"Did you like history?" "No I hated it, I
can't bear names and dates." "What did you think of so and so?" "He
wasn't in my period." So history has become names and dates, genealogies
and summaries, hard pebbles instead of bread. It is unfair to children
thus to prejudice them against a subject which thrills with human
interest, and touches human life at every turn, it is unfair to history
to present it thus, it is misleading to give development to a particular
period without any general scheme against which it may show in due
proportion, as misleading as the old picture-books for children in which
the bat on one page and the man on the other were of the same size.
There must necessarily be a principle of selection, but one of the
elements to be considered in making choice ought always to be that of
proportion and of fitness in adaptation to a general scheme. It was
pointed out by Sir Joshua Fitch in his "Lessons on Teaching" (an
old-fashioned book now, since it was published before the deluge of
"Pedagogics," but still valuable) that an ideal plan of teaching history
to children might be found in the historical books of Holy Scripture,
and in practice the idea is useful, suggesting that one aim should be
kept in view, that at times the guiding line should contract to a mere
clue of direction, and at others expand into very full and vivid
narrative chiefly in biographical form.
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