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IN common with all children of my age, I was brought up on American History and given no other history but American, year in and year out, year after year for eight or more years.
So far as I knew 1492 was the beginning of the world. Any events or characters before that time, reference to which I encountered by any chance, were put down in my mind in the same category with fairy-tales. Christ and His times, of which I heard only in Sunday-school, were to me mere fiction without reality. They were not mentioned in any history that I knew and therefore, so I thought, must belong not to a realm in time and space, but to a spiritual realm.
To give an American child only American History is as provincial as to teach a Texas child only Texas History. Patriotism is usually given as the reason for such history teaching. It only promotes a narrow-mindedness and an absurd conceit, based on utter ignorance of any other peoples and any other times—an intolerant egotism without foundation in fact. Since World War I, it has become increasingly more and more important that American children should have a knowledge of other countries and other peoples in order that their attitude may be intelligent and unprejudiced.
As young as nine years of age, a child is eagerly inquisitive as to what has taken place in the ages past and readily grasps a concept of World History. Therefore, for many years Calvert School nine-year-old pupils have been taught World History in spite of academic and parental skepticism and antagonism. But I have watched the gradual drift toward adoption of this plan of history teaching, and with it an ever-increasing demand for a text-book of general history for young children. I have found, however, that all existing text-books have to be largely abridged and also supplemented by a running explanation and comment, to make them intelligible to the young child.
The recent momentous studies into the native intelligence of children show us what the average child at different ages can understand and what he cannot understand—what dates, figures of speech, vocabulary, generalities, and abstractions he can comprehend and what he cannot comprehend—and in the future all textbooks will have to be written with constant regard for these intelligence norms. Otherwise, such texts are very likely to be “over the child's head.” They will be trying to teach him some things at least that, in the nature of the case, are beyond him.
In spite of the fact that the writer has been in constant contact with the child mind for a great many years, he has found that whatever was written in his study had to be revised and rewritten each time after the lesson had been tried out in the class-room. Even though the first writing was in what he considered the simplest language, he has found that each and every word and expression has had to be subjected again and again to this classroom test to determine what meaning is conveyed. The slightest inverted phraseology or possibility of double meaning has often-times been misconstrued or found confusing. For instance, the statement that “Rome was on the Tiber River” has quite commonly been taken to mean that the city was literally built on top of the river, and the child has had some sort of fantastic vision of houses built on piles in the river. A child of nine is still very young—he may still believe in Santa Claus—younger in ideas, in vocabulary and in understanding than most adults appreciate—even though they be parents or teachers—and new information can hardly be put too simply.
So the topics selected have not always been the most important—but the most important that can be understood and appreciated by a child. Most political, sociological, economic, or religious generalities are beyond a child's comprehension, no matter how simply told. After all, this History is only a preliminary story.
Excellent biographies and stories from general history have been written. But biographies from history do not give an historic outline. They do not give any outline at all for future filling in; and, indeed, unless they themselves are fitted into such a general historical scheme, they are nothing more than so many disconnected tales floating about in the child's mind with no associations of time or space.
The treatment of the subject in this book is, therefore, chronological—telling the story of what has happened century by century and epoch by epoch, not by nations. The story of one nation is interrupted to take up that of another as different plots in a novel are brought forward simultaneously. This is in line with the purpose, which is to give the pupil a continuous view or panorama of the ages rather than Greek History from start to finish then, retracing the steps of time, Roman History, and so on. The object is to sketch the whole picture in outline, leaving the details to be gradually filled in by later study, as the artist sketches the general scheme of his picture before filling in the details. Such a scheme is as necessary to orderly classification of historical knowledge as is a filing system in any office that can function properly or even at all.
The Staircase of Time is to give a visual idea of the extent of time and the progressive steps in the History of the World. Each “flight” represents a thousand years, and each “step” a hundred—a century. If you have a spare wall, either in the play-room, attic, or barn such a Staircase of Time on a large scale may be drawn upon it from floor to reaching height and made a feature if elaborated with pictures or drawings of people and events. If the wall faces the child's bed so much the better, for when lying awake in the morning or at any other time, instead of imagining fantastic designs on the wallpaper, he may picture the crowded events on the Staircase of Time. At any rate, the child should constantly refer either to such a Staircase of Time or to the Time Table as each event is studied, until he has a mental image of the Ages past.
