TWO EXPERIMENTS I N THE TEACHING OF HISTORY

The forty girls of the top class in the Brentford Secondary Modem School were all between fourteen and fifteen years old when we began the experiment in revision which we called, " How We Wrote the History of England ". I was responsible for all the history teaching in the school, which numbered three hundred and twenty girls. Our syllabus ranged from ancient empires (Egypt, Greece and Rome) to modem times, and included the history of England and some reference to European and world affairs. The utmost time which a full and varied time-table could allot to history teaching was one hour a week in each class, so that our topics had to be carefully selected and combined, in order that the idea of the continuity of history and the laws of cause and effect should not be obscured. Some revision during the fourth year seemed desirable, as the period covered had been so vast. Our problem was to make this revision sufficiently interesting to ensure that the girls would carry it out for themselves as part of the fourth year plan for independent work.

We had always used a standard historical atlas, so that the girls were accustomed to mapreading in order to gain informa- tion and to make comparisons. It seemed to me therefore that the girls might be interested in using the one-inch ordnance survey maps to help them to revise their work. My original idea was that we should trace Roman roads, find the positions of abbeys and castles, cathedrals, churches, mills and lighthouses, the sites of medieval battles and the battles of the Civil War, and I hoped that the girls, having done this, might be interested in reading about these things, making notes, and relating the local history to the general history from Roman times up to the agrarian and industrial revolu- tions. I thought we might work out Anglo-Saxon and Danish place-names, try to find out whether the private estates of to-day had ever been Norman manors, and trace, with the help of the historical atlas, the growth or decay of towns. I had not intended to go further back than Roman Britain, but the girls were fascinated by the maps, and I soon realised that we should lo* much valuable material and, what was as

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bad, much genuine interest and excitement if I kept to my original plan. I was asked so many questions about the prehistoric landmarks shown on the maps that there was nothing for it but to give a short talk on long and round barrows, hill-forts, sacred sites, lake villages and prehistoric trade routes, and then refer the girls to the local museum and afterwards produce books and photographs. The local museum is housed in the public library, and, my books and the school text-books proving insufficient for the most interested girls, the library itself was soon invaded and the success of our venture seemed (and was) secure.

The maps had come on the one-and-sixpenny flat sheets and each girl had chosen her own before they were ordered- that is to say, during the previous term. Some girls remembered with pleasure the country homes which had received them during the war. Others had had enjoyable holidays. Some had romantic leanings towards " a map with the sea on it ", and others had been to Guide camps. One of the first things we did was to make time-charts. These were double pages, worked out in centuries beginning with the eleventh; the important events and persons were written on the left-hand page and the local history on the right-hand page. I helped always with the composition of the left-hand page, but the right-hand page was always the result of the girls' own research.

Another exercise carried out by the whole class was to make an enlargement of a section of the ordnance map so that detail could be plainly shown. To do this we cut an inch-square hole in the middle of a postcard, pasted tracing paper over it and drew pencil lines to divide it into quarter-inch squares. Then we drew diagonals on these squares to form triangles, and traced through from the map the portion which was to be enlarged. After this, all that we had to do was to draw a six-inch square on a mapping-book, make the triangles on this, and then carefully copy the outline in each small triangle on to the corresponding large one. (Most teachers will know this method of map-enlargement, of course. It is very simple, but keeps the right proportions.)

The girls showed a strong inclination to illustrate their work, and many at first would go to more trouble and spend more time over drawing than on reading and making notes.

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It was soon apparent to them, however, that without reading and note-taking their pictures had not the same value, but I found it a good plan to go round to the public library after school to give advice and answer questions. I must add that the librarians were most interested in what we were doing, and gave us a great deal of willing help, getting us books from the much larger library in Chiswick and “ holding ” books for girls who had staked a claim on them.

