Welsh Journals

inevitably also a change in historical perspective and sense of values. The connotation of the word history cannot be--or, at any rate, it ought not to be-the same as a hundred years ago. The revelation of the antiquity of man, which nineteenth century science has spread before us (the palaeolithic age carrying us back anything from fifty to two hundred thousand years), the discovery of the august civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, Crete, etc., must, for any thinking man, involve a new conception of the whole process of human development, simply because the vista of mankind's history is so enormously prolonged, because bit by bit whole centuries, which till comparatively recently were periods of prehistoric conjecture, have been brought within the realms of verified historical fact. The new light which has thus been flooded upon the older civilizations has very rightly had the effect of stimulating general interest in what is popularly termed World History, and the vogue of Mr. H. G. Wells's remarkable book on that theme is a striking illustration of this. The question is being asked, and is likely to be asked with growing insistence, whether it is not time for the new historical learning to be finding its way into our English and Welsh schools, whether the laborious hours at present dedicated to purely national and political history could not more profitably be given to the study of history in its widest sense-that of the development of human ciilization. It is asked: Is not the latter by far the bigger and finer thing, and also educationally the more valuable? Why should the history hour mean the accumulation of many detailed facts about a single period of British history when it might mean the assimilation by our children of the great conception of the pro- gress of human society through the ages, from the stone age and the bronze age down to modern times? Must not a course in World History have a much more stimulating effect, quicken the imagination much more potently, be a far more permanent and impressive influ- ence after school-life is over? And we have to bear in mind particularly the need of that great majority of pupils in our secondary schools, who receive no further education when they leave at the age of from sixteen to eighteen. For the fortunate minority the maturer studies of a university career help to rectify any narrowness there may have been in the school curriculum. But the history teaching in the schools must not be conditioned solely by the requirements of the university, be made satisfactory only as an elementary introduction to further studies; it must have a certain element of completeness in itself. In their history curricula the schools of Great Britain have been both conservative and unsys- tematic. In France and Germany and other con- tinental countries the history taught in the schools has for long been more than the nation's history; it has included that of Greece and Rome and the outlines of mediaeval and modern European history. The classical tradition in the great English public schools has indeed kept alive the history of classical times, and this has been taught together with the history of Eng- land, but in a completely haphazard and un- connected way. In English secondary schools generally nowadays some considerable period of European history forms part of the ordinary curriculum, but in Wales, except for the higher forms taking the higher school certificate exami- nation, history nearly always means the history of England and Wales only. The whole question of the rival claims of the two systems-the system of the necessarily rapid and summary treatment of world movements, on the one hand, and on the other that of a more thorough concentration on a much narrower field, mainly that of British history-demands full and free discussion. And the enthusiasts for World History must face the strong arguments in favour of the latter system. It may be con- tended with good reason that a course of World History reduced to the requirements of young children, within the limits of a school career of four years, must of necessity be exceedingly sketchy, that every teacher's experience proves how blurred and muddled may be the average scholar's impression from a rapid survey of such large and intangible things as ideas," prin- ciples," movements." Far better, it may be urged, is it to be content with something less ambitious, more humdrum possibly, but far more easily assimilated. Again, the reaction against the narrowness of purely national history is often rather stupid and ignorant. The relegation of national history to a purely subordinate place in the general scheme of study serves no good purpose, educational or otherwise. The sug- gestion that concentration on national history has in our country fostered a narrowly insular and aggressively patriotic spirit, must be recog- nised by anyone acquainted with the actual facts as frankly nonsense. There has been far more of patriotic bias in the schools of France and Germany, with their more extensive curricula, than in our own, our narrower syllabuses not- withstanding. Special interest in the history of one's own countrymen is a thing as natural and healthy as the special love of one's own home and one's own countryside. A sound acquaint- ance with the history of his own land is the right and obligation of every citizen. It should be regarded as part of the equipment without which no man can undertake his task in the polity into which he has been born. Again, the reaction against the conception of history as the equiva- lent of past politics can be carried too far. To say that past politics are not deserving of close and intimate study is as absurd as to maintain that the work of government, of legis- lation, of administration, the ordering of the