of aid or
direction. These considerations strongly advocate small classes for
freshmen, frequent recitations, discussions, tests, papers and maps,
library problems--in short, a laboratory system. Every student should
always have at least one course in which he is held to rigid and exact
performance. These courses should be required, no matter what the
special field or period of history, and should form a sequence leading
to a degree and providing training for a technical and professional
career. In addition to these courses, designed to assure personal work
and supervision, enough other, presumably lecture, courses should be
required to secure a general knowledge of history. Beyond that there
are always enough electives to satisfy any personal wish or whim of
the student.

=Topical method in European history=

There is much to be said, especially in modern history, for the
topical treatment of institutions. In a very specialized course a
single institution may be treated; but even in a general course,
treating the several human institutions as evolutionary organisms
seems preferable and is more interesting than a chronological
narrative, which grows more inane the more general the course. Courses
which come to modern times can trace existing institutions and their
immediate antecedents, thus giving an advantage that many instructors
neglect from the mere tradition that history does not come down to
living man. No primitive superstition needs to be dispelled more than
this, if history is to maintain its hold in the modern college.
Indeed, whenever possible--which is always with modern history--a
course should start from the present by dwelling on the existing
conditions the historical antecedents of which are to be traced. If
this is done, the student forthwith secures a vital interest and feels
that he is trying to understand his own rather than past times. After
this preliminary the past can be traced chronologically or topically
as preferred, the textbook serving as a quarry for data, the teacher
seeing to it that the change or progress toward the present condition
is perceived and understood, and furnishing corroborative and
analogous materials from the history of other nations and periods.

=Assigned reading=

It is the general practice of college courses in history to require
outside reading. Though this rests on the sound ground that the
student ought to get a large background and learn to know books and
wr