Ontario Teachers' Manuals. Ontario. Department of Education

      Commonwealth: nominally a republic, really a dictatorship under Cromwell. He gave Britain a strong government at home, and made her respected abroad, and laid the foundations of Britain's foreign trade and colonial empire.

      Charles II: The Restoration: Reaction in state, church, and society; King striving for absolute power; Nonconformists persecuted; society profligate in its revolt against the strictness of Puritanism; Habeas Corpus Act; Test Act; Plague and Great Fire.

      James II: Revolution of 1688, the death-knell of "divine right"; Parliament supreme; Declaration of Rights.

      William and Mary: Party government—Whigs and Tories; King to act by advice of his ministers; each parliament limited to three years; Bill of Rights; Act of Settlement.

      Anne: Marlborough; Union between England and Scotland, 1707; the Jacobites, 1715 and 1745.

      George II: Walpole, the great peace minister—home and colonial trade fostered and material wealth of the nation greatly increased; Pitt, the great war minister; territorial expansion in Canada and India—Wolfe, Clive; the Methodist Movement, Wesley.

      George III: The American Revolution, 1776–83: loss of the American Colonies; Pitt; Washington; acquisition of Australia by Great Britain, 1788; legislative union of Ireland with Great Britain, 1801; Napoleonic wars; Nelson, Wellington, Aboukir, Trafalgar, and Waterloo; industrial revolution—the change from an agricultural to an industrial country.

      William IV: Reform Act of 1832, a great forward movement in democratic government; abolition of slavery, 1833; railways and steamships.

      Victoria: First British settlement in New Zealand, 1839; Repeal of the Corn Laws, 1846—free trade, the commercial policy of England; Elementary Education Act, 1870, education compulsory; parliamentary franchise extended—vote by ballot; Crimean war; Indian Mutiny; Egypt and the Suez Canal; Boer War—Orange Free State and South African Republic annexed; social progress.

      Edward VII: Irish Land Act of 1903; pensions for aged labourers; King Edward, "the Peace-maker."

      Civics

      Taxation—direct and indirect; how the revenue of the Dominion, provinces, and municipalities, respectively, is collected.

      Federal Government—Governor-general, Senate, House of Commons, Premier, Cabinet.

      Imperial Government—King, House of Lords, House of Commons, Premier, Cabinet.

HISTORY

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

THE AIMS AND STAGES OF STUDY

       Table of Contents

AIMS

       Table of Contents

      History may be made, in several ways, an important factor in forming intelligent, patriotic citizens:

      (a) It must be remembered that society, with all its institutions, is a growth, not a sudden creation. It follows that, if we wish to understand the present and to use that knowledge as a guide to future action, we must know the story of how our present institutions and conditions have come to be what they are; we must know the ideals of our forefathers, the means they took to realize them, and to what extent they succeeded. It is only in this way that we become capable of passing judgment, as citizens, on what is proposed by political and social reformers, and thus justify and guarantee our existence as a democracy.

      (b) Patriotism, which depends largely on the associations formed in childhood, is intensified by learning how our forefathers fought and laboured and suffered to obtain all that we now value most in our homes and social life. The courage with which the early settlers of Upper Canada faced their tremendous labours and hardships should make us appreciate our inheritance in the Ontario of to-day, and determine, as they did, to leave our country better than we found it.

      To-morrow yet would reap to-day,

       As we bear blossom of the dead.

      

      (c) "History teaches that right and wrong are real distinctions." The study of history, especially in the sphere of biography, has a moral value, and much may be done, even in the primary classes, to inspire children to admire the heroic and the self-sacrificing, and to despise the treacherous and the self-seeking. The constant struggle to right what is wrong in the world may be emphasized in the senior classes to show that nothing is ever settled until it is settled right.

      (d) History affords specially good exercise for the judgment we use in everyday life in weighing evidence and balancing probabilities. Such a question as "Did Champlain do right in taking the side of the Hurons against the Iroquois, or even in taking sides at all?" may be suggested to the older pupils for consideration.

      (e) History, when taught by a broad-minded, well-informed teacher, may do much to correct the prejudices—social, political, religious—of individuals and communities.

      (f) The imagination is exercised in the effort to recall or reconstruct the scenes of the past and in discovering relations of cause and effect.

      (g) The memory is aided and stimulated by the increase in the number of the centres of interest round which facts, both new and old, may be grouped.

      (h) A knowledge of the facts and inferences of history is invaluable for general reading and culture.

      To sum up: It is important that the good citizen should know his physical environment; it is just as important for him "to know his social and political environment, to have some appreciation of the nature of the state and society, some sense of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, some capacity in dealing with political and governmental questions, something of the broad and tolerant spirit which is bred by the study of past times and conditions."

SCOPE

       Table of Contents

      The ideal course in history would include (1) a general view of the history of the world, giving the pupil knowledge enough to provide the proper setting for the history of his own country; (2) a more detailed knowledge of the whole history of his own country; (3) and a special knowledge of certain outstanding periods or tendencies in that history. In our schools, we should give most attention to the study of Canadian and British history as a whole, to enough of the history of France and other countries to make clear certain parts of our own history, and to certain important periods, such as the settlement of Upper Canada by the United Empire Loyalists, etc. (See Detailed Course of Study, p. 5.) We may also study our history along special lines of development—political, military, social, educational, religious, industrial, and commercial—but these phases are subjects of study rather for secondary schools and colleges.

STAGES OF STUDY

       Table of Contents

      There are three stages in the study of history which, though they overlap each other, yet indicate different methods of treatment for pupils at different ages. They are the