138 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



English history ? while geography, science, literature, and art are treated as 

 separate subjects ? Surely " pulverising the statue " is not an unfair description 

 of such a method ? 



The purpose of these pages is to suggest a method of teaching history which 

 will not only afford a background for our own island story, but will utilise the 

 hours devoted to geography, literature and Bible teaching. Above all, the aid 

 of art is evoked — art which, in later years, is often the outstanding reason for the 

 study of the past. 



A school year is generally made up of three terms of twelve weeks each, 

 thirty-six weeks in all. I suggest that these thirty-six weeks should be divided 

 into eighteen fortnights, and each devoted to a period of general history. Thus 

 all history would be covered in the school year. In the following year the process 

 would recommence. Here is a provisional list of the suggested periods : 



1. The Creation and Prehistoric Man. 



2. Egypt, Babylonia and the Far East. 



3. The Greek City States. 



4. The Art and Thought of Greece. 



5. Roman Republic to Julius Caesar. 



6. Rise of Christianity. 



7. The Roman Empire. 



8. The Middle Ages. 



9. Italian City States. 



10. Reformation and Counter Reformation. 



11. Spanish and Dutch Empires. 



12. Supremacy of France. 



13. England in the Age of Shakespeare. 



14. Rise of British Imperialism. 



15. The Napoleonic Age. 



16. The Reaction and the Revolutions of '48. 



17. The Coal and Factory Age. 



18. The World War. 



There is probably no better way of introducing each epoch than a general 

 lecture, given by the head master or a visiting lecturer, to the whole school. 

 In an hour it would be possible to outline the main facts and principles underlying 

 any one of these periods. The facts of the nineteenth century can be grouped 

 around such ideas as the coal age and the invention of the railway, the steamship 

 and industrial machinery. These brought about the growth of large towns and 

 the increase of national wealth. Finally, with the increase of knowledge came 

 the demand of the mass of the people for political power. Ideas which can 

 be summarised in a sentence can be vitalised in an hour. 



Let me deal in rather more detail with another typical fortnight, that covering 

 the Story of Creation and Prehistoric Man. The first of all historical facts 

 is the vastness of geological time and space, compared with the physical littleness 

 of man. A description of the creation of the sun, the planets and the earth from 

 the chaos of undifferentiated matter will bring home to a child's mind the immensity 

 of space. As for time, the throwing off of the moon from the glowing earth may 

 have been a hundred million, or even a thousand million, years ago. The 

 physicists and geologists differ. The minimum suggested is 57 million years 

 ago. Yet the whole recorded history of man is about 8,000 years. It is, perhaps, 

 26 million years since life became possible on our planet through " the gathering 

 together of the waters " when the once-glowing globe had cooled to boiling point. 



