Ideas and advice about history teaching 1900-1950s
Before the 1980s history teaching was not the subject of continuing controversy in the way that it
has been for the last twenty five years. But before then there were still considerable and heated
debates about how it should be taught – and what should be taught – among teachers, teacher
trainers, historians, politicians, HMIs, the press and the general public. What David Sylvester later
called ‘the great tradition’ of history teaching1 (by which he meant a ‘chalk and talk’ exposition of
kings and battles) was never uncontested; teachers found themselves teaching that way because
they were pressured, and had too many pupils and too few resources to do otherwise, but many
were conscious that this was neither an interesting nor inspiring way to teach children and was
never going to instil in them a continuing and consuming love of history. So over the years many
teachers and educationalists attempted to find more innovative methods of improving the teaching
of history. They were not immune from criticism and carping: some of the Board of Education’s
‘Suggestions’ criticise a decline in teaching dates; and in 1924, the writer Hilaire Belloc declared
that,“…we must return to an old-fashioned method which had governed the teaching of history for
generations. We must return to dates, conventional divisions, and an insistence upon mechanical
accuracy, which in its turn, is primarily dependent upon the unreasoning memory”.2 Professor Tout,
the second president of the Historical Association, expressed concern in 1923 about the
concentration on ‘modern’ and European and world history, at the expense of British history and
medieval history:
An even worse tendency is to re-write history from a particular point of view. The ‘patriotic
bias’ of the past is to be corrected by an anti-patriotic bias that shows our country to be
nearly always wrong . Those who hate war would have all battles cut out of history books,
despite the unfortunate facts that was plays a large part in history, and the present general
outlook does not suggest much prospect that fighting will be immediately eliminated.3
The 1930s saw debate over how far there should be teaching about the League of Nations in schools:
the official presumption was that the League was ‘a good thing’ which children should be taught, but
even some of its supporters were reluctant to teach in this way, fearing it strayed towards
propaganda and bias if not conducted in a spirit of debate and enquiry. There had been similar
reluctance among some local authorities and schools thirty years earlier to embrace the celebration
1
David Sylvester, ‘Changing Continuity in History Teaching 1900-1993’ in Hilary Bourdillon (ed), Teaching
History Education, (Routledge, London 1994).
2
Hilaire Belloc, Teachers’ World, 5/3/1924, quoted in Patrick Brindle, ‘Past Histories: History and the
Elementary School Classroom in early twentieth century England’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of
Cambridge, 1998, p55.
3
TF Tout, ‘The Middles Ages in the Teaching of History’, History, Vol VIII, April 1923, pp3-4.
2
of Empire Day and it was only in 1916 in the middle of war that the Government finally gave it
official recognition.
However most of the discussion about history teaching during the first half of the century centred on
how it should be taught as will be described below
The Historical Association
After the Board of Education, the most powerful influence on the teaching of history in the first half
of the twentieth century was the Historical Association. It was set up in 1906, arising out of a
concern about the state of history at all levels from elementary schools to university research
departments. By 1906 subject associations had already been set up for a number of other disciplines
– Mathematics (1870), Geography and Modern Languages (1893), Classics (1903) – but those
teaching history still had no independent forum from which to seek guidance and information. Its
inception was on January 5th 1906, at a meeting chaired by Professor AF Pollard of University
College, London, at a conference for elementary school teachers organised by the London County
Council, when Miss MA Howard, Head of the History Department of the London Day Training
College, made a plea for such a body. She commenced her paper by saying:
History is a comparatively new subject in schools. We are feeling our way towards a
satisfactory treatment of it. No one would deny that there has been an enormous
improvement in the teaching of history in England during the last ten or twenty years; but
on the other hand, no one would deny that there is still room for great improvement in this
matter…4
She made a compelling case for the need for children to learn history, clearly including elementary
school children as well as the minority in secondary and private schools, and managing to link the
need for history to encourage patriotism together with its need to make them think for themselves:
We should all agree that the history lesson can give, as no other school subject can, training
in what is, perhaps, the most necessary quality for success in life, that quality for which in
the English language we only have the unsatisfactory word ‘sympathy’. In learning history
the child is always, or should be always, exercising his imagination, projecting himself
backwards into the past, looking at things from other people’s point of view, and picturing
circumstances widely different from his own. Some children do this instinctively, but most
need a good deal of guidance. It is our business to give them the stimulating and suggestive
questions which are necessary. Then, too, the history lessons may give valuable preparation
for after life by training the children in reasoning, not in the abstract reasoning of
mathematics, but in reasoning and judgment as applied to human affairs. They cannot,
indeed, always learn the why, but we can teach them to want to know the why, and to form
4
Report of Conference of Teachers, Fourth Meeting, January 5 th, 1906, p35. Historical Association Archives:
Acc 1435, Box 9.
3
the habit of reasoning from the knowledge they already have. We can teach them never to
make generalisations or pass opinions for which they can give no reasons...
We want in the history lessons to impress the importance of historical truth; we want to
develop intelligence, patriotism, and citizenship; we want to give the children opportunities
for hero-worship. If these are our aims, how are they to be accomplished? The great need is
to make the children think. The great danger is that they should be passive, not active in the
history lesson. The great difficulty in most schools is the size of the classes. It is a
comparatively easy matter to teach history satisfactorily to a few individual children or to a
small class; to teach it satisfactorily to large classes is a task of the greatest difficulty.
The problem of method in history teaching seems threefold: how to make the children use
and realise the past; how to make them think about it; how to make them remember the
important things.
Whatever we do, or do not do, our history lessons will be a failure unless we make the
people and conditions of the past real to children...5
Most of Miss Howard’s paper went on to discuss her quite practical suggestions for improving the
teaching of history – deciding to leave out complicated areas like, “the greater part of constitutional
history” for pupils under sixteen6, minimise the learning of dates so that even in the later years,
“only the most important dates should be committed to memory, and these should be used as
centres around which events approximately synchronous may be grouped”.7 She emphasised the
use of aids – particularly maps but also pictures , lantern slides, old newspapers, coins, facsimiles of
letters and old documents, visits to galleries and museums, time charts. For large classes she
described the difficulty of giving children sufficient opportunities to put their knowledge to use,
without which they soon forget even the most interesting lessons. “We want them to make them
apply in some way the knowledge they have acquired. For example, after a lesson on the First
Crusade, one might ask the children to suggest how some particular knight who had returned from
the Crusade would describe his experiences”.8
Above all Miss Howard stressed the importance of history teaching in encouraging people to read:
“How are we to accomplish this? We must talk to them about books – we must show them books
and read extracts from them – we must encourage them to read by suggesting to them where they
can find more information about subjects that have interested them in class, or by assigning to
5
Ibid, pp37-38.
She said this “with all deference” to Professor Pollard, the distinguished professor of Constitutional History
who was chairing the meeting. She illustrated her point with the story of a girl who said she would never
forget the date of the Provisions of Oxford [an agreement between king and barons signed in 1258] because
she always imagined as a child that they had something to do with a picnic. Ibid, p36.
7
Ibid, p36.
8
Ibid, p38.
6
4
different pupils different topics on which to collect information, thus giving them ..the supreme
pleasure of finding out things for themselves...In fact, we must try to do for all our scholars what is
done for some of them by the influence of the home where history is read and talked about”.9
In her concluding words Miss Howard described how:
for a long time some of us who are interested in the study of history have been wishing for
the formation of an Historical Association, to do for the teaching of history what has been
done for the teaching of other subjects by the Geographical and similar Associations. Such
an Association would be useful in many ways. We should profit by meetings held from time
to time to discuss the special problems of history teaching. The organ of such an association
might do much to keep those who are working in schools in touch with the work which is
being done at the Universities. It might call attention to books and articles on the teaching of
history, and give particulars about new text-books, illustrations and other apparatus for use
in schools. Such an association might, when needful, bring pressure to bear on educational
authorities and on examining bodies. It might persuade publishers to undertake the
publication of good and cheap historical wall-maps and historical atlases...Such an
association might, in fact, co-ordinate the efforts of all who are working in England towards
the improvement of history teaching in our schools.10
Professor Pollard spoke up in support of this proposal, which behind the scenes was already
underway. He saw such an association as being mainly comprised of history teachers in schools and
universities, with its objects being, “that history should be properly recognised by universities, and
that history should be properly taught in schools”.11 By June 1906 the Historical Association’s
constitution had been adopted, Charles Firth, the Regius Professor of History at Oxford, was its chair,
and local branches and meetings were underway. Initially the Association was focused solely on the
interests of history teachers but as time went on laypeople, non-teachers , were encouraged to join
as well and in 1917 the membership was widened to include all those “interested in the study and
teaching of history”.12
The Association set up committees to deal with publications, the use of illustrations in teaching
history, examinations and syllabuses, and the local branches which were gradually set up around the
country. It became – and continues to be – involved in many of the debates around history and
history teaching – how far to teach imperial and naval history and the League of Nations? Should
examination syllabuses and question papers be reformed? Should there be international cooperation on textbooks? After the First World War it pioneered the forging of links with other
subject associations. It collected lantern slides to lend to teachers, and its members were involved
9
Ibid, p39.