At first a child does not appreciate time values represented by numbers or the relative position of dates on a time line and will wildly say twenty-five hundred B.C. or twenty-five thousand B.C. or twenty-five million B.C. indiscriminately Only by constantly referring dates to position on the Staircase of Time or the Time Table can a child come to visualize dates. You may be amused, but do not be amazed, if a child gives 776 thousand years A.D. as the date for the First Olympiad, or says that Italy is located in Athens, or that Abraham was a hero of the Trojan War.
If you have ever been introduced to a roomful of strangers at one time, you know how futile it is to attempt even to remember their names to say nothing of connecting names and faces. It is necessary to hear something interesting about each one before you can begin to recall names and faces. Likewise an introduction to World History, the characters and places in which are utterly unknown strangers to the child, must be something more than a mere name introduction, and there must be very few introductions given at a time or both names and faces will be instantly forgotten. It is also necessary to repeat new names constantly in order that the pupil may gradually become familiarized with them, for so many strange people and places are bewildering.
In order to serve the purpose of a basal outline, which in the future is to be filled in, it is necessary that the Time Table be made a permanent possession of the pupil. This Time Table, therefore, should be studied like the multiplication tables until it is known one hundred per cent and for “keeps,” and until the topic connected with each date can be elaborated as much as desired. The aim should be to have the pupil able to start with Primitive Man and give a summary of World History to the present time, with dates and chief events without prompting, questioning, hesitation, or mistake. Does this seem too much to expect? It is not as difficult as it may sound, if suggestions given in the text for connecting the various events into a sequence and for passing names and events in a condensed review are followed. Hundreds of Calvert children each year are successfully required to do this very thing.
The attitude, however, usually assumed by teachers, that “even if the pupil forgets it all, there will be left a valuable impression,” is too often an apology for superficial teaching and superficial learning. History may be made just as much a “mental discipline” as some other studies, but only if difficulties of dates and other abstractions are squarely met and overcome by hard study and learned to be remembered, not merely to be forgotten after the recitation. The story part the child will easily remember, but it is the “who and when and where and why” that are important, and this part is the serious study. Instead of, “A man, once upon a time,” he should say, “King John in 1215 at Runnymede because—”
This book, therefore, is not a supplementary reader but a basal history study.Just enough narrative is told to give the skeleton flesh and blood and make it living. The idea is not how much but how little can be told; to cut down one thousand pages to less than half of that number without leaving only dry bones.
No matter how the subject is presented it is necessary that the child do his part and put his own brain to work; and for this purpose he should be required to retell each story after he has read itand should be repeatedly questioned on names and dates as well as stories, to make sure he is retaining and assimilating what he hears.
I recall how once upon a time a young chap, just out of college, taught his first class in history. With all the enthusiasm of a full-back who has just kicked a goal from field, he talked, he sang; he drew maps on the blackboard, on the floor, on the field; he drew pictures, he vaulted desks, and even stood on his head to illustrate points. His pupils attended spellbound, with their eyes wide open, their ears wide open, and their mouths wide open. They missed nothing. They drank in his flow of words with thirst unquenched; but, like Baron Munchausen, he had failed to look at the other end of the drinking horse that had been cut in half. At the end of a month his kindly principal suggested a test,and he gave it with perfect confidence.
There were only three questions:
1. Tell all you can about Columbus.
2. Tell all you can about Jamestown.
3. Tell all you can about Plymouth.
And here are the three answers of one of the most interested pupils:
1. He was a greatman.
2. He was a greatman.
3. He was a greatman to
.
