The Teaching of History. . .

As with almost every other Professor or Lecturer in the College, Prof. Wilson has been criticised for his teaching of his subject. The self-important little wiseacre with a reform-complex is not absent even in Victoria. Perhaps he misses in the University system the coddling which a bright boy can obtain at a secondary school; perhaps he is flushed with his success in spotting History as the softest option in the Arts course; perhaps he is merely practising the vocal exercises of the Youth Movement. It is true that History for B.A. is only one remove from light reading and History for Honours (up to, at any rate, Second Class) the safest and easiest method of securing M.A.; but this is not the fault of the Professor of History. The University sets the standard; the Professor's business is to get his student through. Prof. Wilson is entitled to a large share of the credit for the fact that it is virtually impossible to fail a degree exam, in History.

But he is entitled to credit for more than this. From odd holes and corners comes a demand for History with trimmings. History with a doctrinaire bias, History tagged on to some form of modern radicalism, History adapted to practical use. Such History is not History at all—it is propaganda, or journalism, or politics. Prof. Wilson made no concession to the demand for History Coloured, but stuck to the ordinary conception of the subject as a chronicle of things that have happened and conscientiously fulfilled the requirements of the University prescription. He did not make the subject priggishly "dateish;" neither did he make it pretentious with verbal borrowings from "authorities," as thesis-compilers do. His recognition of the value of the subject as cultural rather than commercial value has probably done much to preserve it from the odour of quackery which appears to be gathering about one University institution and another in the uses to which they are put outside the University.

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