Ibid, p39.
11
Ibid, p40.
12
‘The Historical Association 1906-1956’, (The Historical Association, London 1957), p12.
10
5
from early on in looking at the use of film and radio in teaching history. Towards the end of the First
World War the Association embarked on producing a historical atlas particularly for use in
elementary schools. It appeared in 1921 as Philip’s Junior Historical Atlas. In 1916 the Association
took over the journal History which had been originally founded by one of its members in 1912. Until
1969, when Teaching History was started by the HA, History was a mixture of articles about teaching
practice and teaching issues, and more general, fairly academic papers. Its first editor was Professor
Pollard who was a dominating figure in the Association from its beginning. He was responsible for
setting up the Institute of Historical Research which began in 1921, and from 1923 History was based
at the Institute.
The Historical Association immediately started producing leaflets, which, particularly in its early
years, were mainly devoted to practical teaching issues. The very first one (1907) was on ‘Sourcebooks’ and will be discussed in more detail below. Those produced over the next few years included
bibliographies on teaching history in schools, on books for schools on ‘general history, ancient
history and European history’, on colonial history, on ‘British history for the use of teachers’, on Irish
history, Scottish history, and on Exeter and London (drawn up by the local branches in these areas);
annotated lists of historical maps and atlases and ‘illustrations, portraits and lantern slides chiefly for
British and modern history’, and a summary of school history examination syllabuses. Sometimes the
discussions or lectures delivered at the Annual Meetings of the Association were published: in 1908
‘The teaching of local history’ by the Principal of University College, Reading , was printed, complete
with the accompanying discussion, and two years later several papers were printed as, ‘The methods
of teaching history in schools’, again with the points raised by members of the audience.
Apart from university and training college staff and a couple of HMIs, almost all platform speakers
and audience members were from secondary schools – indeed mainly public schools. It is difficult to
tell how far elementary school teachers were involved in the Association. In the list of members of
the Historical Association for 1912 where members gave their schools as their addresses these are
almost exclusively secondary or public schools but many members just gave their home address so it
is quite possible that a proportion of these taught in elementary schools, especially as many of these
are single women. Given the constraints of time and expense, elementary school teachers are
probably more likely to have attended local branch meetings rather than national ones, especially
those which encouraged their attendance; a prominent early member of the Leeds branch was an
HMI, Mr PL Gray, who together with Professor Grant, history professor at Leeds University, ran a
history study group at his house mainly for elementary school teachers. When Mr Gray retired to
Worthing the numbers of these members dropped. Mr Gray, “always indignantly denied that he
6
brought any pressure to bear on teachers to join the branch and this was true. However his great
personal charm and real helpfulness to teachers does explain this large membership, and after he
left there was not the same recruiting from elementary school teachers.”13
In 1912 the Association held a debate on history teaching in elementary schools at its annual
meeting which was held in Manchester (the first to be held outside London) but most of the
speakers again spoke from a secondary school perspective, discussing elementary school pupils from
the point of view of their level of historical knowledge when arriving at secondary school. One said
they arrived “with absolutely no knowledge of history”, although a teacher from North London
Collegiate School was more positive about the level of knowledge and interest shown by the pupils
coming to her school from elementary schools. She “had been deeply impressed with the
enthusiasm and self-sacrifice with which teachers got up information about places of historic
interest in London so that the visits on which children were taken to these spots might be turned to
interest and profit”. Professor Unwin of Manchester University regretted that, “very little had been
heard from the elementary teacher in the debate”, and said they must recognise, “the practical facts
– the limitations of school-time, the limitations of the teacher and of the child under fourteen”. In
fact the only speaker from an elementary school, the head of a large one in Derbyshire:
said he thought some of the speakers had formed too low an estimate of the work done in
history teaching in the elementary schools, and the amount of enthusiasm that was put into
it. In his own school they had been specialising for several years. For instance, he had two
teachers taking history, the one taking the three lower standards, and the other the rest of
the school. The plan had proved to be an excellent one in its results”.14
Use of source material
In 1910 M W Keatinge, Reader in Education at Oxford and former schoolmaster, published a book
advocating the use of ‘sources’ in teaching history to ‘schoolboys’. As the use of sources has become
widespread in the last thirty to forty years Keatinge continues to be quoted as a forerunner to many
contemporary practices. However it is not clear that his ideas made much impact at the time and it
should also be pointed out that he was not the first person to advocate using sources. The Historical
Association’s first leaflet , printed in 1907, was on ‘Source-books’. It described how popular these
books were in America. They were collections of extracts from original authorities published for the
use of teachers or their pupils and there was considerable discussion in American educational
literature about how they should be used. Already, by 1907, several series of source books had been
13
Historical Association Archives, University of Nottingham, Box 9. History of Leeds HA branch, written for
Historical Association Jubilee, 1956.
14
Speakers quoted from debate at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Historical Association, held January 11th13th, 1912. HA Leaflet No 30, pp24-27.
7
published for English schools which the leaflet lists in detail, some covering the whole of ‘English
history’, others selected topics or periods. The leaflet said that on the whole most teachers are likely
to use them as illustrative aids rather than a substitute for a textbook. It favourably quoted an
American report which dismissed what it called the ‘source method ‘ of history teaching and said;
“The aim of historical study in the secondary school is the training of the pupil, not so much in the
art of historical investigation as in the art of thinking historically”; for this, sources are ‘adjuncts’ to
good text-books.15 Three years later a paper was given on the use of sources at the HA Annual
Meeting, also considering sources to be best used as a side illustration rather than the whole focus
of a lesson. But from the way the speaker (the headmaster of Batley Grammar School) spoke, it is
clear that a number of history teachers were now trying to use sources as a principal part of their
teaching methods; “I understand that there are some who regard the comparison of these sources
as the real aim and object in teaching history; the ‘so-called Source-Method’ has become in their
hands the ‘Laboratory’ Method, and the phrase ‘sifting of evidence’ is one of their shibboleths”.16
For Keatinge the source method was a way of making the pupil contribute to the lesson. He was
concerned that history had yet to establish itself as a definite and valuable subject for school study.
Unlike other subjects it engendered a passivity in pupils which meant that they rapidly lost interest
in it. Other than learning notes from the textbook or the teacher, and writing essays, there was little
boys (as he always styles the pupils) could do in the history lesson or for homework. Keatinge
quoted public school masters and an Oxford academic who criticised the study of history at school
and saw little justification for it except for learning a brief outline of facts and dates.
However Keatinge believed that all pupils should learn history and was concerned to improve its
teaching. He tried to make a case for the ‘scientific treatment of history’ (linking it to social science
and sociology although he recognised that there were difficulties involved in this), and suggested
that the study of documents might contribute towards this, using ‘external’ and ‘internal’ criticism.
The former looked at the genuineness, the factual basis of a document; the internal looked at the
background to the document – why it was written , the motives of the writer. The documents should
not be introduced to every lesson and, “the teacher [must] consider how every scrap of value can be
squeezed out of them”. “A few documents carefully studied will be impressed on the boys’ minds
and will serve as centres around which historical facts may be grouped”.17 Keatinge also stressed the
importance of bringing history alive through events and personalities, suggesting that their lives
15
HA Leaflet No 1, (1907), ‘Source-books’, quoted on p4.
HA Leaflet No 19 (1910), ‘The Methods of Teaching History in Schools: Papers read at the Annual Meeting on
Saturday, January 8th, 1910’, p6.
17
MW Keatinge, Studies in the Teaching of History (Adam & Charles Black, London 1910), pp101, 102.
