A METHOD OF MEMORIZING DATES, WITH FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND PRIVATE STUDENTS. BY VIRGINIA CONSER SHAFFER, FORMERLY TEACHER OF HISTORY IN THE MARYLAND STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 1890. PREFACE. SOME years ago I was conducting a Teachers' Institute in Washington County, Maryland, when one of the teachers in attendance proposed to explain his method of teaching history in connection with chronology. The explanation was given at some length, and a class of children who had been taught after this method was introduced and made a very creditable exhibition of their attainments. I was so much pleased with the system that I determined to try it in the State Normal School, in which the author of this volume was at that time the teacher of history. The experiment was eminently successful and the method was permanently continued. On Miss Conser's leaving the State Normal School I requested her, as a parting contribution to the profession of which she had been for years a distinguished ornament, to prepare an outline of history and chronology on this plan for publication. The period from the eleventh to the nineteenth century, inclusive, was at first selected; but, as it proved too bulky for an initiatory volume, the illustration was confined to the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. There is nothing new about the principle. Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody used it many years ago in a school history of the United States, and she borrowed it from a German, Bem, I believe. But many changes of detail and plan have been made, which adapt it more completely to class use. Still better than any claim to novelty or originality is the fact that it has been taught, from manuscript, year after year, in our school, and always with good results. It may be alleged that the success was due to the teacher rather than to the system; but from the Normal School the system spread into hundreds of country schools, and was attended with gratifying, if not always brilliant, success. So far as I know, no teacher who has tried it has ever voluntarily given it up. I commend this little book, therefore, to my fellow-teachers throughout the United States as eminently deserving of a fair and patient trial, and in the assured conviction that those who give it such a trial will not be disappointed. M. A. NEWELL, Principal of the Maryland State Normal School and State Superintendent of Public Instruction. 541672 |