Ancient History in the Secondary School

WILLIAM FAIRLEY, Ph.D., Editor.

Initial Problems.

What is said in the editorial of this number on “The Opening Days of a History Course” has a deep significance at the beginning of the work in Ancient History. Such work normally comes in the first year of the high school course. The pupils are fresh from the grammar schools, and unused to the kind of work they will have to do in the high school. The child of educated parents, from a more or less cultivated home, will take to the work readily enough. What about some of the others, who may ask, “Why do we have to study this stuff? We do not care about these old people.” The writer has to confess that, owing to a visit to the British Museum when he was about five years old, the first association of ideas that comes to his mind when the Egyptians are mentioned is of a lot of mummies. To many of our pupils is there not a danger that ancient history shall seem to them like an exhibition of mummies rather than of people who lived and moved and worked like ourselves?

It would seem, therefore, that the wise teacher will begin, not by plunging into a recitation on the first five or ten pages (I have heard of thirty-five pages being assigned in a city high school), but by being polite, and introducing the young strangers to their task and its meaning. Tell them that they have come to the high school to become educated people; that all educated people read a great deal; that in their later reading they will very often come across references to the old world peoples; with the rise and fall of their empires; their creeds, their superstitions, the wicked things some of them did, the good that is to be found in many of their codes. Above all, the young student is to be taught that from these early peoples have come directly the majority of the things that make up civilized life of to-day; we are their debtors. The antiquity of civilization needs to be impressed. Owing to the great mechanical advances of the time since steam power came in to use, I find that young people are prone to think of all the ages back of the nineteenth century as very crude and comfortless. But they should be made to feel that in many ways this is untrue. George Washington lived a comfortable life without the telephone and the Pullman car. And it is a fact that, barring the printed page and the use of gunpowder and the advantages of the compass, a high-class Citizen of ancient Babylon, Nineveh or Memphis, probably lived nearly as comfortably as did Washington; certainly the men of the Roman Empire had many more conveniences and refinements than he had.

The young pupil, then, needs to be stimulated to his task by a wise presentation of such facts as those cited.

The Dim Background.

This great development of civilization among the peoples we are to study, of course implies long preparatory ages of slow and bitter struggle upward from savagery. These stages may be hinted at enough to make the pupils reflect that there has been such a weary fight in unrecorded days. And now our story begins in the middle and not at the beginning of things. In our year’s work we are to take up the study of some eight or ten of the great peoples who have helped make our modern world what it is. We are to note what is like and what unlike our own ways of doing things; what we owe to these bygone folk.

Many mighty peoples are to be passed by. Why do we begin west of the Indian peninsula, and ignore the Hindoos, the Chinese, the Japanese? Because these peoples are out of the great stream of development. The progressive life of to-day’s world owes little to them, if anything. But the nations we are to take up have had a direct connection with us. One has handed on to another the torch of progress which now burns with electric splendor in our hands.

The Race Question.

The old confident classifications of mankind into races, save for those made by the obvious test of color, have been given up. Yet it is wise to use the main lines of cleavage as a working basis. The Hamitic, Semitic and Indo-European distinctions are useful as guides. And the primacy of the last named must be taught, not as a thing whose causes we can trace, but as a sober fact. And while there is such a primacy I think one of the worthiest things the history teacher can do all through his work is to emphasize the good that has come from other races than our own. Probably every good history teacher has been appalled by the Chauvinism of Young America. The study of history is its best corrective.

The Use of Geography.

To make these people of antiquity anything but mummies we must compare them and their doings constantly with ourselves. We speak much of our American resources: our broad prairies, our mighty water-powers, our fine harbors, our majestic rivers. These largely condition our lives. Before the coming of modern means of communication and transportation, natural surroundings had even more to do with the destiny of nations. The use of the map (preferably, by all means, the outline map, whether on board or paper, so that it may be drawn on) will be an early essential. And the study of the two great valleys, the Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile, will be emphasized. A good subject for special report in these connections would be a comparison of the Nile with the Hudson; of the Tigris and Euphrates with the Mississippi and the Missouri.

A Few Concrete Bits of Knowledge.

In many of our schools the whole Oriental period is merely skimmed, with the idea of leaving simply a general impression. The demand on time seems to render this imperative. What can we pick out from these earlier lessons and insist on its being retained?

The latest fashion is to regard the Babylonian or Chaldean Empire as antedating the Egyptian. Beginning with that, then dwell on the fact that this was a Semitic race. Relate them to the Jews of to-day, and to Abraham, a Semite from “Ur of the Chaldees.” Place Sargon the Elder at 3800 B.C. as marking, so we are told, the earliest verified date of history. Coming down to 2250 B.C., we reach Hammurabi, certainly the most interesting character of his people. Here again is a good occasion for special report. Some of the text-books give extracts from his code. Let one pupil find out from such extracts, or better yet, from the school library, some of the highly moral and kindly edicts. Let another show what trades and businesses these Babylonians had corresponding to our own, making special note of the fact that the commercial and business practices were highly developed.

The essential thing about the Assyrian Empire is that it was the first power to reach out broadly for world control and to subjugate its neighbors.

The Phœnicians are notable as the great traders of antiquity. Their skill in the arts gave them something to sell, and their location on the Mediterranean developed their powers of navigation. They seem to have been the first over-sea colonizers. Their trade routes and colonies would form a good report topic. By way of anticipation note Carthage, the coming rival of Rome. And our great debt to the Phœnicians is for the phonetic alphabet.

Religious prejudice, or the fear of touching in public schools anything bearing on religion should not be allowed to make us neglect the Hebrew people. True or false, right or wrong, religion is one of the prime forces with mankind. And here we have another Semitic race developing as a matter of fact, regardless of any theories as to its origin, the most sublime monotheism and the purest code of morals which the world had yet seen. Why this should have been so is as mysterious as was the flowering of Greece in the Periclean age. But there is the fact, and every young student should be made familiar with it.

Suggestions for a Lesson on Egypt.

What follows is simply an illustration of one method sometimes used. The whole class is directed to read the account of Egypt. The work is then subdivided for more minute study. Depending on the size of the class, it is divided into topics, one of which is assigned for special preparation to a student or a group of students. At the recitation period ten minutes are given in which each student or group is to write out what has been learned on the particular topic. It will probably not be possible in a large class for each pupil to read the work thus written. But one or two treatments of each topic may be read, and a different set of pupils called on at some other time. Thus the work will be participated in by all. As each topic is read criticisms and suggestions from the class are called for; and first of all from those who have not had that special topic; then in closing, from some student who has written but not read on that particular field. If note-books are used, the teacher may guide as to what shall be written down as the summary of each topic after it is read. A variation of the foregoing scheme is to send as many pupils as possible to the board to write out their topics. Appoint to each writer one or two critics. Let one criticize the English, the spelling, the punctuation (every lesson in history may be a lesson in English); and another the facts. A sample list of such topics for a lesson on Egypt is offered.

1. The Nile Valley.

2. The people; the one Hamitic race of prominence.

3. Periods of political history; the two capitals.

4. The government.

5. Classes of society.

6. Occupations and products.

7. Arts and sciences; specially architecture and sculpture.

8. Religion; ideas of immortality.

9. Decay of moral ideals.

10. Foreign conflicts.

11. Subjugation by Persia.

With the coming into view of Media and Persia, we get our first glimpse of a conquering Indo-European people. Their struggle to get into Europe is foreshadowed and we are brought to the threshold of the Greek story.