XX INTRODUCTION 



those teachers who are afflicted with the worst 

 of all pedagogical manias, the mania for informa- 

 tion. But they are perfectly sound, and we 

 might apply the same tests to the teaching of 

 history in a high school or a college. Has it 

 strengthened your determination to do your own 

 thinking in political matters, the pupil might be 

 asked ? Has it made you resolve that, come 

 what will, you will never wear any party collar? 

 Has it made you feel the infinite pathos of the 

 situation, if it should eventually appear that after 

 many centuries of struggle, humanity succeeded 

 in throwing off the rule of an oligarchy of birth, 

 only to succumb to the tyrannical and self-seek- 

 ing rule of the oligarchy of a party organization ? 

 If the pupil can honestly answer such questions 

 in the affirmative, he has studied history to the 

 best possible purpose, even though he is con- 

 fused as to many of the dates upon which the 

 information-mad teacher is in the habit of laying 

 so much stress. 



In general, the Pedagogy of this book is en- 

 tirely sound. The discipline of a school comes 

 to seem an end in itself to the rigid disciplinarian. 

 Not so to Dr. Bigelow. From the average 

 teacher's point of view, the preservation of his 



