Introduction to the Study of History Part 15

II. In recent times the general movement of educational reform, which began in the Department and the Faculties, has at last extended to secondary instruction. The professors of history have been emanc.i.p.ated from the jealous supervision which weighed on their teaching under the government of the Empire, and have taken the opportunity to make trial of new methods. A system of historical pedagogy has been devised. It has been revealed with the approbation of the Department in the discussions of the society for the study of questions of secondary education, in the _Revue de l'enseignement secondaire_, and in the _Revue universitaire_.

It has received official sanction in the _Instructions_ appended to the programme of 1890; the report on history, the work of M. Lavisse, has become the charter which protects the professors who favour reform in their struggle against tradition.[237]

Historical instruction will no doubt issue from this crisis of renovation organised and provided with a rational pedagogic and technical system, such as is possessed by the older branches of instruction in languages, literature, and philosophy. But it is only to be expected that the reform should be much slower than in the case of the higher instruction. The _personnel_ is much more numerous, and takes longer to train or to renew; the pupils are less zealous and less intelligent; the routine of the parents opposes to the new methods a force of inertia which is unknown to the Faculties; and the Baccalaureate, that general obstacle to all reform, is particularly mischievous in its effect on historical instruction, which it reduces to a set of questions and answers.

III. It is now possible, however, to indicate what is the direction in which historical instruction is likely to develop in France[238] and the questions which will need to be solved for the purpose of introducing a rational technical system. Here we shall endeavour to formulate these questions in a methodical table.

(1) _General Organisation._--What object should historical instruction aim at? What services can it render to the culture of the pupil? What influence can it have upon his conduct? What facts ought it to enable him to understand? And, consequently, what principles ought to guide the choice of subjects and methods? Ought the instruction to be spread over the whole duration of the cla.s.ses, or should it be concentrated in a special cla.s.s? Should it be given in one-hour or two-hour cla.s.ses?

Should history be distributed into several cycles, as in Germany, so as to cause the pupil to return several times to the same subject at different periods of his studies? Or should it be expounded in a single continuous course, beginning with the commencement of study, as in France? Should the professor give a complete course, or should he select a few questions and leave the pupil to study the others by himself?

Should he expound the facts orally, or should he require the pupils to learn them in the first instance from a book, so as to make the course a series of explanations?

(2) _Choice of Subjects._--What proportion should be observed between home and foreign history? between ancient and contemporary history?

between the special branches of history (art, religion, customs, economics) and general history? between inst.i.tutions or usages, and events? between the evolution of material usages, intellectual history, social life, political life? between the study of particular incidents, of biography, of dramatic episodes, and the study of the interconnection of events and general evolutions? What place should be a.s.signed to proper names and dates? Should we profit by the opportunities afforded by legends to arouse the critical spirit? or should we avoid legends?

(3) _Order._--In what order should the subjects be attacked? Should instruction begin with the most ancient periods and the countries with the most ancient civilisations in order to follow chronological order and the order of evolution? or should it begin with the periods and the countries which are nearest to us so as to proceed from the better known to the less known? In the exposition of each period, should the chronological, geographical, or logical order be followed? Should the teacher begin by describing conditions or by narrating events?

(4) _Methods of Instruction._--Should the pupil be given general formulae first or particular images? Should the professor state the formulae himself or require the pupil to search for them? Should formulae be learnt by heart? In what cases? How are images of historical facts to be produced in the pupils' minds? What use is to be made of engravings? of reproductions and restorations? of imaginary scenes? What use is to be made of narratives and descriptions? of authors' texts? of historical novels? To what extent ought words and formulae to be quoted? How are facts to be localised? What use is to be made of chronological tables?

of synchronical tables? of geographical sketches? of statistical and graphic tables? What is the way to make comprehensible the character of events and customs? the motives of actions? the conditions of customs?

