The New Teaching of History With a Reply to Some Recent Criticisms of the Outline of History
9781465628428
188 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
For the better part of three years the writer of these notes has been occupied almost entirely in an intensely interesting enterprise. He has been getting his own ideas about the general process of history into order and he has been setting them down, having them checked by various people, and publishing them as a book, The Outline of History, which both in America and Europe has had a considerable vogue. In volumes or in complete sets of parts it has already found over two hundred thousand purchasers; it is still being bought in considerable quantities, and it is being translated and published in several foreign languages; it is quite possible that it has sufficiently interested almost as many people to read it through as it has found purchasers to take the easier step of buying it. This Outline of History did not by any means contain all the history the writer himself would like to know or ought to know, and much less did it profess to condense all history for its readers. But it did attempt to sketch a framework, which people might have in common, and into which everyone might fit his own particular reading and historical interests. It did try to give all history as one story. And the largeness of the measure of its success is certainly much more due to the widespread desire for such an Outline than to any particular merit of the particular Outline the writer produced. So far as reception goes, almost any enterprising person might have succeeded as the writer has succeeded. He was, as people say, “meeting a long-felt want.” But his years of work in meeting it have necessarily made him something of a specialist in historical generalities, and the adventure of making and spreading the Outline abroad has been full of interesting and suggestive experiences. Some of the criticism to which the Outline has been subjected affords an opportunity for profitable comment. To “answer” all its critics would be a preposterously self-important thing to do, but, from the point of view of our general education, some of them do repay examination. And accordingly he is setting down these present notes to the Outline; partly comments upon the educational significance of its general reception and partly a consideration of the mental attitudes, the moral and intellectual pose, into which it has thrown certain of its critics.A most fruitful question the writer found was this: “Why was it left for me in 1918 to undertake this task?” There has been a need of some such general account of man’s story in the universe for many years. Such an account is surely a necessary part of any properly conceived education. One might almost say it was the most necessary part. For why do we teach history to our children? To take them out of themselves, to place them in a conscious relationship to the whole community in which they live, to make them realise themselves as actors and authors in a great drama which began long before they were born and which opens out to issues far transcending any personal ends in their interest and importance. And it is a commonplace to say that in the last century or so the sphere of human interest has widened out with marvellous rapidity until it comprehends the whole world. Economically, intellectually, and in many other ways the world becomes one community. But, while there has been this enormous enlargement of human interests, there has been, if anything, a narrowing down of the scope of historical teaching. If the reader will look into the sort of history that is taught in schools to-day and compare it with the yellow old books of our great-grandfathers, he will find rather a shrinkage towards the intensive study of particular periods and phases of history than an extension to meet the more extensive needs of a new age.
