The History Teacher’s Magazine
Perhaps the most difficult question which now confronts the college teacher of history is the work of the first year of the college course. The problem is comparatively new, and becomes each year more serious. Twenty-five or thirty years ago the small amount of history taught in American colleges came in the junior or senior year, and was not organized into any regular curriculum. With the recent development of historical courses, however, the teaching of history has worked down into the sophomore and often into the freshman year, so that the teacher of the first course in history is not only charged with introducing students to college work in history, but must also take his share of the task of introducing them to college work in general. At the same time the enlargement of the curriculum and the improvement of instruction in history in many of our secondary schools result in sending to the colleges a body of students who have already some familiarity with history and cannot be treated in the same way as the great mass of freshmen. Moreover, the first college course in history in all our larger institutions attracts a considerable number of students, in some cases as many as four hundred, so that the management of a large class adds another element to the problem; and matters are further complicated by the fact that while some of these will continue their historical studies in later years, others must get from this course all the historical training which they will receive in college. I take it that no one pretends to have found the solution of these difficulties, and that what is at present likely to prove helpful is not dogmatic discussion so much as a comparison of the experience of different institutions.
The introductory course at Harvard, History 1, is designed to be useful to those whose historical studies are to stop at this point, as well as to serve as a basis for further study. A period of the world’s history is chosen which is sufficiently large to give an idea of the growth of institutions and the nature of historical evolution, yet not so extensive as to render impossible an acquaintance at close range with some of the characteristic personalities and conditions of the age; and an effort is made to stimulate interest in history and to give some idea of the nature and purposes of historical study. The field covered is the history of Europe, including England, from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries. This period has generally received little or no attention in school, so that students come to it with a freshness which they could not bring to ancient history or American history, and are introduced to a new world of action and movement and color which easily rouses their interest. The year devoted to the Middle Ages bridges the gap between their ancient and modern studies, and not only gives a feeling of historical continuity, but by showing the remote origin of modern institutions and culture it deepens the sense of indebtedness to the past and furnishes something of the background so much needed in our American life.
Most introductory courses now give considerable attention to the Middle Ages; the point of difference is whether the attempt should be made to cover something of the modern period as well. Where a longer period has been chosen, it has been quite generally found impracticable in a single year to bring the course down to the present time, and such courses have ordinarily stopped somewhere in the eighteenth century, leaving to a subsequent year the study of the more recent period. Thus the course which was given at Harvard until 1903 stopped at the Treaty of Utrecht. Assuming that two years are necessary for the satisfactory treatment of mediæval and modern history for the purposes of the general student, the question then becomes one as to the point where the break shall come, and we believe that experience is in favor of placing this point fairly early. The pace should be slower in the first year than in the second, so that students may not be confused and hurried while they are learning new methods of work and being emancipated from habits of close dependence on the text-book. There should be time for reading and assimilation, as well as for thorough drill, in a way that is not possible when too much ground is gone over. Good training in the first year makes it easier to cover a considerable period in the second. Such at least has been the experience at Harvard, where about half of the students in History 1 go on to the survey of modern history given in History 2 in the following year, while most of the others go directly to modern English history or American history. It ought to be added that while about nine-tenths of the class of three hundred who elect History 1 are freshmen, students who have given a good deal of attention to history in school are permitted to go on immediately to more advanced courses; and for those who take only American history in their later years, the introductory course in government is accepted as sufficient preparation.
The class meets three times a week, twice in a body for lectures, and the third hour in sections of about twenty. The lectures do not attempt to give a narrative, but seek to bind together the students’ reading, comment upon it, clarify it, reënforce the significant points, and discuss special aspects of the subject. The processes of historical interpretation and criticism are illustrated by a few simple examples, and from time to time the work is vivified by the use of lantern slides. The reading is divided into two parts, prescribed and collateral, and indicated on a printed “List of References” which each member of the class is required to buy. The prescribed reading, from seventy-five to one hundred pages a week, is made, as far as possible, the central part of the student’s work. At first this is selected largely from text-books and illustrative sources; later in the year text-books drop into the background, and narrative and descriptive works are taken up, although the student is urged to have at hand a manual for consultation and for securing a connected view of events. The effort is made to break away from high school methods of study and to teach students to use intelligently larger historical books. Stubb’s “Early Plantagenets,” Jessopp’s “Coming of the Friars,” Bryce’s “Holy Roman Empire,” Brown’s “Venetian Republic,” Day’s “History of Commerce,” Reinach’s “Apollo,” and Robinson and Rolfe’s “Petrarch,” are examples of the kind of books from which the required reading is chosen. Some sources are given in their entirety, such as the “Germania,” the “Life of St. Columban,” and Einhard’s “Charlemagne”; but reliance is placed mainly upon the extracts given in Ogg’s “Source Book” and Robinson’s “Readings.” It is found that the proper use and appreciation of sources is one of the hardest things for beginners to learn, and careful and explicit teaching is required both at the lectures and at the meetings of the sections. Each student is required to provide himself with two or three texts, a source book, and an historical atlas, and many buy a number of the other books used in the course. The books in which the reading is assigned are kept in a special reading-room, where the supply is sufficient to provide one copy of each for every ten men in the course. Duplicates of the works recommended for collateral reading are also furnished.