How are the episodes of an event to be chosen? and the examples of a custom? How is the interconnection of facts and the process of evolution to be made intelligible? What use is to be made of comparison? What style of language is to be employed? To what extent should concrete, abstract, and technical terms be used? How is it to be verified that the pupil has understood the terms and a.s.similated the facts? Can exercises be organised in which the pupil may do original work on the facts? What instruments of study should the pupil have? How should school-books be compiled, with a view to giving the pupil practice in original work?

For the purpose of stating and justifying the solutions of all these problems, a special treatise would not be too much.[239] Here we shall merely indicate the general principles on which a tolerable agreement seems to have been now reached in France.

We no longer go to history for lessons in morals, nor for good examples of conduct, nor yet for dramatic or picturesque scenes. We understand that for all these purposes legend would be preferable to history, for it presents a chain of causes and effects more in accordance with our ideas of justice, more perfect and heroic characters, finer and more affecting scenes. Nor do we seek to use history, as is done in Germany, for the purpose of promoting patriotism and loyalty; we feel that it would be illogical for different persons to draw opposite conclusions from the same science according to their country or party; it would be an invitation to every people to mutilate, if not to alter, history in the direction of its preferences. We understand that the value of every science consists in its being true, and we ask from history truth and nothing more.[240]

The function of history in education is perhaps not yet clearly apparent to all those who teach it. But all those who reflect are agreed to regard it as being princ.i.p.ally an instrument of social culture. The study of the societies of the past causes the pupil to understand, by the help of actual instances, what a society is; it familiarises him with the princ.i.p.al social phenomena and the different species of usages, their variety and their resemblances. The study of events and evolutions familiarises him with the idea of the continual transformation which human affairs undergo, it secures him against an unreasoning dread of social changes; it rectifies his notion of progress. All these acquisitions render the pupil fitter for public life; history thus appears as an indispensable branch of instruction in a democratic society.

The guiding principle of historical pedagogy will therefore be to seek for those subjects and those methods which are best calculated to exhibit social phenomena and give an understanding of their evolution.

Before admitting a fact into the plan of instruction, it should be asked first of all what educational influence it can exercise; secondly, whether there are adequate means of bringing the pupil to see and understand it. Every fact should be discarded which is instructive only in a low degree, or which is too complicated to be understood, or in regard to which we do not possess details enough to make it intelligible.

IV. To make rational instruction a reality it is not enough to develop a theory of historical pedagogy. It is necessary to renew the material aids and the methods.

History necessarily involves the knowledge of a great number of facts.

The professor of history, with no resources but his voice, a blackboard, and abridgments which are little better than chronological tables, is in much the same situation as a professor of Latin without texts or dictionary. The pupil in history needs a repertory of historical facts as the Latin pupil needs a repertory of Latin words; he needs collections of _facts_, and the school text-books are mostly collections of _words_.

There are two vehicles of facts, engravings and books. Engravings exhibit material objects and external aspects, they are useful princ.i.p.ally for the study of material civilisation. It is some time since the attempt was first made in Germany to put in the hands of the pupil a collection of engravings arranged for the purposes of historical instruction. The same need has, in France, produced the _Alb.u.m historique_, which is published under the direction of M. Lavisse.

The book is the chief instrument. It ought to contain all the characteristic features necessary for forming mental representations of the events, the motives, the habits, the inst.i.tutions studied; it will consist princ.i.p.ally in narratives and descriptions, to which characteristic sayings and formulae may be appended. For a long time it was endeavoured to construct those books out of extracts selected from ancient authors; they were compiled in the form of collections of texts.[241] Experience seems to indicate that this method must be abandoned; it has a scientific appearance, it is true, but is not intelligible to children. It is better to address pupils in contemporary language. It is in this spirit that, pursuant to the _Instructions_ of 1890,[242] collections of _Historical Readings_ have been compiled, of which the most important has been published by the firm of Hachette.

The pupils' methods of work still bear witness to the late introduction of historical teaching. In most historical cla.s.ses methods still prevail which only exercise the pupils' receptivity: the course of lectures, the summary, reading, questioning, the _redaction_, the reproduction of maps. It is as if a Latin pupil were to confine himself to repeating grammar-lessons and extracts from authors, without ever doing translation or composition.

