HISTORY AND LITERATURE IN GRAMMAR GRADES.

BY SUPT. J. H. PHILLIPS, BIRMINGHAM, ALA.

It is not without trepidation that I appear before this Department to discuss so vital and comprehensive a subject as that assigned to me by your president. Fully aware of the fact that I am addressing those who are far better equipped than I for this task, I beg at the outset that what I shall say upon this important topic may be considered tentative and suggestive rather than didactic.

The connection between history and literature is so intimate that the treatment of the latter in its broad sense might include the former, without violence to either. Considering each in its more restricted meaning, however, and particularly in its commonly accepted scholastic sense, the reason for the separation of these subjects in the caption becomes apparent.

In presenting the claims of history and literature to a place in the curriculum of the elementary school, I do not feel that I am advocating the introduction of new subjects into our already too crowded course. History has been assigned a place for many years in the majority of our schools, and literature has received at least a passive recognition. The actual instruction in both has been far from satisfactory; in quantity, it has been for the most part, nominal and uncertain; in method, aimless and desultory. That these subjects have not been-are not now-adequately appreciated by the vast majority of the educational guild of this country, will be readily conceded.

During the past decade, the methods of instruction in nearly all of the other branches of elementary school work have undergone radical changes, and have reached a wide range of development. In the subjects of history and literature, however, it must be admitted that but little if any progress has been made in securing systematic instruction either in matter or method.

In language and arithmetic, we find a careful gradation throughout the course; in every stage of the child's progress, we become conscious of an effort to adapt matter and method to the capabilities of the growing mind, to arouse and develop self-activity by creating an interest in the subject-matter. An extended examination of courses of study in different sections of the United States reveals the fact that in few instances only has there been any serious attempt to apply to history and literature the systematic treatment accorded to other subjects.

The explanation of this fact cannot be found in any inherent difficulties in the subjects themselves. The plaintive question of the venerable Walt Whitman regarding our national literature may have been unconsciously applied by many to our national history, though we should be loth to make the admission. Popular indifference may, perhaps, be partially attributed to the absence in our local and institutional history of the element of antiquity, an element quite necessary to enlist the attention and take hold of the imagination. Until within recent years, our people have been more actively interested in the making, than in the recording, of history. As a people, we are even yet standing far too near the seething caldron of our later history to form a calm dispassionate judgment respecting its character and value. Proper perspective will doubtless enhance our interest, both in American history and American literature.

There is still another cause, deeper lying perhaps, but farther reaching in its results.

The curriculum of the common school is not a mere arbitrary or accidental catalogue of subjects; it is a development, a growth, under influences as potent and as complex as those which have given life and form to our social organism. On the one hand we find those fundamental principles, physiological and psychological, which appertain to the nature and development of mind, those laws of mental action which indicate the relative strength and activity of the several powers at different ages and stages of growth, and dictate the order and methods of training. These factors, so far as understood, within certain limits at least, are definite, universal and invariable, and must constitute the subjective basis of a rational course of study. On the other hand, we encounter objective conditions and requirements, among which may be mentioned the sphere of activity and environment designed for the child, the time and extent of his education, the spirit of the age and the demands of public sentiment as dictated by that spirit. These factors, embodying the popular ideal of education, are variable, and are subject to changes and modifications, sometimes radical and revolutionary, always more or less definite and percep

tible.

This elasticity of conditions, due so largely to the genius of our American institutions, is in itself an important factor in the progress and development of our national life, as well as of our educational ideals.

Based upon these primary conditions, we find two distinct lines of educational thought, characterizing the two predominating ideals of the century. The one, emphasizing subjective conditions, subordinates the acquisition of mere knowledge or information to the disciplinary value of the studies pursued; the other makes the utility of the subject-matter the measure of its disciplinary value. The predominating tendency of the former has been the concentration of all the agencies of education to

secure the severe training and exact discipline of the intellectual faculties, leaving the culture of the emotional and executive faculties largely to the accidents of life. Such subjects as were deemed unsuited to intellectual gymnastics, were carefully excluded. History, poetry and music, were laid aside as too trivial and effeminating for men who aspired to intellectual strength. With the rise of the utilitarian ideal, we find in recent years a pronounced tendency towards the opposite extreme. The practical arts as elements in individual and national progress, have demonstrated their marvelous power to such an extent that to-day science is idolized and knowledge is declared omnipotent.

It is not difficult to see that under the sway of these two great educational ideals, history and literature have received but little direct encouragement as branches of school work. Considered by the one inadequate as a means of severe mental training and exact scholarship, and by the other as containing too little promise of immediate utility in the business of life, these subjects have been assigned a subordinate and precarious lodgement in the curriculum of the elementary school.

The tendency has been to relegate the study of literature as such to the high school and the college-to place it as far as possible beyond the reach of the masses. The value of literature as a means of culture may be admitted, but it is claimed to be beyond the comprehension of pupils below the high school. In the meantime, these pupils take their reading into their own hands, and drift away unwarned to the dangerous shallows of sensational and ephemeral literature. When we remember that only about fifteen per cent. of the children in our elementary schools ever reach the high school, it becomes evident that those educational agencies designed to advance the masses and to conserve the highest interest of the state, must be concentrated in the grammar schools. In the millions of youths in these schools to-day are centred the hopes and the interests of the future. The boys from these schools, not those from our high schools and colleges, will roll up the future majorities in our great cities. For many years to come the battle-ground of the republic must be the grammar school, and the instruction here imparted will determine the future battle-cry of American civilization.

