Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/55

 Rh and such colleges as have already established a department of history, is a course or courses upon the period or countries in which the professor is himself most deeply learned and hence most deeply interested. This is, of course, proper from the standpoint of the professor or the special student, but is it the best that can be done for the general student?

Can a student in the university, with only the history training he has received in the earlier school, enter with proper comprehension upon the study of the Middle Ages, or the French Revolution, or the Reformation? Yet these are examples of the courses offered in the best universities by the best known and the best prepared teachers.

People often accomplish their objects without using the best methods. The fact that many students after several years of study are able to obtain a degree, or even to do creditable productive work, does not prove that they did not flounder in too deep water for a year or more before they got their bearings. It is often said by students who have attended some of the best American and European universities, that after a year or so they began to comprehend the relations of different periods of history and of civilization, and henceforth the work was more profitable. The inference would be that they were forced by circumstances to work painfully backward and forward from some arbitrary starting point, and that some short course, as advocated further on in this paper, should precede the higher studies in history.

Let us illustrate the condition of the average college or university student at the beginning of his study of history by the better known condition of the public school pupil at the first presentation of United States history to him. The whole world which he hears about began in 1492. Columbus appears out of the misty somewhere and discovers a new part of the world. Other men follow him and America becomes a reality. Soften it as we will, smooth over the abrupt beginning with Ferdinand and Isabella stories and the early life of Columbus, the impression is still received by the pupil that 1492 is the commencement of things. Whether this state of mind is unavoidable I shall not