﻿HISTOEY STUDY IX THE ELEMENTAEY SCHOOLS 41 



Employment of Construction Activities in Teaching* History. 



The reports do not show that construction activities are employed 

 very extensively in historv- vroA Of the systems and schools rep- 

 resented in the returns, thirty-nine leave the question unanswered. 

 When one adds to this number those reporting little or none (63) 

 and 'to some extent in lower grades' (21), about half of the sys- 

 tems are included. That the reader may know in detail what the 

 ansAvers of those reporting contain, they are tabulated below: 

 Little or none (63) ; frequently, considerable, some in gTades I and 

 TT (17) ; much in lower grades (41) ; to some extent in lower grades 

 (21) ; drawing, wea^dng, modeling, and wigwam making in pri- 

 mary .grades (17) ; story of Washington, Columbus, and the Pil- 

 grims illustrated in primary grades (2) ; dra^^dng more than others 

 (21) ; manual training in grades I, II, and III correlated with such 

 work (6) ; construction work regularly done in primary grades 

 (7) ; build pioneer houses in sixth grade (1) ; make section of Eo- 

 man road, battering ram, and castle (1) ; children reproduce 

 weapons and utensils (1) ,• correlate drawing and histoiy (1) : 

 drawing and painting pictures for historical notebooks (1) ; posters 

 made for historical pageant (1) ; much of it is waste of time (1) : 

 done by teachers who know how (2) ; not as much as we should 

 like (2) ; dra^ving much, others little (3) ; make Greek and Roman 

 houses in grades III and IV (1) ; Indian village constructed (1) ; 

 boys make crude weapons and shields, girls make costumes for 

 history scenes (1) ; modeling and wigwam-making in grade I (3) ; 

 weaving, modeling, drawing, and painting in all grades (1) ; do 

 modeling and drawing (2) ; correlate history and reading in this 

 way (2). Throughout the replies there are evidences that such 

 work is considered entirely Avorth while. The smaU systems do 

 little work along this line, yet the answers indicate that the country 

 teacher recognizes its value even if she is unable to do it. 



Use of Dramatization and Historical Pageants in History 



Teaching. Dramatization has certainly not yet come into its own 

 in history teaching. Of the entire number reporting, forty-one 

 leave this question imanswered, 121 say 'nothing is attempted', 

 and thirty, 'little or not much' — making a total of 192 of the total 

 number of systems (259) represented in the returns. The nature 

 of the work done by those reporting actual work of this kind is in- 

 dicated by the few replies listed below. The extent of each kind 

 of work is shown by the number in parentheses, wliich is the num- 

 ber of syst-ems doing this particular work: Dramatized scene? 



