"I am a part of all that I have met."

-TENNYSON: Ulysses.

T IS not enough for a teacher of history to try to leave a store of interesting facts in a child's mind. He must work for a realization on the part of the child of the relationship between these facts, and from such flashes of understanding he must try to develop habits of thinking. It is not too much to ask from the study of history that it stimulate in us: (1) the habit of looking for causes; (2) the habit of realizing that the opinions of people, oneself included, will be influenced by their surroundings; (3) the habit of weighing varied opinions before making a judgment; (4) the habit of expecting changes to be slow; and (5) the habit of keeping "a time sense" that can look at immediate events with some perspective. We work for the growth of such habits of thinking, but we cannot teach them directly. They may develop through contact with minds already trained to them, or they may develop from repeated experiences of realization within the Ichild's own mind.

Such flashes come only when the child's mind is really working on the material. They come in the process of taking possession of an idea, not in hearing and storing one. So the child must be living vividly in the historical material, and the question of how to bring this about presents the first problem.

Every teacher will have a different way of making the subject matter vivid to his class. There is one requirement, however, to be made of all. They must first make the subject vivid to themselves.

In selecting material the gathered experience of a school may be of great service to an individual teacher. At the Shady Hill School it has always been the aim to use original sources wherever possible in reconstructing a historical period. These are chosen for their power and beauty of language and for the sense they bring of direct contact with the mind of the man who wrote them, a sense which text-books cannot give. The continued search for material adequate to the new demands of each new class, and its organization for class-room use, keeps the research spirit active in the teacher, who is constantly experiencing the joy of discovering new material. It requires, however, more time and labor than one can well give while doing the full-time teaching. We need the help of students in historical research if we are to give our coastwise pupils, endeavoring to put to sea in imagination, a real sense of "rollers never checked by land."

Much might be said in favor of a chronological series of history courses throughout a school. We have inclined rather to select for each grade a period of history which offers material most congenial to the interests of that age. It matters comparatively little which of the significant periods one chooses to live again. If vividly done, all is grist to the mill.

But how to do it vividly? We have said that in order for a child to take possession of facts and draw conclusions from them he must have a close acquaintanceship with them, he must for the time being live in the period he is studying. In building up such a close acquaintanceship the time element is a very strong one. A child must stay long enough with one

great character or one group of historical people to absorb their appearance, manners, habits of thought, occupations, in short to feel familiar with them. But this cannot be done, we exclaim, if we are to cover the necessary ground. No, it cannot, if by that we mean the presentation in order of all the main events of a given period. This process is satisfying to the mind of the presenter, it brings a false sense of security of having done one's duty toward one's children, but how quickly it is forgotten by the children! If we are to get well acquainted with any group of historical people we must give up meeting many others who might be just as interesting. But we can tell our children that the others are there, and if we have made them familiar enough with certain stages in the human pilgrimage it is not unlikely that they will want to fill in the gaps in the journey by later reading and experience.

If we agree on the need for selecting a few main focus points for the year's work, the next question is the choice of these points. Although, to secure continuity, the general subject is determined by the school history plan, each year's work must vary with the tastes and special powers of the teacher, the material available and the character of the class.

The following outline may give some idea of the way our course in the second year of mediaeval history, studied this year with Grade Eight (children twelve and thirteen years of age) worked out. Last year these children had studied the folk life and feudal life and certain great secular leaders of mediaeval times.

4. The First Crusade.

Study and comparison of three letters
written by Crusaders.

Discussion of results of this and later
Crusades. (See below.)

5. St. Francis of Assisi and St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Sabatier's life of St. Francis read and dis

cussed by half the class.

Morison's life of St. Bernard, read and dis

cussed by the other half.

Readings from contemporary sources about
both of these men.

Pictures of Assisi and the Giotto frescoes.
Drawing of scenes from lives of these

Saints in form of stained glass window
designs.

Preparation and acting, later in the year, of

scenes from the lives of these Saints in the form of carved stone tympana over Cathedral doorways, with readings from contemporary sources. (See illustrations.)

Second Half Year: Growth of the people away from the Feudal System.

1. Rise of towns.

Guilds. The need of them, their growth and organization.

A mediaeval Fair held out of doors for the school.

Life and studies in the Universities. Cathedral Building. Gothic architecture.

2. Pilgrimages.

Routes; people.

Troubadour songs.

The spread of ideas in literature and art

through pilgrimages.

3. Review by arranging material studied on a chronological chart with parallel

columns for the different countries.

The working out of any single topic can be made very rich if a child finds ways of expressing what he is learning, not only by oral and written composition, but through his hands, in the shop, or the art room, by maps and diagrams, or through his music. The following account of the work on Crusades will give some suggestions of how these various forms of expression will help a class in gaining possession of one topic. It may also show the teacher's attempt to create situations which would call into play those habits of looking for causes behind. events and opinions, of suspended judgment, and of appreciation of the slowness of change and growth.

The first step in the work on Crusades was to pool the information which the class, boys and girls between twelve and thirteen years old, already had on the Crusades. Several had read "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman." One had read Davis's "God Wills It." Another had seen in Europe the mail-clad figures of crusaders lying with crossed legs on their on their tombs. We broached the question why the Crusades came when they did, and discussion followed. Why was there. special need of defending Jerusalem now? Why had not men gone out before when the Mohammedans took it? How could they leave everything at home and go off? What happened to their families? Did all the men go?

With these questions still unanswered, we read Urban's speech at Clermont calling on Europe to be off to defend the Holy

City and offering spiritual rewards to all who would take the cross. This brought more questioning and comment. Mahomet said the same thing about being sure of heaven if you died fighting infidels. Wouldn't men go on Crusades just to get the rewards? Were they more full of religious feeling than we are? Some light on these matters was gleaned from Robinson's "Mediaeval Times," and Kingsford and Archer's "Crusades." The reasons they gave for the Crusade's appeal to all types of men, merchants, peasants, knights, freebooters, were different from the reasons held out by Urban, and we discussed the difference.

The next thing was to find out who actually went and what happened to them. We took Kingsford and Archer's account of this with selections from Robinson's "Readings," including a pathetic account of the Hungarians, unable to understand the meaning of these plundering hordes who marched across their territory and attempting repeatedly and often with success to annihilate them; and the tart comments of the daughter of the Emperor at Constantinople picturing the Crusaders through Eastern

eyes.

We were then ready to hear about the capture of Jerusalem from eye witnesses. Through the research of Frederick Duncalf who has published in the University of Texas Bulletin no. 224 "A Problem in the Uses of Parallel Source Material in Mediaeval History," a translation of the letters of three Crusaders all describing the capture of Jerusalem was available, together with a map of Jerusalem and many suggestive questions. A copy of these letters was put into the hands of each child.

The first step was to find out what kind of people wrote them. of people wrote them. One was anony