The New Teaching of History: With a reply to some recent criticisms of The Outline of HistoryWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
The New Teaching of History: With a reply to some recent criticisms of The Outline of History
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History -- Study and teaching; Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946. Outline of history
Now if it is true that my _Outline of History_ is a sketch of the real
Outline of History, this framework of which we stand in need; and if it
is true that either by effective revision or replacement we may
presently get a generally satisfactory Outline of History that will be
available as an educational framework, the next question we have to ask
is how we can best get that Outline into operation in schools. In
America, where there is much more freedom and variety in educational
method than in Europe, much may be achieved by a steady insistence on
the part of groups of parents and journalists upon the introduction of
the new teaching of history into schools and colleges. But in Europe,
where the schools of both boys and girls are much more dominated by the
requirements of the various leaving-schools, qualifying and competitive
examinations by which they pass on into business or professional or
student life, the method of attack may need to be a different one. It
becomes a matter of importance under such conditions to do one’s utmost
to introduce into such examinations what will be at first _an
alternative paper_ in the Outlines of History, a paper which may be
taken as an alternative to the paper upon the national history of a
special period which is at present the usual requirement in history of
such examinations. The two sorts of history teaching would then go on,
for a time at least, side by side. Some schools and some candidates
would follow the extensive, and some the intensive, method. And a thing
now very urgently needed is for teachers of history, or for the
Historical Society, or some special committee, to draw up a sample
syllabus, or two or three such documents, to define a course of
instruction in the outlines of world history. My own contribution to
that is, of course, the list of contents of the _Outline_ I have
written. It would be an extraordinarily useful thing to produce and to
criticise and revise such a syllabus now, and then when it was in fairly
good shape to agitate for its adoption as an alternative scheme of
instruction to the existing history courses.
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