It was not without fitness that literature and its allied subjects were called by the ancients the humanities. These studies appeal directly to the human element in life, and are calculated to inspire the soul and mold the life more effectively than all the other subjects of our elementary course combined; these are the only studies of the course that are likely to be projected into the child's after-life; they serve to cultivate the affections, to ennoble the emotions and the desires-in short, to purify the springs of human action, and to render secure from pollution the streams of social and national life.

Literature in its comprehensive sense has been defined as the expression

of life; history relates to the visible form, the outward expression, while literature in poetry and fiction deals with the throbbings of that inner life which animates and beautifies the whole. The interest of both centers in man. History and biography, appealing to individual experience, and exercising the imagination by vivid portrayals of past scenes and incidents, constitute perhaps the surest and most direct avenuc to the broader fields of literature. This service of history to literature will be admitted, but not so readily recognized as the connection between the other naturally related subjects of the grammar school course and literature, the supplement and complement of all. It is evident that reading, grammar, history and geography are bound together in a most intimate relationship through the bond of literature. Reading is not reading, if it stops satisfied with word-calling and a mechanical observation of pauses and inflections. That study of United States history which fails to invest the lives of the noble men and heroic women of the past with an interest all absorbing, and to lead the child to appreciate in their proper setting the eloquent and impassioned outbursts of patriotic sentiment, has fallen miserably short of its mission.

If the long and dreary journey through the desert of language and technical grammar fails to vouchsafe now and then an encouraging glimpse of the promised land of literature, even if it be beyond the Jordan, much time has been wasted, much energy vainly exhausted. As "all roads lead to Rome," so should all the studies in the grammar school lead to the cultivation of the literary sense as the end and sum of all education below the high school.

The study of history and geography might be profitably united throughout the course. While studying the physical and political characteristics. of different countries, let the child learn something of the prominent men and notable events associated with them in history. Call to his aid a few of the heroes and noted travellers of history; let Alexander, Hannibal, or Napoleon, Captain Cook, Livingston, or Stanley do service as guides. Let the progressive map of Italy, Greece, or Germany, as it expands before the pupil, become instinct with the living, glowing millions of the past; let those horrid wriggling lines be translated by the imagination into remarkable rivers, lakes, and mountains, associated with deeds of valor and renown, and invested with something of the ancient glory of romance. Both in general and American history the child will thus associate place and circumstance in such relation that the one may recall the other. History and geography as studied independently are woefully abused; in the one, the element of time is unduly emphasized, in the other that of place. It is in their union we must seek strength. If need be, let the geography be rewritten, and let the endless list of insignificant places that have failed in all the centuries to prove interesting to the makers of romance and history, rest silent in deserved obscurity. Winnow, if you will, from

the school history much of dry indigestible detail. Let history and geography be co-ordinated, and the two will move on hand in hand, mutually helpful, mutually inspiring.

But, while much may be accomplished by co-ordinating the more obviously related subjects of the course, and by organizing the instruction in these subjects with reference to literary culture, specific and exclusive attention should be given to history and literature in any well-arranged curriculum.

A brief survey of history-teaching in the grammar grades is all that can be attempted within the limits of this paper. The course in United States history usually covers a period of one or two years. In a few instances we find English history or outlines of general history in the highest grade. Rarely do we find any systematic effort to teach history before the sixth or seventh year of the child's school life.

The increased attention given to this study of late in many of our leading colleges and universities, under the direction of eminent specialists, has revealed three important needs of history-teaching in the grammar school 1. Better preparation on the part of teachers; 2. Improved methods of teaching; 3. Better gradation of the course in history.

Dr. Thorpe, in an article published in 1887, gives the following vivid description of the prevailing method of instruction in history:

"The teacher assigns a fixed number of pages in the text-book to be memorized; pupils repeat the text in recitation; they are examined in the text, and the subject is dropped, usually willingly. This method prevails in large cities and in crowded schools, and is the sine qua non of every teacher who is compelled to hear lessons which he does not understand. The result is that thousands pass from these schools with a brief mental incumbrance of names, dates and isolated events. In some public schools no text-book is used. The teacher not being a special student of history talks text-book on a small scale. The notes of pupils are disconnected statements swept together into a table which is memorized. The recitation is the story after the teacher with unique variations by the child; the text-book abridges the larger work, the teacher abbreviates the text-book, and the child abbreviates the teacher." Dr. Thorpe's conclusion is anything but flattering: "In these schools for elementary instruction, the study of American history as at present conducted is, with few exceptions, time wasted, money wasted, energy wasted, history perverted, and intelligent elementary knowledge of elementary history prevented.”

This is doubtless true enough to-day, though the past five years have wrought progress in many schools. The grammar school teacher of today, be it remembered, is not a specialist; existent conditions preclude such a possibility. In the majority of our schools, the grammar school teacher is required to give instruction in almost the entire circle of the arts, and is expected to include in her mental equipment the elements of all knowl