I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving! After a long, but satisfying day (hiking, making and eating turkey dinner, cleaning up, and playing a board game), I’m putting up an easy post this evening. Following up on Part 1 here are some more passages excerpted from “Instruction in History and Citizenship” by Professor S.S. Laurie, University of Edinburgh (Volume 11, 1900, pgs. 1-8, 69-77).

“If we reflect for a moment, we shall see that the writer of the history even of a single nation in the above large and true sense, much more the historian of the world, ought to be possessed of an intense sympathy with humanity, the imagination of a poet, the thoughtfulness of a philosopher, the knowledge of an encyclopaedist and the gifts of an orator. For the historian has to deal with the largest generalization of generalizations in every field of human activity, and, by dwelling on these, to lay bare the secret springs of events and motives, and all the causal relations, of the growth or decay of nations. Hence, we may say, that a historical grasp of the life of man through the ages is the last and richest result of a man’s culture.”

“We must teach history to the young as an epic, a drama and a song. A certain number of dates connected with great crises of national history, or with great characters, must, of course, be known for the sake of the time-sequence, and certain prosaic facts must enter as connecting links of the epic, as the pupils increase in years. But the younger our pupils are, the more must the epic and dramatic and lyric idea of history be kept in view, and the more indifferent must we remain to causal explanations. Thus, the history of the school will be full of humanity, and so be a humane study; thus will it connect itself with literature; thus will it stir ethical emotion; thus, in short, will it be the true matter of history; and when history, in the larger philosophic conception of it, comes within the range of the cultured adult mind, this epic view of it will contribute to a true-reasoned comprehension–a comprehension, that is to say, which will take full account of human character, feeling, and motive.”

“History taught in accordance with this method shows itself to be, above all other studies, a humane study, and to be rich in all those elements which go to the ethical culture of the young. All subjects, when properly taught, contribute, it is true, to this ethical culture, for even science can be humanized; but language (in its larger significance) and history contribute most of all, and these two play into each other’s hands. Together they constitute, along with morality and religion, the humanistic in education, and furnish the best instruments for the ethical growth of mind.”