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to the service of all other ends, the teaching of the lower public schools must take into account the relevancy of historical fact to current and future problems which concern men and women engaged in the common social life. So the elementary and secondary school teachers of the more progressive sort recognize that the way in which historical truths are selected and related to one another determines two things: (1) Whether our group experiences as interpreted in history will have any intelligent effect upon men's appreciations of current social difficulties, and (2) whether history will make a more vital appeal to youth at school. Certainly children, whose interests arise not alone from their innate impulses, but also from the world in which they have lived from the beginning, will be eager to know the past that is of dominant concern to the present. It is clear gain in the psychology of instruction if history is a socially live thing. The children will be more eager to acquire knowledge; they will hold it longer, because it is significant; and they will keep it fresh after school days are over because life will recall and review pertinent knowledge again and again. There can be no separation between the dominant social interests of community life and effective pedagogical procedure; the former in large part determines the latter. Such educational reforms in history teaching as have already won acceptance confirm the existence of this vital relation between current social interests and the learning process. The barren learning of names and dates has long since been supplanted by a study of sequences among events. The technical details of wars and political administrations have given way to a study of wide economic and social movements in which battles and laws are merely overt results reinforcing the current of change. History, once a self-inclosed school discipline, has undergone an intellectual expansion which takes into account all the aspects of life which influence it, making geographical, economic, and biographical materials its aids. All these and many other minor changes attest the fact that a vital mode of instruction always tends to accompany that view of history which regards the study of the past as a revelation of real social life. The author's suggestions will, therefore, be of distinct value to at least two groups of history teachers. Those who believe in the larger uses of history teaching, so much
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