Nichols School - Verdian Yearbook (Buffalo, NY)

Page 31 text:

GUY M. JOHNSON, JR. RODNEY F. DASHNAW GEORGE B. TRUSCOTT 25

Page 30 text:

HISTORY MILLARD SESSIONS Chairman NORMAN A. PEDERSEN, JR. 24 History is what the historian says it is. The honest historian sets out to capture the truth, to describe how it was. He does this by scanning the evidence. This by itself is often a difficult task, for the evidence is often scanty, or too voluminous, or misleading, or ambiguous. Thus the historian is the agent that reduces this mass to order, gives it meaning, and exercises his judgment on it. The historical account, therefore, can- not transcend the historian. History is his discretion, his words. The historian is present in his work as much as the sculptor, playwright or other artist is present in his work. If this description of the relationship between his- tory and the historian is reasonably accurate, then there must be many historical truths, perhaps as many as there are historians. How does the user or student of history know which history to use? How does he discriminate between the accounts of the past? In short, he must be something of a historian himself. Only by reading and writing history may the student begin to understand what history is. It is by these means that the student comes to use the intellectual and material tools that the historian uses. By these means the student may appreciate the historian's point of view, his techniques, and, most important, his quali- ties of mind. In time, the student may know mind from mindlessness, truth from partisanship. If the study of history is to become something of a historian, is history taught at Nichols? No, it is not. The taking of orthodox courses in history is not study- ing history directly. We can only teach about history. History in a school must be approached obliquely. We do not delude ourselves that we teach history, or that history can be taught. We can attempt, nevertheless, to prepare some of the students to realize these improba- ble goals, that is, to acquire the attribute of mind pos- sessed by the historian. This is our prime objective. We can avoid rote learning, we can provide skeptical remarks, we can offer different accounts of the same event, we can give only essay examination questions, we can require some independent work, we can chal- lenge orthodox solutions, we can insist on accuracy, we can eschew dogma, we can warn of the simple, absolute solution, we can demand that knowledge be the basis for judgment. Millard Sessions

Page 32 text:

J J. HERLAN LANGUAGES A graduate of but a few years ago returning to our foreign language curriculum would find fundamental changes in almost every area of language learning. Gone are the vocabulary sheets C105 of them, remem- ber?J and the grammar sheetsg gone too is translation from one language to another, a technique which took up two thirds of our time in advanced classes, gone are the silent Cnumb'?J students listening to learned lec- tures on grammatical structure Cin English, of coursejg gone is Latin for two years and a foreign language for two years-the smattering which amounted to noth- ing. What have we now? First, an expansion of the cur- riculum at both ends: every sixth grader chooses his foreign language and studies it for a compulsory six years, with a seventh year optional, while at the upper level the long desired fourth year is now offered every year. The effects of this expansion are the delight of the foreign language faculty. Language learners coming into the Upper School have most fundamentals under control, allowing much greater progress in the upper levels. The fourth year courses mean the study of liter- ature and civilization to a degree never possible before. ALBERT R. SUTTER Chairman This year, students of French V are devoting them- selves to an in-depth study of the literature and ideas of the eighteenth century, that glorious flowering which made France the undisputed intellectual leader of the world. Also new is the abandonment of the grammar-trans- lation method of language learning in favor of the audio-lingual method. The philosophy and techniques of the new method are too complicated to describe here. Suflice it to say that each student speaks about one hundred times as much foreign language in one year as former students did in threeg that translation is out, out, out, as is the memorization of columns of words and ffor the first two years, at leastj the study of grammar as an abstract set of rules in lieu of prac- ticing the language itself, that class activities are rapid, varied, and, best of all, as much participated in by the student as by the teacher. From the teacher's point of view, audio-lingual classes are much more fun to teach: something happens, someone speaks, things move. But does the method really work? See the Verdian for '67! Albert R. Sutter 26