EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION THE TEACHING OF CIVICS. BY MABEL HILL INSTRUCTOR IN HISTORY AND CIVICS EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION We have come at last to a sound notion of teaching civics in the schools. Long experience with traditional modes of instruction has indicated their failure, and teachers now turn to a more direct application of important principles of pedagogical procedure long urged by the practical psychologist and recently verified by careful experimental work. For a generation past the teaching of civics aimed at little more than the acquisition of knowledge about government. It was assumed that the school's function did not extend beyond an intellectual treatment of social and political welfare. The subject-matter was formal and necessarily barren, remote from ordinary human interests, and more remote still from any concerns of children. In the earlier years it consisted of a study of the mechanics of government through analysis of the fundamental law as provided by constitutions and charters. More recently the social functions of government have been given the chief place in school study, and political structure has been made secondary. On |