Special devices for utilizing details are, of course, not entirely strange to American practice. In the elementary school much is made of dramatizing history. In the best form of this kind of exercise the children themselves compose the drama and afterward act it. When this is done with proper material it is a valuable exercise, well worth the time which it takes. It compels, through the demands of stage setting and costumes, attention to the very materials that are needed for visualization. One class in preparing a drama on Alfred the Great found at once difficulties in the way of having the traditional prince wear every day "his crimson velvet suit." That led to a new sense of reality. All of us know how boys delight to play Indians, and many of us have witnessed plays on Indian life that were really illuminating. But the general tendency is to base such plays upon imaginative rather than upon historical material. Often the plays are ready-made and these are less effective for the purpose.

Another common device for "living the past" is to have children write letters. Let them imagine themselves in Tarrytown, for example, at the time of the capture of Major André, and let them write to some imaginary friend in New York an account of the incident and of how it might have affected them. One teacher, some years ago, found this plan so effective

that she proposed to keep a seventh grade in history occupied wholly with letter writing.

Still another device is to have the children keep diaries. Let them imagine themselves in Boston in April, 1775, and let them record what they might have seen or heard during that month. Such an exercise will often make even dry official records absorbingly interesting to a seventh or eighth grade.

An exercise formerly more in vogue than at present, and somewhat influenced by the old-fashioned school reader, consisted in learning and reciting famous speeches. It was an event to be remembered, when, with a proper historical setting given by the teacher, one eighth-grade boy came forth as Hayne and another as Webster in selections from the great debate.

These are but illustrations of possible ways of making the past real through details of a kind that would ordinarily have no place in the history lesson. Many, perhaps most teachers, would here lay the chief stress on imaginative material, on what we call historical novels and historical poems. A distinction should be made between novels and poems that are contemporary with the conditions and events described and those that represent later attempts at reconstruction. The former have often a high value as illustrations of the spirit or atmosphere of their times. The value of the latter for

history may easily be exaggerated. Some novelists have more genius than some historians, but historical novels as a class are scarcely such miracles of reconstruction as the claims often made in book reviews, and in papers read at teachers' gatherings, might lead one to infer. Their rather general use in school history has been due in part to the tradition which so long made history a mere branch of literature, and in part to more general acquaintance with this kind of material than with material more distinctly historical.

If, during the elementary period, the sense of reality has been stimulated as it may and ought to be stimulated, history in the high school can be essentially generalized history. There will still be need of descending to particulars, and on occasion, even to trivialities. Whatever the nature of the training, there is danger at every stage of school instruction of leaving the impression that history deals with a mere succession of disembodied acts and sentiments. But, in the high school, particulars included for the purpose of lending reality can, in the main, be particulars more in keeping with the dignity of standard historical treatises.

The first step toward the realization of any aspect of the past is to realize the difficulty. With all the advantages of local environment, of special aids to visualization, and of full and accurate verbal descrip

tion, the reality even of the material past will continue in large measure to elude both pupil and teacher. "Nothing," says Professor Morse Stephens, "is more difficult than to realize existence in a bygone era. The perspective which years, as they roll by, give to past ages emphasizes certain salient points and leaves the background vague, and it is only by saturating the mind in contemporary literature, diaries, and letters, that an idea can be formed of the ordinary life during a past period. But even then it is difficult to convey to a reader an impression of a time in which one has not lived; it is more it is almost impossible." 1 The teacher must none the less, like the historian, attempt the "almost impossible."

1 Stephens, French Revolution, II, 361.

CHAPTER IX

THE USE OF MODELS AND PICTURES

THE primary purpose of models and pictures in the teaching of history is to give definiteness to visual imagery. This purpose may on first thought seem to be sufficiently accomplished by the simple process of exhibiting models and pictures, with appropriate labels or appropriate oral description. The teacher has then but to follow the methods of the museum, of the motion picture theater, or of the popular illustrated lecture. The pupil has but to lend his presence. Very often nothing more is attempted. Very often teachers do not appear to have discovered that any other procedure is either necessary or desirable. Models and pictures, they seem to reason, are direct representations of reality and make their own appeal to the eye.

The exhibition idea is applied in a variety of ways. Sometimes the pupil is merely told to notice pictures in the textbook, or on the walls of the classroom, or in books to which references are made for collateral reading. Sometimes he is urged to visit museums. Sometimes class periods are set apart at convenient intervals