与当时所有和我同龄的孩子一样，我也是学习“美国历史”长大的，当时的教育只讲美国的历史，就这样年复一年地学了八年甚至更长的时间。
按照我当时的知识，世界历史是从1492年开始的，如果我偶然听到或读到别人提及1492年以前的事和人，我就会认为这都属于童话一类的故事。那些只有在主日学校里才能听到的有关基督和他的时代的故事，在我看来都是人想象出来的，并不是真的。在我所读的历史书中，这些故事从没被提到过，所以我就认为它不属于真实的时空领域，而只存在于人们的想象之中。
给美国孩子只讲美国历史，就像只教得克萨斯州的孩子得克萨斯州的历史一样褊狭。人们通常用爱国主义来解释这样的历史教育，但这样的教育只能让人变得胸襟狭窄，狂妄自大，因为它建立在对其他民族和其他时代一无所知的基础上——这是一种虚妄的、偏执的自我主义。第一次世界大战以后，人们越来越认识到美国孩子应该对其他国家和民族有所了解，有了这方面的了解，他们看问题才能有明智的态度，不带偏见。
孩子从9岁开始就迫切地想知道过去时代所发生的事，欣然领会世界历史的概念。因此，多年以来卡尔弗特学校的学生从9岁开始就上世界历史课了，尽管有些教师和孩子的父母表示怀疑和反对，但我注意到，人们渐渐接受了这样的历史教学计划。随着这种态度的转变，对世界通史儿童读本的需求日益增长。然而，我发现，为了便于孩子理解，所有现行的历史课本，都需要大幅度删节，并且还要补充不断的解释和评论。
最近对孩子天生智力的一些重大研究让我们知道，一个普通孩子处于不同的年龄时什么是他可以理解的，什么是他无法理解的；哪些日期、修辞格、词汇、一般原则和抽象概念他能理解，哪些他无法理解——将来所有的课本在编撰时都必须始终考虑到这些智力标准。否则，这样的课本很可能超过孩子的理解能力，孩子学习这样的课本，至少有些内容他肯定看不懂。
尽管作者多年来不断接触到孩子的智力问题，他发现每次课文在课堂上试讲后，他在书斋里所写的那些东西还是不得不修改甚至重写。尽管作者自认初稿用的是最浅白的语言，他还是发现每个词语和短语都必须先在课堂上反复试用，然后才能确定这些词和短语向孩子传达了什么意思。措词稍有倒装或可能存在歧义或多义都会引起孩子们的误解和困惑。比如说：“罗马城在台伯河畔”，由于这句话在英语中用了介词“on”，就很容易被理解成城市就建在河上，而且孩子们还会异想天开，想象罗马的房子都建在水里的木桩上。一个9岁的孩子还很幼稚——他可能依然坚信有圣诞老人的存在——他在观念、词汇和理解能力方面比大多数成年人意识到的还要幼稚——即使这些成年人是他们的父母或老师。因此，新知识表述得越简明易懂越好。
因此，课本中选择的题材并不总是最重要的，最重要的是里面的内容孩子们能看懂并感兴趣。无论文字叙述多么简单易懂，大多数的政治学、社会学、经济学和宗教上的一般原则都超出了孩子们理解力。毕竟，这本历史课本只是对历史的初步叙述。
本书撰写了世界历史中极为精彩的传记和故事，但历史中的这些传记无法勾勒出历史轮廓，也根本不能为孩子们将来补充历史知识提供一个大纲；事实上，如果不能将这些传记纳入历史发展的总纲里，这些传记只不过是浮现在孩子们脑海里的许多孤立的故事，与时间或空间没有丝毫联系。
因此本书按照时间的顺序来论述题材——一个世纪接一个世纪、一个时代接一个时代地述说历史事件，而不是按照各个国家的顺序。一个国家的历史叙述还没有结束就停下来，又开始了另一个国家的历史叙述，就像小说里让不同的情节同步展开一样。这样做和编撰本书的目的是一致的——就是让小学生们看到各个时代连续的全景图，而不是把希腊历史从头到尾说一遍，然后从时间上返回来，再讲述罗马历史，这样不断继续下去。本书的宗旨就是要勾勒出整个历史画面的轮廓，而详情则有待孩子们在以后的学习中逐渐补充，就像画家先粗略勾勒出草图，然后再补充细节。要把历史知识有条理地归类，需要这样一幅轮廓图，就像任何一个运作平稳有序的办公室，需要一个能将各类文件归档的系统。
