Book_ .T5 Sir ). (',. Fitch. Lectures on Teaching IJV Sir J. G. FITCH, M.A. One of Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools NEW EDITION SYRACUSE, N. Y. C. W, BARDEEN, PUBLISHER 1900 '■^•SlZijo PEEFACE. In" 1879 the Senate of the University of Cambridge, in compliance with numerous memorials from Head-masters and others, determined to take measures with a view to encourage among those who intended to adopt the pro- fession of teaching, the study of the principles and prac- tice of their art. In furtherance of this design a ^^ Teachers' Training Syndicate '' was appointed, and that body shortly afterwards put forth a scheme of examina- tion in the history, the theory, and the practice of Educa- tion. The first examination under this scheme was held in June 1880. The Syndicate also resolved to provide that courses of lectures should be given during the academical year 1879-80. The introductory course on the History of Education, and the life and work of eminent teachers, was delivered by the Eev. E. H. Quick in Michaelmas Term. In the following Easter Term, Mr. James Ward, Fellow of Trinity College, lectured on Men- tal Science in its special relation to teaching ; and the second course, which fell to my own share, was delivered in the Lent Term, and related mainly to the practical aspects of the schoolmaster's work. It has been considered by some of those most interested in this experiment that this, the first course of lectures on iv Preface. the Art of Teaching specially addressed to the members of an English University, might properly be placed within reach of a somewhat wider circle of students. In carrying out this suggestion, I have not thought it neces- sary to 'abandon the free and familiar forms of address appropriate to a lecture, or attempted to give to what is here said the character of a complete treatise. Nor did I deem it advisable, out of regard to the supposed dignity of an academic audience, to keep out of view those simple and elementary considerations which, though usually dis- cussed in their relation to the lower class of schools, lie really at the basis of all sound and skilful teaching, whether in high schools or low. Some explanation may seem to be needed of the nomen- clature which is here used in distinguishing different classes of Schools. It would doubtless be an advantage to employ in England the same terminology which is adopted throughout the Continent. But the term " Sec- ondary School" in France, Germany, and Switzerland covers all the institutions which lie between the Elemen- tary School and the University ; and it is manifest that within these wide limits some further distinction is needed, in England at least, to mark the different aims of schools so far asunder as Winchester or Clifton, and a humble commercial school. Such phrases as ^^ Enseigne- ment Superieur" and '' Enseignement Moyen" would hardly indicate this distinction with sufficient accuracy, and I have given on page 48 my reasons for thinking that the terms "First, Second, and Third Grade," suggested by the Schools Inquiry Commissioners, will not find per- manent acceptance in this country. So I have been fain to fall back upon the words Primary, Secondary, and High Preface, v School, not because I think them necessarily the best ; but because they mark with tolerable clearness the prac- tical distinctions I have tried to make ; because they are equally appropriate to schools for boys and for girls ; and because they do not, like such words as Classical, Com- mercial, and Technical, connote any theory defining the kind of study specially suited to a particular age or rank in life. It seems right "to add that this book is not, and does not profess to be, a manual of method. Indeed it may well be doubted whether at the present stage of our edu- cational experience any body of rules whatever could be safely formulated and declared to be the best. Nor is it certain, even though the best conceivable methods could be put forth with authority, that more harm than good would not be done, if by them teachers were deterred from exercising their ow^n judgment, or became less sen- sible of the responsibility which lies upon them of adapt- ing methods to their own special circumstances and needs. I cannot regret, even though the book proves profoundly disappointing to those — if any such there be — who sup- pose teaching to be a knack or artifice, the secret of which may be acquired, like that of dancing or swimming, in a short course of lessons. All that has been attempted here has been to invite intending teachers to look in succession at each of the principal problems they will have to solve ; to consider what subjects have to be taught, and what are the reasons for teaching them ; and so, by bringing to- gether a few of the plainer results of experience, to place readers in a position in which it will be a little easier for them to devise and w^ork out methods for themselves. No one can be more conscious than I am of the incomplete vi Preface. and provisional character of these first lectures ; but I cannot doubt that the University, in seeking to promote investigations into the philosophy and the practice of the teacher^s art, is entering on an honorable and most prom- ising field of public usefulness ; and that, under her sanc- tion, future explorers in this field will do much to make the work of honest learning and of noble teaching simpler, more effective, and more delightful to the coming gen- erations. CONTENTS. PAGE I. THE TEACHER AND HIS ASSISTANTS. Introduction 15 Relation of the University to the teaching profession 17 Teaching not to be stereotyped 20 Teaching both an Art and a Science 22 ^ Quahfications of the Ideal Teacher 23 ^ Knowledge of the thing to be taught 24 Preparation 26 Extra-professional Knowledge 26 Temper 29 Activity and cheerfulness 31 Avoidance of Pedantry 34 Power of describing and narrating 87 Freshness of mind 38 Sympathy 39 The work of Assistants 40 Limits to their responsibility , 43 School Councils 44 Student-teachers 47 The Teacher's aims ., 48 II. THE SCHOOL, ITS AIMS AND ORGANIZATION. Limits to School-work 52 Five departments of School-instruction 53 Their relative importance 54 Primary, Secondary, and High Schools 57 The studies appropriate for each 60 What is a liberal education ? 60 The grading of Schools 61 Day and boarding Schools 63 True relation of the School to the Home ; 64 Bifurcation and modern departments 67 Girls' Schools 70 Distribution of time 72 vii viii Contents, PAOB Classification 74 Entrance Examination 76 Fees 77 III. THE SCHOOL -ROOM AND ITS APPLIANCES. The physical conditions of successful teaching 79 Space and light . 79 Desks 82 Ventilation and Warmtlk 84 Furniture and Apparatus 66 Comeliness of a School 88 Registration and School book-keeping 89 Tabulated Reports of progress 90 Note-books for Teachers and Scholars 93 Text-books 96 Tests of a good School-book 98 School libraries 99 School museums 103 Costly apparatus not always the best .... 104 IV. DISCIPLINE. The Teacher as a ruler and administrator 107 Commands to be well considered before they are given 109 Over-governing Ill Right and wrong uses of mechanical drill 112 Corporate life of a School 114 Child-nature to be studied before insisting on rules 115 School-time to be filled with work 116 The law of Habit.... 118 Its bearing on School life and work c. 119 Recreation and gymnastics 120 Sunday discipline in boarding schools 123 Rewards: how to use and to economize them 124 Happiness of children 127 Punishments and their purpose 128 Principles to be kept in view 128 The sense of shame 131 Tasks as punishments 132 The discipline of consequences. . . ., 134 Why inadequate for the purposes of the State 135 And inadequate for School purposes 135 The best kinds of punishment 138 Corporal punishment 138 How to dispense with punishments 140 V. LEARNING AND REMEMBERING. The law of mental suggestion 141 Different forms of association 143 Contents. ix PAGE The process of remembering 144 Mode of establishing permanent associations 145 (1) Frequent Repetition, (2) Interest in the thing learned 145 Verbal and rational memory 148 Learning by heart when legitimate 149 How to commit to memory 153 Memory to be supplemented by reflection 154 And strengthened by exercise 155 Tests of a good memoriter lesson 156 Printed catechisms 158 Eelations of memory to intelligence 161 The uses of forgotten knowledge 162 Oral instruction— its advantages and its dangers 164 Self -tuition 166 Book-work, its advantages and shortcomings 167 Home and written exercises 169 Conditions to be fulfilled by them 170 Illustrative examples 173 VI. EXAMINING. Purposes to be served by questioning 176 A Socratic dialogue 178 The Socratic method in its application to Schools 181 Characteristics of good oral questioning 182 Clearness, Terseness, Point 182 Simplicity, Directness, Continuity = 185 Different forms of answer 187 Collective answering deceptive 189 Mutual questioning 190 The inquisitive spirit 191 Books of questions 192 Written examinations, their use and abuse 194 Dishonest preparation 197 Legitimate preparation 198 How to frame a good Examination paper 200 And to estimate the answers 203 Venial and punishable blunders 208 The morality of Examinations 209 Vn. PREPARATORY TRAINING. Principles to be kept in view in Infant discipline 212 The training of the Senses 213 The Kindergarten 214 Its merits 215 Limits to its usefulness 217 The art of Reading 220 Anomalies of the English Alphabet 221 Proposals to reform it , .- 228 Contents, PAGE Modes of teaching Eeading 225 Reading boolcs 228 Spelling 230 Dictation and Transcription 233 Words to be used as well as spelled 234 Thoughtful and effective reading 236 Oral expression 239 Writing and mode of teaching it 240 Locke's directions 242 VIII. THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. Language long the staple of school instruction 245 Reasons for this 245 Greek and Latin 248 Purposes once served by the learning of Latin 250 Some of these no longer useful — 250 " Classical" Schools 253 The true place of Latin in the schools of the future 254 In High Schools and in Secondary Schools 255 Comparison of Latin with English forms 257 How much Grammar should be learned by heart 261 Exercises in translation from the first 263 Literature to be studied early 264 The place of Latin in a primary school 266 Etymology — Prefixes and Affixes 269 Modern foreign languages 269 Purposes and methods of teaching them . , 270 Audition 273 The choice of foreign teachers 275 IX. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The relation of English to other linguistic studies 277 Grammar as an Art not to be acquired by technical rules. 278 Grammar as a Science 278 A vernacular language to be studied analytically 281 Classification of English words 283 Logical and Grammatical Analysis 287 Example of Analysis 289 Verbal Analysis 292 Composition 294 Paraphrase ; examples 296 Precis- writing 299 Versification 300 The study of English Literature 301 Principles and Methods to be kept in view 302 Critical analysis not destructive of literary enjoyment 304 The history of literature 305 Contents. xi PAGE X. ARITHMETIC AS AN ART. Why Arithmetic should be taught 307 It is both an Art and a Science 307 Robert Recorde's Arithmetick 309 The place of Arithmetic among school studies 312 Its practical uses 314 Skill in Computation , how to obtain it 315 The discipline of an Arithmetic class 316 Exercises in words as well as in figures 317 Answers to be kept out of sight 318 Oral or Mental Arithmetic 320 Its uses and abuses 321 Examples of its legitimate use 322 Exercises in weighing and measuring 326 Rapidity and exactness 328 Exercises in ingenuity and invention 330 Practical applications of Arithmetic 332 Decimalizing English monej' 333 Visible relation to business no test of real utility 333 Practical Geometry 334 XI. ARITHMETIC AS A SCIENCE. Its disciplinal value 337 Inductive and deductive methods of reasoning 338 Arithmetic a training in deductive logic 340 Our artificial notation 343 Methods of elucidating it 344 Other Scales of Notation 346 The Systeme Metrique 347 Methods of demonstrating simple rules — Subtraction 348 Arithmetical parsing 352 The teaching of Fractions 353 Illustration of demonstrative exercises 354 The use of formuloi 355 Proportion 358 Extraction of Roots 358 Synthesis before Analysis 359 Analogous truths in Arithmetic and Geometry 363 True purpose of mathematical teaching 365 XII. GEOGRAPHY AND THE LEARNING OF FACTS. Objects to be kept in view in teaching geography 367 Its use (1) as information, (2) as mental discipline 367 Home Geography , 370 Lessons on earth and water 371 Order of teaching geographical facts 372 No necessary sequence of difficulty or importance 373 xii Contents. PAGB The use of a globe 375 Measurement of approximate distances STG Physical Geography 377 Its influence on national character and history 378 Maps o81 Verbal description of phenomena , '. S8'2 Fact-lore 3!:5 Object-lessons 38C Their use and their abuse 387 Lessons on general information 387 Subjects suited for such lessons 388 A basis of fact needed for future teaching of science 389 Technical terms 391 XIII. HISTORY. Purpose of historical teaching 394 Text-books, and their legitimate use 395 The Bible a model of history 307 Great epochs to be studied first 399 Chronology 402 Right and wrong ways of teaching it 403 Mnemonic methods of learning Chronology 404 Biography 405 Lessons on great writers , 408 Historical readings 408 The poetry of history 411 Picturesque teaching and its relation to detail 413 Lessons on the Government and Constitution 414 The training for citizenship 415 XIV. NATURAL SCIENCE. The place of Physical Science among school studies 418 Its claims to rank as part of a liberal education 421 The utilities of physical truths 423 Their beauty and intellectual attractiveness 424 The disciplinal value of the inductive process 425 The search for the causes of phenomena 427 Reasons and explanations not discoverable, but only facts 429 Large truths instead of small ones 430 What are " laws " of Nature ? 430 Application of the methods of inductive investigation to the business of life 431 The relation of science to skilled industry , 433 Technical and Trade Schools 435 Subjects of physical inquiry suited to form part of general education. 436 Scientific terminology . . 438 Lessons on common things not necessarily scientific 441 General not special training 443 Contents, xiii PAGK XV. THE CORRELATION OF STUDIES. Review of the curriculum of school studies 446 Multum non multa ; 447 Distribution of time not necessarily proportioned to the importance of subjects.... < 448 The contending claim of numerous subjects. 449 The convertibility of intellectual forces 450 Adaptation of the school course to individual wants and aptitudes... . 451 Religious and moral instruction 452 Moral teaching latent in school discipline 455 Indirect moral teaching in school lessons 459 The ideal life and work of a school 461 The vocation of the true teacher 461 UXORI DILECTISSIM^, GUI OPERA ET CONSILIIS ADJUVANTI SI QUID UTILE VEL HODIE SCRIPSI VEL UNQUAM EGI ACCEPTUM REFERO, D. LECTURES ON TEACHING, I. THE TEACHER AND HIS ASSISTANTS. That the University of Cambridge should institute a course of lectures on the Art and Method of Teaching is a significant fact in the history i^t^o^^<=ti°^- cf Education in England. We have in this fact a recogni- tion, on high authority, of a principle which has hitherto been but imperfectly admitted, in relation to the higher forms of school life and instruction, although it has been seen in most beneficial application to the elementary schools. That principle I take to be, that there is in the teacher's profession the same difference which is observa- ble in all other human employments between the skilled and the unskilled practitioner, and that this difference de- pends in large measure on a knowledge of the best rules and methods which have to be used, and of the principles which underlie and justify those rules. It is easy to say of a schoolmaster " nascitur non jit^^ and to give this as a reason why all training and study of method are super- fluous. But we do not reason thus in regard to any other profession, even to those in which original power tells most, and in which the mechanic is most easily distin- •. ' - - - - ' - - - 15 1 6 Lectures on Teaching. guishable from the inspired artist. For when in the de- partment of painting yon meet with a heaven-born genius, you teach him to draw ; and you know that what- ever his natural gifts may be, he will be all the better pro tanto, for knowing something about the best things that have been done by his predecessors; for studying their failures and their successes, and the reason why some have succeeded and others have failed. It is not the office of professional training in art, in law or in medi- cine, to obliterate the natural distinctions which are the result of special gifts ; but rather to bring them into truer prominence, and to give to each of them the best opportunities of development. And if it be proved, as indeed I believe it to be demonstrable, that some acquain- tance with the theory, history and rules of teaching may often serve to turn one who would be a moderate teacher into a good one, a good one into a finished and accom- plished artist, and even those who are least qualified by nature into serviceable helpers, then -we shall need no bet- ter vindication of the course on which we are about to enter. It seems scarcely needful to reply to the contention of TeacMne those who urge that the art of teaching is fcM-nedby^** to be learned by practice, that it is a matter practice only. Qf experience only, that a man becomes a teacher as he becomes a swimmer, not by talking about it, but by going into the water and learning to keep his head above the surface. Experience it is true is a good school, but the fees are high, and the course is apt to be long and tedious. And it is a great part of the economy of life to know how to turn to profitable account the ac- cumulated experience of others. I know few. things much more pathetic than the utterances of some Head-masters The Teacher and His Assistants, 17 at their annual conferences, at which one after another, even of those who have fought their way to the foremost rank of their profession, rises up to say : " We have been making experiments all our lives ; we have learned much, but we have learned it at the expense of our pupils ; and much of the knowledge which has thus slowly come into our possession might easily have been imparted to us at the outset, and have saved us from many mistakes." The truth in regard to the ofhce of a teacher is that which Bacon has set forth in its application to the larger work of life, ^' Studies perfect nature and are perfected by ex- perience : for natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study. And studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience." There is here, I think, a true estimate of the relation between natural aptitude, the study of principles and methods, and the lessons of experience. Each is indispensable, you cannot do with- out all three, you are not justified in exalting one at the expense of the rest. It is in the just synthesis of these three elements of qualification that we must hope to find the thoroughly equipped schoolmaster, the teacher of the future. And of these three elements, it is manifest that it is the second only which the University can attempt to supply. She cannot hope to give the living power, the keen insight into child-nature, which distinguish the born teacher, the man of genius, from the ordinary pedagogue. The University does not need to be reminded -^1^^^^ that the best part of a teacher's equipment ^a^do^to"^ is incommunicable in the form of pedagogic improve it. lectures ; and that w^hen she undertakes to give a profes- sional diploma to the schoolmaster, some of the most im- portant qualifications of the office — as zeal, faithfulness. 