284 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
They cannot be taught too early. The home is the first and the best school 
for them, but the school may supply the defects of many homes in a great 
measure. Our nursery for citizenship should have sweetness as well as light. 
There are social points in all branches of knowledge, but they are often hid- 
den. Itisthe duty of the true teacher to point them out and emphasize them. 
I heard yesterday in the Art Section, from Mr. Stimson, lessons for 
sitizenship given by means of drawing. If the teacher has in his 
heart the feeling that to train worthy citizens is his prime duty, every 
subject which he presents to his pupils will be instinet with this convie- 
tion. If, on the contrary, he cares nothing for public duty, the best text- 
hooks that may be put in his hands will fall dead on the class. Let us 
first inspire the educators ; the inspiration will be communicated to the 
schools. 
METHODS OF TEACHING HISTORY TO CHILDREN. 
BY MRS. MARY H. PEABODY, OF NEW YORK. 
To make the briefest possible statement, I would say that I was led to 
shis method of teaching history by the manifested needs of a class of 
children from eight to twelve years of age. I took them from a kinder- 
zarten, and sought to carry into school the principles taught by Froebel. 
The subject of the children’s study was truly man and his occupation of 
she earth. 
As all action is related to nature, I considered political geography as the 
cesults of the movements of man, and physical geography as the outward 
cause and guide of those movements; the two therefore can be learned 
incidentally, not as separate lessons. 
In opening the work, I was led by the questions of the children to the 
beginnings, to the origins of things—to the sun, the earth as a planet, to 
its growth and geological construction, and the progress of life. 
The lessons were given round a table with globe and maps, and began 
with personal experience, and were intended to touch the child’s natural 
celationships. There was the land to speak of, its boundaries, its name, 
and flag—all that they knew about it here and now; its present condition, 
people, and methods of life. © These made a series of lessons, related 
intentionally to the history, yet with variety in the subject to awaken the 
child’s consciousnesss of alliance to nature, to God, and to his fellows. 
Human life, like the earth, has its natural divisions. These are the 
family, the race, and the nation. The first two are opposites ; the third 
is the result of their union. 
The family is the near, close relationship which by birth gives name, 
position, and something of personal character. It is the unit of society. 
The race. using the word as in anthropology, is the largest relationship