In order that the teaching may make an adequate impression, it is necessary, if not to discard all these pa.s.sive methods, at least to supplement them by exercises which call out the activity of the pupil.

Some such exercises have already been experimented with, and others might be devised.[243] The pupil may be set to a.n.a.lyse engravings, narratives, and descriptions in such a way as to bring out the character of the facts: the short written or oral a.n.a.lysis will guarantee that he has seen and understood, it will be an opportunity to inculcate the habit of using only precise terms. Or the pupil may be asked to furnish a drawing, a geographical sketch, a synchronical table. He may be required to draw up tables of comparison between different societies, and tables showing the interconnection of facts.

A book is needed to supply the pupil with the materials for these exercises. Thus the reform of methods is connected with the reform of the instruments of work. Both reforms will progress according as the professors and the public perceive more clearly the part played by historical instruction in social education.

APPENDIX II

THE HIGHER TEACHING OF HISTORY IN FRANCE

The higher teaching of history has been in a great measure transformed, in our country, within the last thirty years. The process has been gradual, as it ought to have been, and has consisted in a succession of slight modifications. But although a rational continuity has been observed in the steps taken, the great number of these steps has not failed, in these last days, to astonish, and even to offend, the public.

Public opinion, to which appeal has been made in favour of reforms, has been somewhat surprised by being appealed to so often, and perhaps it is not superfluous to indicate here, once more, the general significance and the inner logic of the movement which we are witnessing.

I. Before the last years of the Second Empire, the higher teaching of the historical sciences was organised in France on no coherent system.[244]

There were chairs of history in different inst.i.tutions, of different types: at the College de France, in the Faculties of Letters, and in the "special schools," such as the ecole normale superieure and the ecole des chartes.

The College de France was a relic of the inst.i.tutions of the _ancien regime_. It was founded in the sixteenth century in opposition to the scholastic Sorbonne, to be a refuge for the new sciences, and had the glorious privilege of representing historically the higher speculative studies, the spirit of free inquiry, and the interests of pure science.

Unfortunately, in the domain of the historical sciences, the College de France had allowed its traditions to be obliterated up to a certain point. The great men who taught history in this ill.u.s.trious inst.i.tution (J. Michelet, for example), were not technical experts, nor even men of learning, in the proper sense of the word. The audiences which they swayed by their eloquence were not composed of students of history.

The Faculties of Letters formed part of a system established by the Napoleonic legislator. This legislator, in creating the Faculties, by no means entertained the design of encouraging scientific research. He had no great love for science. The Faculties of Law, of Medicine, and so on, were intended by him to be professional schools supplying society with the lawyers, physicians, and so on, which it needs. But three of the five Faculties were unable, from the beginning, to perform the part allotted them, while the other two, Law and Medicine, successfully performed theirs. The Faculties of Catholic Theology did not train the priests needed by society, because the State consented to the education of the priests being conducted in the diocesan seminaries. The Faculties of Sciences and of Letters did not train the professors for secondary education, the engineers, and so on, needed by society, because they were here met by the triumphant compet.i.tion of "special schools"

previously inst.i.tuted: the ecole normale, the ecole polytechnique. The Faculties of Catholic Theology, of Sciences, and of Letters were therefore obliged to justify their existence by other modes of activity.

In particular, the professors of history in the Faculties of Letters could not undertake the instruction of the young men who were destined to teach history in the _lycees_. Deprived of these special pupils, they found themselves in a situation a.n.a.logous to that of those charged with historical instruction at the College de France. They too were not, as a rule, technical experts. For half a century they carried on the work of higher popularisation in lectures delivered to large audiences of leisured persons (since much abused), who were attracted by the force, the elegance, and the pleasing style of their diction.

