"If
the education of the citizen is to be our aim at all, it must be our
aim from the beginning, and if we are going to do our deliberate work
through lessons, it must begin with the lessons. To insure the
acceptance of the ideas we offer, we must take care that they are
served attractively, and not only to be found, if ever found, after a
long and painful search. For this reason it might be better not to
begin by taking modern history with the young child. We are a little
too close to it. Looking at a picture from a near point of view, we
see so clearly all the details that we find it difficult to see the
broad lines and the meaning of the whole. If we go further off,
however, the details cease to distract our attention, and we see
clearly the whole plan. So it is with history. The nearer the history
comes to our own time, the fuller it becomes of political and
constitutional details, and the more we are involved in questions of
statecraft. If, however, we go back to the early history, we find it
moves on broader, simpler lines, and the statesmanship, so far as it
exists at all, only shows how a resourceful mind attempts to cope
with circumstances.
"The
early histories also are practically biographies, written about great
men by men of their own time. With the child, a biography is of
greater use than a number of detached history stories, because in the
latter it is difficult to make the characters real living men and
women, whereas if he drops leisurely into some biography, he begins to think the thoughts and take the point of view of the man whose
life he is studying, and he becomes accustomed to the dress and
habits of his time. In this way, he is living not only in the life of
one man, but in his period."
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