ege course in American history which gives much
time to the period from 1815 to 1860. The events of these forty-five
years are not taught in administrations but are summed up in six
national tendencies; viz., the questions of state sovereignty,
slavery, territorial acquisition, tariff, industrial and
transportational progress, and foreign policy. Each of these movements
is treated as intensively as time permits. At the end of the study of
the entire period, the student is left with these six topics but
without a unifying principle; to him, these are six unrelated currents
of events. In each of these problems the North and the South displayed
distinctive attitudes, acted from distinctive motives, expressed
distinctive needs and preferences, but these were never brought out
either through well-formulated questions or through explanation. As a
result, the class never realize fully that those years, 1815-1860,
marked the period of growing sectional differences, misunderstandings,
and animosities. Had this underlying tendency been brought out clearly
at various points in the course, the students would have carried away
a permanent impression of what is most vital in this period of
American development.

_Gradation_ of subject matter is another characteristic of good
organization. Careful gradation is not so vital in subjects of social
content as it is in mathematics, foreign languages, and exact
sciences. The most important single factor in removing difficulties
that beset a student is gradation. Teaching problems often arise
because the instructor or the textbook presents more than one
difficulty at a time. Teachers who lack intellectual sympathy or who
are so lost in the advanced stages of their specialty that they can no
longer image the successive steps of difficulty, one by one, that
present themselves to a mind inexperienced in their respective fields,
are frequently guilty of this pedagogical error. Malgradation of
subject matter is the direct cause of serious loss of time and energy
and of needless discouragement not only to students but to instructors
as well.

_Ability of the student to summarize_ easily is a test of good
organization. At the end of a loosely organized chapter or lesson the
student experiences no little difficulty in setting forth the
underlying principles and their supporting data. It does not help much
to have the textbook or the instructor state the summary either at the
end of the lesson in