plan" in American history he has forgotten all about the experiments with the first United States Bank. He could no more outline the financial history of the United States as given in his text than he could outline the industrial or political history of the American people. And yet he has studied the facts given in his textbook; he has supplemented the text by his work in the library, and in the recitation; he has done everything that may reasonably be expected of him, except to a.s.semble his historical information and review it as a whole.

If the student in American history is asked to go to the board at intervals and write an outline for the work covered on such topics as the following, he will come much nearer understanding the progress of our people:--

1. History of the tariff.

2. Political parties and principles for which they stood.

3. Things that crystallized Northern sentiment against slavery.

4. Reasons for the unification of the South.

5. Diplomatic relations of the United States.

6. Additions of territory.