16
8
should be placed on a timeline to show how they interacted with major events. It was also vital to
use maps and pictures to make history more immediate to the pupils. He was quite clear that it was
impossible in the limited time available (no more than 72 hours per year and perhaps half that)for
the boys to be taught all of history, and it was also impossible that they should remember all they
were taught – school studies were a preparation for future life rather than an end in themselves. He
concluded that:
In consequence all attempt at giving a complete presentation of any subject must be
relinquished. The teaching should be sufficiently wide for the pupil to gather some idea of
the scope of the subject and the relation in which it stands to other subjects, and sufficiently
intensive to introduce him to the methods of reasoning or of manipulation peculiar to the
subject.18
This led Keatinge to take issue with, “the specialist in the subject whose acquaintance with boys is
small”, but who, “is inclined to lay down the law with assurance [about history teaching]”.19 In
particular he cited Professor Tout, the second president of the Historical Association, and history
professor at Manchester University. Tout had recently suggested it was best to give pupils “a broad
sweep of historical development, and not to drill them in the details of any of the corners of
history”.20 This was anathema to Keatinge:
For the teacher a methodical presentation based on the text-book, and for the pupil the
memorising of facts is the almost certain result of syllabuses such as these; and let it be
repeated that the facts learned are soon forgotten, that the mastery of a condensed syllabus
does not induce the interest which leads to private reading at a later stage, and that the
whole business may easily degenerate into cram of the most unsatisfactory kind.21
He proposed what would later be called the ‘patch’ method of teaching history:
In contrast to such a method a more effective mode of teaching is to treat small portions of
a subject intensively so that they stand out with vividness against a background of routinework, and in a setting that gives their relation to the rest of the subject.22
He gave numerous practical examples of how he used sources to involve the boys; for example a
class, who “are doing the reign of Elizabeth, and have reached the execution of Mary Queen of
Scots. They have a good knowledge of the general political situation”, were given a letter from
Elizabeth to James VI of Scotland – “(1) Make a brief analysis of the letter. (2) State which of the
18
Ibid, p152.
Ibid, pp152-153
20
Quoted in ibid, p153. In fact, according to the ODNB, although he was never a school master Professor Tout
was an extremely effective teacher of undergraduates and pioneered their use of original sources. It says,
“Tout's approach thus combined an Oxford-style broad coverage of general European history with early but
limited specialization in a special subject.” http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36539 accessed
16/3/2011.
21
Ibid, p160.
22
Ibid, p161.
19
9
points in it express the real views of the writer and which do not. Give your reasons.”23 Another
class, “who are reading the reign of Edward II, and are about to have a lesson on his Scottish
campaign”, are asked to “draw a plan of the battle of Bannockburn”, from two fairly
contemporaneous accounts.24 The Canada-based education academic Ken Osborne points out that
to successfully teach using sources in this way would be enormously time-consuming as would the
source-based examinations Keatinge also proposed. This, Osborne says, helps:
explain why Keatinge’s source-method met with so little success. He ignored the reality that,
given the existing pattern of schooling, it seriously complicated teachers’ lives. What he saw
as the relatively straightforward introduction of a new teaching strategy in fact called for a
fundamental rethinking of schooling. This is why, apart from one or two short-lived
experiments, and despite general dissatisfaction, fact-based examinations did not change
and textbooks remained largely the same. At best, a minority of teachers incorporated some
sources into their teaching, although largely to serve as illustrative material, not as the basis
for teaching the principles of historical method.25
Nevertheless Keatinge’s ideas were discussed and had a continuing influence across the twentieth
century through the work of later proponents of innovative history teaching like Happold and
Jeffreys. A contemporary review of his 1910 book recommended it “most heartily…because it is the
first work which shows, how even in the history lesson, the pupil may and must always be
contributing to the development of the subject, instead of the teacher always doing the maximum
and the pupil the minimum of work”.26
Edmond Holmes and What is and What might be and the school at Sompting
Source methods, especially as espoused by MW Keatinge, were aimed at an improvement in
secondary school teaching. At about the same time as Keatinge’s Studies in the Teaching of History
appeared, EGA Holmes was putting the final touches to his attempt to revolutionise elementary
school teaching. Oxford-educated Holmes had taught briefly in public schools before tutoring the
family of the eleventh earl of Winchilsea who then supported him for a position as an HMI which he
took up in 1875. In 1905, after thirty years experience of inspecting and considerable input in the
final draft of the Suggestions for the Use of Teachers and Others Concerned with the Work of
Elementary Schools, the Government’s official guidance for elementary school teachers, he was
appointed chief inspector of elementary schools. In 1907, in one of his routine inspection visits, he
23
Ibid, pp66-67.
Ibid, pp67-72.
25
Ken Osborne, ‘MW Keatinge: A British Approach to Teaching History through Sources’ Canadian Social
Studies, Vol No 2, Winter 2004, p4.
26
M Lightfoot Eastwood, ‘Review of Studies in the Teaching of History by MW Keatinge’, International Journal
of Ethics, Vol 21, No 2 (Jan 1911), pp241-242.
24
10
came across Sompting School in West Sussex and there found his ideal of how a school should be
run. The school was an ordinary country elementary school; “the premises were poor even by the
standards of the day and the pupils were of only average ability”.27 But the headmistress (and sole
teacher of fifty children from eight to fourteen), Harriet Finlay-Johnson, was an innovative and
inspiring influence and the school struck Holmes as a revelation. This, he felt , was what education
should be about:
Two things will strike the stranger who pays his first visit to this school. One is the ceaseless
activity of the children. The other is the bright and happy look on every face. In too many
elementary schools the children are engaged either in laboriously doing nothing, - in
listening, for example, with ill-concealed yawns, to lectures on history, geography, naturestudy, and the rest; or in doing what is only one degree removed from nothing, - working
mechanical sums, transcribing lists of spellings or pieces of composition, drawing diagrams
which have no meaning for them, and so forth. But in this school, every child is, as a rule,
actively employed.28
In the book which Holmes wrote on retiring as Chief Inspector, What is and What might be, he called
the village in which the school was placed ‘Utopia’, and Miss Finlay-Johnson, ‘Egeria’ (a goddess in
Roman mythology, adviser and giver of life). He eulogised the school and the effect it had on the
children: “Utopia belongs to a county which is proverbial for the dullness of its rustics, but there is
no sign of dullness on the face of any Utopian child. On the contrary, so radiantly bright are the faces
of the children that something akin to sunshine seems always to fill the school”.29 He lauded, “the
lively atmosphere and the ceaseless activity of the children, who were engaged in all forms of selfexpression: talking, including the ventilation of opinions, the free asking of questions and formal
debating, reading aloud, singing, dancing, modelling and gardening, without detriment to the basic
subjects. Miss Finlay-Johnson’s use of acting which included the dramatic treatment of history and
geography as well as arithmetic was particularly effective”.30
Miss Finlay-Johnson had already publicised her teaching methods locally and received considerable
coverage in the local press, and praise and support from the local HMI. Holmes’ description of her
work, and his apparent conversion to a completely different way of elementary teaching from that
espoused by the Board of Education, catapulted her to national significance as the press naturally
made it their business to find out who she was.
27
Peter Gordon, ‘The writings of Edmond Holmes: a reassessment and bibliography’, History of Education, Vol
12, No1, 1983, p20.
28
Edmond Holmes, What is and What Might Be, (Constable and Co Ltd, London,
29
Ibid, p155.
30
Gordon, p20.
