The Washington herald., 1921-01-09

COMMISSION, IS well within the
bounds of fact when he criticizes the past
methods of teaching history in the pub
lie schools. How much is due to the
American Historical Association for
changes for the better in teaching this
subject, we do not know.
If the association has had a con-
siderable part in this, it is entitled to
public appreciation. History has, as he
says, in most schools been made "a live
subject" 1t could be made much livelier in
most of them.
The war has been most useful in con-
verting many teachers from teaching his
tory wrong end to. After a smattering Of
American history in about the seventh
grade, it used to be permanently laid
aside along with geography.
What was given, also, was mainly to
impress the pupils with the wickedness of
Great Britain; how we had licked her
three times and could do it again. Ameri-
can history was an anti-British chip to
be worn on the shoulder of every true
American.
Having disposed of what might have
had a present and personal interest had
it been rightly taught, history was
dropped until the high school. The pupil
was then hurled back into the dusty,
mouldy, clammy past and from there
through college, got dabs of this, that
and the other, of Greek, Latin, English
and maybe something reaching back to
tradition, all wholly disconnected, unre-
lated, and so far as told irrelevant and
mmateriaL"
A boy in making toy discovered what
fractions were for" Many an adult boy,
IN reading of the war in Macedonia,
Thrace, at Galipol, in Asia Minor and
along the Adriatic, discovered the "why"
of history.
He ran across the names that brought
back school days. They were like child
hood playmates. He remembered them as
forgotten friends he had met when play
ing tag with the Greeks and Latins. He
was quite thrilled.
Then he began to wonder why history
had not been turned around and taught
the other end to. Why our own system
of government, our own laws, our own
customs, our today of immediate personal
interest, had not been the starting point
in American history. Why this had not
all been traced back to the revolution,
to the colonies and then across the ocean
into English history.
He wondered why history began with
ancient, then took medieval and then
modern. Why did the dark ages precede
the light ones; why did it not start with
the people of now, and find where they
came from and why, what was their heri-
tage and from where?
He discovered, perhaps, that history has
such a thing as sequence; that every
period had a meaning developed in a
subsequent period. He found that history
is inseparable from geography and geogra-
ply from history. That in fact pretty
much everything he had had in all his
school life was marvelously correlated
with history.
If he had CHANGED to inquire, he found
that now history includes current events
But that current events is still tackled
on without much rhyme or reason,
though it is the part the children like
best.
So he kept on wondering when if ever
current events would be the basis of
the beginning, the constant companion
and source of inspiration of every course
in history from our own back to the
Chaldeans.
Maybe this will come some day just
as in many schools geography begins
with the pupils own home town. But
strangely enough education moves slowly
in its methods, as slowly as Congress
changes in its attitude toward the schools
OF Washington.