The function of training the future teachers for secondary education was reserved for the ecole normale superieure. Now at this epoch it was an admitted principle that to be a good secondary teacher it is necessary for a man to know, and sufficient to know perfectly, the subject he is charged to teach. The one is certainly necessary, but the other is not sufficient: knowledge of a different, of a higher, order is no less indispensable than the regular "scholastic" equipment. At the ecole there was never any question of such higher knowledge, but, in accordance with the prevailing theory, preparation was made for secondary teaching simply by imparting it. However, as the ecole normale has always been excellently recruited, the system in vogue has not prevented it from numbering among its former pupils men of the first order, not only as professors, thinkers, or writers, but even as critical scholars. But it must be recognised that they made their way for themselves, in spite of the system, not thanks to it, after, not during, their pupilage, and princ.i.p.ally when they had the advantage, during a stay at the French School at Athens, of the wholesome contact with doc.u.ments which they had not enjoyed at the Rue d'Ulm. "Does it not seem strange," it has been said, "that so many generations of professors should have been turned out by the ecole normale incapable of utilising doc.u.ments?... Formerly, in short, students of history, on leaving the ecole, were not prepared either to teach history, which they had learned in a great hurry, or to investigate difficult questions."[245]

As for the ecole des chartes, which was founded under the Restoration, it was, from a certain point of view, a special school like the others, designed in theory to train those useful functionaries, archivists and librarians. But professional instruction was early reduced to a strict minimum, and the ecole des chartes was organised on a very original plan, with a view to provide a rational and complete apprenticeship for the young men who proposed to study mediaeval French history. The pupils of the ecole des chartes did not follow any course of "mediaeval history," but they learnt all that is necessary for doing work on the solution of the still open questions of mediaeval history. Here alone, in virtue of an accidental anomaly, the subjects which are preliminary and auxiliary to historical research were systematically taught. We have already had occasion to note the effects of this circ.u.mstance.[246]

This was the state of affairs when, towards the end of the Second Empire, a vigorous reform movement set in. Some young Frenchmen had visited Germany; they had been struck by the superiority of the German university system over the Napoleonic system of Faculties and special schools. Certainly France, with its defective organisation, had produced many men and many works, but it now began to be held that "in all kinds of enterprises the least possible part should be left to chance," and that "when an inst.i.tution proposes to train professors of history and historians, it ought to supply them with the means of becoming what it intends them to be."

M. V. Duruy, minister of Public Education, supported the partisans of a renaissance of the higher studies. But he did not think it practicable to interfere, for the purpose either of remodelling, of fusing, or of suppressing them, with the existing inst.i.tutions,--the College de France, the Faculties of Letters, the ecole normale superieure, the ecole des chartes, all of which were consecrated by the services they had rendered, and by the l.u.s.tre they received from the eminent men who had been, or were, connected with them. He changed nothing, he added. He crowned the somewhat heterogeneous edifice of existing inst.i.tutions by the creation of an "ecole pratique des hautes etudes," which was established at the Sorbonne in 1868.

The ecole pratique des hautes etudes (historical and philological section) was intended by those who founded it to prepare young men for research of a scientific character. It was not meant to be subservient to the interests of the professions, and there was to be no popularisation. Students were not to go there to learn the results obtained by science, but, for the same purpose which takes the chemical student to the laboratory, to be initiated into the technical methods by which new results can be obtained. Thus the spirit of the new inst.i.tution was not without some a.n.a.logy to that of the primitive tradition of the College de France. It was endeavoured to do there, for all the branches of universal history and philology, what had long been done at the ecole des chartes for the limited domain of French mediaeval history.

II. As long as the Faculties of Letters were satisfied to be as they were (that is, without students), and as long as their ambition did not go beyond their traditional functions (the holding of public lectures, the conferring of degrees), the organisation of the higher teaching of the historical sciences in France remained in the condition which we have described. When the Faculties of Letters began to seek a new justification for their existence and new functions, changes became inevitable.

This is not the place to explain why and how the Faculties of Letters were led to desire to work more actively, or rather in other ways than in the past, for the promotion of the historical sciences. M. V. Duruy, in inaugurating the ecole des hautes etudes at the Sorbonne, had declared that this young and vigorous plant would thrust asunder the old stones; and, without a doubt, the spectacle of the fruitful activity of the ecole des hautes etudes has contributed not a little to awaken the conscience of the Faculties. On the other hand the liberality of the public authorities, which have increased the _personnel_ of the Faculties, which have built palaces for them, and liberally endowed them with the materials required by their work, has imposed new duties on these privileged inst.i.tutions.

