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The Use of the Problem Method in History

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Teaching

SAMUEL M. LEVIN, DETROIT, MICHIGAN.

...........................ODAY more than ever before is the question of history teaching singularly important. On one side the conditions and the problems brought to the foreground by the Great War require on the part of the people of America an understanding of pressing and fundamental issues, national and international in scope; a responsiveness to progressive principles, and a discriminate judgment. And yet, how well prepared are men and women, whose minds have never in the past been pried open to the light of history, to formulate sound judgments about the claims of the Poles, the Czecho-Slavs, or the Jugo-Slavs; how well prepared are they to define President Wilson's criticism of balance of power and to support the new program of America, that of international association and international responsibility? Certainly there is needed some substratum of historical knowledge if there is to be the right sort of thinking about these things. But granting this unprecedented need for history, teachers must, nevertheless, admit that history has failed to hold a place of vantage in the schools. Despite the grim persistence and sedulous application on the part of well meaning teachers to get the better of unwilling pupils, they do not seem to succeed much better than to leave with them stray bits of information; specks of knowledge, as it were, touching only the surface of the mind.

It would serve no purpose to deny that the material of history, as taught in the past, has, in general, not been the sort of material calculated to hold fast the student's interest or to impress him with any sense of its practicability. History has failed to suggest itself as significant. "What is it," so students have been wont to ask themselves, "if not a study of empires and peoples

which are no more; of generals, statesmen and kings who for many ages have been moldering in their graves; a study that packs one's head, and that in a treadmill sort of way, with memory facts concerning a dead past, facts which have not the slightest bearing on the life and problems of the day; a study that does not help one to get started nor to become proficient in the conduct of one's job, business, or profession." As against physics, zoology, chemistry, perhaps even sewing and cooking, history to the average schoolboy and girl has been too much like the ceremonial of an initiation, which one must needs go through to belong to the society of the elect, those who are the proud possessors of the insignia of graduation.

Such criticism is based on the assumption that history does give knowledge, but of the kind that bears to real knowledge the relation that the forgotten life of Nineveh bears to the vividly present life experienced in a metropolis like Detroit or Chicago. It is knowledge remote and unattached, and precisely because it is remote and unattached it is more akin to pretense than real attainment. And if this be the case, is it any wonder that in the economy of education other subjects are allowed priority rights? Promising no direct vocational or professional utility, failing to offer material which is directly and irrefragably contributive to the cultivation of mind and senses, or interpretative of what Robinson in his New History has called "the problems and prospects of mankind," history has held a dubious place in the school curriculum.

Of course there are other difficulties. History bears the odium of belonging to the category of subjects strictly academic, and therefore it need not, at least in the present complexion of things, expect abundant popularity. It is a subject that reaches out to the infinite. "In its amplest meaning," says Professor Robinson, "history includes every trace and vestige of everything that man has done or thought since he first appeared on the earth." It therefore does not lend itself to such pedagogical methodization as does arithmetic or Latin. The working material of history consists of abstractions, memory images, ideas, generalizations,

concocted from a multitude of ingredients that pertain to biography, religion, military science, philosophy or politics. Added to all this, history has the reputation of dealing with a forgotten past, the life that was and not the life that is.

No question therefore is more vital to us than this: "What can the history teacher do to make the history courses contribute their utmost to the education of the coming citizen?" An academic subject history must remain and certainly no less circumscribed in the future than in the past. Yet it is possible for the teacher to do a great deal by his own attitude toward the subject matter of history and by the way he brings the student's mind in contact with this subject matter; by a recognition on his part that whatsoever facts the pupil is asked to acquire, be they facts touching on the reign of Louis XIV, on the framing of the American constitution, or on the wars of Napoleon, they must be woven into the actual thought fabric of his life, they must be brought into organic association with the thought processes of his own experience, so that the history thus learned will offer the necessary data for the interpretation of the political, economic, religious, intellectual and social phenomena of his own day, and for a knowledge of the institutions with which he comes in contact.

