t will help
to solve this difficulty: (1) The child learns by relating everything
new to his present fund of experiences; (2) A child's notions grow more
complex as his knowledge increases. To apply these, we must know the
child's experiences and his present notions. We cannot assume that the
present conditions of social life are known to the child through his
experiences. Our social life is also too complex to be understood by him
yet; he can understand an _individual_ hero better than he can the
complex idea of a _nation_. How many children would be able to begin a
study of history by having, as one writer suggests, "a short series of
lessons ... to make some simple and fundamental historical ideas
intelligible--a state, a nation, a dynasty, a monarch, a parliament,
legislation, the administration of justice, taxes, civil and foreign
war!" These are ideas far beyond the comprehension of the beginner. We
must be guided, not by "what happens to be near the child in time and
place, but by what lies near his interests." As Professor Bourne says:
"it may be that mediaeval man, because his characteristics belong to a
simple type, is closer to the experience of a child than many a later
hero." With older children it is more likely to be true that the life of
history lies "in its personal connections with what is here and now and
still alive with us"; with historic places and relics, etc., which make
their appeal first through the senses; with institutions, such as trial
by jury; with anniversaries and celebrations of great events which may
be used to arouse interest in the history which they suggest and recall.

However, as McMurry points out, we are in a peculiarly favourable
position in Canada, because we have in our own history, in the
comparatively short time of 400 years, the development of a free and
prosperous country from a state of wildness and savagery. The early
stages of our history present those elements of life that appeal
strongly to children--namely, Indians with all their ways of living and
fighting, and the early settlers with their simpler problems and
difficulties. The development of this simpler life to the more complex
life of the present can be more readily understood by children as they
follow up the changes that have taken place. (See McMurry, _Special
Method in History_, pp. 26-30.) Of course, at every step appeal must be
made to the experiences of children, as the teacher knows them. In
Civics, how