11
Holmes’ book received particular coverage because just before he retired he was plunged into
notoriety when a controversial (and confidential) circular he had issued criticising the calibre of local
authority schools inspectors was leaked to the press. He criticised their general lack of, “the
antecedents which we usually look for in our candidates for junior inspectorships- ie , have been
educated first at a public school and then at Oxford or Cambridge”. Most were themselves exelementary school teachers: “the difference in respect of efficiency between the ex-elementaryteacher inspectors and those who have had a more liberal education is very great.” And he quoted
the Manchester HMI saying of the 15 Manchester and Salford local authority inspectors (of whom 14
were ex-elementary school teachers): ‘The existence of these inspectors stereotypes routine,
perpetuates cast-iron methods, and forms an effectual bar to development and progress’. The only
one he exempted from this criticism was a woman – the only one who had not been an elementary
teacher.31
The leaked circular caused an outcry among teachers’ organisations, and debates on it were held in
Parliament. The National Union of Teachers passed a resolution at its conference condemning the
circular as part, “of a whole administrative system intended to discredit the schools, scholars,
teachers , and inspectors not belonging to a certain social class”, declaring that “in almost every
Government Department a like attitude is adopted towards public servants who come from what are
called lower-class homes and from public elementary schools”. It demanded inquiries into, “the antidemocratic policy and practice” that characterised “the Board’s administration as a whole”, and into,
“the conditions governing the entrance into, and promotion in, the First or Upper Division of the Civil
Service”.32
The controversy eventually led to Sir Robert Morant’s resignation as Permanent Secretary of the
Board of Education in November 1911 as he was blamed for allowing the circular to be printed,
albeit not for public consumption. Holmes, not a figure who attracted the vitriolic dislike often
inspired by Morant, was seen as having written the missive in an uncharacteristic moment. However
in fact it chimed in with his philosophy about schooling. Although he was subsequently seen as
making a breathtaking break with his HMI past when he penned What is and What might be, he had
in fact always been interested in mysticism and philosophy and was a published poet from the 1870s
when he was in his 20s, his first two volumes being “a celebration of love, faith and nature
worship”.33 Even as an inspector of schools his instinct was to deplore the regulatory system of
31
The Times, March 22nd, 1911.
The Times, April 19th, 1911.
33
Gordon, op cit, p16.
32
12
‘payment by results’, and encourage a more free-thinking way of providing education; for him those
who had come up through the elementary schools to the inspectorship were inevitably seen as
imbued with the spirit of petty discipline and rote-learning which he despised. Those who were free
of this stultifying background, coming from the classical and humanist educational traditions of the
great public schools and elite universities were far more likely to be able to encourage more
innovative forms of education.
Holmes learned his lesson from the reaction to the circular and was at pains in What is and what
might be to defend teachers from blame for what he saw as the iniquitous system of education in
England: “No one knows better than I do that the elementary teachers of this country are the victims
of a vicious concept of education which has behind it twenty centuries of tradition and
prescription”.34 In particular he blamed the ‘payments by result’ mechanism (which had ended in
1895), whereby the inspectors had, “to examine every child in every elementary school in England
on a syllabus which was binding on all schools alike. In doing this, they put a bit into the mouth of
the teacher and drove him, at their pleasure, in this direction and that”.35 Examinations lay at the
root of much that was wrong with education: “In every Western country that is progressive and ‘up
to date’…the examination system controls education, and in doing so arrests the self-development
of the child, and therefore strangles his inward growth”.36
Miss Finlay-Johnson was less concerned with justifying her work than in endeavouring to pass on her
methods. After she retired to marry in 1910, she wrote about her ‘dramatic method of teaching’.
She described the way in which she encouraged the children to work for themselves to discover
things : “it was my endeavour to treat with children rather than with methods and theories which
led me to throw more and more of the initial effort onto the children themselves”.37 This started
with Nature Study – the children must study it for themselves outside rather than have it, “filtered
through pictorial illustration, text-book, dried specimen, and scientific terms”.38 She then used
‘Nature Study’ as a basis for many other lessons – “singing, reading, writing, arithmetic, drawing,
painting, recitation, composition, grammar, and much of the geography”.39 But how to study history
which had no links with nature study? This is where she evolved her dramatic method:
A child learns, and retains what he is learning, better by actually seeing and doing things,
which is a guiding principle of Kindergarten…Why not continue the principle of the
34
Holmes, op cit, pvi.
Holmes, op cit, p7.
36
Holmes, op cit, p8.
37
Harriet Finlay-Johnson, The Dramatic Method of Teaching, (James Nisbet & Co Ltd, London 1911), p15.
38
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, p16.
39
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, pp16, 19.
35
13
Kindergarten in the school for older scholars? I did so, but with this difference: instead of
letting the teacher originate or conduct the play, I demanded that just as the individual
himself must study Nature and not have it studied for him, the play must be the child’s
own.40
To begin with the historical plays were mainly based on the knowledge the children had acquired
from historical fiction, particularly novels by Sir Walter Scott. Indeed the very first was based on
Ivanhoe which they were reading as an adjunct to the study of the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion
and his times. Acting out scenes from the book the children, “soon began to study the book closely
to supply deficiencies in dialogue, and when dialogue was rendered according to the book it had to
be memorised (voluntarily), and this led to searching questions after meanings and allusions – some
of which the elder scholars soon learned to find in the dictionary”.41 Subsequent questions elicited a
wealth of information ranging from Knights Templars to chivalry to international trade. From this
initial foray into drama Miss Finlay-Johnson saw how she might, “throw more of the actual lessons,
including their preparation and arrangement, on to the scholars themselves”.42
A collection of books – ‘sources’ – was made: good historical novels, good history books and
‘manuals’ and contemporary accounts of episodes from British history. These were left in an easily
accessible place so the scholars could consult them whenever they wished: “there was often quite a
rush for the driest of history books, because such books supplied all the facts without too much
padding, and were most useful and reliable in tracing the life histories of notable personages.
Biographies for the same reason were eagerly sought for…”43 For Miss Finlay-Johnson, the text-book
was being used “in its proper place not as the principal means, but merely as a reference and for
assistance.”44 In this way a number of books were used for every scene: “No play was adapted from
any one book. All the authorities on the subject of the play were consulted, got together in note
form and reviewed...the next step was, naturally, to choose characters, cast parts , and either read
the play through or tentatively rehearse”.45 Then the children would disappear and organise most of
the play themselves, returning, “with the play in such a condition that we would be quite astonished
at the originality and individuality shown…[and the children] would bring out, apparently quite
40
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, p19.
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, p37.
42
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, p42.
43
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, p49.
44
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, p50.
45
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, p53.
41
14
casually and without effort, the salient points of the history they were engaged in learning without
being taught formally”.46
These plays would actually be the history lessons:
because we considered our play in the light of a lesson. We had two of these each week, one
of a half-hour’s duration and one of an hour. Preparation had to occupy the scholars’ own
leisure time and odd minutes in school…while for the making of notes an occasional writing
lesson was set apart. Once a week we had what we termed a ‘library morning’ when
scholars were allowed each to take a book from off the library shelf and read it silently in the
desks. Questions might be asked and answered, and little discussions were permitted, so
long as only one person spoke at a time and the general order and peace of the class was
not upset too much.47
The publication of Edmond Holmes’s 1911 book had an enormous impact and marked what RJW
Selleck called, “the beginning of progressivism in England”. There were already English followers of
Herbart and Froebel who were united in disapproving of much that went on in elementary schools
but completely disagreed over how to improve them.48 Now, “reformers who had been on the
defensive gained unexpected support and defenders of the status quo were shaken when so
eminent an educationalist joined the ranks of their attackers”.49 Holmes went on to spend the
twenty five years of his retirement deeply involved in progressive education movements. In 1914,
with the Montessori Society, he organised a large conference in East Anglia out of which eventually
grew the New Education Fellowship , a worldwide movement during the interwar years, and its
journal New Era, an international forum for progressive educational debate. His championing of Miss
Finlay-Johnson and her school may have been his most direct contribution to mainstream education.
His Times obituary in 1936 said that her methods, “on the lines of free expression, activity in
handwork, and dramatization …have now become familiar in most elementary schools”.50
The Dalton Plan
46
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, p54.
Finlay-Johnson, op cit, p69.
48
Herbart, a German philosopher (1776-1841), was interested in furthering the moral and intellectual
development of children through education, and he advocated a rigorous and methodical way of teaching to
instil knowledge, using literature rather than readers. Froebel developed the idea of the ‘kindergarten’ and the
importance of learning through activities and games.
49
RJW Selleck, English Primary Education and the Progressives, 1914-1939, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London
1972), p26.
50
The Times, October 16th, 1936. Edmond Holmes’ son, MG Holmes, possibly had more influence over
mainstream education than his father as he entered the Board of Education in 1909 and was its Permanent
Secretary from 1937-1945, presiding over the implementation of the 1944 Education Act. It is interesting to
know what his father would have thought of this.
47
15
The first half of the twentieth century saw many educational ideas come and go. The central thrust
was generally about ways of freeing up the inner creativity of the child which progressive
educational philosophers, academics and psychologists believed was stultified by conventional
teaching.51 The teaching of history was slightly at the periphery of this: English, art, drawing and
music were the key subjects, but there were some educational ideas which involved history.
