Lawrence High School - Lawrencian Yearbook (Falmouth, MA)

Page 25 text:

12 The Lawrencian The use of phonetics is just one of the many changes since 1875. Textbooks have changed from fine- print, pictureless grammars to easy- to-read, attractive books, whose bright covers and picture-sprinkled contents combine the business of grammar with the color and charm of stories of foreign lands. If one should ask: “What are language courses worth? What do they contribute to the high-school student’s education?”, we should reply: “Besides giving instruction in the bare essentials of the language, modern language courses tend to include something of a cultural na- ture. They give a glimpse of the art, literature, and music of other countries. They show our neighbors to be people like us, who are only separated frcm us by the barrier of speech. When this barrier is broken, the contributions of these other languages are realized.” All these things lead toward the supreme goal cf the educational in- stitutions of America, as hoped for by Horace Mann, the father of the public school system, “enlightened citizenship — that this nation may not perish from the earth.” Robert Brown, ’37, HONOR ESSAY HISTORY Introduction The subject of history is the old- est of all the social sciences. The story of its origin, development, and expansion can be traced from the earliest stages of life to the century of today. As civilization has ad- vanced, so has the subject of his- tory gained in importance and re- cognition. To give the complete story of the subject would be to narrate the rise and advance of mankind throughout the ages. From this prolific background we will, to- night, extract only that which is vital to our interests. Accordingly we begin our story with the situation in America dur- ing the last part of the 18th cen- tury. We shall briefly notice, dur- ing the next two and a half cen- turies, the place of history in the school curriculum before the year 1837, the changes instituted by Horace Mann, the present status of history in the schools, and today’s new and different conceptions re- garding the subject, as compared to those of yesterday. History Before Horace Mann During the period of the Con- federation, when the United States was still unorganized and the spirit of independence and individualism high, history was almost entirely lacking in the public and private schools. The few that did offer courses in the subject were pre- paratory schools that prepared stu- den ts for the law and ministry. The types of history taught in these schools were, naturally, those per- taining to the classics, usually An- cient history, Roman history, anti- quities, mythology, and chronology. There was no American history, and even the British history during the Colonial Period was absent. There were, however, a few public lead- ers who, before the close of this period in America, recognized the importance of the subject. Ben- jamin Franklin, most prominent of these, submitted to the public a plan for a scheme of education based on historical study. He urged and recommended the schools to teach American history, but only slight attention was paid him and the subject made little headway.