It is about twenty-five years since the Faculties of Letters began to transform themselves, and during this period their progressive transformation has occasioned changes in the whole fabric of the higher teaching of historical science in France, which up to that time had remained unshaken, even by the ingenious addition of 1868.

III. The first care of the Faculties was to provide themselves with students. This was not, to be sure, the main difficulty, for the ecole normale superieurs (in which twenty pupils are admitted every year, chosen from among hundreds of candidates) was no longer sufficient for the recruiting of the now numerous body of professors engaged in secondary education. Many young men who had been candidates (along with the pupils of the ecole normale superieure) for the degrees which give access to the scholastic profession, were thrown on their own resources.

Here was an a.s.sured supply of students. At the same time the military laws, by attaching much-prized immunities to the t.i.tle of _licencie es lettres_, were calculated to attract to the Faculties, if they prepared students for the licentiate, a large and very interesting cla.s.s of young men. Lastly, the foreigners (so numerous at the ecole des hautes etudes), who come to France to complete their scientific education, and who up to that time were surprised to have no opportunity of profiting by the Faculties, were sure to go to them as soon as they found there something a.n.a.logous to what they had been accustomed to find in the German universities, and the kind of instruction they wanted.

Before students in any great number could be taught the way to the Faculties, great efforts were necessary and several years pa.s.sed; but it was after the Faculties obtained the students they desired that the real problems presented themselves for solution.

The great majority of the students in the Faculties of Letters have been originally candidates for degrees, for the licentiate, and for _agregation_, who entered with the avowed intention of "preparing" for the licentiate and for _agregation_. The Faculties have not been able to escape the obligation of helping them in this "preparation." But, twenty years ago, examinations were still conceived in accordance with ancient formulae. The licentiate was an attestation of advanced secondary study, a kind of "higher baccalaureate"; for the _agregation_ in the cla.s.ses of history and geography (which became the real _licentia docendi_), the candidates were required to show that they "had a very good knowledge of the subjects they would be charged to teach." Henceforth there was a danger lest the teaching of the Faculties, which must, like that of the ecole normale superieure, be preparatory for the examinations for the licentiate and for _agregation_, should be compelled by the force of circ.u.mstances to a.s.sume the same character. Note that a certain emulation could not fail to arise between the pupils of the ecole normale and those of the Faculties in the compet.i.tions for _agregation_.

The _agregation_ programmes being what they were, this emulation seemed likely to have the result of engaging the rival teachers and students more and more in school work, not of a scientific kind, equally devoid of dignity and real utility.

The danger was very serious. It was perceived from the first by those clear-sighted promoters of the reform of the Faculties, MM. A. Dumont, L. Liard, E. Lavisse. M. Lavisse wrote in 1884: "To maintain that the Faculties have for their chief object the preparation for examinations is to subst.i.tute drill for scientific culture: this is the serious grievance which able men have against the partisans of innovation....

The partisans of innovation reply that they have seen the drawbacks of the new departure from the beginning, but that they are convinced that a modification of the examination-system will follow the reform of higher education; that a reconciliation will be found between scientific work and the preparation for examinations; and that thus the only grievance their opponents have against them will fall to the ground." It is only doing justice to the foremost champion of reform to acknowledge that he was never tired of insisting on the weak point; and in order to convince oneself that the _examination question_ has always been considered the key-stone of the problem of the organisation of higher education in France, it is only necessary to look through the speeches and the articles ent.i.tled "Education and Examinations," "Examinations and Study," "Study and Examinations," &c., which M. Lavisse has collected in his three volumes published at intervals of five years from 1885 onwards: _Questions d'enseignement national, etudes et etudiants, A propos de nos ecoles._

Thus the question of the reform of the examinations connected with higher education (licentiate, _agregation_, doctorate) has been placed on the order of the day. It was then in 1884; it is still there in 1897.