Why is it important to study continuity in order to study history?
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Continuity of Historical Study and the Relation of History to Other Subjects
We have no intention of framing a secondary-school course, in which each study shall be carefully related in time and space with every other. Such a process is, for the present at least, a task for each superintendent or principal in the conduct of his own work. Certain suggestions, however, are pertinent, and may be helpful.
We believe that, whenever possible, history should be a continuous study. In some schools it is now given in three successive years; in others it is offered in each of the four years of at least one course. Some practical teachers, impressed with this need of continuity and feeling unable to give more time to the work, have thought it wise to give the subject in periods of only two recitations per week for one year or more; and such a plan may prove desirable for the purpose of connecting two years in which the work is given four or five times per week, or for the purpose of extending the course. Probably two periods a week, however, will seem altogether impracticable to the great majority of teachers, and we do not recommend that this step be taken when the circumstances allow more substantial work. A practical working programme in one of the very best western schools presents the following course:
7th grade, American History—4 periods
8th grade, American History—2 periods
9th grade (1st year of high school), Greek and Roman History—3 periods
10th grade, English History—3 periods
11th grade, Institutional History—2 periods
12th grade, American History—2 periods
Another school of high grade, where effective work is done, gives history in three periods per week for two years, and in five periods per week for two more years, viz:
1st year of high school, Oriental, Greek, and Roman history—3 periods
2nd year, mediaeval and modern European history—3 periods
3rd year, English history—5 periods
4th year, American history, economics, and civics—5 periods
In both of these schools some of the historical work is optional or elective, other parts are required. These courses are given here simply to show how a long, continuous course may be arranged in case the circumstances make it inadvisable to give work four or five times per week for four years. We do not recommend courses in which the study comes twice a week, but only say that in some instances they may prove advisable as a means of keeping the parts of the course in connection. We can not see our way clear to proposing the acceptance of a two-hour course in history for entrance to college, if units are counted or definite requirements are laid down.
A secondary-school course in which there are many distinct subjects may furnish to the pupil only bits of information, and not give the discipline resulting from a prolonged and continuous application to one subject, which is gradually unfolded as the pupil's mind and powers are developed. A course without unity may be distracting, and not educating in the original and best sense of the word. At least in some courses of the high school or academy, history is the best subject to give unity, continuity, and strength. Where a foreign language is pursued for four consecutive years, it serves this purpose; but in other cases it is doubtful whether anything can do the work so well as history. Even science has so many branches and distinct divisions-at all events, as it is customarily taught-that it does not seem to be a continuous subject. Doubtless there are relationships between physiology, chemistry, physics, botany, and physical geography, and of course the methods of work in all of them are similar; but to treat science as one subject, so that it may give opportunity for continuous development of the pupil, and for a gradual unfolding of the problems of a single field of human study, seems to us to present many almost insurmountable difficulties. A committee of historical students may be pardoned therefore for thinking that history furnishes a better instrument than science for such purposes. The history of the human race is one subject; and a course of four years can be so arranged as to make the study a continually developing and enlarging one, as the needs and capacities of the pupil are developed and enlarged.
History should not be set at one side, as if it had no relation with other subjects in the secondary course.
We have no intention of framing a secondary-school course, in which each study shall be carefully related in time and space with every other. Such a process is, for the present at least, a task for each superintendent or principal in the conduct of his own work. Certain suggestions, however, are pertinent, and may be helpful.
We believe that, whenever possible, history should be a continuous study. In some schools it is now given in three successive years; in others it is offered in each of the four years of at least one course. Some practical teachers, impressed with this need of continuity and feeling unable to give more time to the work, have thought it wise to give the subject in periods of only two recitations per week for one year or more; and such a plan may prove desirable for the purpose of connecting two years in which the work is given four or five times per week, or for the purpose of extending the course. Probably two periods a week, however, will seem altogether impracticable to the great majority of teachers, and we do not recommend that this step be taken when the circumstances allow more substantial work. A practical working programme in one of the very best western schools presents the following course:
7th grade, American History—4 periods
8th grade, American History—2 periods
9th grade (1st year of high school), Greek and Roman History—3 periods
10th grade, English History—3 periods
11th grade, Institutional History—2 periods
12th grade, American History—2 periods
Another school of high grade, where effective work is done, gives history in three periods per week for two years, and in five periods per week for two more years, viz:
1st year of high school, Oriental, Greek, and Roman history—3 periods
2nd year, mediaeval and modern European history—3 periods
3rd year, English history—5 periods
4th year, American history, economics, and civics—5 periods
In both of these schools some of the historical work is optional or elective, other parts are required. These courses are given here simply to show how a long, continuous course may be arranged in case the circumstances make it inadvisable to give work four or five times per week for four years. We do not recommend courses in which the study comes twice a week, but only say that in some instances they may prove advisable as a means of keeping the parts of the course in connection. We can not see our way clear to proposing the acceptance of a two-hour course in history for entrance to college, if units are counted or definite requirements are laid down.
A secondary-school course in which there are many distinct subjects may furnish to the pupil only bits of information, and not give the discipline resulting from a prolonged and continuous application to one subject, which is gradually unfolded as the pupil's mind and powers are developed. A course without unity may be distracting, and not educating in the original and best sense of the word. At least in some courses of the high school or academy, history is the best subject to give unity, continuity, and strength. Where a foreign language is pursued for four consecutive years, it serves this purpose; but in other cases it is doubtful whether anything can do the work so well as history. Even science has so many branches and distinct divisions-at all events, as it is customarily taught-that it does not seem to be a continuous subject. Doubtless there are relationships between physiology, chemistry, physics, botany, and physical geography, and of course the methods of work in all of them are similar; but to treat science as one subject, so that it may give opportunity for continuous development of the pupil, and for a gradual unfolding of the problems of a single field of human study, seems to us to present many almost insurmountable difficulties. A committee of historical students may be pardoned therefore for thinking that history furnishes a better instrument than science for such purposes. The history of the human race is one subject; and a course of four years can be so arranged as to make the study a continually developing and enlarging one, as the needs and capacities of the pupil are developed and enlarged.
History should not be set at one side, as if it had no relation with other subjects in the secondary course.
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