Principal of Troy (N. Y.) High School and professor-elect of History in the University of Minnesota.

The common formula of the educational iconoclast is, that whatever is is wrong; and this is supplemented by the further dictum, "There is but one right way, and that is my way."

I wish to say, at the outset, that I am not an iconoclast; neither do I propose to carve out a slice of German fog and set it up here labeled an electric light. I recognize fully the fact that much earnest and valuable work is done by the teachers of this State in the study of history. Some defects of method to which I shall try to call your attention, existing in varying degree in different schools, are due to causes largely beyond the control of any one man, largely inherent in the usual conditions of school work. But to detect and analyze such defects, and so far as possible to modify unfavorable conditions, are among the first duties of genuine teachers.

First of all, it is worth considering whether we do not materially undervalue an adequate knowledge of history., Weigh it in the balance against other branches. Does not a correct notion of the past tend to make an intelligent man a good citizen, a prudent politician? What is history but the accumulated experience of the race? And of what fibres are good judgment and wisdom wrought, if not of experience? The individual learns to guide his separate actions mainly by the rude teaching of hard knocks. History affords us a wider ground of induction, an ampler material for constructing the future. Is it a question whether all that goes to make a man better and wiser is not found at least as richly in the domain of historical knowledge as in the refinements of language or in the subtleties of mathematics? And yet in these other lines of work methods of in

struction have reached a far wider development, and much more time is given in the curricula of schools. Notice that in the study of language or mathematics a careful gradation is observed, both in matter and in the manner of instruction. A foundation is laid slowly and surely. And yet the figure of a foundation fails just here: a real comprehension of the principles of either language or mathematics is a growth; and a part of good teaching is the judicious waiting for the mind to grow to the intelligent understanding of the successive ideas. Now, in teaching history, the method and the material too often vary but slightly from the beginning to the end of the course. The historical sense is never developed. A child is put at reciting the manoeuvers of a campaign, who can hardly tell a campaign from a cartridge. It is time for a boy to study history, and so a book in history is deliberately rammed into the educational gun and fired at the victim at point-blank range. Little wonder that quite often he

is knocked down.

It should be remembered that the number of boys and girls who are interested in history is really small. Now and then we find one who reads it from choice. But the great mass of young people with whom we have to deal, from the circumstances surrounding them in their home-life and from their inherited tastes, would never open a book on history except as a task. Young people, do I say? How many grown persons make a practice of historical reading? How many of any age would not greatly prefer one of E. P. Roe's novels to Gibbon's Rome? We remember that even Mr. Boffin, who began his career of culture by lavishly hiring "a literary man with a wooden leg," soon degenerated from "a declining and a falling off the Roman empire" to the greedy devouring of the exploits of highwaymen. We see, then, that our problem widens. It is not merely how to impart a given amount of useful knowledge in a given time. More than that, it is, how to arouse interest in place of indifference, how to make people searchers and thinkers instead of being, at the best, passive absorbers.

ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION.

I question whether any consecutive history is the proper thing with which to begin. A child can hardly grasp the abstractions of algebra until he has mastered the concrete ideas of arithmetic. And so when he makes his beginning with history. Episode, detail, description, he finds fascinating. But the idea of the continuity of historic time, the long march of ages, the kaleidoscopic changes of

events, he finds bewildering. Too often he is dizzy and despairing almost from the outset; and history becomes to him a synonym for the laborious memorizing of juiceless facts.

To meet this difficulty, perhaps we can wisely take a leaf from the experience of our German friends; and this experience is so practical and so successful that we can hardly call it either foggy or fanciful. They remember that children are, above all things, inquisitive, and, like the Athenians, eager to hear some new thing. And so, at an early point in the primary school, a definite portion of time is devoted to story telling; only the stories are of facts, not fancies. I can safely ask those before me if, in their own childhood, a story of pioneer life and Indian adventure, from the lips of the aged grandmother, telling things that really happened, was not vastly more absorbing than the fictions of Ned Buntline or Mayne Reid? Fiction is not in itself more interesting than fact. The interest lies in the thing told and in the way of telling it. But surely, in the long and varied story of the human race there are countless episodes more thrilling than any that the brain of novelist or poet ever conceived. And what accomplishment can the teacher learn of more constant value in his work, than the power of telling what he has to say in a way to interest?

In this line of work the essential things to remember are, that the stories must be of men and events worth knowing; that they may be entirely isolated one from another, the teacher not merely seeking to keep up the sequence of things, but carefully avoiding it; and that the tales are interesting. In this way most of the essentials in ancient and modern history may be made entirely familiar before history is ever studied. Then, when the study is begun, it is not untrodden ground. At every turn familiar friends are met, and added zest is given to the work by learning the relations of things that before existed in the mind unrelated-this last is no small point. Remember that it is not so much learning new facts, as learing the relations of old facts, that satisfies curiosity.