1 8 Lectures on Teaching, self-consecration, and personal fitness — will escape her analysis and defy her power to test them. She is con- scious of the inevitable limitations under which she works, in regard to this, as indeed to all other of the learned professions. It suffices for her to say that she will attempt to communicate only that which is communi- cable ; and to test so much as in its nature is capable of being tested, and no more. Nor can the University to any appreciable extent supervise the actual professional practice of her sons and daughters, or follow them into the schoolroom, the laboratory and the home, to see how well they do their work, and lay to heart the lessons which experience has to teach. But she can help to call atten- tion to principles of teaching ; she can record, for the guidance and information of future teachers, the details of the best work which has been done aforetime ; she can accumulate rules and canons of the didactic art, can warn against mistakes, can analyze the reasons why so much of scholastic work has often been jo3dess, dull and de- pressing, can set up year by year a higher standard of professional excellence, can " allure to brighter worlds and lead the way." Shall we attribute this newly awakened ambition to ^^ . ^ ^ nothing but the restless spirit of modern The Art of -i ^ o r Teaching, the academic life : to discontent with the old plain proper con- i , i. . cernofa duty of encouraging learning, devotion and research, to a morbid and uneasy hankering after " fresh fields and pastures new^' ? I think not. The great function of a University is to teach ; and to sup- ply the w:)rld with its teachers. The very title of Doc- tor, which marks the highest academic distinction in each of the faculties of Law, Divinity and Physic implies that the holder is qualified to teach the art which he knows. 77?^ Teacher and His Assistants, 19 And if the experience of these later times has brought home to us the conviction that the art of com^municating knowledge^ of rendering it attractive to a learner^ is an art which has its own laws and its own special phil- osophy ; it is surely fitting that a great University, the bountiful mother whose special office it is to care alike for all the best means of human culture, and to assign to all arts and sciences theor true place and relation, should find an honored place for the master-science, a science which is closely allied to all else which she teaches — the science of teaching itself. It is not good that this science, or in- deed any other science, should be mainly pursued per se, in sejoarate training institutions or professional colleges, where the horizon is necessarily bounded, and where every- thing is learned with a special view to the future necessi- ties of the school or the class-room. It is to the Univer- sities that the power is given in the highest degree of co-ordinating the various forms of preparation for the business of life ; of seeing in due proportion the study and the practice, the art and the science, the intellectual efforts which make the man, as well as those which make the lawyer or the divine. It is to the Universities that the public look for those influences which will prevent the nobler professions from degenerating into crafts and trades. And if the schoolmaster is to become something more than a mere pedant ; to know the rules and for- mula of his art, and at the same time to estimate them at their true value, it is to his University that he ought to look for guidance ; and it is from his University that he should seek in due time the attestation of his qualifica- tions as a teacher ; because that is the authority which can testify that he is not merely a teacher, but a teacher and something else. . 2 Lectures on Teaching, Even at the risk of lingering a little longer at the threshold^ I am tempted to refer briefly to iiot^£scour- one other objection which is often felt by Ifudy of ^ thoughtful people, and which is doubtless present in the minds of some of you, to the trial of the novel experiment in which we who are assembled here are all interested. Teaching js an art, it may be said, which esj)ecially requires freshness and vigor of mind. The ways of access to the intelligence and the conscience of learners are manifold ; different circum- stances and intellectual conditions require diiferent ex- pedients. Variety and versatility are of the very essence of successful teaching. If by seeking to formulate the science of method, you encourage the belief that one mode of teaching is always right and all others are wrong, you will destroy the chance of new invention and dis- covery, and will do much to render teaching more stereo- typed and lifeless than ever. An'd even if it be admitted that a perfect set of rules for practice is desirable and at- tainable, we are not yet in a position to lay them down ; and any attempt to fix educational principles, and to claim for them an authoritative or scientific character, is at pres- ent premature, and therefore likely to prove mischievous. This is an argument on which I, for one, should look with special seriousness, if it were not practically answered by every day's observation and experience. It has been my lot to see schools of very different ranks and pretensions, from the highest to the lowest ; and the one thing which impresses me most is that the schools under untrained per- sons, who have given no special attention to the theory of their art, are curiously alike. There is nothing more monotonous than ignorance. It is among those who have received no professional preparation that one finds the The Teacher and His Assistants. 21 same stupid traditional methods^ the same habit of tell- ing scholars to learn instead of teaching them ; the same spectacle of a master sitting enthroned at one end of a room and calling np two or three at a time to say their lessons^ while the rest, presumably occupied in prepara- tion, are following their own devices. Let us appeal on this point to the experience of other professions. Is it the effect of good professional training in medicine or in law to produce a hurtful uniformity either in opinion or practice ? Is it not on the contrary true that the most original methods of procedure, the most fruitful new speculations, come precisely from the men who have best studied the philosophy of their own special subject, and who know best what has been thought and done by other workers in the same field ? So in teaching, the freshest and most ingenious methods originate with those men and women who have read and thought most about the rationale of their art. And if in this place we are in any degree successful in layins^ down principles of action, and In -, . , <> , 1 . T ..-,-, Independent evolvmg a lew 01 the simpler practical dedue- tiiotigiit . more impor- tions from those principles, the truest test of tantthan our success will be found in bringing home to every earnest student the conviction that good teaching is not an easy thing ; that those who undertake to call out the intelligence and fashion the character of children are undertaking to deal with the most complex and wonder- ful phenomena in the world ; that the philosophy of the teacher's art is yet in its infancy ; that the best re- sults we are yet able to attain are only provisionally ser- viceable until they are absorbed or superseded by some- thing better ; and that it is part of the duty of every one who enters the profession to magnify his office, to look on 22 Lectures on Teaching. each of the problems before him in as many lights as pos- sible, and to try by his own independent experiments to malie the path of duty easier, safer, and happier for his successors. The question is often asked, " Is Education an Art or a Science ? '^ and at present the answers to this question are not unanimous. But in truth no compendious reply Teaching' ^^ possible. The object of Science is the in- Ar?^a vestigation of principles, of truth for its own Science. sake, considered as an end, not as a means to any further end. But it is obvious that this view alone will not carry us very far. It may help us to analyze men- tal processes and laws of human development, but it may leave us very impotent in the presence of the actual prob- lems of school-keeping and of professional work. And the object of Art is simply the accomplishment of a given re- sult by the best means. Hence we are justified in speak- ing of Education as an Art, because it has a complex prac- tical problem to solve. But this view of it alone would be inadequate ; for in fact teaching is both an Art and a Science. It aims at the accomplishment oi a piece of work, and is therefore an Art. It seeks to find out a ra- tional basis for such rules as it employs, and is therefore a Science. Down very deep at the root of all our failures and successes there lie some philosophic truths — it may be of ethics, or of physiology, or of psychology — which we 'have either heeded or disregarded, and the full recogni- tion of which is needed to make us perfect teachers. The more these underlying truths are brought to light the better ; and it is satisfactory to know that the University has made other and very effective provision for the dis- cussion both of the philosophy and the history of the teacher's work. Here, however, our task is humbler. We The Teacher and His Assistants. 23 have to gather together a few of the plainer lessons of ex- perience, and to apply them to the actual requirements of the class-room and the school. Yet, if while thus re- garding Education as an Art we lose sight of the fact that it is also a Science, we shall be in danger of becoming empirics, and of treating our work as if it were a mere knack, a collection of ingenious artifices for achieving a certain desired end. This is a danger not less real than would be incurred by those who, in their zeal to vindi- cate the claims of Education to the name and character of a Science, resolved it merely into a series of speculations into the relative value of different forms of human knowl- edge, or into the constitution of the human mind. Those wdio ask us to think of Education as a Science must re- member that it is an Applied Science, whose principles are largely derived from experiment and observation, and need to be constantly reduced to practice and brought to the test of utility. And we on the other hand who are seeking for some rules and counsels by which we may guide our practice and economize our resources must not forget that such rules and counsels have no claim upon our acceptance, except in so far as they have their origin in a true philosophy, and can be justified by reason and by the constitution of human nature. Now in regard to all the duties of' life there has to be considered the correlation between the thing jhe auaiif i- to be done and the doer of it; the qualities J|g°e?r*^ of the agent largely determine the character teacher. and the results of the work. In all mechanical labor, in which matter alone has to be acted on, the physical strength and tactual skill of the artisan are the determin- ing forces ; his motives and moral qualifications have little to do with the result. But in the case of the schoolmaster. 24 Lectures on Teaching. as in that of the priest^, or of the statesman, mind and character have to be influenced ; and it is found that in the long-run nothing can influence character like char- acter. You teach, not only by what you say and do, but very largely by what you are. Hence there is a closer cor- respondence in this department of human labor than in others between the quality of the work and the attributes of the workman. You cannot dissociate the two. And because in the profession of teaching the ruler or agent comes into closer contact with the person ruled than in any other profession, it becomes here specially needful to inquire not only what is the character of the work to be done, but what manner of men and women they should be who undertake to do it. We may then, I think, use- fully employ some of our time in considering rather the artist than his art — the qualifications which the ideal teacher should bring to his w^ork. It seems a trite thing to say that the teacher of a given subjects should first of all possess a full and accurate^ exact knowledge of the subject which he es- orfhe^thmg says to teach. But I am not sure that the ^^^ * full significance of this obvious maxim is al- ways recognized. Some of us imagine that if we keep a little ahead of our pupils, we shall succeed very well. But the truth is that no' one can teach the whole, or even the half of what he knows. There is a large percentage of waste and loss in the very act of transmission, and you can never convey into another mind nearly all of what you know or feel on any subject. Before you can impart a given piece of knowledge, you yourself must not only have appropriated it, you must have gone beyond it and all around it ; must have seen it in its true relations to other facts or truths ; must know out of what it origi- The Teacher and His Assistants, 25 nated^ and to what others it is intended to lead. .A per- son cannot teach a rule of Arithmetic — say division — intelligently/ without having himself mastered many ad- vanced rules, nay, without some knowledge of Algebra as well. Your own experience, if you watch it, will force this truth upon you. You hear a story, or you receive an explanation of a new fact. The thing seems perfectly intelligible to you, and you receive it with satisfaction and without a suspicion that anything more is wanting. But you try to tell the story or rej^roduce the explanation, and you find quite unexpectedly that there are weak points in your memory, that something or other which did not seem necessary when you were receiving it is necessary to your communicating it : and that this something lies out- side and beyond the truth or incident itself. Or you are giving a lesson on some subject on which your information is limited, or has been specially prepared for the occasion, and you give it under a consciousness that you are very near the boundary of your own knowledge, and that if certain further explanations were asked for you could not supply them. Is it not true that this latent consciousness begins to show itself in your teaching ; that you falter and speak less positively, and that your scholar who shows curious acuteness in discerning whether you are speaking fiom a full mind or not finds out the truth directly, and so your lesson is a failure ? And the moral of this is that if a certain amount of accuracy, or a certain strength of conviction, is necessary for a learner, much greater accuracy, and a still stronger conviction, is needful for the teacher : if you want to teach well the half of a sub- ject, know first for yourself the whole or nearly the whole of it : have a good margin of thought and of illustration in reserve for dealing with the unexpected questions ?nd 2 6 Lectures on Teaching. difficulties which may emerge in the course of the les- son, and look well before beginning, not only at the thing you want to teach, but at as much else as possible of what lies near it, or is akin to it. And if this be true there arises the necessity for look- ina: into ourselves and carefully sjauarino' our Preparation. ^ ^„ .•,•.-. resources beiore we began to give even the humblest lesson. Before undertaking a matter so simple as hearing a class read, we should glance over the passage and determine on what words it will be well to dwell by way of explanation and what form of illustration should be brought to bear upon it. Even if you are going to give an exposition of a rule in Arithmetic, or of the use of the Ablative, it is wise to select beforehand and mentally to rehearse your illustrative examples ; to see that the in- stances chosen have no irrelevant factors in them, but are calculated to furnish the most effective examples of the particular truth which you wish to explain. However sim- ple the subject of a lesson, it is never so good when un- premeditated as it would be with a little pre-arrangement and forethought. And for all lessons which do not lie in the ordinary routine, the careful preparation of notes is indispensable ; it is only by such preparation that you can determine how much can fairly be attempted in the prescribed time, what is the order in which the parts should be taken up, how they should cohere, at what points you should recapitulate, and how you can give unity and point to the general impression 'you desire to leave. And further, a true teacher never thinks his education The teacher complete, but is always seeking to add to his ! ?5;?^14^i" Q^y32 knowledD:e. The moment any man ceases / ways he a ^ -^ . < learner. ^^ i^q ^ systematic student, he ceases to be ' an effective teacher ; he gets out of sympathy with The Teacher and His Assistants. 27 learners, he loses sight of the process by which new truth enters into the mind ; he becomes unable to understand fully the difficulties experienced by others who are re- ceiving knowledge for the first time. It is by the act of acquiring, and by watching the process by which you your- self acquire, that you can help others to acquire. It is not intended by this that the thing thus acquired should be merely a greater store of what may be called school learning, or of what has a conscious and visible bearing on the work of school. It is true that we can never know all that is to be known, even about the subjects which we teach in schools. Mathematics, History, Phi- lology are constantly subject to new developments, are stretching out into new fields, and becoming capable of new and unexpected applications to the needs and to the business of life. There should never be a time in the history of a teacher at which, even in regard to these purely scholastic subjects, he is content to say, " I know now all that needs lo be known for my purpose. I have an ample store of facts and illustrations at my command, and may now draw freely upon it." Still the question, " What has this or that study to do with the main busi- ness of my life ? How far will this kind of reading tell upon my professional work in school ? " though it nat- urally occurs to a conscientious man, is narrowing and rather ignoble. The man is something greater than the teacher. The human needs crave to be satis- Notof fied even more than the professional. Our scholastic work makes the centre of our world no doubt ; but life needs a circumference as well as a centre, and that circumference is made up of sympathies and tastes which are extra-professional. And in relation to the tastes and reading of your own leisure I would say : When your 28 Lectures on Teaching. more strictly professional work is done, follow resoljitely your own bent ; cultivate that side of your intellectual life on which you feel that the most fruitful results are to be attained, and do not suppose that your profession demands of you a cold and impartial interest in all truth alike, or that what to others is a solace and delight, to you is to be nothing but so much stock in trade. If when I see a school, and ask the teacher what is its special fea- ture, or in what subject the scholars take most interest, he replies, '' Oh, there is nothing distinctive about our course, we pay equal attention to all subjects,^' I know well that his heart is not in his work. For over and above the necessary and usual subjects every good school ought to reflect in some way the special tastes of the teacher. The obvious demands of your profession and of the public must first be satisfied. And when they are satisfied, one mind will be drawn to the exact sciences, another to poetry and the cultivation of the imaginative faculty, another to the observation of the phenomena of nature, a fourth to the sciences of history and of man. Be sure that no study thus honestly and affectionately pursued can be without important bearings on your special work. Everything you learn, even in matters like these, will tell in ways you little suppose on the success of your lessons, will furnish happy digressions, or will suggest new illus- trations. " Tout est dans tout,^^ said Jacotot, by which I suppose he meant that all true knowledge is nearly akin, and that any one fact honestly acquired sheds light on many others, and makes every other fact easier to acquire. The one thing you dread most in your pupils, dread most in yourself — stagnation, acquiescence in routine, torpor of mind, indifference to knowledge. When your own soul 77?