Page:History of West Virginia, old and new, in one volume, and West Virginia biography, in two additional volumes (v.1).djvu/35



The importance of local historical research is steadily gaining recognition. This is reflected in a growing belief that local history should have a place in the course of study in our schools. Teachers are discovering that the surest way to kindle and to stimulate to activity the child's attention is to build on his own experience in his home community life — whose origin and development he will be interested to know. When local life touches the larger streams of national life, local history may be employed to introduce or to illustrate national history. If it has little connection with national life, the history of every local community of whatever age may still be full of vital interest and may be made very instructive. If presented in a systematic, organized development. It contains the universal motives to human action, the universal geographic conditions and influences, the law of development from the simple to the complex, and the evolution of institutions to meet human needs. The common people in their home life, government, and industrial interests, have contributed a share of their onward movement of civilization, and a study of the story of their community life will fortify the student with a habit of mind which will fit him to study more intelligently the history of the nation and the world.

The study of history, like charity, should begin at home. The first step, as in geography, is to know thoroughly the home district. The most natural introduction to a knowledge of the history of the world is from local environment, through ever widening circles of interest, along lines that vitally connect the past with the present. The child should first observe systematically the phenomena and processes which lie near to him. He begins this himself and only needs to be guided. He sees the institutions and life of his own neighborhood and is interested in them. In connection with local geography he can learn many things about the society in which he lives, he can get first hand experience with institutions in the concrete. What he learns in regard to the family, the school, the church, the industrial life and the affairs of local government will aid in giving him a conception of what history is.

Students should be led to appreciate the common and lowly things around them, to understand the familiar facts of local environment whose truths are as significant as those of far-away places and remote times, to have respect for law, and for the institutions which through long ages of the past have been developed in the great school of human experience, and how contribute to the welfare of all. The annals, and records, and life, of quiet neighborhoods are historically important by their vital connection with the progress and science of the nation and the world.

Local history may advantageously be studied as a contribution to national history and to a larger "world history." Almost every community has some close and intimate connection with general history. Here, the Indians assembled in council and participated in the war dance or smoked the pipe of peace. There, a brave explorer passed Vol I—11