ding to the sociology rooms at the University of Minnesota
has been lined with large photographs of tenement conditions, child
labor, immigrant types, etc. The student's interest and curiosity have
been heightened immensely. Once a semester, during the discussion of
the economic factor in social life, we stage what is facetiously
called "a display of society's dirty linen." The classroom is
decorated with a set of charts showing the distribution of wealth,
wages, cost of living, growth of labor unions and other organizations
of economic protest. The mass effect is a cumulative challenge.

=Field work: values and limitations=

Finally, a word about "field work" as a teaching device. Field work
usually means some sort of social service practice work under
direction of a charitable agency, juvenile court, settlement, or
playground. But beginning students are usually more of a liability
than an asset to such agencies; they lack the time to supervise
students' work, and field work without strict supervision is a
farcical waste of time. If such agencies will accept a few students
who have the learner's attitude rather than an inflated persuasion of
their social Messiahship, field work can become a very valuable
adjunct to class work. In default of such opportunities the very best
field work is an open-eyed study of one's own community, in the
attempt to find out what actually is rather than to reform a
hypothetical evil.[38]

ARTHUR J. TODD
_University of Minnesota_

Footnotes:

[34] In order to secure frank statements, both these autobiographies
and the time budgets may be handed in anonymously.

[35] _American Journal of Sociology_, 4:1-20; 7:1-28, 171-187.

[36] In his _Men of the Old Stone Age_.

[37] See such a diagram in Todd, _Theories of Social Progress_, page
240.

[38] While accepting full responsibility for the opinions herein set
forth, I wish to express my appreciation of assistance rendered by a
large group of colleagues in the American Sociological Society.

XII

THE TEACHING OF HISTORY

A. THE TEACHING OF AMERICAN HISTORY

=Function of the teacher of history=

History as a science attempts to explain the development of
civilization. The investigator of the sources of history must do his
part in a truly scientific spirit. He must examine with the utmost
scrutiny the many sources on which the history of the past has its
foundation.