The Dalton Plan attracted much attention in England in the early 1920s. Its creator was an American
teacher, Helen Parkhurst, who studied with Maria Montessori in Rome in 1914. Montessori, whose
ideas continue to be influential, worked particularly, though not exclusively, with younger children.
Her ideas centred on providing a learning environment prepared with materials designed so that
children could follow their own self-directed learning. Parkhurst was closely involved with the
Montessori Method in the States for some years but gradually evolved her own system, the ‘Dalton
Laboratory Plan’. She believed, “that pupils could learn to manage their own time effectively when
they were able to perceive the time as their own”.52 The aim of the Plan was to develop children's
initiative by giving them assignments to complete in their own way within a certain timeframe and
with self-imposed discipline. It aimed to tailor each student's program to his or her needs, interests
and abilities; to promote both independence and dependability and to enhance their social skills and
sense of responsibility toward others. It required a certain amount of pupil discipline and individual
tuition time to be successful. The way schools implemented it varied; sometimes pupils devised their
own assignments, sometimes teachers set them. The proportion of class teaching and study periods
also varied. Classrooms were referred to as ‘laboratories’ – “each the province of the specialist
teacher with the appropriate books redistributed from the school library, forming a reference
collection in each room”.53 Examinations within schools could be tailored to the Plan, with some
questions requiring extended knowledge which the pupils had gained through their research. Or
questions could be issued a week before the exam so pupils could search out material beforehand.
In theory this method could work quite well with history. The most high profile adoption of the Plan
in England was at Streatham County Secondary School in South London whose headmistress, Rosa
Bassett, became an instant convert to the idea when she read an article about it in the Times
Educational Supplement in May 1920. In 1922 she described how it worked: at the beginning of
every month each girl received a syllabus of work to be done in each subject and this would be
51
See for example, Selleck, op cit; Margaret Mathieson, ‘English Progressive Educators and the Creative Child’,
British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol XXXVIII, No4, November 1990;
52
Lesley Fox Lee, ‘The Dalton Plan and the loyal, capable, intelligent citizen’, History of Education, (Vol 29,
2000, No 2), p131.
53
Fox Lee, op cit, p134.
16
studied in a mix of class lessons and free study. As far as possible subjects were studied in subject
rooms which had subject libraries and where the subject mistress might be consulted; each girl was
expected to see the mistress at least once a week as well as in set lessons. Apart from the set lessons
the girls could arrange their working time as they pleased. Each girl was responsible, “for giving the
right proportion of time during the month to all the subjects in her curriculum and she indicates on
the charts in the subject rooms the time she has given and the amount of work she has done”. She
had to satisfy the subject mistress before she began the next syllabus – either, “by test, or by any
other method that the mistress finds most suitable for the girl”.54
In the first year (c11 year olds) of the school, history was allocated three lessons, of which one was
the class lesson; the second years had six lessons of which two were class lessons. In the third and
fourth years history and geography were taken in alternate years; in the lower fifth year for half the
year each, and in the upper fifth, pupils could take either history or geography or both. Miss Bassett
was naturally extremely positive about the scheme; she believed it improved concentration,
initiative, co-operation between the girls. She quoted a few negatives from the responses of the
pupils to a questionnaire at the end of the first year, but they are generally in favour. (She said: “The
majority of girls seem to think they have improved in History, Geography, and English”. And one girl
was quoted as saying; “For History , instead of the whole class getting the same idea on a subject,
everyone tackles the subject from a different point of view”.55) Reading between the lines one
suspects that there had been more problems convincing teachers (rather than pupils) of the virtues
of the new scheme. Clearly some found it challenging, at least initially, to deal with the concept of an
intimate bond between pupil and teacher so that, “the latter becomes less of an autocrat and more
of a guide”.56 Now teachers no longer, “think how to bring the matter, the information , to the child,
but how to lead the child to find it out for himself”.57
Miss Bassett’s account was published in a book by Miss Parkhurst which also contained a chapter by
the headmaster of an elementary school in Leeds, John Eades. He claimed that the Plan had already
been adopted in many elementary schools by 1922 and, “in fact, in various modified forms it had
been in use in some English up-to-date schools long before it came from America”.58 He described
how in his school they had introduced the idea of teachers concentrating on specialist subjects some
54
Rosa Bassett, ‘A Year’s Experiment in an English Secondary School’ in Helen Parkhurst, Education on the
Dalton Plan, (EP Dutton & Co, New York 1922), p177.
55
Bassett, op cit, p181.
56
Bassett, op cit, p186.
57
Bassett, op cit, p188.
58
John Eades, Head Master of Kirkstall Road Council School, Leeds, ‘The Dalton Plan for Elementary Schools’, in
Helen Parkhurst, Education on the Dalton Plan, (EP Dutton & Co, New York 1922), p196.
17
years ago. This was successful but he felt that whole class teaching was often wasted on many of the
children so he started dividing the classes into sections based on the children’s ability. This worked
well but still seemed to deny the child’s uniqueness so then, at least for the seventh standard
children (c13 years old), individual work was given to them, one week’s tasks at a time. “Then the
Dalton Plan arrived, and that led to further developments”.59 For standards IV to VIII, the ‘academic’
subjects including history were now taught individually or in small groups, with a subject room and
specialised teacher for each subject . At 9.30am a gong sounded and the children moved into any
room they preferred and stayed there as long as they liked. They planned their own work and
carried it out at their own convenience. “No slacking is allowed”, and their work was monitored by
means of their ‘Work Record Card’. Record-keeping was obviously crucial to check that the children
were completing their allocated work. If they completed their work early they could move on to the
next assignments or do their favourite subject in more detail. Among Eades’ examples of work is:
STANDARD IV [c10 year olds]
HISTORY
March
STUDY.
(a) How a monastery got its food and money.
(b) The Friars.
(c) A medieval town in the time of Edward III (14th century). (See Piers’ Plowman History,
pp118-139.)
WRITTEN WORK.
(a) Make a sketch of the stocks on page 134, but leave out the drawings of the man and
woman.
(b) Give an account of the Friars in your own words.
(c) What do you think the streets of Leeds were like in the 14th century?
(d) Tell what you know of the trade guilds.
Mr Eades had a list of fifteen advantages of this way of teaching; above it all it treated the children
as individuals, allowing them to progress at their own pace and developing their organisation skills,
giving them the satisfaction and confidence of accomplishing work by their own efforts and
developing a closer relationship with their teachers.
All the English school examples in Miss Parkhurst’s book were from state schools; they grappled with
how to put the Plan into effect given limited resources, old buildings and a wide range of pupils. Not
surprisingly all the examples are generally positive and report encouraging feedback from pupils and
teachers despite initial misgivings. They saw it as a tool for improving the way subjects were taught
in ordinary schools. This, as Selleck, pointed out , was one of its strengths and meant it could be
59
Eades, p198.
18
adapted quite easily to English state schools. Miss Parkhurst seemed to agree with this flexibility in
her earlier writings, although by 1930, she was implicitly criticising the emphasis of the English
contributors to her 1922 book on altering the curriculum rather than the school. As far as she was
now concerned, “the aim of the Dalton Plan was to create a new type of educational society [her
italics] by putting boys and girls under entirely different conditions of living from those provided in
the ordinary classroom”. In her school in New York, “there is no such thing as a subject on the Dalton
Plan” 60 – every year a big idea such as ‘Civilisation’ would be chosen to be studied which would
encompass all the areas like history which other schools called subjects.
English state schools did not have the freedom to initiate that kind of radicalism but the
modifications of the Dalton Plan do appear to have assured it considerable influence in the interwar
years. Selleck says that “by 1926 two thousand schools were said to be using the Dalton Plan”.
Indeed an article in The Year Book of Education 1933 (edited by the former President of the Board of
Education, Lord Eustace Percy MP), said that the Dalton Plan, “with modifications, has been applied
with considerable success in many schools”, and advocated its use in the new senior schools,
“whereby each child can proceed at his highest rate of progress”.61 Certainly the Plan’s method of
individual assignments percolated through to the projects and topics which were given in many
schools in the 1950s and 60s. ‘Progressive’ ideas generally had a considerable impact during the
interwar years even if their full flowering did not emerge until after the Second World War. As
Selleck described, by the mid 1930s, at least in primary education, they had captured the
educational opinion-makers; they were the new orthodoxy.