^ Teacher and His Assistants, 29 loses. the receptive faculty, ceases to give a joyous welcome to new truth, be sure you have lost the power of stimu- lating the mental activity of others, or of instructing them to any real purpose. Old Eoger Ascham in his Scliolemaster, the oldest edu- cational book in England, describes his ideal student and teacher as Philoponos, " one who hath lust to labour," and Zetetikos, " one that is always desirous to search out any doubt, not ashamed to learn of the meanest, nor afraid to go to the greatest, until he be perfectly taught and fully satisfied." And these qualities are still as indispensable as ever. There must be in the perfectly successful teacher a love of work for its own sake. The profession is no doubt laborious ; but as it has been well said, " It is not labor, but vexation that hurts a man." Trouble comes from mismanaged labor, from distasteful labor, from labor which w^e feel ourselves to be doing ill, but not from labor itself when it is well organized and successful. Then there arises a positive delight in the putting forth of power, and in the sense that difficulties are being over- come Familiar as the truth is, it is worth reiterating that while teaching is one of the professions which most tries the patience, it is one in which the ^^^^^' maintenance of a cheerful and happy temper is most es- sential. Some of us are conscious of a tendency to hasty, unguarded words, to petulance, and to sudden flashes of injustice. Such a tendency may become a great misfor- tune to a teacher, and lead to consequences he may regret all his life. And I have known those who, having chosen the vocation of a teacher and being at the same time aware of their own infirmity in this respect, have so 30 Lectures on Teaching. guarded and watched themselves, that their profession has become to them a nieans of moral discipline, and has sweetened and ennobled tempers naturally very hasty or very sour. But be this as it may, unless we are prepared to take some pains with ourselves and cultivate patience and forbearance, we are singularly out of place in the profession of schoolmaster. We want patience, because the best results of teaching come very slowly ; we want habitual self-command, because if we are impulsive or variable and do not obey our own rules we cannot hope scholars will obey t'hem. Chronic sullenness or acerbity of temper makes its possessor unhappy in any position, but it is a source of perpetual irritation and misery in a school. " That boy,^' said Dr. Johnson, when speaking of a sulky and unhappy looking lad, " looks like the son of a school- master, which is one of the very worst conditions of child- hood. Such a boy has no father, or worse than none, he never can reflect on his parent, but the reflection brings to his mind some idea of pain inflicted or of sorrow suffered." Poor Johnson's own scholastic experiences, which, both as learner and as teacher, had not been delightful ones, led him no doubt to an exaggerated view of the misery of school-keeping as he had seen it. But he did not exag- gerate the mischievous effect of a regime of brute force, and of a hard and ill-tempered pedagogue on the charac- ter of a child. Injustice breeds injustice. Every act of petulance or ill-temper will have some effect in deteriorat- ing the character of the pupils, and will be reproduced in their own conduct towards their juniors or inferiors. Dr. Channing has well said that " a boy compelled for six hours a day to see the countenance and hear the voice of a fretful, unkind, hard, or passionate man is placed in a school of vice/' The Teacher and His Assistants. 31 The need of constant cheerfulness on the part of a teacher becomes more apparent when we con- sider the nature of childhood. In some pro- ^^^^^^^i^^^s. fessions an artificial gravity of demeanor is not inappro- priate. The clerg3anan or the surgeon has much to do at the bedside^ in the house of mourning, with the sick and the suffering, where anything approaching to levity would often be unbecoming. But the intercourse of a teacher is with the young, the strong and the happy, and he makes a great mistake if he thinks that a severe and forbidding manner is required by the dignity of his call- ing. A good fund of animal spirits puts the teacher at once into sympathetic rapport with his pupils, because it shows them that seriousness of purpose need not mean dulness, and that the possession of learning is not incom- patible with a true enjoyment of life. We must not for- get that to a little child the teacher is the possessor of un- fathomable erudition, the representative and embodiment of that learning which he himself is being urged to ac- quire. And if he sees that the acquirement of it has rather made the teacher's life gloomy than bright or joy- ous, 'he may not put his inference into the form of a proposition, but he will none the less surely acquire a dislike for knowledge, and arrive at the conclusion that it cannot be such a cheering and beautiful thing after alL It is well known that the men and women most influential in the schoolroom are those who know how to share the enjoyment of their scholars in the playground ; who at least do not frown at children's play, but show an interest in it, recognize it as a proper and necessary employment of time, and indeed can play heartily themselves when the proper occasion comes. Many of the influences which sur- round a teacher's life have a special tendency to encourage 32 Lectures on Teaching. a sedentary and physically inactive habit, and it is also observable that persons are not unfrequently attracted to the profession of teaching because they are not strong, and are studiously inclined. But it ought never to be forgotten that bodily activity is a very valuable qualifica- tion in a teacher and should be cultivated as far as possi- ble ; not rapidly lost, as it too often is. That eminent schoolmaster showed a true appreciation of his work who said, " Whenever the day comes in which I can find I can- not run upstairs three at a time I shall think it high time to retire.^' And among other merely physical qualifications neces- Ouick per- ^^^3^ ^"^ ^ teacher one cannot overlook the need eye^and of ^^ great quickness both of eye and of ear. ®*r- These are indispensable. In standing before a class, whether it be large or small, it is essential to stand so that every member of it should be brought into focus so to speak, that the eye should take in all that is going on, and that no act or movement should escape no- tice. I am more and more struck, as I look at schools, with the importance of this. I often see teachers who either place themselves so that they cannot see every pupil, or who, by keeping the eye fixed either on the book or on one particular part of the class, fail to check indiffer- ence or/ inattention simply because they do not see it and are not instantly conscious of it. No real intellectual drill or discipline is possible in such a class. It is a great thing therefore to cultivate in yourself the habit of glancing rapidly, of fixing the gaze instantly on any child who is wandering or disobedient, and applying a remedy without delay. And the need for a remedy will steadily diminish as your own vigilance increases. Let scholars know that every deviation from rule, every wandering look, every The Teacher and His Assistants. 2>?i carelessly written letter in a copy is sure to be at once recognized by your quick glance^ and they will cease very soon to give you much to detect. But let them see al- ways before them a heavy eye, an unobservant manner, which permits let us say two out of every three faults to pass undiscovered, and they are skilful enough in the doctrine of chances to know well in effect what this means. It means that the probability is two to one against the detection of any given fault, and you will find that in this way, the chances being largely in favor of the disobe- dient one, disobedient acts will be multiplied in far greater proportion still. The teacher's ear too should be trained to a sensitive perception of all discordant or unpermitted sounds. It should be acute to distinguish between the legitimate noise of work and the noise which impedes work or is inconsistent with it. Obvious as this is, many school masters and mistresses waste much time and add greatly to the difficulties of their duty by disregarding it. Quick sensibility, both of ear and of eye, are special natural gifts with a few ; but they may be acquired with the help of cultivation, even by those who have not been gifted by nature, if they only believe them to be worth having and take a little pains to obtain them. I may add that if a teacher possesses enough knowledge of the art of draw- ing to enable him to make impromptu rough diagramis il- lustrative of his lessons, the accomplishment is one which will add much to his effective power. And may we not enumerate among the physical at- tjibutes which go to make a perfect teacher, a gentle and yet an authoritative voiced There is necessarily a great expenditure of voice in teaching, and it is of much importance to know how to economize it. As years go on, those whose profession obliges them 34 Lectures on Teaching. to talk much, ore rotundo begin to find the vocal organs weak and overworked, and to regret all useless exertion of vocal power. And thus it should be borne in mind from the first that simply from the point of view of one's bodily health it is not good to shout or cry or lift up the voice unnecessarily. It is a great point in what you may call the dynamics of teaching to effect the maximum result with the minimum of eft'ort. And it happens that in re- gard to the voice, a low tone not only eft'ects as much as a loud one, but it actually effects more. The key at which the teacher's voice is habitually pitched determines the tone of all the school work. Children will all shout if you shout. On the other hand, if you determine never to raise your voice w'hen you give a command they will be compelled to listen to you, and to this end to subjugate their own voices habitually, and to carry on all their work in quietness. The moral effect of this on the character of the pupils is not insignificant. A noisy school is one in which a great opportunity of civilizing and softening the manners is habitually lost. And a school whose work is always done on a low tone is one in which not only is the teacher healthier, and better able to economize the re- sources of his own life, but as a place of m.oral discipline it is far more effective. Touching the matter of speech, which among the minor conditions of effective and happy school- e an ry. j^eeping is of far more significance than it may at first appear, I should like to add that some teachers seem to think it necessary to affect a studied precision in language, and to cultivate little crotchets as to elegant pronunciation which are unknown outside of the school world. The perfection of language is the perfection of a transparent glass ; it is the virtue of self-effacement. By The Teacher and His Assistants. 35 it and through it one mind should look right into another and see exactly the thing which has to be seen ; but if the medium itself is visible^ if it challenge attention to itself, it is, in just that degree, an imperfect medium, and fails to fulfil its highest purpose. Ars est celare art em. The moment our speech becomes so precise and so proper that its precision and propriety become themselves no- ticeable things, that moment we cease to be good speakers in the best sense of the word. Ours is the one profession in which there is the greatest temptation to little pedan- tries of this kind, and it may therefore not be unfitting to refer to it. He whose speech or manner proclaims him to be a schoolmaster is not yet a perfect adept in his art. We may not conceal from ourselves that in society those whose manners and speech betray them thus are not popular, and that they are not unfrequently spoken of as pedants. Now what is it to be a pedant ? It is to have our vision so narrowed by the particular duty we have in hand that we see it and other people's duties, so to speak, in false perspective, and mistake the relative importance of our own doings and theirs. In this sense there are pedants in all professions, and it must be owned that they are often the people most devoted to their work. But the profession of teaching is more often credited with this particular vice than any other, and for a very obvious rea- son. '^ We are never at our ease,'' says Charles Lamb, " in the presence of a schoolmaster, because we know that he is not at his ease in ours. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours. • He is so used to teaching that he wants to be teaching you." The truth is that the one exceptional circumstance of a teacher's life, the neces- sity of passing many hours a day with those who know so 36 Lectures on Teaching. much less than ourselves^ and who^ because of their own To be cor- jouth and ignorance^ look uj^ to us as prodigies rectedty of learning, is very unfavorable to a per- studies, fectlj just estimate of ourselves, and is calculated to make us put a higher value than it de- serves on the sort of knowledge which gives us this acci- dental ascendency over the little people. We ought to know this and to be on our guard against it. And after all;, if there be a certain faulty tone of mind and character produced by the habit of spending much time with our intellectual inferiors, the true remedy is obvious ; it is to take care that out of school we spend our time as much as possible with our intellectual superiors. We may seek them in societ}/, or if they are not easily accessible there, we may always have recourse to the great silent compan- ions of our solitude, the wise and the noble who speak to us from our libraries, and in whose presence we are no longer teachers, but reverent disciples. ' Another corrective to the special danger of the scholastic profession is to have some one intellectual in- and by work terest — some favorite pursuit or study — which is wholly unprofessional, and bears no visible relation to school work. I have known many teachers who have been saved from the narrowness and pedantry to which their duties would have inclined them, by their love of archasology or art, or their interest in some social or public question. This extra-scholastic interest has brought them into contact with other people whom they meet on equal terms ; it has helped them to escape from the habit of using the Imperative Mood, and to see their own professional work in truer relations with the larger world of thought and action, of which after all a school is only a small part. We all need, in playing our part in The Teacher and His Assistants. 37 life, to perform some at least of it in the presence of an audience which habitually demands our best. I have spoken of the necessity for laying all your pri- vate reading under contribution, and for bringing it to bear by way of illustration or scSngand' otherwise in vivifying the teaching given in a ^^^^ ^^^' class. But to do this well it is essential that the skilled teacher should cultivate in himself the rather rare gift of telling a story well. There are some who are good raconteurs by nature or by instinct. They know how to seize the right point, to reject what is irrelevant, and to keep up by their mode of telling it. the hearer's interest in any narrative they relate. But even those who have no natural aptitude of this kind may acquire it by prac- tice, and such an aptitude when acquired is most ser- viceable in teaching. Watch therefore for good pieces of description which come in your way in books or news- papers, or for effective stories which you hear ; and prac- tice yourself often in reproducing them. Observe the effect of telling such a story when you give it to a class, see when it is that the eye brightens, and the attitude be- comes one of unconscious fixedness and tension ; and ob- serve also when it is that the interest languishes and the attention is relaxed. A very little experience of this kind, if superadded to thoughtfulness, to some care in the choice of materials, and to a genuine desire to interest the scholars, will go far to make any one of ordinary intelli- gence a good narrator ; and therefore to give him a new and effective instrument for gaining their attention and for doing them good. There is indeed an abidinor necessity for the applica- tion of fresh thought to every detail of school work. There is no method, however good, which does not want to be 38 Lectures on Teaching. modified and reconstructed from time to time ; no truths Freshness of ^owever true^ which does not need to be stated mind. ^^ow and then in a new form^ and to have fresh spirit infused into its application. It is true of rules of teaching as of higher matters, " The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life.'' But even this is not the whole truth. For the spirit is constantly tending to fix and embody itself and to become the letter, unless we are ever on our guard. We know how often it has happened in the history of religion that a great reforming move- ment, which has begun in the shape of a protest, and per- haps a very effective protest, against formalism and me- chanical religion, has in time come to have its own watch- words and stereotyped usages, and has ended by being just as cold and unspiritual as that which it has sought to supersede. And this has been no less true in the history of education. The new thought, the bright rational method seeks to embody itself in a rule of action. While this process is going on, all is well. But when it is at an end, and the rule is arrived at, then comes the relapse into verbalism. Eoutine is always easier than intelligence. And some of the most worthless of all routine is — not the traditional routine of the mediaeval schools, which is known to be mechanical, and is accepted as such — ^but the routine at first devised by enthusiasts, and afterwards adopted by dull, uninspired people, who think that they can learn the method of Socrates, of Arnold, or of Frobel as they could learn a system of calisthenics or of short-hand. Carruptio optimi pessima est. It is very touching to read M. Michel Breal's account of a visit to Pestalozzi, at the end of his career. He