The Teaching of History by Ernest C. Hartwell
page 35 of 59 (59%)
page 35 of 59 (59%)
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moment's notice to the remainder. Student descriptions of
battles are bound to be stereotyped. The ordinary textbook describes each of the thousand battles of the world in about the same fifty words. 8. Let some of the questions be directed towards cultivating the student's powers of oral description. History is not altogether a matter of analysis or generalization. There can scarcely be assigned a lesson in history that does not contain events which lend themselves to dramatic description. Their recital should be made the occasion of the student's best efforts in this direction. Let the pupils be taught to use adjectives and adverbs. Break down the barrier of listlessness or fear or self-consciousness which keeps the student from rendering a graphic and thrilling account of great events. 9. Let the questions from day to day develop the continuity of history. Avoid questioning that fails to unite the events of previous lessons with the one being studied. Bring out the connection of the past and the present. Slavery existed in America for two hundred years before the Civil War was fought. Your teaching of those two centuries of history should be so conducted that when the Civil War is finally reached, the class can tell the process by which anti-slavery sentiment was finally crystallized. The hiatus between the mobbing of Garrison in Boston and the extraordinary contribution of Massachusetts to the Northern army should be bridged, not by a heroic question or two when the war is finally reached, but by a daily attention to the events which effected the metamorphosis. |
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