There was never any difficulty about getting the girls to settle down to the work in school, and many of them spent hours of their own time on research and on plans and drawings. The latter grew more and more careful, difficult, bold and interesting. The school supplied Indian ink in black and green, and I bought a few bottles of coloured inks for the sketch-plans and map enlargements. Soon girls were bringing their own materials, and although the property was never regarded as in any way communal-a nice sense of ownership persisted-it was pleasing to see how willingly the materials were shared and lent. The girls’ choice of subjects to draw was conditioned by their skill, but the general standard was high. I think that the most amazing was a facsimile reproduc- tion-copied, not traced-of an entry in Domesday Book for a manor in the county of Leicester, but other girls produced finished drawings in Indian ink or pencil, of church interiors, castles, the Bayeux tapestry and house exteriors, and, almost nonchalantly, copies of detailed architects’ plans of abbeys and parish churches.

I was so much impressed by the amount of research done and by the quality of the drawings that I conceived the notion of our making the history book which was exhibited in London in September 1948, and subsequently in Germany. My method was to collect, collate and subedit the girls’ notes, and then to write them in essay form against a background of English history. I interleaved my chapters with the girls’ illustrations, and the girls themselves typed my work after school, when they had their typewriting lesson. Each chapter dealt with a definite period of history. In case it should seem that there were no difficulties or problems connected with the scheme, I will list one or two which became obvious, Perhaps it would be as well to state here that I was fortunate

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in the class. They were alert, well-mannered, not particularly noisy, very ready to be interested, and they were whole-hearted and clannish. Never- theless, some girls found it difficult to begin the work. They were interested, but puzzled. I found that the best and kindest thing to do was to “ give them a start ”, and to do this I would dictate to them one or two facts from my Muirhead, an encyclopzdic guide-book which proved, on more occasions than one, a very present help in time of trouble. Then, the scope of the maps vaned enormously, and some girls were worried and dissatisfied when, for example, there was no abbey on their map, or no castle, or no battlefield, and so forth. They disliked gaps-as I think all children do-and during the first few weeks a number of them asked to change their maps, which meant sharing with someone else. This was always allowed if the other girl was willing, but of course it meant a certain amount of lost time. Then, I doubt whether this is a scheme which could find a regular and unassailable place in the school curriculum. Apart from the fact that I found it hard work because of the amount of cross-checking involved, it by no means suited every girl who tried it, and the skulkers were able to continue undetected for quite a long time just because the rest of us were so busy. (This sort of thing is apt to give a conscientious teacher the fidgets.)

Last, but very important indeed, this scheme does not suit the ‘‘ B ” stream. It is beyond their scope, and, apart from this, many of them do not seem to have the leisure to do the extra work outside school time because of home duties. For this reason, Miss Stamp, Miss Blazey and I (the head teacher and the two fourth-year teachers respectively) were anxious to hit on something which both the “A’ and the “ B ” streams could tackle with a fair prospect of success. During last Christmas vacation Miss Blazey and I worked out a scheme which should combine English, history and geography. We ourselves had spent half a dozen summer holidays on the Mediterranean and we thought that to travel (especially on board ship), even in imagination, might excite the girls’ interest, especially as we proposed to carry out in school as many of the activities and amusements of the life on board a liner as we could fit in.

(They were not my class.)

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Thus we have encouraged the girls to make a list of suitable clothing, taught them to play deck games, and seen to it that they can choose a well-balanced and interesting meal from a long French menu. The girls understand boat-drill, have had talks on various kinds of ships’ engines, fuels and navigating instruments, and have seen radar being used. All this is in addition to the main trend of the work in history and geography. They also know something of foreign currency, the pre- and post-war rates of exchange, and the use of the metric system. The method we use is based on individual reading and note- taking, but, although there is no definite groupwork, conversa- tion has been encouraged, all good work is displayed, and the girls (who have the unrestricted use of both form-rooms and mix up as much as they like) move freely about to study books, photographs, ships’ plans and wall maps. Time has also been allotted for girls to go across in couples to the public library to change their books during morning school. (We are very fortunate here, as the public library is on the comer of our road.)

Both of us give talks and eye-witness descriptions to both classes, we have tackled the full text of A Midszcmnter Night’s Dream, in which both classes have taken part, and we started off with a “ Get-Together ” party to encourage fraternisation between the two groups and a sense of holiday. We have tried in every way to make the course realistic. We held an exhibition last term of Mediterranean products and of photo- graphs of classical and historic subjects gathered by us on our cruises and by some of the girls’ fathers during the war. Several of the fathers served in Italy and North Africa, and this fact, and the souvenirs and pictures which they had sent or brought home, helped us considerably and gave the girls the feeling that they were working at something practical.

