740 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION L. 



The following Papers were then read : — 



1. The Place of History in Education. 

 By Professor F. 0. J. Heaenshaw. 



Before the place of history in education can be determined, the aim of 

 education as a whole must be agreed upon. There is not at the present day 

 the same simplicity of aim as there was in ancient and mediaeval times ; but in 

 a democratic country like Britain the civic aim must necessarily be the dominant 

 one. The main purpose of national education is to produce good citizens. What 

 part can history play in the attainment of this end ? 



Until recently history, regarded as an instrument of education, manifested 

 several serious defects. It was written from a partisan point of view ; it was 

 unscientific in method ; it was unduly restricted in its scope. Recent changes, 

 however, in the study and writing of history have gone far to remove these 

 defects and to provide a valuable and trustworthy instrument, even though 

 history on its literary side has thereby suffered. 



The educational functions which history subserves may be classiiied as 

 (1) Technical, in the case of statesmen and others ; (2) Intellectual, in so far as 

 it trains the imagination, shows the sequence and cause and effect in human 

 affairs, and gives practice in the weighing of conflicting evidence ; (3) Moral, 

 in that it widens the mental horizon, elevates the character by bringing it into 

 contact with great men and large affairs, arouses sympathy, develops impar- 

 tiality, and teaches ' awe at the prodigious manysidedness and endless signi- 

 ficance of human activities ' ; (4) Civic, in that it provides a school of political 

 method, a storehouse of political precedent, and the basis of future political 

 progress. It further serves a purpose which may be termed (5) Philosophical, 

 since it furnishes man with some data for the solution of the ultimate problems 

 of knowledge and being. 



These generalisations may be illustrated from the light which history throws 

 upon the causes of the present European crisis. 



2. Methods and Content of History as a Subject of School Study. 

 By Professor Eamsay Muir. 



History, like other subjects, has to serve a double end in the school 

 curriculum. (A) It provides training for certain qualities of mind, imagina- 

 tion, judgment, the habit of considering events in the light of their back- 

 ground, the power of weighing human testimony without undue credulity or 

 undue scepticism, and the habit of tolerance, arising from the sympathetic 

 appreciation of conflicting points of view. (B) It provides the pupil with a 

 body of knowledge useful for the purposes of his life, and especially with an 

 explanation of the society in which he lives. The scheme of an historical 

 curriculum, and the way in which it is handled, must depend upon the relative 

 importance attached to these two ends. 



If we think only of mental training we shall conclude (a) that it does not 

 matter what period is studied, and (b) that it is best to study a limited period, 

 where the teacher has full and first-hand knowledge, and where by the use of 

 contemporary narratives the events can be seen through the eyes of the actors. 

 This forms the real justification of the long ascendency of classical studies, 

 which gave the_ intelligent student a really intimate knowledge of decisive 

 periods in the history of Greece and of Rome, and therefore achieved, often in a 

 remarkable degree, the intellectual benefits of historical training. If equally 

 good results are to be achieved in the modern field, the same methods, or 

 similar methods, must be followed. 



The demand that history should be used to explain his world to the pupil 

 is, however, now predominant; and it seems to exact a range of study that 

 puts out of the question the intimate study required for the realisation of the 

 first aim, and_ drives us back upon arid outline surveys, supplemented at the 

 best by the disconnected collections of excerpts known as source-books. Foy 