describes the old man, pointing with his finger to the black-board, to his diagrams and to the names of the qualities of objects, while the children ^ The Teacher and His Assistants, 39 repeated mechanically his favorite watchwords, which they had learned by heart. Those words had once been full of meaning. Bnt they had ceased to represent real intel- lectual activity on the children's part, or on his. They had become dead formulas, though he knew it not. And so it will ever be, with you and with me, if we lose the habit of looking at all our methods with fresh eyes, of revising them continually, and impregnating them anew with life. It w^ould be a melancholy result of the humble and tentative efforts which, under the encouragement of the University, we are now seeking to make after an Art of teaching, if by them any of us were led to suppose that it was an art to be acquired by anybody once for all. In truth, though we may enter on the inheritance of some of the stored-up experience of others, each of us must in his own experience begin at the beginning, and be responsible for the adaptation of that experience to the special needs of his pupils, as well as to the claims of his own idiosyn- crasies and convictions. Nothing can ever be so effective as the voice, the enthusiasm, the personal influence of the living teacher. Without these, apparatus, pictures, helps, methods, degenerate soon into mere processes and a sterile mnemonic. And no set of rules, however good, can ever release us from the necessity of fashioning new rules, each for himself. And it need hardly be said here that the one crowning qualification of a perfect teacher is sympathy — sympathy with young children, with their Sympathy. wants and their ways ; and without this all other quali- fications fail to achieve the highest results. The true teacher ought to be drawn towards the profession by nat- ural inclination, by a conviction of personal fitness, and by a wish to dedicate himself and the best powers and 40 Lectures on Teaching. faculties he has to this particular form of seryice. That conviction^ if it once dominates the mind of a person in any walk of life^ does much to ennoble and beautify even work which would otherwise be distasteful ; but I know no one calling in which the presence of that conviction is more necessary^ or its absence more disheartening, than that of a schoolmaster. Teaching is the noblest of all professions, but it is the sorriest of trades ; and nobody can hope to succeed in it who does not throw his whole heart into it, and who does not find a positive pleasure as he watches the quickened attention and heightened color of a little child as he finds a new truth dawning upon him, or as some latent power is called forth. There is no calling more delightful to those who like it ; none which seems such poor drudgery to those who enter upon it reluctantly or merely as a means of getting a living. He who takes his work as a dose is likely to find it nau- seous. '^^ The good schoolmaster," says Fuller, "minces his precepts for children to swallow, hanging clogs on the nimbleness of his own soul, that his scholars may go along with him." This means that he has enough of imaginative sympathy to project his own mind, so to speak, into that of his pupil, to understand what is going on there, and to think not only of how his lesson is being imparted, but also of how it is being received. But no- body can do this who is not fond of his work. That which we know and care about we may soon learn to impart ; that which we know and do not care about we soon cease to know at all, to any practical purpose. It is obvious that in selecting assistants you should seek to find as far as possible those who pos- Assistants. ^^^^ ^^^ qualifications you would most desire in yourselves. The Teacher and His Assistants. 41 It is also clear as tlxe result of modern experience that the head teacher in every school ought to be responsible for the choice of each of his own assistants. But having secured him, what is the best use to make of him ? There are two opposite views on this point. There is one which gives the assistant the care of the whole work of a class, and another which makes him the teacher of a particular subject and sends him from class to class to give lessons on it. Both systems may be seen in operation in very good schools, and it would be hard to say that all the truth lies necessarily on one side, or that one mode of di- viding the labor is necessarily and always right. It is here as in governments : That which is best administered is best. One system gives scope for special ability, and assigns to each the work for which he is presumably fittest. But the disadvantages are serious. In the first place, the teacher of one subject only — the French or Arithmetic master — is generally without influence. AVhen a man con- fines himself to one subject he is apt to see his one sub- ject in a false light, and to lose sight of its relation to the general culture of the pupil. Perhaps too if he has a stronger will than his colleagues, he demands proficiency in his one subject at the expense of others. The class system avoids this particular danger, but it has the obvious disadvantage of setting each of your assistants to teach several subjects, of which it may fairly be assumed he can teach some much better than others. There must be a compromise between these two systems. I believe that which in the long-run secures best the unity and coher- ence of the school work is to assign to an assistant a 42 Lectures on Teaching, definite portion of responsibility^ npt to move him about from place to place^ but to attacii him to a class for a sufficient time to make it clear that the progress or back- wardness of the class is to be distinctly attributed to him. Each assistant should be clearly identified with the work of particular scholars and mainly responsible for it. On the whole, a distribution of assistants among classes ef- fects this purpose better than their distribution among subjects. Experience is not favorable to the plan of mak- ing one teacher take the exclusive charge of arithmetic, another of writing, and another of literature. The class system calls out more varied power, prevents the mind of the teacher from always running in the same groove, and is more interesting to himself. He wants a change of occupation and of subject as much as his pupils. At the same time, while this seems to be the best general rule, it is clearly important to utilize any special gift possessed by an assistant and to find out in the case of every one such assistant what is the subject he can teach best, or in what work he feels most interest. If over and above his proper and ordinary work in his class, an assistant who is fond of drawing, or who sings well, or who is skilful in the book-keeping and supervision of registers, has appro- priate special work assigned to him, — work which belongs rather to the whole school than to the class, — such work will be a clear gain, not only to the school, which will thus turn all its best resources to account, but also to the assistant himself, whose interest in the prosperity of the school as a whole will thus be much augmented. So we may conclude from these considerations that on the whole the class-master plan should prevail in the lower classes, and the plan of employing specialists in the higher, but that the evils of too exclusive a dependence The Teacher and His Assistants, 43 upon either plan should be carefully guarded against throughout the school. Another form of compromise between the two systems succeeds well in some good schools. To each class of from 30 to 40 pupils two teachers are attached — a senior and a junior. The class is divided into two for arithmetic, languages, reading, and a good deal of viva-voce question- ing, and each teacher is responsible for his own section. For all lecture lessons the sections are thrown together and the class is one. The most important lectures are given by the senior teacher, others by the junior ; but both teachers are present at all lectures, and responsible for seeing that their respective sections understand and profit by them. This plan has the further advantage of putting a younger teacher under the supervision and prac- tical training of an elder ; and also of relieving the younger teacher occasionally for his own studies or for higher lectures. But though it is well to confide responsibility to assist- ants, it is essential to watch its exercise care- jjgsponsi- fully. The principal teacher should hold fre- Jj^i^^g^^fo^ quent periodical examinations to see what Assistants, progress is being made, should himself stand by and listen to the teaching, should make himself thoroughly ac- quainted with the methods employed by his assistant, and with the sort of influence he exerts. I once knew a large private school in which this was done by the cunning de- vice of letting a small pane of glass into the wall of each class-room ; and the- principal prided himself on being able to pervade the whole establishment at all times, and peep in when it was least suspected. But this is not what I recommend. It is not espionage, for this always de- stroys the self-respect of those who are subject to it. xsTor 44 Lectures on Teaching, is it the half-apologetic way which some head-masters have of coming into the class of an assistant with some pretext^ as if they felt they were intruding. It is the frank recognition of such oversight as one of the condi- tions nnder which the work is to be done, and under which alone responsibility can be properly yet concen- ^ . \ ^ "^ i i j tratedinthe concentrated m the hands of the principaL It is indispensable that there should be unity in a school, that the plans and methods in use in the various classes should harmonize and be mutually help- ful. And to this end the occasional presence of the prin- cipal in the lower classes should be part of the recognized order of the school. He will not interrupt or criticise of course in the presence of the scholars. He will in their eyes rather appear as in friendly co-operation with the assistant than as a critic. But he will criticise neverthe- less. He will carefully note mistakes, negligences, and ignorances ; and make them the subject of private counsel to the assistants afterwards. In many large schools, it is the custom to have every School week a short conference among the teachers, Cotmciis. jj^ which they and the head-master compare notes and consult together about the work and about the pupils. Whether the number be small or great, some such comparison of experience is absolutely necessary if the school is to be at unity with itself, and if its parts are to fit together. I once visited an Endowed Grammar School, in which the head-master and the usher, both clergymen, both on the Foundation, both separately appointed, car- ried on their duties in separate rooms. They had not spoken to each other for fifteen years. The head-master explained to me that the low state of his own department was attributable to the worthless character of the prepara- The Teacher and His Assistants, 45 tion obtained in the usher's class ; and the ushe-r, with equal frankness, told me that it was of no use to take any pains with boys who were to come under so foolish a regime as that of the Upper Department. These cases it may be hoped are rare, but instances of practical isola- tion, and want of harmony in the w^ork of classes, are not rare, and I hold it to be indispensable that the principal of a school should know everything that is going on in it ; and should habitually test and observe the work of his subordinates, not because he suspects them, but ])ecause thorough and intelligent co-operation towards a common end is impossible without it. No general rule can be laid down about the age of assistants ; the whole question is a personal youthful one, to be settled by the individual character- assistants. istics of the people within your reach, and not by any fixed rules. But I may confess to a strong sense of the services which may often be rendered by young teachers and assist- ants. Much experience in elementary schools of the work- ing of the pupil-teacher system has not led me, as it appears to have led many others, to distrust that system, and to wish to see it universally superseded by an or- ganization dependent on adult teachers alone. You know that by the regulations of the Council Office, one grown- up assistant master or mistress is allowed to count as two pupil-teachers in assessing the sufficiency of the staff. They are about equal to one such assistant in point of cost, but I have come to the conclusion that in a great many cases the two pupil-teachers do more work than one assistant. And I have no doubt that in secondary schools the system of student-teachers might often be adopted with much advantage, and that you may get very valuable work out of young people of seventeen or eighteen who 46 Lectures on Teaching, are drawn to the profession by choice and aptitude and who wish to become trained for it. What they lack in maturity and experience tliey often make up in enthu- siasm^ in freshness of mind, and in tractability. You can easily direct them, and mould their work so as to fit your own plans. Only it is worth while to bear in mind two or three conditions. They should not at first be put to the care of the youngest children. It is a very common fault to suppose that your rawest and least-trained teacher should be put to your lowest class, whereas it is in the lowest class that the highest professional skill is often wanted. To awaken the interest and intelligence of very young children is often a much harder task than to direct the work of elders. The easiest part of the work of a school is the supervision of the more mechanical lessons, such as reading and writing, or the correction of sums and of home exercises in the middle classes of a school, where scholars may be presumed to have already been drilled into good habits of work. And this therefore is the de- partment of duty which should first be confided to a young teacher. The function which is known in the French schools as that of repetiteur, who has charge of the minor and more mechanical parts of the teaching, is the proper function of such a teacher, not the sole charge of any one department of a school. Then by degrees he may be called upon to give a lesson perhaps on some rule of arithmetic in the presence of a class, and afterwards to teach in suc- cession other subjects properly graduated in difficulty. It is a mistake to exact so much as is often demanded from young teachers. While in the stage of probation or partial studentship they should not give more than half the day to teaching, and reserve the rest for their own studies, If we expect a young assistant to spend the The Teacher and His Assistants. 47 whole of the ordinary school-hours in charge of young children^ and to pursue his own studies when school is over, we expect what is unreasonable, and we go far to disgust him and make him feel the task to-be drudgery. On the other hand, an alternation of teaching and learn- ing, of obeying and governing, is very pleasant to an active mind ; and I think by trying the experiment of what may be called the '^ half-time system " the principal of a school may often get better, fresher work — work which he can more completely control and bring into harmony with his own views and plans — out of student-teachers than out of adult ushers of the ordinary type. There is great advantage, whenever possible, in secur- ing assistants of your own training, those gtudent- whom you have manufactured on the prem- teachers^ ises, so to speak. And the system of student-teachers lends itself well to the adoption of this course. But we must not overlook the demerits and dangers of this sys- tem on the other hand. A youth selected from among your most promising pupils, and trained under your own eye with a view to taking office as an assistant, may in- deed be expected to be familiar with your own methods and in sympath}^ with your aims. But it is essential that in the interval between the time of quasi-apprenticeship and that in which he takes permanent office as assistant he should go out either to the University or to some other school for that important part of his education which you cannot give him. In the elementary schools young peo- ple are chosen early as pupil-teachers, go out at eighteen for two years to a training college, and return to an ele- mentary school as assistants before they are qualified to take the sole charge of schools. In theory this is un- exceptionable. And if at the training colleges they were 48 Lectures on Teaching. enabled to obtain a broader view of their profession and of life, little more could be desired. Unfortunately, how- ever, at the Normal College they are associated only with others who have had precisely the same training, who come from the same social class, and have been subject to the same early disadvantages. They are therefore from the beginning to the end of their career always moving in the same rut, always bounded by the traditions and the experience of the elementary school, and they know too little of the outer world, or of what in other professions passes for a liberal education. Hence the narrower views and the more obvious faults which often characterize the elementary teacher. For a successful teacher of a higher school we may indeed desire in some cases the early train- ing analogous to pupil-teachership ; and some special preparation, either as assistant or otherwise, in the duties of a schoolmaster. But it is important that a substantial part of his training, at any rate, should be obtained in other places than the school in which he intends ulti- mately to teach ; and among persons who are not intend- ing to follow the same profession as himself. And for the teacher and for all his assistants, the one The teacher's ^^^^^^^ needful is a high aim, and a strong aims. faith in the infinite possibilities which lie hidden in the nature of a young child. One hears much rhetoric and nonsense on this subject. The schoolmas- ter is often addressed by enthusiasts as if he were more important to the body politic than soldier and statesman, poet and student all put together ; and a modest man rebels, and rightly rebels, against this exaggeration, and is fain to take refuge in a mean view of his office. But after all, we must never forget that those who magnify your office in never so bad taste are substantially right. The Teacher and His Assistants. 49 And it is only an elevated ideal of your profession which will ever enable you to con*;end against its inevitable dis- couragements — the weary repetitions, the dulness of some, the wilfulness of others, the low aims of many parents, the exactions of governors and of public bodies, the un- generous criticism, the false standards of estimation which may be applied to your w^ork. What is to sustain you in these circumstances, in places remote from friends, or in the midst of uncongenial surroundings ? Nothing, ex- cept the faith which removes mountains, the strong con- viction that your work, after all, if honestly and skilfully done, is some of the most fruitful and precious work in the world. The greatest of all teachers, in describing his own mission, once said, ^^ I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly/' And may we not without irreverence say that this is, in a humble and far-off way, the aim of every true teacher in the world ? He wants to help his pupil to live a fuller, a richer, a more interesting and a more useful life.