In general, as I have already said, reading, note-taking and illustrations have formed the bulk of tfie work. Each girl keeps three note-books-a large unlined one for finished work and her own maps, plans and drawings, a shore- excursions and ports-of-call note-book, and a “ log ’’ in which she keeps a daily record of her work and of the books she reads. A list of books is also kept on the class-room notice-board.

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On this girls write down the books which they have found particularly useful. Each girl also has a map of the Mediter- ranean on which she charts the ship’s course and marks the ports we visit. In addition to making maps of the separate countries, the girls have copied from the black-board the street plans of the ports. This, we thought, would make the work more realistic. The girls consolidate their work and revise it from time to time by writing letters home as though they were actually voyaging, and in place of a formal examina- tion they are now writing a lengthy essay on the cruise, choosing seven of the twenty ports of call and making their journey a three-weeks’ holiday.

We have given fifteen hours a week to the scheme, and it shows no signs of flagging. We have visited Corunna, Lisbon, Gibraltar, Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Naples, Messina, Venice, Dubrovnik, Nauplia, Athens, Istanbul, Smyma, Rhodes, Alexandria, Tunis, Algiers, Ceuta and Tangier. The girls now know a considerable amount about Ancient Egypt, Crete, Homeric, Archaic and Classical Greece, Rome, Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Mohammedan conquests of North Africa, Palestine and Spain, the Crusades, the Turkish conquest of south-eastern Europe, the history of Venice and the colonisation of North Africa. They have traced the trade routes of the Mediterranean from the time of the Phcenicians to the present day. They understand something of the importance of Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus and the Dardanelles. They know that we have always been friendly with Portugal and that the French have made better colonists than the Italians and the Spaniards. They know that there were Roman cities in North Africa and Moorish cities in Spain, and they have some conception of the importance and fascination of archaeology.

Last term we took the girls to the science museum at South Kensington to look at the collection of model ships. Later on we were able to visit a passenger-cargo liner which was lying in the Royal Albert dock. The ships’ officers demon- strated the ship’s wireless, the use of radar, the various bridge instruments and the gyroscopic compass. We should have liked to visit the maritime museum at Greenwich, but time did not permit of this.. An historical side-line which we

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tackled was the evolution of nautical instruments from the time of Columbus to the present day, and the transition from the earliest days of sail t o the use of oil fuel to generate electricity. Our next-year's scheme is based on the history of writing, but that, as Kipling rather irritatingly says, is another story.

GLADYS MITCHELL.

THE RUPTURE OF THE ORANGE MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1814 : CORRIGENDUM

Professor A. ASPINALL writes:-

May I correct an error in my article printed in History, No. 120/121 ? It was Prince Augustus, not Prince Frederick, of Prussia with whom Princess Charlotte fell in love in June 1814. One or two sentences in her letters to Mercer Elphinstone seemed, indeed, to point to Augustus, but, misled by the leading genealogical authorities, the Almalzack de Gotha and von Isenburg's Stummtafe?t z w Geschichte Der Europaischen Staaten ( 2 vols., Berlin, 1936), I wrongly decided in favour of Frederick. According to the Almanack, the elder prince was named William Augustus (and so he was described in the obituary notices in the British press). According to von Isenburg, he was simply Augustus. Since Charlotte in 1814 invariably referred to her lover as " F ", I assumed too readily that Frederick was meant, and that Augustus, lacking this name, must be ruled out. Later, however, the duchess of York once referred to him as Augustus Ferdinand. This, if accurate, makes the " F " references intelligible, though why Charlotte should generally mention him thus, when he was usually called Augustus, remains unexplained. This confusion in my own mind does not affect the argument of the article. It is abundantly clear that in 1814, and indeed, for some time later, Charlotte would not have been allowed by her father to marry either of these Prussian princes ; his attitude was, simply, she must marry the hereditary prince of Orange or else nobody. And as for the immoral behaviour of Prince Augustus, it is equally clear that she would not have married him after she had been told the truth about his amorous intrigues.