rapidly for the nest two years. Those who chose the despatch because it was true,
signed, etc., increased rapidly in girls and boys throughout the teens, and the
preference for the telegram as a more direct source increased very rapidly from
thirteen to seventeen.
Other studies of this kind led Mrs. Barnes to conclude that children remembered
items by groups; that whole groups were often omitted; that those containing
most action were best remembered; that what is remembered is remembered
with great accuracy; that generalities are often made more specific; that the
number of details a child carries away from a connected narrative is not much
above fifty, so that their numbers should be limited; and from it all was inferred
the necessity of accuracy, of massing details about central characters or
incidents, letting action dominate, omitting all that is aside from the main line of
the story, of bringing out cause and effect and dramatizing where possible.
Miss Patterson[20] collated the answers of 2,237 children to the question "What
does 1895 mean?" The blanks "Don't know" decreased very rapidly from six to
eight, and thereafter maintained a slight but constant percentage. Those who
expanded the phase a little without intelligence were most numerous from eight
to ten, while the proportion who gave a correct explanation rose quite steadily
for both sexes and culminated at fourteen for girls and fifteen for boys. The latter
only indicates the pupils of real historic knowledge. The writer concludes that
"the sense of historical time is altogether lacking with children of seven, and
may be described as slight up to the age of twelve." History, it is thought, should
be introduced early with no difference between boys and girls, but "up to the age
of twelve or thirteen it should be presented in a series of striking biographies and
events, appearing if possible in contemporary ballads and chronicles, and
illustrated by maps, chronological charts, and as richly as possible by pictures of
contemporary objects, buildings, and people." At the age of fourteen or fifteen,
another sort of work should appear. Original sources should still be used, but
they should illustrate not "the picture of human society moving before us in a
long panorama, but should give us the opportunity to study the organization,
thought, feeling, of a time as seen in its concrete embodiments, its documents,
monuments, men, and books." The statesmen, thinkers, poets, should now
exceed explorers and fighters; reflection and interpretation, discrimination of the
true from the false, comparison, etc., are now first in order; while later yet,
perhaps in college, should come severer methods and special monographic
study.