to the service of all other
ends, the teaching of the lower public schools must take into account
the relevancy of historical fact to current and future problems which
concern men and women engaged in the common social life. So the
elementary and secondary school teachers of the more progressive sort
recognize that the way in which historical truths are selected and
related to one another determines two things: (1) Whether our group
experiences as interpreted in history will have any intelligent effect
upon men's appreciations of current social difficulties, and (2) whether
history will make a more vital appeal to youth at school.

Certainly children, whose interests arise not alone from their innate
impulses, but also from the world in which they have lived from the
beginning, will be eager to know the past that is of dominant concern to
the present. It is clear gain in the psychology of instruction if
history is a socially live thing. The children will be more eager to
acquire knowledge; they will hold it longer, because it is significant;
and they will keep it fresh after school days are over because life will
recall and review pertinent knowledge again and again. There can be no
separation between the dominant social interests of community life and
effective pedagogical procedure; the former in large part determines the
latter.

Such educational reforms in history teaching as have already won
acceptance confirm the existence of this vital relation between current
social interests and the learning process. The barren learning of names
and dates has long since been supplanted by a study of sequences among
events. The technical details of wars and political administrations have
given way to a study of wide economic and social movements in which
battles and laws are merely overt results reinforcing the current of
change. History, once a self-inclosed school discipline, has undergone
an intellectual expansion which takes into account all the aspects of
life which influence it, making geographical, economic, and biographical
materials its aids. All these and many other minor changes attest the
fact that a vital mode of instruction always tends to accompany that
view of history which regards the study of the past as a revelation of
real social life.

The author's suggestions will, therefore, be of distinct value to at
least two groups of history teachers. Those who believe in the larger
uses of history teaching, so much