^ He wants so to train the scholar that no one of his intel- lectual or moral resources shall be wasted. He looks on the complex organization of a young child, and he seeks to bring all his faculties, not merely his memory and his capacity for obedience, but also his intelligence, his ac- quisitiveness, his imagination, his taste, his love of action, liis love of truth, into the fullest vitality ; "That mind and soul according well May make one music." ^ " Qu'on destine mon eleve k I'epee, h I'eglise, au barreau que li'importe ! avant la vocation des parents, la nature I'appelle a la vie humaine. Vivre est le metier que je lui veux apprendre." — ■ RoussEAx:. so Lectures on Teaching, No meaner ideal than this ought to satisfy even the humblest who enters the teacher^s profession. From considerations so high and far-reaching does it seem to you a rather steep descent to come down to the details of school organization^ to books and methods^ to maps and time-tables ? I hope not^ for it is only in the light of large principles that little things can be seen in their true significance ; and a great aim is often the stimu- lus to exertions which were otherwise petty and weari- some. The School : Its Aims and Organisation. 5 1 IL THE SCHOOL: ITS AIMS AND OEGANIZATION. We are to consider now the nature and functions of a School generally. The Art of Teaching, or xne business Didactics as we may for convenience call it, of a school. falls under two heads, general and special. And before seeking to investigate the several subjects usually included in a school course, one by one, and the methods appro- priate to each, it seem_s right to take a vue d'ensemhle of the whole work of a School, and to ask ourselves what it ought to aim at, and what it cannot do. We shall not gain much from any preliminary speculation as to what Education is. Nothing is more easy than to define it as the awakening and training of faculty, the co-ordinate development of all the powers both passive and active of the human soul, the complete preparation for the busi- ness of life. In the view of many who have written on this subject there is no one element of perfectibility in the human character, no one attribute, physical, intel- lectual, or spiritual, which it is not the duty of a teacher to have in mind, and which does not form part of the business of education. We may leave for the present all such speculations. They are unquestionably true ; be- cause all the experience of life is a training, and men are educated from infancy to the grave by all the sights and sounds, the joys and sorrows which they encounter, by the character and behavior of their friends, the nature of their surroundings, and by the books they read. But we have to ask which and how many of these formative in- 52 Lectures on Teaching, fluences are within the control of professional teachers. The home and the family influence do mnch^ and these have to be presupposed. The out-door life^ and the con- tact with its facts and experience, will do still more ; and T^ 1- -Ar ^f this also must be taken into account. The Tlie limits 01 its work. school comes in between these, and seeks to control some of the forces which act on the young life from 7 years old to 15 or 18'; and for a very limited num- ber of the hours of each day. It is for a school to sup- plement other means of training, not to supersede them ; to deal with a part and not with the whole even of youth- ful life. It can never safely seek to relieve parents of their own special moral responsibilities ; or to find for the child fit surroundings in the home or in the world. The teacher may properly set before himself the ideal perfection of a life. He will do well to study Herbert Spencer's description of the purpose of Education as a means of forming the parent, the worker, the thinker, the subject, and the citizen. But the practical question for him is what portion of the vast and intricate work of attaining such perfection is to be done in a school, and under the special limitations and conditions to which a professional teacher is subject. After all, he is not and cannot be to his pupil in the place of the parent, the em- ployer, the priest, the civil ruler, or the writer of books, and all these have in their own way educative functions not inferior to his. It is well also to remember that some of the most jorecious teaching of life come to us obiter, and without special provision or arrangement, while other knowledge can hardly come to us at all except we get it at school. "We cannot therefore measure the claim of a given kind of knowledge to become a part of a school course, by considering its worth per se, We must also The School : Its Aims and Organisation. 53 consider whether it is a kind of knowledge which is capable of being formulated into lessons and imparted by a teacher. For otherwise, however valuable it may be^, it is for the purpose now in view no concern of ours. Now a school can operate on the education of a scholar in two ways : (1) by its discipline and indi- its true func- rect training, and (2) by positive instruction. ^^°^^- Of discipline in so far as it is moral and affects the growth of character, we have to speak hereafter. But of instruc- tion, and the special intellectual and practical discipline which may be got by means of definite lessons, we may usefully take a brief preliminary view now. I suppose that if we seek to classify the objects of in- struction Qelir-stoff) , so far as they lie within the purview of a school-teacher, they are these : (1) The attainment of certain manual and mechanical arts, e.g. those of reading, writing, drawing, and music. With these you try to train the mentsof in- senses, and to develop a certain handiness and readiness in the use of physical powers, and in the solution of some of the practical problems of life. (2) The impartation of certain useful facts — of the kind of information which is needed in the intercourse of life, and of which it is inconvenient, and a little disgrace- ful, to be ignorant. Such are the facts of geography, and history, and a good deal of miscellaneous information about common things, and about the world in which we live. It may be safely said that quite apart from all con- sideration of the intellectual processes by which knowl- edge of these facts finds entrance into the mind, and of the way in which it is systematized or made to serve an intellectual purpose, such facts are in themselves useful, and ought to be taught. 54 Lectures on Teaching. (3) Language^ including tlie vocabulary^ grammar and literature of our own and other tongues ; and all exer- cises in the meaning, history and right use of words. (4) Pure Science, including Arithmetic, Mathematics and other studies of a deductive character, specially in- tended to cultivate the logical faculty. (5) Applied Science, including Natural History, Phy- sics, Chemistry, and the Inductive Sciences generally. Now under these five heads may be included nearly all the secular teachina^ of a school ; and I think Their rela- tive import- we may roughly say that, if you take the whole period of a child's school life, supposing it to be prolonged to the age of 18, the time would not be ill- divided if about one-fifth of it were given to each. All five are indispensable. But the proportions of time which you give to them respectively will vary much according to the stage of his career which the child has reached. At first, the first, second and third will occupy the whole time. As the arts of Eeading and Writing are acquired, i.e. after the age of 8 or 9, practice in them will become less and less important ; and in a year or two later, ex- ercises in what may be called Art will only be interspersed among the lessons of the school as reliefs from intellectual labor. Thus more time will become available for the subjects of the second, third, fourth and fifth groups. And of these it should always be remembered, that the second is of the smallest value educationally, and that in just the proportion in which you deal wisely and suc- cessfully with the other branches, the acquisition of in- formation about history, geography and common things may be safely left to the private reading, and intelligent observation, for which your purely disciplinal studies will have created an appetite. Moreover these classes of The School : Its Aims and Organi:{^atton. 55 knowledge are not quite so sharply divided in fact as they seem to be in a theoretical scheme. Much depends on the mode of their treatment. For instance, much of the work done under the name of arithmetic is often taught more in the nature of a knack, or mechanical art, than as a mental discipline. Grammar too, considered as the art of correct speaking, is matter of imitation rather than knowledge. And Physical Geography may easily, if well taught, become lifted to the rank of a science, and fall rmder the fifth rather than the third head. On the whole, the staple of school discipline and instruction will be found in the third, fourth and fifth groups, and you cannot go far wrong in alloting the best of the time, in the case of older pupils, in about equal proportions to these three de- partments of intellectual effort. We shall have to con- sider more fully hereafter the reasons which justify the teaching of each of these subjects. At present, it may suffice to say that you teach language in order to enlarge a learner^s vocabulary, to give him precision in the use of words, and a greater command over the resources of speech con- sidered as an instrument of thought. And an ancient language which is fully inflected, a modern language which we learn for purposes of conversation mainly, and our own vernacular speech, all in their several ways conduce to the same end, though each has processes peculiar to itself. And we teach besides arithmetic some branch of mathematical or deductive science, because this furnishes the best training in practical logic, in the art of deducing right inferences from general or admitted truths. And as to the sciences which are not to be investigated deductively, but depend on experience, observation, and a generalization from a multitude of phenomena, we teach them not only because they make the student acquainted 56 Lectures on Teaching. with the beauty and the order of the physical world, but because the mode of attaining truth in these matters cor- responds more nearly than any other to the mode by which right general opinions are formed about all the principal subjects which for the purposes of practical life it behooves us to know. You can hardly conceive a completely educated man Their CO- whose faculties have not been trained in each ordination. ^f ^hese ways. But while this threefold di- vision of studies may always be held in view, it does not follow that every' one of them should be pursued uni- formly and co-ordinately all through a scholar's course. When elements have been learned and the scholar has got to the age of 13 or 14, you will do well often in a given term or half-year to concentrate special attention on two or three subjects, and for a while to do little more with some others than take measures for keeping up what has already been gained. It is unsafe to specialize too soon, till a good general foundation has been laid for ac- quirement in all departments ; but when this founda- tion has been secured, it is a great part of education, especially in the higher classes, to show what may be done now and then by a resolute and steady devotion to a par- ticular department of work. It is only by doing so occa- sionally, and, in doing this, by sacrificing for a time the theory of proportion which ought always to prevail in your scheme of instruction considered as a wdiole, that you will give to your elder pupils a due sense of their own power, and prepare them for that duty which is so often needed in after-life — the duty of bringing the whole faculty, and effort and enthusiasm, to bear on one subject at a time. Do not be afraid therefore of giving an extra proportion of time to Latin or to Literature, or to Nat- The School : Its Aims and Organisation. 5 7 ural Science, when yon find the pupils have just canght the spirit of the work and are prepared to do it unusually well. For though relatively to the particular month or term the distribution of time may seem inequitable, it is not so relatively to the whole period of the school life. We have, in fact, to keep in view the general principle that every school ouo^ht to provide in its own -, "^ . , , . 1 J . . . THe three way and measure, instruction and trainino^ 01 kinds of "^ . ° Schools. several different kinds — the practical arts, so that the pupil learns to do something, as read, write or draw ; the real or specific teaching, so that the pupil is made to Imoiv something of the facts and phenomena round him ; the disciplinal or intellectual exercise, whereby he is helped to think and observe and reason ; and the moral training, whereby he is made to feel rightly, to be affected by a right ambition, and by a sense of duty. But in applying this general view to different schools we must make great modifications. Whether a school is in- tended for girls or for boys, for young children or elder, for boarders or for day scholars, must be first considered before we determine its curriculum. And after all, the most important consideration which will differentiate the character of various schools, is the length of time which pupils are likely to spend in them. Roughly we may say that a Primary School is one the majority of whose scholars leave at the age of 14 ; a Secondary School, one in which they remain till 16 ; and a High School, one which may 'hope to retain them till 18 or 19, and to send them direct to the l^^iiversities. The problem may be further modified by special professional aims and by the necessary differences in the training of boys and girls, es- pecially in relation to the side of art culture ; but mainly we may keep these three divisions in view. 58 Lectures on Teaching. ^N'ow the work of a Primary School begins earlier^ and is much more usually founded on infant-school discipline than the work of either of the other primary two. From 5 years old to 1, the playful, kindly ^*^^°°^- discipline of the Kindergarten may be made to alternate with short lessons on reading, writing, drawing and count- ing, and with manual and singing exercises. And during the age from 7 to 14 it is not too much to expect that the child of the poor man who is to earn his living after that age shall learn to read with intelligence, to write and ex- press himself well, to know something of the structure of his own language, and to understand the meanings of w^ords. The purely logical part of his training will be gained by instruction in the principles and the practice of arithmetic, and the elements of geometry ; his knowledge of facts will be mainly that of geography and of his- tory; the scientific side of his training will be obtained through the elementary study of mechanics or chemistry, or physiology, Erdlmnde or Naturkunde, and the aesthetic side by vocal music and drawing, and the learning of poetry. And if to this can be added sufficient instruction in the elements of any foreign grammar, say French, to enable the pupil to pursue the study of another language than his own, by his own efforts after leaving school, the primary school may be considered to have done, its work, and to have given him, relatively to the limited time in which he has been under instruction, a complete, coherent, and self-consistent course. The curriculum of the Secondary School, which ex Jiypotliesi is to be carried on at least to the age of 16, should from the first aim at all that is secondary attained in the primary, with some additions. It may reasonably include the elements of two languages The School : Its Aims and Organiiation. 59 other than the pupil's own, of which it is expedient that one should be Latin and the other French or German. It should on the side of pure science be carried to alge- bra and geometry; and in the department of applied science should include at least one such subject as chem- istry, physics or astronomy rather fully treated. On the side of the humanities it should recognize the study of a few literary masterpieces, and some knowledge of the his- tory of thought as well as of events. But it should not, in my opinion, attempt to include Greek, nor any exercise in Latin versification or composition; simply because it is not possible to carry discipline of this kind far enough within the limits of age to achieve any real intellectual result. The Public School of the highest grade necessarily and rightly adjusts its course to the requirements 3^ ^j^^ ^igh of the University, for which as a rule its pupils School are destined. It keeps in view the same broad distinctions, and the same general scheme of the co-ordination of studies; but it may from the first lay wider and deeper foundations; it may proceed more slowly, and may fitly give heed to niceties of scholarship which would be un- suitable in a shorter course. The scheme put forth by the Oxford and Cambridge Joint Board for the final examina- tion in schools, which is to be regarded either as a tetvuinus ad quern relatively to the public-school course, or a terminus a quo relatively to the University, and is to serve either for a leaving certificate or for matriculation, arranges studies in four groups in this wise : I. (1) Latin, (2) Greek, (3) French and German; II. (1) Scripture knowledge, (2) English, (3) History; III. (1) Mathematics (elementary), (2) Mathematics (additional) ; 6o Lectures on Teaching, IV. (1) ISTatural Philosophy, (2) Heat and Chemistry, (3) Botany, (4) Physical Geography and elementary Geology; and requires candidates to satisfy the examiners in at least four subjects taken from not less than three different groups. Having determined the course of instruction by con- sidering the age to which it is likely to be rounded^and prolonged, we have to secure that within this comp e e. probable limit there shall be unity of purpose, and a distinct recognition of the claims of each of the four or five principal means of training. The course should be rounded and complete as far as it goes, on the supposition that, except in the case of schools which are preparing for the University, there is little or no chance that the time of formal school instruction will be prolonged. It is by los- ing sight of this, that we often commit the grave mistake of conducting the school education of a boy on too pre- tentious a plan, and on the assumption that he is to make a long stay at school. And the incomplete frustum of a higher course is not of the same value as the whole of a scheme of instruction which from the first has a less am- bitious aim. The nature and extent of a foundation must be determined by the character of the superstructure you propose to build on it. The course of instruction should be begun with a reasonable prospect of continuing it. Otherwise it may simply come to nothing, and represent a weary waste of time. And thus, we are to have in view, for schools of all kinds. And each in ^^ education which may well deserve to be "liberal" called " libera V because it seeks to train the course. man, and not merely the good tradesman or doctor or mechanic. What we may call the " real '^ ele- The School : Its Aims and Organisation. 