At the weekly section meetings the students are held responsible for the required reading and the lectures for the week. There is always a short written paper about twenty minutes in length, including usually an exercise on the outline map, and the rest of the hour is spent in explanation, review and discussion. No attempt is made at systematic quizzing, as the work of the week is much more effectively tested by the written paper. These sections are held by the assistants, four in number, who are chosen from men who have had two or three years of graduate study and generally some experience in teaching.
For the collateral reading certain topics are suggested each week, and every month each member of the class is required to read the references under at least one of the assigned topics. These topics have considerable range, and students are encouraged to select those which have special interest for them and to read freely upon them. Thus if a student takes the Northmen as his topic, he will read the greater part of Keary’s “Vikings,” and translated extracts from Norse poetry or sagas; if he chooses Henry II, he will have Mrs. Green’s biography and Stubb’s characterization in the introduction to Benedict of Peterborough; if he reads on monasticism, he will compare different views of the subject as found in specified chapters of Montalembert, Lecky, Taylor’s “Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages,” and in Harnack’s “Monasticism”; on castles and castle life he will read portions of Miss Bateson’s “Mediæval England,” and Viollet-le-Duc’s “Annals of a Fortress,” and examine the illustrations in Enlart’s “Manuel” and Schultz’s “Höfisches Leben”; on St. Louis he will have Joinville, certain pages of Langlois, and William Stearns Davis’s novel, “Falaise of the Blessed Voices.” A certain fixed minimum of such reading is set for each one in the course, and a higher minimum for those who expect distinction, and ambitious students will read from 1,500 to 2,000 pages in the course of the year.
The effort is constantly made to develop individual aptitudes and stimulate the better men. Every student has at least eight individual conferences with the assistant during the year. The conference is devoted mainly to a discussion of the collateral reading, but it also serves as an opportunity for examining note books, talking over difficulties, and in general for closer personal acquaintance between assistant and student. Sometimes small voluntary groups of men have been formed which meet the assistant weekly at his room for the reading and discussion of short historical papers written by students.
Considerable attention is given to well-reasoned note-taking upon both lectures and required reading, a matter respecting which the freshman is at first likely to be quite helpless. Here the personal supervision of the assistant is of the greatest value, and is often exercised weekly.
Special emphasis is put upon historical geography, not only by constant reference to wall maps and by special exercises involving the use of the principal historical atlases, but also by means of the regular use of blank outline maps. Members of the class are required to bring such a map to all meetings of the sections, and to be able to locate upon it important places and boundaries. The mid-year and final examinations also include a regular test of such geographical knowledge. More time than should be necessary is devoted to this work, but experience has shown that college students have at the outset only the vaguest ideas of European geography, and in this and in some other respects it is necessary to do in college, work that ought to have been done in the secondary or grammar school. If the ordinary freshman brought with him an elementary knowledge of geography and the ability to read intelligently, the task of the college teacher of history would be greatly lightened.
No attempt is made to require theses or formal written reports, as such work is useful rather for those who are to continue their historical studies, and as regular training of this sort is given in the second-year courses. Some attempts have, however, been made to coördinate the student’s work in history and in English composition by having the results of reading upon an historical topic embodied in a brief essay which is read and graded both by the instructor in history and the instructor in English. Such coöperative efforts are still in the experimental stage, but they are regarded favorably by those who believe that the occasion for writing good English is not confined to courses in English composition, and that a broader policy with regard to the student’s work is necessary if the American college is to give an education as well as to teach particular subjects.