beings, men and
women with desires and feelings like our own. But in history and
geography stories we deal particularly with people who are different
from ourselves, and we should help children to understand, and to
sympathise with those whose surroundings and customs are not ours. They
may have lived centuries ago, or they may be living now but afar off,
they may be far from us in time or space, but our stories should show
the reasons for their customs and actions, and should tend to lessen the
natural tendency to feel superior to those who have fewer advantages,
and gradually to substitute for that a sense of responsibility.

But the narration of stories is not the only way in which we can treat
history. Our present Minister of Education says that history teaching
ought to give "discipline in practical reasoning" and "help in forming
judgements," not merely in remembering facts. Indeed he went so far as
to say "eliminate dates and facts" by which, of course, he only meant
that the power of reasoning, the power of forming judgements is of far
more consequence than the mere possession of any quantity of facts and
dates. Training in reasoning, however, must involve training in
verification of facts before pronouncing judgement.

Training in practical reasoning takes a prominent place in that form of
history teaching introduced by Professor Dewey. According to him,
history is worth nothing unless it is "an indirect sociology," an
account of how human beings have learned, so far as the world has yet
learned the lesson, to co-operate with one another, a study of the
growth of society and what helps and hinders. So he finds his
beginnings in primitive life, and although there is much in this that
will appeal to any age, there is no doubt that children of seven to ten
or eleven revel in this material.

If used at all it should be used as thinking material--here is man
without tools, without knowledge, everything must be thought out. It
does not do much good to hand over the material as a story, as some
teachers use the Dopp series of books. These books do all the children's
thinking for them. Every set of children must work things out for
themselves, using their own environments and their own advantages. The
teacher must read to be ready with help if the children fail, and also
to be ready with the actual problems. It is astonishing how keen the
children are, and how often they suggest just what has really happened.
Where