6i ments of a scliool course, the acquisition of power to read and write and do certain things, and the knowledge of useful facts, will form the largest proportion of the work of the primary school; while the formative elements — those which seek to give general power and capacity, — language, logic and science, will be less prominent, simply for the reason that time is limited. But these higher ele- ments should not be absent even from a course of instruc- tion which ended at 10 or 11. And the reason why a High or Public School course or a University course better deserves to be called a course of liberal education than the other, is not because it neglects the "real" elements of manual arts and matters of fact, but simply because a larger proportion of its work is essentially formative and disciplinal; and because every year enables the student to give relatively more attention to those studies, by which taste and power and thoughtfulness are increased. From this point of view, it will be seen how unsatisfactory are such designations as " Classical " school, Realschule, or " Science " school, which imply that all the intellectual training is to be of one kind, or worse than all " Com- mercial " school, which implies that there is to be no in- tellectual training at all, but that the whole course shall be consciously directed rather to the means of getting a liv- ing, than to the claims of life itself. And if this be the true principle to be kept in view in the gradation of schools, it follows that, except within certain limits, we must not regard the dationof Primary as a preparatory school for the Secon- dary, or the Secondary for the High School. We need, no doubt, to construct the ladder of which we have so often heard, from the lower to the highest grades of public in- structiori. But it is a grave mistake to suppose that the 62 Lectures on Teaching. highest step in a lower school corresponds with the lower one in the secondary. Or to change the figure, the three courses of instruction — primary, secondary and higher — may be compared to three pyramids, of different sizes, though all in their way symmetrical and perfect. But you cannot take the apex of the larger pyramid and set it on the top of a smaller. You may indeed fit on, with a certain practical convenience, the tdp of the higher scheme of edu- cation to the truncated scheme of the lower, provided you go low enough. If by means of scholarships or otherwise, we desire to take a promising pupil out of the elementary into the secondary school, it is not expedient to keep him in the first till 14 when the course is ended, and then transfer him for the last two years of his school life into a school of higher pretensions. He should be discovered earlier, say at 11, and placed in the higher school for a sufficiently long period to gain the full advantage of its extended course. And in like manner, if a scholar is to be helped from a secondary school into one which prepares for the Universities, he should not remain to complete the school course, but should be captured, and transferred at 14 or 15 at the latest. Otherwise it will be found that he has something to unlearn, that the continuity of his school life is broken, that some of the books and methods will be new to him, and that the conditions will not be favorable The " finisii- ^^ ^^^ learning all which the more advanced ing" School, gchool Can teach. This principle, if once ac- cepted, will it is clear prove fatal to the very prevalent notion that the higher or more expensive school may be regarded as a sort of. finishing school for pupils from the lower. There is still a theory, current especially among parents in regard to girls, that it is worth while to take a pupil from one school, and send her for the last year to The School : Its Aims and Organisation. 6t, some expensive establishment to '^ finish." I know few more pestilent heresies than this — the notion that a little top-dressing of accomplishments is the proper end of a school course. There is a great break in the unity and sequence of the school career ; and the new books and new aims come much too late to be of any real service^ and indeed serve only to unsettle the pupil. When schools are rightly graded each will have its own complete and characteristic course; and for this reason^ it is only within certain limits, that is to say, about two years before its natural completion, that any one of these courses can be rightly regarded as preparatory to the other.* In fashioning schemes of instruction, it is well to make up our minds as to the relative advantages of day schools and boarding schools. In this part tSding of our island, a strong preference has long ^^^°°^^- been felt for boarding schools ; and it is believed that a more complete as well as a more guarded course of educa- tion is attainable in them than in day schools. In Scotland and in most European countries the opposite feeling has prevailed; and wherever good day schools are within reach parents prefer to use them, and to look after the moral * The desire of the Schools Inquiry Commission was to make three grades of Schools above the primary: the Third grade for scholars who would leave at 15, in which the fees should be i4 or £5 a year; the Second grade to take boys to 16 or 17, and to charge fees of £S or ilO; and the First grade to retain scholars till at the age of 18 or 19 they should be able to proceed to the University; and in such schools the fees might be fixed from il5 to £20 a year for tuition only. This theory has proved to be unworkable, (1) because, in fact, it separates three classes rather too rigidly, when two would have sufficed; and (2) because of the unfortunate use of the word " grade," which is popularly taken to connote social rather than educational rank, 64 Lectures on Teaching. discipline of t'lieir children at home. I believe that this view is becoming more prevalent among ns, and that the establishment of large public day schools in towns is doing much to reconcile parents^ especially in regard to girls^ to a method of training which a few years ago was generally regarded by the middle and upper classes as inadequate and just a little lowering from the social point of view. The discipline of an orderly and intelligent home, and the intercourse with brothers and sisters, is itself an important, part of education. But this cannot be attained, when three-fourths of the year are spent in an artificial comi- munity, which is very unlike a home, in which one's com- panions are all of' one sex and nearly of the same age, and in which the child is placed under the discipline of strang- ers who have no other than a professional interest in his progress. If we consider the matter well, t,e?piac?of there is a sense in which the custom of relying '^^^^' on the boarding school implies the degradation of the home. It attaches the idea of duty, order and sys- tematic work exclusively to the school ; and of leisure, license and habitual indulgence to the home. Now the highest conception of the life of youth regards both school and home as places of systematic discipline, and of orderly and happy work. It is after all in the home that much of the serious work of men, and nearly all the serious work of women, has ultimately to be done; and the sooner this fact is made evident to the young scholar the better. No parent should willingly consent to part for a large part of the year with the whole moral supervision of his child. That so many parents do thus consent may be attributed partly to the conviction of some, that they are unable owing to other occupations or to personal inaptitude to do the work properly; and partly to the love of social ex- The School : Its Aims and Organisation. 65 clusiveness, which is a prominent characteristic and not the noblest characteristic of people in the middle and upper ranks. We all know that a day school is often spoken of as an inferior institution, one in which there will be mixture of classes, an object of special dread to the vulgar rich. With a truer sense of responsibility on the part of parents and truer notions as to the functions of a school, this difficulty is likely to become less seriously felt. The association of scholars from different ranks of life in classes and lessons, involves no real danger to the manners and habits of a child. On the contrary such association is well calculated to break down foolish prejudice, to furnish the best kind of intellectual stimulus, and to show the scholar his true place in the w^orld in which he has to play his part. This principle is already widely recognized in regard to boys; but it is, for obvious reasons, not so readily admitted in its relation to girls, although it is not less true and sound in their case. Ere long, I hope it will be admitted even by the most refined of parents that, with reasonable care as to the associations which their daughters form out of school, they may not only without risk, but with great advantage, permit them to share all the advantages of good public day schools; and need feel no greater misgiving as to the results of association for school purposes than they do in respect to the meeting together on Sundays in the same place for public worship. In the boarding school, however, habits and personal associations are necessarily formed. And since, The board- partly from necessity and partly from the pref- i^g-sciiooi. erence of parents, boarding schools will always exist, it is well to bear in mind that the reasons which render them desirable, and which should control their organization, differ much in the case of boys and of girls. The great 66 Lectures on Teaching, public school has much to teach besides what is learned in the form of lessons^ much which could not be learned by boys at home. It is a moral gymnasium, an arena for contest, a republican community in which personal rights have both to be maintained for one's self and respected in others; it should be a microcosm; a training ground for the business and the struggle of life, and for the duties of a world in which men have to work with men and to con- tend with men. But a big conventual boarding school for girls is unlike any world which they are ever likely to enter. It has no lesson to teach and no discipline to fur- nish which bears at all on the future claims of society and of home. Hence, while the ideal boarding school for boys may be large and stately, with its strong sense of corporate unity, its traditions, its contests, its publicity, its represen- tation on a small scale of municipal and political life; the ideal boarding school for girls is an institution large enough indeed as to all its teaching arrangements to ad- mit of perfect classification, right division of duty among teachers, and abundant intellectual activity ; but organized, as to all its domestic arrangements, on the principle of small sheltered boarding houses in separate communities of not more than 20, each under the care of a mistress who shall stand in loco parentis. And in each of such boarding houses it is well that care should be taken to gather to- gether under the same roof scholars of very different ages, in order that relations of helpfulness and protection may be established between the elder and the younger, and that in this way something analogous to the natural discipline of a family may be attained. We may not forget too that all large boarding establish- ments, Avhen limited to pupils of one particular class, clergy-orphan schools, schools for officers' daughters, or- The School : Its Aims and Organisation. 67 phan schools, and the like, have a very narrow influence on the formation of character and are essen- tially wrong in principle. Any disadvantages boarding- which belong to the children of any one such class becomes intensified by the attempt to bring them tip together. Experience has shown us that the worst thing to do with pauper children is to bring them up in pauper schools ; and that the wise course is as soon as possible to let their lives be passed in ordinary homes, and in schools frequented by children whose parents are not paupers. So the happiest thing for the orphan daughter of a clergyman is that she should be placed in a school where the children do not all come from parsonages, and where some at least of her associates are not orphans. To what extent are the principles we have laid down consistent with a system of bifurcation, or -^ ^ Bifurcation. ■division of the upper part of the school, into two branches, according to the special bent or probable destiny of the scholars ? On this point there has been much discussion. Even in the. greatest and most ancient of our schools, it has come to be recognized that the tradi- tional classical discipline is not equally suited for all the pupils ; that what are called modern subjects — modern languages and sciences — have a right to recognition; and that for all boys who are not likely to go to the University, as well as for all who, when they enter an academic life, mean to pay special attention to science, an alternative course should be offered; and they should be permitted to substitute modern languages for ancient, or chemistry and physical science for literature. And hence the estab- lishment in so many of the great schools of what are called " modern departments," or " modern sides." It is impossi- ble to declare that this experiment 'has been wholly sue- 6S Lectures on Teaching. cessful. There is often a complete separation, say at the Modernde- ^S^ ^^ ^^y ^^ ^^^^ boys in this department from partments. those of the " classical." The " moderns '' are sometimes placed under the care of a class of teachers of inferior academic rank. It is understood that the work is rather easier, and that hoys of inferior abilities gravitate to it. So it comes to be regarded as less creditable to be- long to it; and those who keep in the ancient traditional groove, in which all the former triumphs of the school have been won, consider themselves not only intellectually but socially superior to those who avail themselves of the locus poeniteiitice provided by the modern department. What is worse, the masters themselves often encourage this feeling, and let it be seen that they think the more hon- orable school career is to be found in exclusive devotion to classics. We shall never give a fair chance to other forms of intellectual discipline while this state of academic opinion lasts. We shall, I hope, ere long come to the con- clusion that the true way to recognize the claims of what are called modern subjects, is not by the erection of sepa- rate modern departments, but rathex by taking a wiser and more philosophical view of the whole range and purpose of school education. It is not good that the boy who is to be a classical scholar should grow up ignorant of physical laws. Still less is it good that the boy who shows a leaning for the natural sciences , should be debarred from the intel- lectual culture which literature and language give. And it may well be doubted whether it is desirable to recognize too early the differences of natural bent, or probable pro- fessional career, at all. Up to a certain point, it is good for all of us to learn many things for which we have no special aptitude. Unless we do this, we do not give our faculties a fair chance. We do not know until our minds have been directed to particular forms of study, whether they will The School : Its Aims and Organi^^ation. 69 prove to be serviceable to us or not. You and I laiow many persons whose intellectual training lias been com- pletely one-sided; scholars^, e.g., wlio have never given a moment^s study to the sciences of experiment and observa- tion in any form. With some of them, the result of this is seen in the lofty contempt with which they regard the kind of knowledge which they themselves do not possess. "With others, the result is seen in a highly exaggerated esti- mate of chemistry or civil engineering, and an absurd and ultra-modest depreciation of that form of mental culture to which they themselves owed so much. Both states of mind are mischievous. And they may be guarded against by taking care that our school-course gives at least the elements of several different kinds of knowledge to every learner. There comes a time, no doubt, when it is quite clear that we should specialize, but this time does not ar- rive early; and until it arrives, it is important that we should secure for every scholar a due and harmonious ex- ercise of the language faculty, of the logical faculty, of the inductive faculty; as well as of the powers of acquisi- tion, and of memory. Let arrangements be made by all means for dropping certain studies, when experience shall have made it clear that they would be unfruitful. Let German be the substitute for Greek, or higher proficiency in physics be aimed at as an alternative to the closer per- ception of classic niceties. But you do not want distinct courses of instruction, existing side by side, to provide for these objects. And if modern departments are to exist at all in our great schools, they can only justify their exist- ence by fulfilling these very simple conditions : (1) That the student of language shall not neglect science, nor the student of science nes^lect Ian- Conditions /., ,11... .. T ^ and their guage, even after the biiurcatian has begun. success. (2) That in each department, the same general curric- 7o Lectures on Teaching. ulum including the humanities as well as science and mathematics shall be pursued; the only difierence being in the proportion of time devoted to each, and possibly in the particular language or science selected, e.g. .German for Greek, chemistry for applied mechanics. (3) That as far as possible, so much of the instruction as is common to the scholars in both departments — and this should be by far the larger portion — should be given to them in common, and not in separate departments or by separate teachers. (4) That there shall be no pretext for regarding the modern course as intellectually inferior to the other; but that both courses should rank as equivalent, exact the same amount of effort, and should even from the school-boy's point of view be equally honorable. Now how far ought this general scheme of division into five departments, of which the first two — the Girls' schools. real — gradually yield the chief importance to the other three, the formative or disciplinal, to be modi- fied for the sake of girls' schools ? Probably to a very small extent indeed. We may indeed postulate one special condition, for which we men all have good reason to be thankful, that a larger portion of a woman's life than of ours is spent in giving pleasure to others;" and that to charm and beautify the home is accepted by her as the chief — one might almost say the professional — duty which she feels to be most appropriate. Hence the greater im- portance in her case of some form of artistic training. The elements of instrumental music and of drawing should be taught to every girl; and these studies should be carried far enough to give her faculties for them a fair chance of revealing themselves, and ,to discover whether she is likely The School : Its Aims and Organisation, 7 1 to excel. And as soon as it becomes clear^ in respect to either^ that she has no special aptitude, and no prospect of attaining excellence, the subject should be dropped. Nothing adds more to the charm of life than good music, but nothing is more melancholy than to reflect upon the wasted hours spent by many a girlin the mechanical prac- tice of music, from which neither she nor any hearer de- rives real enjoyment. But this admission once made, and the just claims of art and taste as part of a woman's edu- cation duly recognized, there seems no good reason for making any substantial difference between the intellectual -training of one sex and that of the other. The reasons which have been urged for a co-ordinate development of faculty apply to the human and not to any specially mas- culine needs. We are bound to make a practical protest against that yiew of a girl's education which prevails so widely among ignorant parents. They often care more for the accom- plishments by which admiration is to be gained in early years, than for those qualities by which it is to be per- manently retained, and the work of life is to be done. In the long-run, the usefulness and happiness of women and their power of making others happy depends, more than on anything else, on the number of high and worthy sub- jects in which they take an intelligent interest. Some day perhaps we may be in a position to map out the whole field of knowledge, and to say how much of it is masculine r.nd how much of it is feminine. At present the data for such a classification are not before us. Experience has not yet justified us in saying of any form of culture or useful knowledge that it is beyond the capacity of a woman to attain it, or that it is unsuited to her intellectual needs. Meanwhile the best course of instruction which we can de- 72 Lectures on Teaching. vise ought to be put freely within the reach of men and women alike. We may be well content to wait and see what comes of it ; for we may be sure that no harm can pos- sibly come of it. As to the distribution of time, it is impossible to lay Distribution ^^^wn any rigid rule, applicable to schools of of time. different characters and aims. Specimen time- tables might easily be given, but they would probably be very misleading. It may be useful, however, to keep in view some general directions for the fabrication of your own time-table : (1) Calculate the total number of hours per week avail- able for instruction, and begin by determining what pro- po-rtion of these hours should be devoted respectively to the several subjects. (2) In doing this contrive to alternate the work so that no two exercises requiring much mental effort or the same kind of effort come together, e.g. let a lesson in translation, in history or arithmetic, be followed by one in writing or drawing; one in which the judgment or memory is most exercised by one in which another set of faculties is called into play. It is obvious that the exercises which re- quire most thinking should generally come earliest in the day. (3) Have regard to the character and composition of your teaching staff; and to the necessity for continuous yet well-varied and not too laborious employment for each of them; particularly for those who are specialists, or teachers of single subjects. (4) As a rule do not let any lesson last longer than three-quarters of an hour. It is unreasonable to expect continuous and undivided attention for a longer time, and with very young children even half an hour is enough. The School : Its Aims and Organisation. 