More practical advice
Edmond Holmes and the progressive educationalists were approaching history teaching as a sideissue to their main focus which was on the development of the individual child through a more
considered and sensitive approach to education. There were also of course many people offering
advice to history teachers from a much more practical basis: often grammar school or public school
teachers who had the time to reflect on their practice and were concerned to improve the level of
history teaching in their own classrooms and in schools across the country. Contrary to what many
of the proponents of new history teaching liked to believe in the 1970s and 80s, there had always
been considerable interest and debate around how to make history more interesting and above all,
how to make children more involved in what they were doing so that it was their lesson rather than
60
Helen Parkhurst, ‘History – the Dalton Plan’, The New Era, Vol 11, October 1930, p105.
Harley V Usill, ‘A Critical Survey of Education in the Public Elementary Schools: The Senior School’ in Lord
Eustace Percy MP (editor in chief), The Year Book of Education 1933, (Evans Bros Ltd, London 1933), p191.
61
19
just the teacher’s. That is certainly what Keatinge was trying to achieve in the 1910s but so also were
a number of other writers on history teaching. Naturally many teachers, probably the majority,
found it easiest, given the pressures of examinations and lack of equipment and new books, to teach
in the old ways of ‘chalk and talk’, particularly in secondary schools and senior schools and the upper
years of elementary schools –– but there were plenty of magazines and journals for teachers, and
books by innovative practitioners to offer them other ways of doing things if they had the energy to
consider them.
Helen Madeley, a former secondary school history teacher and training college lecturer produced
her guide to teaching history in 1920. Her particular slant was to call history, ‘a school of citizenship’,
although really it was more about making history in secondary schools more interesting and relevant
to contemporary life than in promulgating the virtues of citizenship. Hers is a plea to leave behind
“the battles and genealogies of the Wars of the Roses, the ministries of George III, the terms of some
defunct treaty or some long-repealed bill”, and consider “craft history which might give new life to
our technical training, studies in social life which might bring a new sensitivity into human relations,
and political discussion which would give both a new zest and efficiency to citizenship”.62 She gives
some interesting examples of how history might be taught. A teacher has ‘cyclostyled’ (on an early
duplicating machine) illustrations of medieval gowns for girls studying dressmaking in a trade school
to fill in and colour; another picture shows a fourteenth century gown that has been designed and
made by the girls.63 She also suggests the ‘Bridge-head Scheme’ where big subjects are introduced
via some “connected feature in the pupil’s own surroundings”64; for example, for a class of 10 year
old girls in Leeds, ‘Monasticism’ would be introduced through study of Kirkstall Abbey, and
‘Medieval Trade’ by looking at the ‘Fleece in the Leeds Coat of Arms. With this method, Miss
Madeley recommended the use of a wall-chart running all along one wall of the classroom, two or
three feet deep so pictures could be stuck to it. Her other suggestions included: limited use of source
material, speed tests where pupils mark each others’ questions, use of postcards and illustrations,
classroom exhibitions in which everyone is invited to contribute “anything very old and historical”;
using handwork to link history and craft lessons. Other writers, (often practising or former teachers),
who produced guides and handbooks for new and inexperienced teachers wanting help and advice
included H Ann Drummond ( a teacher from the private schools, Roedean and Bedales, which she
62
Helen M Madeley, History as a School of Citizenship, (OUP, London 1920), p10.
Madeley, op cit, pp31-33
64
Madeley, op cit, p40.
63
20
said gave her “a free hand to ‘try out’ any ideas and methods”65); Miss Dorothy Dymond, who was
helped in producing her Handbook for History Teachers by the Historical Association’s South-East
London Branch66; Eric C Walker, who particularly advocated using the study of local history to bring
history alive for pupils, 67 and Catherine Firth , a lecturer in history at Furzedown Training College in
South West London, who offered practical advice for those teaching elementary school children
based on using a variety of ways to encourage children to be active and questioning in their
approach to history. Educationalists Fred Clarke and JJ Bell also published books on history teaching.
The two most influential educationalists writing on history teaching in the interwar years – at least in
terms of innovative ideas which gradually percolated through to many schools – were F Crossfield
Happold and MVC Jeffreys. The former was senior history master at the Perse School, Cambridge
when he first starting writing up his ideas, and from 1928 he was headmaster of Bishop
Wordsworth’s School, Salisbury. MVC Jeffreys was mainly an education academic, moving from the
Institute of Education in London to the University of Durham to the University of Birmingham where
he was Professor of Education and Director of the University’s own Institute of Education.
FC Happold's Approach
Happold started from the premise that unlike science, modern languages or mathematics, whose
teachers could point to a “definite body of knowledge or skill acquired”, for the history teacher there
were less obvious gains for pupils: “what, one is sometimes tempted to ask oneself, is the use of the
few smatterings of historical knowledge which the ordinary pupil gains in his school years.”68
Happold believed that rather than trying to fill the pupil’s “mind with a mass of historical facts and
opinions”, the study of history “should be regarded as a means of training certain desirable
attributes and qualities of mind”. Indeed he believed, “that we should pay less attention to what a
pupil knows or learns than to the quality of mind he is developing through his study; in brief that the
study of history should be regarded as a useful training in the art of thinking”.69 The qualities he
particularly had in mind were:
The ability to collect, examine, and correlate facts and to express the result in clear and vivid
form, freedom from bias and irrational prejudices, the ability to think and argue logically and
to form an independent judgment supported by the evidence which is available, and at the
same time, the realisation that every conclusion must be regarded as a working hypothesis,
65
H Ann Drummond, History in School: A Study of Some of Its Problems, (George G Harrap & Co Ltd, London
1929), p11.
66
Dorothy Dymond, Handbook for History Teachers, (Methuen, London 1929).
67
Eric C Walker, History Teaching for To-day, (James Nisbet & Co Ltd, London 1935).
68
F Crossfield Happold, ‘The Study of History in Schools as a Training in the Art of Thought’, Historical
Association Leaflet No 69. (G Bell & Sons Ltd, London 1927), p3.
69
Happold, ‘The Study’ op cit, p4.
21
to be modified or rejected in the light of fresh evidence. These capabilities and qualities we
shall, through the study of history, endeavour to instil. We shall endeavour, too, to give our
pupils a greater flexibility of mind, a more highly developed imagination and a wider breadth
of sympathy and understanding in human affairs.70
The historical content which Happold most emphasised was an understanding of what he called ‘the
pattern of history’ – the way that, “history is not a series of disconnected photographs but a thing of
motion, each picture merging into the next”.71 To achieve this he had a range of practical
suggestions: for example, for the younger years of secondary school, pictorial record charts in which
“ after a topic has been studied, instead of expressing what has been done in written words, the boy,
with the help of the master, reduces his ideas to concrete pictorial form...It has been found that
boys allowed to express themselves in this form retain the knowledge longer and more effectively
than by any other way”. 72 For example in Happold’s book The Approach to History, a page on ‘The
French Revolution’ (in fact also incorporating Napoleon’s career), has a picture map of Europe, with
a time chart and a list of the chief characters; there at a glance is an encapsulated history of France
1780-1820!73 Before deciding on what should be included in the pictorial chart the boys would do
some individual study, some might present a lecture on it, and then there would be class discussion
of what was important.
Happold also favoured what he called the “imaginative conception of history”74 which would enable
pupils to realise that history is “something dynamic” – “the story of real people”.75 They were
encouraged to write ballads and songs and their own ‘eye-witness accounts’, imaginary diaries,
letters and dialogues.
Let any teacher set a group of boys to write an account of, say, the Hundred Years’ War, and
then ask the same group to write a diary of a soldier who took part in one of the campaigns
or a description of a battle at which he was present. If the teacher compare the results he
will almost certainly find a vitality in the one which is not present in the other.76
The pupils would also have to carry out at least some small measure of research to carry out the
following kind of assignment: here the subject of study is the Saxons and Danes in England, and the
pupil might be given the suggestion that:
70
Happold, ‘The Study’ op cit, p4.
Happold, ‘The Study’ op cit, p5.
72
FC Happold, ‘The Changing Curriculum – I’, The New Era, Vol 14, May 1933, p129.
73
F Crossfield Happold, The Approach to History, (Christophers, London 1928), p30.
74
Happold, The Approach, op cit, p38.
75
Happold, The Approach, op cit, p37.
76
Happold, The Approach, op cit, p38.