Another prime essential in teaching history is, that it be treated pictorially. Sit through a debate in the House of Commons, watch Gladstone as he manages that turbulent assembly; listen to "the old man eloquent," as he pours out the riches of his learning, his fancy, and his wit, in defending his cause; hear the thunders of applause and the stormy debate that followed. Do you not feel, thereafter, that the British Parliament is for you a reality, and not a mere newspaper abstraction?

Wander over the field of Gettysburg. Look at the long line of sodded entrenchment; at the low stone wall that winds through the woods of Round Top. See the rocks yet seamed wide with streams of melted lead, from bullets that plashed against them in those days of battle. See house and fence and tree yet scarred with rifle-balls and grape-shot. Stand on the Cemetery Hill, and study the long sweep of field and meadow over which Pickett's Virginians swarmed in that last fated charge. Then go to the Hollywood Cemetery at Richmond, see the grave of Pickett, and, circling in long lines about it, the graves in which rests the dust of his heroic dead. After that, does not the eye kindle when you hear and read of Gettysburg? It is a battle whose roar you hear, whose rush you see, and no mere dry tangle of meaningless words.

But the teacher can seldom take his class to Gettysburg, or to the forum at Rome. What then? Why, photography brings the whole world before our eyes. Pictures are now as abundant and cheap, almost as newspapers. Gather all you can. Show your class every place, every cathedral and fortress, every hero and statesman and poet. Let them see the continental soldier, in his cocked hat and uniform of blue and buff; show them his smooth-bore musket, with its clumsy flint-lock. Let them contrast that with the deadly breechloader and repeating-rifle of to day. Let them see Elizabeth, in her ruff and robes, with her red hair and hooked nose; Raleigh, in cloak and doublet; the gentleman of the Restoration and of the age of Queen Anne, in his gorgeous attire. When photograph and engraving fail, or pocket book gives out, then let the painter's brush or the artist's camera be the teacher's lips. Let him give color and life to every phase of the story, so that the mouldering knights of the Crusades are no longer dead, and the vanished strings of the troubadours awake to music.

But that the teacher may have the power to do this, he must observe a very common place law. Perhaps nothing is more stale, true though it be, than that the teacher must study incessantly. And in nothing is this more emphatically true than in teaching history. To realize the ages past as if they were the age present, one must search into them from all sides. He must be ever eager to add to his knowledge, ever ready to correct false impressions. There are some shallow people who think history a simple matter, because, forsooth, it is merely the telling of facts. I do not know anything in this world more difficult than to tell facts as they are. The other day I read an item of local news in one of our best papers, about an

ordinary occurrence, easy to investigate; and in the six lines of print were three material errors. Do you expect the complicated web of human action and passion to be unraveled with facility by the first careless hand that lays hold of it? Physical science is a long series of hypotheses, successfully exploded. Phlogiston and dephlogisticated air, epicycle and caloric, perpetual motion and the transmutation of metals in broken fragments, strew the path over which advancing science has gone. Historical investigation fares no better. One is too apt, even unconsciously, to view the past through the eyes of the present. In the words of Faust

"What you the spirit of the Ages call,

Is nothing but the spirit of you all,
Wherein the Ages are reflected."

To reach, then, such a view of the past as to make it seem present, to be able to do the miracle of restoring to life the dead years, the teacher must saturate himself with study and thought.

ADVANCED INSTRUCTION.

We come now to the "Battle of the Books;" the great question, text book or topics. The solution of the problem that I would suggest is very simple. I should say, text-book and topics. I have no doubt that a good teacher can do excellent work without any textbook at all. The same thing is true of almost any other subject as well as of history. It does not follow that no one should use a textbook. Neither do I doubt that there is a great deal of slovenly work done in using a text-book. But I suspect that the teachers who do such work with a book would do about the same without it. A text-book is like any other tool. In the hands of a skilled workman it may be made to produce artistic results. If a bungler wields it, he will be tolerably sure to botch his material, and may end by cutting his own fingers. In other words, it is the abuse of a text-book, not its use, that leads to such prodigies of stupidity as almost any regents' examination may demonstrate. But in using the book, I should study by topics always, making the text book merely a guide; and to this end it should invariably be supplemented by a generous supply of books of reference. The single book will suffice to bind the work together and save it from that sketchy and disjointed character too apt to belong to topical study. The use of other books will teach the habit of research, the collection of evidence, the balancing of opinions from different points of view. Adhering to one