It is here that the history problem looms up as an instrumentality of inestimable worth. The closer history teaching gets to life, the more must it take on the shape of dealing with a succession of human problems. Life is preeminently a matter of grappling with problems in relation to one's family, vocation, religion, environment, government, habits, and a host of other things. A young man asks himself the question, "Shall I go to college or shall I take a job?" He hesitates long and considers carefully and thinks of the reasons that dictate the one alternative or the other before taking the step which for the while is the solution of his problem. Another asks himself the question, "Which sort of man shall I support for this or that office? What party shall I belong to? What shall be my stand in regard to monopolies, big business, labor, prohibition, universal military training?" Every one of these questions stands out as a challenge

to his intelligence, judgment and understanding; every one of these, in other words, is a problem, and by acting one way or another he solves it; perhaps unconsciously and unintelligently, but solves it just the same. It is the business of the history teacher to improve and enlarge the thought material of the future adult and citizen, so that when he is met with such a challenge he will be in a position to take it up on the basis of comprehensive understanding, and not-to use a recent phrase of President Wilson-comprehensive ignorance.

The history problem, therefore, is by no means an artificial thing. It is not a casual expedient or a mere accessory to learning by rote. The history problem is vital to the entire process of history teaching, for it must serve to endow any history with intellectual potentiality and facilitate the association of facts however remote with facts of the present. Thus can wars, kings, statesmen, scientists, otherwise of doubtful interest, become amazingly important. A study of the New England confederation, of the German confederation, or the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention might bring to mind some important truths applicable to the plan for a world league; a study of the oft-recurring wars in the history of modern Europe, and the many inconsequential treaties, something about the weak spots in the diplomacy and the political order of the past.

A common way of presenting a history problem is to require of the student that he compare different periods, or governments, or characters; viz., the political aspects of slavery at the beginning of the nineteenth century with its political aspects at the middle of the century; or the government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation with that under the Federal Constitution. Similarly, if applied to foreign countries, the history teacher might call for a comparison between the methods and the statesmanship of Cavour with those of Bismarck, or the working out of the plan of Italian unification with that of German; the principles of the Concert of Powers of 1815 with those proposed by President Wilson as a basis for a world league; the government of the United States with that of Great Britain. The

ability to make such comparisons presupposes not only thoroughgoing knowledge of the items compared, but the ability to abstract and make explicit the vital facts that define the distinctiveness of the one as against the other.

The same sort of history problem may be put in such a way as to add a touch of personal interest and to afford a more direct opportunity for the student's personal reaction; e. g., "Which of the two men appeals to you most, Cavour or Bismarck; why?" Or, "If you were a resident of Alabama in 1860, which candidate would you be disposed to support for the presidency?" The same information no doubt might be drawn simply by calling for the names of the candidates and a comparison of their chances before different classes of the Alabama electorate. And yet, is there not an advantage sometimes to be had by placing these matters before the student's mind in a more personal way; in having the individual make an effort at realizing himself living in a different age and environment and actually faced with the matter of making a decision on a matter of crucial importance? Thus does history stir up the interest that attaches to any sort of challenge, though in this case it must needs always be an intellectual challenge.

Another use of the problem method the teacher will find in the statement of a question or a proposition much like the question or proposition that ordinarily forms the subject for a school debate. Students may be asked to take sides on such issues as these: That the Congressional policy of reconstruction following the Civil War was a blunder, or that a woman suffrage amendment should be adopted, or that radical abolitionism was not a constructive solution of the slavery question. Certainly history teaching lends itself to this sort of thing, and if there be any advantage in training boys and girls to hold their own in a debate, that advantage will accrue as a result of this method.

It is desirable, occasionally, to assign an exercise of this sort to the entire class, or to select students with a view to special study and investigation under the teacher's guidance. In this way the history problem may be made an organ for the initiation of the student into the field of simple research, differing only in