Some Difficulties in Teaching History in a Small High School

Author(s): J. T. McManis
Source: The School Review , Nov., 1900, Vol. 8, No. 9 (Nov., 1900), pp. 535-539
Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1074987

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SOME DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING HISTORY IN A
SMALL HIGH SCHOOL

IT is a fact that most persons who have not ha

in teaching history consider it one of the easies
teach. High-school trustees have told me that it
ter about the history ; anyone could manage that
worth while to bother about getting a specialist for
A man must be hired for high-school work spec
for the Latin, the mathematics, or the science, but
be divided among the teachers as a sort of pie
my experience has been that "so many proble
demand attention; so difficult is it to hold the pu
facts, and yet help him to see that he is studying
great drama of human life which has its perpet
entrances; so hard a task is it to stimulate the imagi
one is seeking to cultivate the reason and judgm
highest teaching power is necessary to complete
The difficulties discussed in this paper are those a
personal experience in a small high school. They
without a remedy for themselves, unless they m
cure apparent. They are confined to the teaching
a school where the pupils are drawn from the rural
do not apply to larger cities where the course
through all the grades and the high school, a
teachers are specialists in the various department
schools where only two or three teachers are emp
of the work there are difficulties for the teacher
history, to overcome. Consequently the points h
are difficulties under which we are laboring and are
from an outside standpoint. They have been discu
ways in the numerous "studies" on elementary e
history teaching; but the answers have not been
tions for the difficulties in question.
I History in Schools, Report of the Committee of Seven, p. 114.
535

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536 THE SCHOOL REVIEW

The first difficulty is the general one of intr

minds into historical study; the second, the lim
torical material and the teacher, and third, the pre
history.
" Perhaps the most difficult problem for the teacher is to bring
home to the minds of the pupils how differently other people
have looked at things." It is the difficulty of giving "that
historical mindedness"2 to the students of high-school age. It
is the problem of making the pupils conscious of that "greater
sense of reality" 3 in referring to the past life of people. Every
teacher of history has felt how difficult it is to carry the minds
of pupils into past life and show them from the facts and expres-
sions of men of other times the unfolding of human spirit and
human institutions. The mind can hardly appreciate the time
when what is was not, and work out the steps by which it came
to be. The pupil at first invariably criticises past ages from their
failures in the light of the present. The longest stride forward
is made when the student views things from the other's stand-
point, and puts himself in the other's place; when he realizes
that men of the past were like himself, striving for various ends,
and working under certain limitations and advantages which he
has not.

This difficulty is a general one and is more or less true in all

schools, large or small. However it is likely that it is more
apparent in the small schools than in the larger, because the
pupils in the small schools have not had the basis for history that
those of the larger schools have had and there is not the same
opportunity to consult good libraries and to have teachers who
can devote all their time to this specialty.
And this brings me to speak of the second difficulty growing
out of conditions in the smaller high schools, the libraries, or
historical material, and the teacher. If a specialist4 in the sub-
ject of history found it difficult to get good "original material"
HART, Source Book, Introduction, p. xix.
DICEY, History in Schools, p. 16.
3 University of Pennsylvania, Translations and Reprints, p. 21.
4 MARY SHELDON BARNES, Studies in Historical Method, p. 138.

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 SOME DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING HISTORY 537

into the hands of pupils, how much more does t

secondary school with a number of classes in v
his hands find it next to impossible to get m
the dry bones of the text-book into the han
The "material" question does not settle itself
plan suggested in "Studies in European Histor
should attempt to follow such a bibliography a
the University of California for high-school
have a great deal of heavy material on han
thirds of it worthless, short of University cour
is becoming an easier matter to procure mater
venient form prepared especially for second
text-books are being written that are of mor
have found a partial answer to this difficulty, bu
culty.
The teacher in the small secondary school cannot devote all
his time to this specialty. Where is he to find time for his
own preparation of the daily lesson if he has seven or eight
recitations to conduct? And this is not an ideal case but an

actuality in schools where there are from two to four te

This difficulty seems beyond solution as long as the sm
schools attempt to do the work adequate for entrance in
University. With but a limited amount of material and tim
teacher in the small high school must have had an excee
good preparation and must be able to present the work
out being a constant student of the subject if he makes any
cess of his teaching at all. He surely cannot fill his
with the zeal of research if he has no time for research him
but must spend all of his time "hearing lessons," and his
are likely to leave school with no abiding interests in th
ject so full of inspiration.
The third difficulty under which the teacher in the smal
school labors is the condition of the pupils entering from the
elementary schools. This is not meant to be a condemnation
of all elementary school work, for in the most of cases it is
good. The same condition may exist to some extent in the
1 FLING and CALDWELL, Studies in European History, p. 23, 24.

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538 THE SCHOOL REVIEW

larger schools, but I think it is true to a greate

rural high schools. The universities have forced
schools the necessity of doing more work and
more thoroughly, which is valuable for the pupils,
sure has not always exerted itself in the best di
elementary school. This may be only a local ex
suspect it is general from the statement " An in
to history in the public schools of the different
the conclusion that the instruction at present give
ject leaves much to be desired."' The pupils of w
had only the preparation obtained from the stu
series text-book in history through the seventh and
and in this study the work was generally carried on
to the county examination passed at the end of t
A study of the questions used in these examinat
fact that they require only the most formal memo
Take a class of pupils from such a preparation
year high school and examine your material
begin the course in Greek history. In the fir
understand how to answer definite questions a
can recite well as long as allowed to memorize an
word for word, but they cannot work out the topi
language. In the second place, there is no gra
tents of paragraphs and chapters. They have no
the use of books, for they have used only one
the third place, there is never a beam of pleasur
nition of a familiar name or person or story in thi
hard names and places. It is all " Greek" to th
no known interests to which to tie the threads o
military and social affairs. Of course this is
pupils wherever you begin with them outside of th
try's history. The myths, the stories of heroes-
Heracles, of Socrates, of Leonidas, and of any of
ties around whom the living interests of these t
cannot be used, for they have no knowledge of
quently the Greek (or Roman or any other) his
I History in Schools, Com. of Seven, p. 158, 159.

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 SOME DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING HISTORY 539

the rather formal study of military, political, and c

affairs, for we have not time to go back over the
should have been learned long before. A pupil can
with Holm's History of Greece before he has seen
lives of Plutarch, for instance. All the interest and life are
taken out of the work because of this absence of what should

have been given in earlier years when the child was intere
in this kind of thing. The content of his history can be
able only as it is filled with characters with like affectio
motives, and thoughts as himself.
"We desire to draw so near to historical persons, scenes
occasions as to stand in their presence, to so exercise the i
ination as to become the eye-witness of the facts."' But t
persons and scenes and occasions have not been approache
before the pupil entered the high school, and it is with the g
est difficulty that the teacher undertakes it in the high sc
It is not desired that the pupils become historians in the grad
nor that they learn all about handling books and workin
topics, but it does seem that we might expect them to en
our first year high school with a few centers of interest e
lished, not only in American history, but in the general histo
of the race. It seems that they might have had some little
pendence given them in the use of the books, and that
work might have been begun in such a way that the high s
could take it up and carry it on to some definiteness and d
These three lines indicate the difficulties we are strugg
with in the small high schools, especially in those of Califo
J. T. McMANIS
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

I MCMURRY, Method in Lit. and Hist., p. 71.

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