73 Thus a three hours' school in the morning should be di- vided into four parts, and a two hours' attendance in the afternoon into three. (5) An interval of ten minutes may fitly be provided in the middle of each school-time for recreation in play- room or ground. So a morning will give three lessons of three-quarters of an hour each, one of half an hour, which is quite long enough say for a dictation or a writing lesson,, and a little break beside. (6) Let the plans be so arranged as to provide movement and change of position at each pause in the work. One lesson a day may very properly be given to the scholars standing. (7) Let one short period be reserved in every day for the criticism of the preparatory or other lessons which have been done out of school. We shall see hereafter that some forms of home lessons admit of very effective and expe- ditious correction in class. (8) Eeserve also a short period, for some purpose not comprehended in the routine of studies, say the last half- hour of the week, for gathering the whole school together, addressing them on some topic of general interest, or read- ing an extract from some interesting book. (9) Do not so fill up your own time, if you are the prin- cipal teacher, and have assistants, as to be unable to fulfil the duty of general supervision. Provide for your own inspection and examination of the work of the several classes, at least once in every two weeks, and take care that the work of all youthful teachers, and of those who are not fully trained, goes on in your sight. (10) Punctuality should be the rule~ at the end as well as the beginning of a lesson; otherwise you do not keep faith with your scholars. The time-table is in the nature 74 Lectures on Teaching. of a contract between yon and them. Do not break it. The pnpils are as mnch entitled to their prescribed period of leisure, as yon are to your prescribed time of lecturing and expounding. I cannot tell you how much a school gains by possessing a thoroughly well considered time-table, and adhering closely to it. In the elementary school, as you know, the time-table once sanctioned and approved by the Inspector, ancl duly displayed, becomes the law of the school, and must not in any way "be departed from. And I feel sure that you will gain by putting yourselves under a regime just as severe. For the habit of assigning a time for every duty, and punctually performing everything in its time, is of great value in the formation of character. And every good school is something more than a place for the acquire- ment of knowledge. It should serve as a discipline for the orderly performance of work all through life ; it should set up a high standard of method and punctuality, should train to habits of organized and steadfast effort, should be " an image of the mighty world." In separating a school into classes two conditions have ciassifica- ^° ^^ fulfilled — that the scholars shall be near tion. enough in ability and knowledge to work well together, to help and not hinder one another, and that there shall be a sufficient number of scholars in one class to secure real emulation and mental stimulus. A large school in which the ages range from 10 to 15 may for the former purpose have five classes. Indeed, it may be roughly said that there should be as many classes as there are years in the school-life of the scholars. Otherwise, you will be mingling children in the same class whose attainments and powers differ so widely that either some of them will be held back, or others will be urged to progress too rapidly. The School : Its Aims and Organisation, 75 On the other hand^ it is essential that chisses shonkl be of a certain size ; and I believe that every teacher who under- stands his business prefers large classes to small ones. There are advantages in the fellowship and sympathy which are generated by numbers^ in the self-knowledge which the presence of others gives to each, and especially in the stimulus which a dull or commonplace child receives from hearing the answers and witnessing the performances of the best in the class. And these advantages cannot be gained in a small class. In fact, I believe it is as easy to teach 20 together as 10; and that in some respects the work is done with more zest and more brightness. So it will be seen that the two conditions we have laid down cannot both be fulfilled except in schools of a certain. size. There is in fact an inevitable waste of resources and of teaching power in any school of less than 100 children; and a very serious waste in small schools of 20 or 30. In all of them you must either sacrifice the uniformity of the teaching, or you must, at considerable cost, have a teacher for every group of six or seven scholars, and in such classes must sacrifice the intellectual life and spirit which num- bers alone can give. For the sake of this intellectual life I should be prepared to make some sacrifices of other con- siderations, and even to incur the risk in small schools of keeping back one or two elder scholars, or pushing now and then a backward scholar a little farther on than would otherwise be desirable. The most joyless and unsatisfac- tory of all schools are those in which each child is treated individually, is working few or no exercises in common with others, and comes up to be questioned or to say a lesson alone. In examining a scholar on entrance, before the age of ten, it is well to determine his position mainly by his read- 76 Lectures on Teaching. ing and by his arithmetic. Above that age, especially in a school in which language forms the staple fxanSna^- of the higher instruction, an elementary exam- *^^^' ination in Latin, in Arithmetic and in Eng- lish will suffice to determine his position. These are the best rough tests for choosing the class in which he should be placed. If you are in doubt, it is safer and better to put him low at first rather than too high. It is always easy as well as pleasant to promote him afterwards, if you have at first underestimated his powers; and it is neither easy nor pleasant to degrade him if you begin by making a mistake in the other direction. I do not think it desir- able to have separate classification for different subjects, except for special subjects such as drawing or music, in which the individual gifts and tastes of children other- wise alike in age and standing necessarily difi^er consider- ably. But for all the ordinary subjects of class instruction, language, history, reading, writing, and lessons on science, it is well to keep the same scholars together. A little latitude may perhaps be allowed for scholars in the same class who have made different degrees of progress in Arith- metic, and it will not always be possible or desirable that all the scholars in a class should be working exactly the same sums. Yet even here we have to ask ourselves what we mean by progress. It does not mean hurrying on to an advanced rule, but a fuller mastery over the applica- tions of the lower rules. I would therefore resist the very natural desire of the more intelligent scholars, who may have got on faster, and perhaps finished all the exercises in the text-book under a particular rule, to go on to a new rule before their fellows. It is much better to let them occupy their time either in recapitulation, or in doing ex- ercises you have specially selected from a more difficult The School : Its Aims and Organisation. 77 book^ and in dealing with rather more complex exempli- fications of the lower rules. When a new rule is taken, the whole class should begin it at once; because, as we shall hereafter see, the oral exposition of a new rule is an es- sential part of class- work; and it is one in which you cannot dispense with that kind of intellectual exercise which comes from questioning, cross-questioning, and mutual help. And if this be true of Arithmetic, then cer- tainly it is true of every other subject which is usually taught in schools. A word or two may be properly added on the subject of fees. They will have a necessary tendency to increase, as the value of money alters, and the public estimation of good teaching rises. Already the sums mentioned on p. 63, which were recommended by the Schools^ Inquiry Commission in 1867, have often proved to be insufficient for the satisfactory conduct even of schools provided with good buildings for which no interest has to be paid. Much will depend on the size of the school — for the cost per head is reduced when num- bers are large — and much also upon the character of the l^lace and it surroundings, and upon the value, if any, of the endowment the school possesses. But whatever the fees prescribed, they should be inclusive of all the school charges, and of all the subjects taught in it. There is no harm in graduating fees by age, or in imposing a heavier charge on those who come into the school late. But there should be no graduation by subjects — no extras, except perhaps for instrumental music, or other special subject requiring quasi-private instruction. Nothing is more fatal to the right classification of a school, and to its corporate unity, than the necessity of appealing to the parent at each stage of a pupil's career, to know if this or that par- ^8 Lectures on Teaching. ticular subject can be afforded or sanctioned. A school is not a mart in which separate purchases may be made for each scholar at discretion of so much French^ or Latin or Mathematics^ but an organized community for the pur- poses of common instruction^ in which no other distinction should be recognized among the scholars than the fitness of each to enter a particular class or to commence a new study. And of this fitness the principal teacher should be the sole judge. There may be in special circumstances good reasons fox reducing the fee to the holders of scholar- ships or exhibitions; but the fee prescribed by regulation for those who have no special privilege should always be such as shall honestly avow to the parents the true market value of the education imparted^ and as shall place within the reach of every scholar who is admitted, without excep- tion, the full advantage of all the instruction which the school can furnish. The School-room and Its Appliances. 79 III. THE SCHOOL-EOOM AND ITS APPLI- ANCES. We may fitly devote one of our meetings to the con- sideration of the physical conditions under r^^^ physical which school work should be carried on^ and successful °^ the merely material equipments and appli- teaching:, ances which are needed in teaching. Such considerations are of great importance. No effective teaching is possi- ble when children are in a state of physical discomfort. We cannot afford to despise one of the artifices which science and experience have adopted^ for making our scholars more at ease, and putting them into a more re- ceptive attitude for instruction. What then are the most favorable external conditions under which the work of a school can be carried. on ? There is first the necessity for sufficient space. In the elementary schools it is an imperative require- ment that at least eight square feet of floor ^^"* area shall be provided for every child, and this in a room ten feet high means a total space of 80 cubic feet. This is the minimum ; and in schools provided by the rates it has of late been the practice to require a larger space — ten superficial feet or 100 cubic feet. But a more liberal provision still is needed in good secondary schools. For you have not only to provide sitting-room at a desk for each scholar, but room for each class to stand up and means for combining two or more classes for collective lessons. It is obvious that the space-requirement must 8o Lectures on Teaching. be mainly determined By the nature of the organization of the school^ whether in separate class-rooms or in one large room. As a general rule there is no harm in pro- viding an isolated class-room for every class for which you are also able to provide a responsible adult teacher who does not need constant supervision. And many modern schools are constructed on the theory that all the work is to be done in class-rooms, and that all the space needed is a sufficient number of such rooms to seat all the scholars. But there are occasions on which it is desirable that all the scholars should assemble together ; for morning or evening prayer, for singing, or for collective addresses. Without a central hall large enough to contain the whole of the scholars, the corporate life of a school cannot be properly sustained and many opportunities are lost of making the scholars conscious of their relations to each other and to the general repute and success of the school. And it is manifest that if such a central hall is used for these public purposes alone, and not for teaching, much space is wasted, and the estimate of area already given must be multiplied by two. In some modern schools the various class-rooms are arranged in the four sides of a quadrangle which is covered in, and which serves the double purpose of a central hall and of a common entrance to all the rooms. In this way you economize sjDace and dispense altogether with the necessity for a corridor. Moreover such an arrangement renders the assembling of all the scholars from their separate rooms, and the dis- missal of all to their work after the roll-call or the prayers of the morning, a simpler and easier process. On the whole, experience shows that in a well-planned, lofty room two or three or even more different classes may work apart without any disadvantage ; and this arrange- The School-room and Its Appliances. 8i meiit is a very convenient one for securing clue supervis- ion over younger teachers, and especially for the occasional junction of two or three classes for some lecture or special exercise which may be given collectively. Of course, if you are in circumstances which make you indifferent to cost, it is a good thing to have class-room accommoda- tion enough for the wliole school, and a central hall for no other than quasi-public gatherings. Even then some of the adjacent class-rooms should be so divided by mova- ble partitions that two of them may be readily thrown into one when occasion requires. But when circumstances render it important to economize space or money, one large room which will hold the entire school for collective purposes, and class-rooms enough to hold half the scholars, will suffice. This arrangement presupposes that, for or- dinary class work, one half of the classes will meet and receive their lessons side by side in the principal room. Thus, taking 100 as the unit, there should be one room of 45 ft. by 20, in which all can sit, but in which half are habitually taught ; and two class-rooms, about 15 by 17, each sufficiently large to provide accommodation for 25 scholars. Class-rooms should be adjacent and should have glass doors, not necessarily for easier supervision, though that is important, but for increase of light. As to light, we have to remember that all glare should be avoided, and that therefore southern win- dows are not the best. It is well to have one southern window for cheerfulness, but the main light should be the steadier and cooler light from the north. I hardly need say that though sunshine may easily be in excess in a school-room, you cannot have too much of it in a play-ground. The best light for working purposes is from the roof; but skylights are often hard to open, 82 Lectures on Teaching. and in snowy weather are apt to become obscured. They should not therefore be the only windows. Yon secure a better diffusion of light throughout a room and avoid shadows by having all windows high up^ the lowest part being 6 or 7 ft. from the ground. But this is not, owing to the structure of rooms, always possible. When windows are low side light is preferable both to that from behind, which causes the pupil to sit in his own shadow, and to that from the front, which is apt to distress his eyes. And of side lights that from the left hand is always the best; otherwise the pupiFs writing is done at a disadvantage and in the shadow of his own pen. In planning desks, you have to consider several re- quirements : (1) They should be comfortable, with a height of 2 ft. for little children, and 2 ft. 6 in. to 3 ft. for older scholars ; the seat in both cases being about as high from the ground as the length of the leg from the knee to the foot. There should be a back rail not more than 10 inches high, and for very young- children about 7 inches high, to give support just at that portion of the back where it is most needed. Most backs to seats and pews are too high. (2) They should be easy of access ; for in writing-lessons, half the work of the teacher consists in going round the class pointing out the errors, correcting and pencilling them ; and this is im- possible if the desks are long or too crowded. At least 1 ft. 8 in. should be allowed for each child. In some of the American schools access is facilitated by giving to each scholar a separate desk and seat, the latter revolv- ing on a pivot, and having its own back like a chair. But this is a very expensive arrangement. In the schools of the School Board for London, the desks are called ^^ dual.'