Correlation in History

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 3, 1908

Correlation in History

THIS is only one of the fields where correlation suggests rich improvement in our methods. A young friend wrote me not long since, concerning the study of history: “A boy learns from his study of Persian history that Darius fell at Arbela, and the Persian power was crushed. He may also remember from his study of Greece that Alexander won a victory at Arbela in 331 B. C., but it never occurs to him that Darius and Alexander were in one and the same battle.”

How can a proper understanding of our own early history be obtained without a study of the history of Spain, Holland, England, and France? The different motives of settlement and colonization can be appreciated only by a study of the conditions that existed in Europe; and why France was our friend in the Revolution will be found to have been not from purely humanitarian impulses, but because it furnished a means of harassing her “ancient enemy.”

Another personal experience may assist

in making my meaning clear. I learned in geography that “a hill is a small elevation of land,” and “a mountain is a vast elevation of land.” And yet the “hill” that I had to climb twice a day in taking the cows to pasture and bringing them home was to my mind a “vast elevation.” It was not shown to me that such terms are relative, and that what we called a “hill” might sometimes well be called a mountain. I learned, too, that “a river is a stream of water flowing through the land.” Now, I had to cross two miniature rivers every time I went to school. There was not the slightest effort on the part of my teachers to correlate these facts, which lay at the very door of the schoolhouse, with the definitions and theories of the books. And yet what an opportunity for practical correlation!

Does not correlation in this sense offer material that is quite within the reach of every teacher? If the young teacher finds something in this discussion that sets him thoughtfully to find a more complete unification of his school work, so that each subject shall sustain, ally, and strengthen every other subject in the school course, he will have reached the best correlation possible.—Selected.