No method of teaching, however, is ever so bad that its abandonment is not attended with some loss to the pupil. In spite of all the success which has undeniably come about in these ten years of thoughtful and friendly effort, there still remain a number of steps imperatively to be taken before the teaching of history in secondary schools can, without serious qualification, be pronounced satisfactory. There is still a woeful need of trained history teachers. While the larger city high schools and many private schools are praiseworthy exceptions, it nevertheless remains true that the majority of schools do not yet think it necessary to choose for the historical department a teacher specially trained for that work. The subject is still too often assigned to this teacher or that who happens to have the necessary free time, but whose serious equipment lies in some other field. Nothing short of sound and extended college training in history should be deemed a sufficient preparation for the teaching of history in a secondary school, just as nothing short of such training, and the frank recognition of its importance by school authorities, will overcome the unfortunate reluctance of the best college graduates to enter secondary school work. No graduate of Brown University can receive from the department of history a certificate of fitness to teach history in a high school or academy who has not completed with credit at least four courses, each of three hours a week for a year, and one of them a course of research; and I should be glad did conditions in the schools make it possible to raise, as they do make it increasingly easy to enforce this minimum requirement.
A second crying need is for better equipment of the historical department. The development of school libraries has not yet made much progress, and the use of public libraries by large classes has obvious practical limitations. Schools which willingly spend money for scientific apparatus decline to spend money for books, pictures, and other illustrative material. The equipment of wall-maps is often exceedingly poor, historical maps being often lacking altogether except in the field of ancient history. Until this lack is supplied, we must expect that the teacher will from necessity rely mainly upon the textbook, at the cost of failing to meet the most fundamental condition of the newer methods of history teaching.