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isturitl elietu VOL. III. TORONTO, JUNE, 1922 NO. 2 NOTES AND COMMENTS MONG educationalists the Report to the,Fresident of the Board of Education on the Teaching of English in England,1presentedlast year by a specialcommitteeof which Sir Henry Newbolt was chairman, is rapidly achieving a wide fame. To the student and teacher of history the findingsof the report have a specialinterest. For in its appeal that every teaching "period" should be an English "period," and in its credothat "English connotesthe discovery of the world by the first and most direct way open to us, and the discovery of ourselvesin our native environment," the committee hammers again and again at the direct connectionand interdependenceof English and history in primary, secondary,continuation, evening and technical schools, in the training of teachers,in the universities,and in the private study. This is a far cry indeed from 1861, when the Newcastle Report segregatedhistory as "a subject intended to increase directly the professionalskill of the student." The methodsof intelligent co-operationbetweenEnglish and history are manifold. For the'schools great stressis laid in the report on the historical essay. Here is a golden opportunity to kill two birds with one stone,to scotchthe bogeyTime-table: The time neededto be set apart for English compositioncould be greatly reducedif teachersof history exacted a higher standard •London:H.M. StationeryOffice. 1021. (Is. 0d.) 100 11o THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW of Englishin oral.andwritten work than that whichthey at present accept; nor need English compositionalways be a thing separate from thewritten work in a specialsubjectsuchashistory, geography, or science. This is not of coursean original idea, though it can never be overemphasized . But a suggestionis made elsewherein the report whichmay benewand very welcometo Canadianschool-teachers. Pointing out the unassailable truth that "epics existed before essays,"the committeeclaimshistory as the most fruitful source 'of dramatic work among children: Considerthe training involved in the compositionof a drama on the subject,say, of Sir Walter Raleigh! There is the actual work of planningthe wholedrama; then of planningeachscene,of fitting the characterswith becomingwords, and of making the scenesaccordwith the conditionsof time and space--of time and spacein the artistic, historicalsense,and of time and spacein the practicaltheatricalsense. This is trainingin the writing of English suchas periodicalattempts at essays will never give. It is, in the fullest sense,practical English composition. To substitute Canadian heroes for Drakes and Raleighs and Nelsonsshouldnot be beyondthe powersof very many teachers of Englishand history in Canada, wherethe two subjectssofrequently fall to the sameinstructors. As the studentbecomes adolescent,the report pointsout, the liaison between English and history increases. In the day continuation schools,"with which the Education Act of 1918 will crown the elementaryschoolsystem," an essentialpart of the English programme should be to "make the pupil at least conscious of the past historyof the Englishpeopleand of their position and functions in the existingfamily of nations." The committee notesand stronglyapprovesthe tendencyin suchof these schoolsas have already been instituted to make some simple socialhistory and geographythe centre of their English course: We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that local history, wisely interpreted, adapted to the minds of adolescentstudents, and studiednot asan endin itself but asan introductionto the splendid literary and historicheritage of humanity,is one of the strongest allies of our cause. This policy has already beenadumbratedby the experimentsof teachersin evening and technical schools: It wasnecessary somehow to relate Englishto the vocationof NOTES AND COMMENTS 111 the student if he was to becomea willing learner. Of recent years this hasbeenaccomplished by broadeningthe conceptionof English to includesomestudy of the history and geographyof the industry in which the locality is chiefly interested. In other words a wellwritten text-book of socialhistory was substituted for the novel as the basisof class-work in English .... [The result hasbeenthat] in most thickly populated industrial centres, English has become one of the most popular subjectsof the eveningschoolcurriculum. This fact leads the committee to make the specificrecommendation , which might at least be tested in similar Canadian circumstances , that the work chosenas the basisof the English teaching should be a book demandingstudy, and in commercialcoursesthe mostsuitable bookswill be found in well-written elementary treatiseson history or geography viewed from the commercial or the rather broader economicstandpoint; and...

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