HISTORICAL SOURCES IN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS.
The article in the September issue of THE HISTORY TEACHER’S MAGAZINE entitled “One Use of Sources in the Teaching of History” is interesting both in its point of view and in the concrete illustration of the method presented by Professor Fling. The “methods” pursued by different teachers of history will vary largely and chiefly in consonance with the respectively dissimilar aims held in mind by the teachers. I must own that an experience of ten years in teaching history in the high schools of New York City has engendered a more modest purpose than that avowed by Professor Fling; my own aim is less ambitious than his and at the same time, perhaps, more comprehensive; it may not be, like his, based upon “my conception of educational theory and of the logic of historical science”; it is, however, based upon a first-hand knowledge of the intellectual attainments and limitations of girls and boys of high school age.
There is, of course, a great difference in mental power between pupils during the time devoted to Greek history and during that in which they are studying American history and civics; there are, too, great disparities in the children of the same grades and in different schools, and yet I think it is a safe generalization to declare that broadly speaking, our pupils are surprisingly immature and undeveloped mentally, even when, as “sweet girl graduates,” or their brothers, they leave us for the struggle of life, or for college.
The public high school, supported as it is by the money of the people, must necessarily adapt itself to the needs of the children sent to it; the vast majority of our pupils receive from us the “finishing touches” of their formal education, as they do not go to college, but plunge at once into “the world.” Such being the fact, what then should be the aim of the history teacher? Should it be to inculcate “the methodical search for truth,” using the phrase in the sense evidently intended by both M. Lanson and Professor Fling?
Remembering the specific task set before us, viz.: insofar as we are able, to fit our charges to grapple with the practical problems of life, I am compelled to say that such a training in the study of history as Professor Fling thinks desirable for high school pupils would be woefully one-sided and inadequate.