本书的时间阶梯是要让孩子们在直观上了解时间的长度和世界历史发展的阶段。每一段阶梯代表一千年，每一个台阶代表一百年，也就是一个世纪。如果你有一面空墙，不管是在游戏室、阁楼还是谷仓里，你可以将“时间阶梯”放大画在墙上，从地面一直画到手够得着的高度。如果再精心配上有人物和历史事件的图片或绘画，那就很有特色，更吸引人了。如果这面墙正对着孩子的床，那就更好了。因为早晨或其他时间孩子醒来躺在床上时，他就可以不去想象墙纸上稀奇古怪的图案，时间阶梯里挤满的历史事件足以让他构想出各种情景。无论怎样，在学习每一个历史事件的时候，孩子就应当不断参考这样一个时间阶梯或时间表，久而久之，过去时代的印象就会留在他脑海中。开始，孩子们领会不到历史年表上数字表达的时间长度或各个时期的相应顺序，会将公元前2500年、公元前25000年和公元前2500万年混为一谈。孩子们只有不断地将历史时期归入到时间阶梯或时间表里相应位置。这些时期才能在他脑子里形成具体的印象。如果一个孩子说公元776000年举办了第一届奥运会，或者意大利位于雅典，亚伯拉罕是特洛伊战争的英雄，你可能会觉得好笑，但千万不要感到惊讶。
如果有人一次介绍你认识一屋子的陌生人，你知道记住他们的名字根本就是徒劳，更不用提将他们的名字和长相对应起来。在记住他们的名字和长相之前，你听一点每个人的趣事是很有必要的。同样，讲述世界历史，就不能仅仅介绍人名和地名，因为这些对于孩子来说就像是不认识的陌生人；而且，一次还不能介绍太多，否则他马上就把“名字”和“长相”都忘掉了。为了让小学生逐渐熟悉新名字，不断重复新的人名和地名也是必要的，因为，这么陌生的人物和地点是令人困惑的。
一个基础的历史大纲应当在将来不断被填充。为了达到这个目的，有必要让学生把时间表完全记住，终身不忘。因此应当像学习乘法表那样去学习这个时间表，直到学生能百分之百地记住，永久不忘，直到学生能像所希望的那样详尽地讲述与每个时期有关的主题。我们的目标就是要让学生在没有别人提示和提问的情况下，自己能够不犹豫，不犯错地从原始人开始，把从古至今的世界历史概述一遍，包括其中重要的历史时期和事件。这个目标是不是听起来期望过高了？如果采用课本所给的建议，把各个历史事件按先后顺序联系在一起，再把重要的历史人物和事件集中复习一遍，那么达到这个目标就没有听起来那么难了。每年卡尔维特学校数百名孩子都按照要求成功地达到了这个目标。
然而，教师通常持有这样的看法：“即使学生忘记了所有的内容，脑子里总要留下一点有价值的印象吧。”这种看法常常成为对草率肤浅的教学和不求甚解的学习的辩解。历史课可以和其他学科一样成为一种“智力训练”，但是其前提是：不回避在学习历史年代和抽象概念时遇到的困难，而是正面迎接，通过刻苦的学习克服这些困难，并学会记住这些年代和抽象概念，而不是在背诵之后忘得干干净净。凡是讲故事的内容，孩子总是很容易就记住了。但是，“人物、时间、地点和原因”才是重要的，这部分是需要认真学习的。他不应该说，“从前有个人”，而应该说，“约翰王在1215年在兰尼米德，因为……”
因此，这本书不是一本补充读本，而是一本基础历史教科书。书中对历史事件给予了充分的叙述，让历史的“骨架”有了“血肉”，使本书读起来生动有趣。撰写本书考虑的不是篇幅要多么长，而是要多么短，所以把1000页缩短到500页，而留下的内容却不至于是干巴巴的骨头。
无论历史在本书中是怎样被呈现的，孩子都必须尽自己的努力，学习时多动脑筋思考；为了这个目的，应该在孩子阅读每个故事以后，要求他们复述一遍，应该反复问他们故事的内容和其中的人名和日期，以确保他们记住和吸收了所听到的内容。
我回想起很久以前一个大学刚毕业的小伙子教第一堂历史课的情景。他满腔热情，像足球场上刚射入一球的后卫那么兴奋。他又说又唱，把一幅幅地图画在黑板上、地板上、操场上。为了说明要点，他画了一些图，用手支撑跃过一张张课桌，甚至身体倒立。学生们听他的课都入了迷，个个都睁大双眼，竖起耳朵，张着嘴巴。他们全神贯注地听着，如饥似渴地吸收他滔滔不绝的话语。但是这个小伙子就像闵希豪生男爵，只顾着给马饮水，却未能看到马的后半身早已被砍掉。过了一个月，和蔼可亲的校长建议他进行一次测验。他信心十足地出了考卷。
考卷上只有三个问题：
1.说说你对哥伦布了解多少。
2.说说你对詹姆斯敦了解多少。
3.说说你对普利茅斯了解多少。
下面是其中一个孩子的回答，这个孩子是那些对他的课最感兴趣的学生之一：
1.他是一个卫大的人。
2.他是一个卫大的人。
3.他业是一个卫大的人。