71
22
You are a Dane. Write a letter describing what happened to you in England or Two Saxons,
one a Christian, the other a heathen, have a conversation.77
As for content, Happold recommending starting with a broad outline of world history in the first year
of secondary school and then a gradual increase of detailed history as the pupils progressed up the
school. There should always be, “a large time map, to which constant reference can be made
throughout the boy’s years of study...It should cover at least three or four thousand years, that is
from 2000 or 1000BC to the present day, and include the civilisations of Babylon, Assyria, Chaldea
and Persia, as well as those of Greece and Rome.”78 The pupils should also create their individual
time maps.
'Lines of development'
In the mid 1930s MVC Jeffreys began to advocate the ‘lines of development’ method of teaching
history. By now the use of ‘topics’ was quite common, particularly in elementary and ‘senior’ or
‘modern’ schools where there were no public examinations; a wider period would be illustrated by
study of a topic or a detailed span of years, a more in-depth study which later morphed into the
‘patch’ way of teaching history which grew quite popular, particularly in the 1950s. Lines of
development were, “a more thorough-going employment of the topical method than has yet been
generally attempted”79 – the development of a field of human activity became the focus of the study
rather than just illuminating a wider general survey.
Jeffreys pointed out that all history that was studied was a product of selection and omission; lip
service was paid to the importance of studying the history of science or literature but political
history was still seen as the real ‘History’ when in fact this was as much a choice as any other. But
there was pressure to study all the other kinds of history too, which was putting impossible demands
on the teacher – “when history meant kings and queens and battles and acts of parliament, it was at
least possible for the teacher to ‘cover the ground’ in some fashion – to cram into pupils’ heads a
certain agreed body of knowledge, even if it was not suitable knowledge. But as the scope of
historical knowledge is widened, a problem of selection is created”.80
Like many of these history teaching reformers, Jeffreys believed that history was not a subject in the
same way as Latin Grammar and Botany, with their specific bodies of knowledge: history’s subjectmatter could include any aspect of human affairs. What was crucial about history was that it studied
77
Happold, The Approach, op cit, p40.
Happold, The Approach, op cit, p26.
79
MVC Jeffreys, ‘The Subject-Matter of History in Schools: A Case for a New Principle of Selection’, History, Vol
xx, Dec 1935, p238.
80
Jeffreys, ‘Subject-Matter’ op cit, p235.
78
23
development of an aspect of human affairs. And studying ‘development’ did not mean acceding to
the idea that all human development was a process of linear progress : if anything, studying the way
fields of human activity have developed over time would teach pupils to have respect for
achievements and discoveries of earlier societies, and show that in some areas, “progress is
obviously not a general tendency”, and “advance in one sphere does not mean advance in all”.81
Jeffreys called his method the study of ‘lines of development’. It could be adapted according to the
level of the pupils, supplying, “a central theme from which subsidiary investigations could radiate as
far as time and the pupils’ intelligence allow”. For example, “the story of transport would, if
necessary, provide means of referring to the foundations of Rome, the wars with Carthage, and the
problems of imperial administration. And the story of the alphabet could be told so as to illustrate
the importance of the Hebrews in the ancient worlds and the contribution of Greek to Roman
culture.”82 Jeffreys saw enormous advantages in the method: apart from an appreciation of
historical development which many pupils left school without any conception of when they studied
periods, they also had a sense of the purpose of what they were doing, lessons had a clearer relation
to one another, pupils gained a concept of change over enormous periods of time, “establishing at
least a foothold in ancient cultures and the more remote contemporary cultures, while at the same
time maintaining connection with here and now”.83 The scope of the study could be broadened as
far as anyone wanted – anything could be included, but equally there was no danger of the pupil
thinking complacently that he knew everything about a period as, “the incompleteness of the study
will be perfectly obvious”.84
In an article in History in 1936 Jeffreys gave some examples of schools which were using his method:
he sent out a questionnaire and received twelve responses from a range of schools: the history
master at a mixed secondary, Kingsbury County School, who had used the method for some time,
was quoted saying: “There has been more individual work than ever before. Many children in the
first year, after grasping the idea of development, have made illustrated histories of things that
interest them: eg clocks, trains, ships, dress etc. This has been voluntary and in their spare time”.
The work done at the school was “Lines” in the junior forms, “on such topics as ‘The Unfolding
World’, ‘Man in search of his Food,’ ‘How we are Governed,’ ‘Transport’, ‘Poverty and
Unemployment,’ etc. In the pre-Certificate forms the lines are ‘English Agriculture, 1066-1914’ and
‘Growth of Towns and Industry, 1066-1914’. Finally the lines are consolidated in a ‘periodic’
81
MVC Jeffreys, History in Schools: The Study of Development, (Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd, London 1939), p21.
Jeffreys, History in Schools, op cit, p34.
83
Jeffreys, ‘Subject-Matter’ op cit, p241.
84
Jeffreys, ‘Subject-Matter’ op cit, p4241.
82
24
treatment of English Economic History which is the subject taken for School Certificate”. 85 On the
whole the schools were positive about the use of ‘lines’, although Jeffreys reported that five of the
seven Senior Schools were concerned about how to introduce (his italics) pupils to history by means
of ‘lines’ without having previously established a general political framework. However he was
confident that the ‘lines’ method could incorporate sufficient necessary political background.
“Meanwhile, if we choose to encounter the Crimean War by way of a discussion of hospitals and
nursing, instead of by way of the intricacies of the Eastern Question, who can claim that our study is
the less ‘historical’…?”86
One of the pupils interviewed for the History in Education Project was taught by the ‘lines of
development’ method and nearly eighty years later still remembered these lessons with enormous
enthusiasm. Bill Endersby was 90 when he was interviewed and had attended Catford Central School
in South East London. He described the way history was taught until he was 14:
The object of the lessons was to deal with particular subjects like clothing, transport and so
on, and to take them right through from the beginning of time to modern times. So you got
your clothing; (you) started off with woad, possibly and skins, then ran through the early
years and always went through the Industrial Revolution – Spinning Jenny and Hargreaves
Loom and all that sort of thing. Can still remember. Then right up to modern fashion but I
can’t remember that I studied much of that…Same thing with transport. Started off with the
wheel I suppose, and before the wheel….
I found it was absolutely fantastic…seemed to me that it got to the way we lived…all these
other things are important obviously – that we fought battles and the Armada and all this
sort of thing – but this was down to earth; it just registered with me.87
He wrote down some of the subjects which he could remember they studied – Clothing; Roads;
Transport; Farming; Living quarters; Money; Manufacture; Education – plus a list of the stages they
studied for each one eg “Money: Stones – Barter – Coins – Gold and Silver – Exchange Notes
(Venice) – Cheques – Foundation of the Bank of England – Trading Companies (Hanseatic League etc)
– Stock Exchange – Shops – Banks”.
Mr Endersby also managed to take School Certificate, which MVC Jeffreys admitted might be a
problem because the scheme did not fit neatly into standard examination syllabuses. As Jeffreys
suggested in his book, Catford Central School used the lines of development method for 11-14 year
olds and then the Certificate course was taught; indeed in Mr Endersby’s case he took it and passed
85
MVC Jeffreys, ‘The Teaching of History by Means of ‘Lines of Development’: Some Practical Experiments and
Their Results’, History, Vol xxi, Dec 1936, p232.
86
Jeffreys, ‘The Teaching of History’, op cit, p238.
87
History in Education Project: Bill Endersby, (born 1919), interviewed 23 April, 2010.
25
it in one year rather than two. He explained that most of his class left at 14 so they never studied
what he called ‘old history’.
'Patch' history
In some ways the ‘lines of development’ method was the opposite of the ‘patch’ method of history
which became quite popular after the Second World War, although the two are sometimes
mentioned together as both are attempts to make history more interesting and relevant to pupils
than the traditional ways of teaching history to post-primary school children. ‘Patch’ history is when
a particular period or area is studied in depth, “entering into another time, with its different habits
and different scales of value”, with the motive of “finding out all it can about the character of life in
some other age for its own sake, and so greatly extend[ing] the imaginative experience of those who
pursue it”.88 This quote is from a Government pamphlet on teaching history published in the early
1950s in which teaching ‘patch’ history is described.
The historian and former teacher, Marjorie Reeves, was a particular proponent of this way of
teaching, declaring that she wished pupils to be able to sit down, “in a good rich patch of history and
stay there for a satisfying amount of time”. 89 In the 1950s she edited the ‘Then and There’ series of
textbooks for Longman which were based on the ‘patch’ method, using contemporary documents
and illustrations to capture children’s imaginations. Conscious that this way of teaching could lead to
children knowing only random disconnected areas of history, she said the patches or ‘beads’ of
history must be connected by ‘a thin string’ of narrative which would enable children to see how
different aspects of history connected with each other and how societies developed. Despite her
narrative solution the potential lack of continuity was seen as the drawback to this method of
teaching: children might come to know only certain illuminated patches of history – the rest would
be shrouded in darkness and they would have no understanding how the whole pattern fitted
together. The 1952 booklet was fairly sanguine about this possibility: it saw the method as
continuing to gain popularity and in a convoluted sentence said:“but it also seems likely that the
need to set the periods in their historical perspective will not come to be ignored, if only because it
is hardly practicable to ignore it
Internationalist views of history teaching
The interwar years saw considerable interest in the idea of history teaching in an international
context: the New Education Fellowship, mentioned above, was the most prominent of these
88
89
Ministry of Education, ‘Teaching History’, Pamphlet No 23, (HMSO, London 1952), pp17, 18.
Marjorie Reeves, Why History? (Longman, London 1980), p53.
26
initiatives, bringing together people involved in education from around the world at conferences
every two or three years during the interwar years.90 and producing the journal, New Era. The NEF
was about progressive education in general but New Era published many articles about the teaching
of history and it was clearly seen as very important. It was inevitably bound up with the promotion
of ‘peace’ and the League of Nations. Teaching history in the ‘right’ way was seen as a possible
method of rearing generations of people who would build a world dedicated to peace and justice
rather than war and national aggrandisement.
It is interesting now to realise how far teaching about the positive role of the League of Nations in
world affairs became part of the accepted orthodoxy of the late 1920s up to the mid 1930s or later.
The League of Nations Union Education Committee had been established at the end of 1919 and
from the start influential educationalists were involved with it: its first chair was Dr CW Kimmins,
then LCC Chief Inspector of Schools, and George Gater (knighted in 1936) who succeeded Sir Robert
Blair as the LCC Chief Education Officer in 1924, was extremely sympathetic to the League’s aims and
was president of the LNU branch at County Hall. By the late 1920s the LNU had achieved
considerable influence in all major educational circles from the teachers’ unions to the Board of
Education to the Association of Education Committees which represented local education
authorities. It was an extremely effective lobbying, networking and local organising body; by 1927
the Board of Education had officially recognised the League of Nations’ importance in its Handbook
of Suggestions for elementary school teachers. Teachers were called on to place Britain’s history into
the context not just of the British Commonwealth of Nations but also world history and would then,
“naturally wish that the children should learn something of the League of Nations and of the ideals
for which it stands”. Study of the League of Nations might show how it has become, “necessary that
the peoples of the World should combine with their natural sense of local patriotism a conception of
their common interests and duties”.91 A 22 page appendix was provided to give the historical
background and details of how the League worked.92 As usual there was no strict compulsion on
teachers to teach history in this way but the Government’s message was clear.
Helen McCarthy describes how relatively widespread teaching about the League of Nations was,
with many teachers supporting it and organising branches in their schools. She also shows how the
90
Kevin J Brehony, ‘A New Education for a New Era: The Contribution of the Conferences of the New Education
Fellowship to the Disciplinary Field of Education 1921-1938’, Paedagogica Historica, Vol 40, Nos 5 & 6, Oct
2004.
91
Ibid, p126.
92
Board of Education, ‘Handbook of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers and others concerned in
the work of Public Elementary Schools’, (HMSO, London 1927), p138.
27
League of Nations Union used celebration – pageants and tableaux – to further its cause and was
sometimes part of the Empire Day celebration in schools, suggesting that there was more of a linking
between the different patriotisms than might have been expected.93 Even before the 1927
‘Suggestions’ were published, the Board of Education’s survey of history teaching in London
elementary schools which was carried out in 1926, found that 25% of the syllabuses of the schools it
sampled made some reference to the existence and aims of the League of Nations.94 By 1932 a
Board of Education pamphlet was declaring that “with a few exceptions, every Local Authority in
England and Wales encourages League Instruction in its Schools”95.The acceptance of the prevailing
orthodoxy is illustrated by a speech by the Headmaster of Rugby School at the National Peace
Conference in 1933. Speaking of how peace and internationalism must be taught to boys in a robust
and appealing way, he lamented the fact that; “It was at present impossible to staff the schools
entirely with firm believers in the League of Nations. He hoped the time would come when they
would be able to do so, but at present it was a new idea , and many of their masters were old”.96
The League’s influence in schools began to decline from the mid-1930s as it became increasingly
obvious that the League’s influence in world affairs was negligible, and as the arguments of
historians, politicians and teachers who mistrusted the advocacy of bias, however ‘benevolent’97,
gained weight.
HG Wells, perhaps characteristically, took a contrary view of the teaching of history from both those
advocating a history that emphasised the importance of the League of Nations, and those
complaining about the prescription and potential bias of advocating one side of historical
development. Throughout the 1930s he criticised the traditionalist syllabus of history teaching and in
a lecture to the League of Nations Union International Teachers’ Conference in 1938 he slammed
‘The Poison called History’. He claimed there was “an old history – which, for all the headlong denials
of indignant teachers, is what is still being taught up and down the scale from the universities to the
infant schools. And there is a new history – now most urgently needed – which is different in scope,
93
Helen McCarthy, The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism,
C.1918 – 45 (Manchester University Press 2011); Helen McCarthy, ‘The League of Nations, Public Ritual and
National Identity in Britain, c1919-56’, History Workshop Journal, Vol 70, Issue 1, Autumn 2010.
94
Board of Education, ‘General Report on the Teaching of History in London Elementary Schools, 1927’ (HMSO,
London 1927).
95
BJ Elliott, ‘The League of Nations Union and History Teaching in England: A Study in Benevolent Bias’, History
of Education, Vol 6, No 2, 1977; ‘Report on the Instruction of the Young in the Aims and Achievements of the
League of Nations’, Board of Education (HMSO, London 1932), p7.
96
Quoted in The Times, July 11th, 1933.
97
Elliott, op cit.
28
method, possibilities and effect from the old and which is scarcely taught at all”.98 This was what he
called “scientific history”; history, “which simplifies detail whenever it can and seeks operating
causes”. Even more prescriptively than League of Nations history; “It shows plainly why war has to
be abolished if humanity, as we know it, is to survive. It explains (and that clearly) why consciously
directed life must now undergo a revolutionary change, or blunder on through deepening distresses
and disaster”.99 The old history, he characterised as beginning with “a falsified account of the
national beginnings”100, and was mainly, “still national or regional propaganda lightened by gossip
and at most paying lip service to humanitarian ideals”. Even when attempts were made to teach
‘world history’ this was usually an assemblage of national histories rather than an account of worldwide patterns, in particular, “the main operating cause of all the subsequent developments [which]
“has been the increase in the facilities of communication...Every increase in the range of
communications has necessarily opened up new possibilities of co-operation, injury and
enslavement. So that continually the nature of social and political history has changed”.101 Wells had
himself already attempted his own version of this thesis in his history of the world, The Outline of
History (1920), and the concise version, A Short History of the World (1922).
As far as teaching was concerned he proposed that the teachers at the conference should teach by
scrapping all the national and separate histories, and then approaching history by studying it “from
the biological side”; how the small sub-human family groups scattered across the world gradually
develop speech, drawing and all the other skills and inventions they need. He called for study on the
way the environment shaped development and the way humans had altered the environment; the
influence of factors like iron on human development; the way language, speech and writing arose –
“The history of nations and peoples is not the essential history of mankind; its chapters are not even
natural fragments of that history”.102 He ended his paper with jeers at the League of Nations, with
which he had become completely disillusioned, calling it a “little bit of a paper hat on the top, not of
a Colossus, but of a squirming heap of discordant patriotisms”.103
Jenny Keating
History in Education Project
Institute of Historical Research
University of London
April 2011
98
HG Wells, ‘The Poison called History’, The Nineteenth Century and After, Vol 123, May 1938, p522.
Wells, op cit, p523.
100
Wells, op cit, p524.
101
Wells, op cit, p526.
102
Wells, op cit, p529.
103
Wells, op cit, p534.
99