^ Each of these measures about 3 ft. 4 in. long. The School-room and Its Appliances. 83 and accommodates two children. They are constructed with a hinge, so that the front half can he lifted np when standing exercises are given. (3) The seats of scholars should he compactly arranged ; so that for teaching the whole class may be brought well into one focus, and not spread over too wide an area for thorough supervision and economy of voice. This requirement appears to con- flict in some measure with the first-named conditions. Yet it seems so important that, for the sake of it, I should be inclined to sacrifice some other advantages. The desks should be so arranged that the angle of vision for the teacher does not exceed 45°. It is a mistake to have more than five desks deep. If there are six the scholars be- hind are too far off for effective oversight or perfect hear- ing. (4) Desks should be very slightly sloped, nearly flat, and about 1 foot wide ; it will suffice if the seats have a width of 8 inches. 1 There should be a shelf-space un- derneath for books or slates, and when each scholar has a fixed place allotted to him, this space may be kept for all his own books and belongings. But except for a very limited number of the eldest and most trustworthy scholars in a High School, it is not well to have lockers ; all pigeon-holes and covered spaces which are appro- priated to the use of individual scholars should be open or easily openable ; there should be no secrets or private hoards and the occasional and frequent inspection of them is itself a useful discipline in neatness. (5) I would have you distrust all contrivances by which desks like Gold- ^ For fuller details on this subject, and indeed on most of the topics treated in this chapter, the reader will do well to consult an excellent work, Robson's School Architecture, and also an American work by Barnard on the same subject. 84 Lectures on leaching. smith's " bed by night and chest of drawers by day " un- dertake to serve two purposes, e.g. to turn over and fur- nish a back suited for older people in a lecture-room, or to be fixed horizontally two together to make a tea-table. All such devices are unsatisfactory and involve a sacrifice of complete fitness for school purposes. The desks should be so arranged that the teacher from his desk should com- mand the whole group. There are two ways of effecting this. If his own desk is on the floor, the fourth and fifth, rows of desks at the back should be raised by two steps, so that each shall be higher than that in front. If, on the other hand, all the scholars' desks are on the same level floor, he himself should have his desk on a mounted estrade or platform. (6) We have to remember also that all the work of a scholar has not to be done at a desk. For the due maintenance of life and animation in teach- ing, it is well, as I have already said, to give some of the lessons to scholars in a standing position. The change of attitude is a relief, and is conducive to mental activity. Do not therefore have so large a j^ortion of your school or class-room encumbered with desks as to make this ar- rangement impossible. Always have space enough re- served to enable you to draw out the class into the form of a standing semi-circle. The questions of warmth and of ventilation should al- ways be considered together. They are rather eati ation. complex, owing to the very dift'erent form of buildings, the aspect of the rooms, and the relative posi- tion of near and surrounding objects. Teachers have few opportunities of being consulted by architects about the requirements on which they wish to insist, but it is well to have a few principles in view, ready for such an oppor- tunity when it occurs. We have to remember that each The School-room and Its Appliances. 85 of ITS breathes about 16 times a minute or 960 times an hour^ and that every time we do tliis the air in any con- fined room is partly vitiated. The indispensable thing is that every room should have some means of admitting fresh and emitting foul air. There are several ways of attaining this. When rooms open out into a corridor, a good place for a ventilator is over the door ; when a group of gas-burners is in the centre of the room, there should be a ventilating shaft above it to carry off the products of combustion. In some cases a ventilating opening in the wall of the chimney above the fireplace is useful. And for the admission of fresh air, a Tobin ventilating shaft in the corner of the room, communicating below with the outer air and open about 7 feet above the floor, so as to introduce a current of air where no draught will be felt by the head, is often an eft'ective experiment. But all windows should be made to open, both at the top and bottom ; and in any interval which occurs in the work of the class, they should be opened. A very slight opening both at the top and the bottom of a window at the same time is often found to be elfectual as a ventilator ; for you have here what the engineers call an upward and a downward shaft, the colder air coming in at the bottom, and passing upwards so as to expel the bad air at the upper opening. And if, owing to the defective supply of means for attaining this purpose, you have any reason to suppose that the air is likely to become bad in a three hours^ sitting of the school, it is a good plan to break up the class for ten minutes when half the morning's or after- noon's work is over, and in this short interval to throw open all the windows and introduce a fresh supply, even in the coldest weather, of pure air. The little sacrifice of time will be more than compensated. 86 Lectures on Teaching, As to warmth, we have to remember that the tempera- ture, if work — especially sedentary work — is to Warmth. . . _, . / , •; be carried on m comfort, should not in any school-room be lower than 60°. But it is bad policy to get warmth by vitiating the air, e.g. by gas-stoves, "by stoves not provided with flues, by steam, or by large heated metal surfaces. On the whole, except for very large schools, open fires, if judicious arrangements are made to sur- round them with proper reflecting surfaces and also to diffuse an equable temperature through the room and to prevent waste of fuel, are best for the purposes of heat and ventilation as well as of cheerfulness. It may be added that a gray color is better for the walls than either a more pronounced and strong color or simple wdiite. Of the teaching appliances in the room, no one is more important than the Blackboard. We may not Apparatus. jDerhaps go so far as the enthusiastic Char- bonneau, wdio says '^ Le tableau noir, c'est le vie d'en- seignement,^' but we may safely say that no school or class- room is complete without one ; that there is no single subject of instruction wherein constant recourse should not be had to it ; and that it and all its proper appurtenances of clialk, sponge, and duster should always be within easy reach, that there may be no excuse for dispensing with its aid whenever it is wanted. Perhaps there is no one crux by which you may detect at once so clearly the difference between a skilled and an u.nskilled teacher, as the fre- quency and tact wdth which he uses the blackboard. In some American schools there is a blackboard all around the Toom, 4 or 5 ft. wide ; and the black surface close to the teacher's desk extends nearly to the ceiling. This sur- face is more often of slate than of wood, and is sometimes The School-room and Its Appliances. 87 of a material known as liquid slating. It is occasionally of a green color instead of black, as offering a pleasanter surface to the eye ; but diagrams and writing are apt to be less clear when any color but black is adopted. I will give you from the official regulations of the Bel- gian Government the list of objects required to be provided in every State school : a state school A bust or portrait of the King, some re- ligious pictures, a small shelf or case for the teacher^s own books of reference, a collection of weights and meas- ures, a set of diagrams or pictures for each of the subjects taught. A map of Europe, a map of Belgium, a globe, a special map of the province, and a cadastral plan (ordnance map) of the commune in which the school is situated. A small collection of objects of natural history, illus- trative, as far as possible, of the flora, fauna, and physical products of the district. A clock ; a thermometer ; and a collection illustrative of the principal geometrical forms. A frame or board on which to affix all programmes and special rules, as well as the permanent time-table of the class. To this one might add that an easel on which maps or diagrams may be displayed is useful, and that all books, slates, and other objects in use in the class should Ije kept in an easily accessible cupboard in the room itself, not only because all these things should be at hand — other- wise there is a pretext sometimes for trying to do without them — but also because all fetching and carrying from store cujDboards at a distance increase the risk of loss and destruction. SS Lectures on Teaching. We are to remember that over and above the conve- nience and economy which have to be secured nitureim- in reo'ard to all school material, there are im- portant as . . discipline in portant incidental purposes to be served by- care and method in all these material arrange- ments. We have to teach respect for public property, care in handling things which are not our own or which have no visible owner. It is notorious that this is much disre- garded in higher schools for boys, and- that the aspect of, the desks and school furniture in them is such as would be simply, disgraceful in a school for the poor. There seems no good reason for this difference. I would there- fore never permit the school-room to be used for play, or to be open as a common room out of school hours when there is no supervision. Eemember too that every time you enlist the services of the scholars in some little effort to render the school-room± and its surroundings more comely and attractive, jou are doing something to en- courage the feeling of loyalty and pride in the school, and are doing still more to educate them into a joerception of beauty, and a desire for refined and tasteful surroundings. In schools for the poor, this aim is especially important ; but in schools for children of every rank, it must be borne in mind that the careful and artistic arrangement of all the school material, and of all pictures and illustrations, is a silent but very effective lesson in good taste ; and will go far to make children love order and neatness. Whoever carries into his own home a feeling of discom- fort and of aesthetic rebellion against dirt, vulgarity, and untidiness, has learned a lesson which is of considerable value as a foundation for an orderly life. Old Joseph Lan- caster's rule, '^ A place for everything and everything in its place,'' is of universal application. The School-room and Its Appliances. 89 The registration of admission and of attendance in ele- mentary schools subsidized by government grants demands a special and minute care^ owing to the fact that a portion of the grant is assessed according to the attendance ; some of the payments made being dependent on the average attendance of scholars and some on the aggregate of attendances made by the particular scholars presented for examination. Hence^ for the elementary schools the strictest rules are laid down (1) for the marking of every attendance, (2) for the com- putation of the number of attendances registered for each child in every year and in every separate school term, (3) for the computation of averages in each class, and of the whole school : the total number of all the registered at- tendances being of course for this purpose divided by the number of times in which the school has been open. No erasures are ever allowed. An exact estimate is thus easily arrived at as to the degree in which the work of the school has been interrupted by irregularity of attendance, and as to the proportion of the actual attendance to the number of those whose names appear on the school reg- isters. IsTothing so elaborate is needed in the case of higher schools, partly because no grant of public money is in- volved, and partly because in such schools the scholars attend much more regularly. But I am sure that the im- portance of careful registration is insui^iciently recognized in our secondary and high schools ; and I think that even in the best of them it is essential that there should be a systematic record for each pupil of these particulars : (1) the date of admission and the exact age ; (2) the date of promotion to a higher class or of the entry on a new study ; (3) absence ; (4) lateness ; (5) the result of each examina- tion ; (6) any punishment or failure of duty. 90 Lectures on Teaching. You want all these particulars for your own satisfac- tion : and also for reference when you send Commtuiica- -^ tionto to the parent of each scholar, at the end of parents. ^ ' the term^ a tabulated statement showing his precise position as to attendance^ conduct, and progress. The particulars which parents have a right to expect from a well-ordered school, and which may easily be recorded and summarized at the end of the term wherever the habitual book-keeping is careful, are these : The number of times in which the scholar has been ab- sent from a lesson or late in attendance. The result of any examinations which may have been held within the term. The number of scholars in the class to which he be- longs. His standing, in order of merit, in regard to each sub- ject of instruction. His place in the form or class, as determined by the col- lective result of his work. A general estimate of his conduct. So long as these particulars are held in view, it matters little what form the report takes. You will r^pM-fsof of course preserve a duplicate of every such progress. report. Each teacher will do well to adopt his own form, and to determine on his own particular mode of estimation, whether arithmetical, by the use of mere figures or marks ; or more general, by the use of such symbols as Excellent, Good, Fair, Moderate, and Im- perfect. The thing to be chiefly borne in mind in the choice of your system of marking is to reduce to a mini- mum the chance of caprice and guess-work, and not to at- tempt to record anything unless you have carefully pre- The School-room and Its Appliances, 91 served the data by which you can assure yourself that the record is thoroughly accurate. Some teachers^ in their zeal for comprehensiveness of statement, have columns for deportment, for politeness, and for other moral qualities which are in their nature very difficult to estimate, and in respect to which haphazard and therefore somewhat un- just estimates are almost necessarily made. For example I have seen in some foreign schools columns for register- ing " moralite d^eleves," " dispositions naturelles," and other impossible data. Here the rule is a good one : Do not pretend to measure with arithmetical exactness quali- ties and results which are essentially incapable of such measurement. In the French Lycees, the system of registration is often very elaborate. There is (1) Eegistre d^inscription, (2) Eegistre d'appel, or attendance, (3) Eegistre des Compo- sitions, and (4) Eegistre des bons points, in which marks are recorded for conduct, and for the results of every class or other examination. The whole of these marks are added up and tabulated at the end of every month, a copy being kept by the pupil, and one sent to his parents or guar- dians. One of the requirements in the public elementary schools, which at first appeared to many of ^^^^^^1 the teachers to be a needless addition to the diaries. routine and burden of their lives, is the keeping of what called a Log-book or School Diary. It is a thick volume, such as will last for a good many years, and is generally fastened with a Bramah lock. The Code requires that entries shall be made in this book at least once a week, and that thus a record shall be kept of the Inspector's re- port_, of changes in the staff, of visits of managers, and 9^ Lectures on Teaching. other facts concerning the school and its teachers. It is not permitted to enter reflections or opinions of a general character. Now the practice thus enforced by anthority has come to be generally approved and liked on its own merits^ and has been found of considerable value. Many little circumstances in the history of a school which ap- pear of no importance at the moment require to be re- called afterwards^ and are seen to have unexpected value when referred to. The date of the entry of a new teacher en his duty^ the introduction of any new school-book^ or plan, or piece of apparatus ; the starting of a new series of lessons ; the result of a periodical examination ; special occurrences m relation to the discipline of the school ; j)romotion of scholars from one class to another ; any un- usual circumstance which affects the attendance ; the visit of a stranger or a governor — all these are matters which are easy to jot down at the time of their occurrence ; and which serve to make up the history of the school, and to give continuity and interest to its life. The adoption of the plan may be strongly recommended in schools of all grades. It may be well also to remember that, especially in School book- schools of any size in which the number of keeping:. books and the quantity of school material given out is large, there should always be a Stock-book, in which a ledger is kept, showing how and when books and sta- tionery are given out, and to whom. The office of keep- ing the needful record is a very simple one, which may well devolve on an assistant, or even on an elder scholar ; and it will be found that the practice conduces to economy and order ; and enables you to know exactly in what di- rection to look, if you have reason to suspect negligence or waste. The School-room and Its Appliances, 93 I spoke in the first lecture of the importance of the habit of preparing- the notes of many and in- jeachers' deed most of the lessons you give. To this I note-books, may now add that such notes should not be on fugitive scraps, but should always be made in a book and carefully preserved. Unless a teacher does this habituall} he squan- ders much time and effort, and has the weary task of pre- paring many of his lessons over again. Suppose you keep a brief record of the plan and order of each lesson, of the books or authorities you consulted in getting it up ; sup- pose you add a little note after giving it, stating whether- it proved too long or too short, too easy or too difficult ; and indicating for your own private information how it might be more effectively given next time ; and lastly sup- pose you leave a blank space at the end of each, and enter in it from time to time, as new information comes in your way, other facts or references which will be helpful when- ever you go over the same ground again ; you will find the practice easy and well calculated to economize time and power. It will bring all your wider reading and added ex- perience to bear on the enrichment of your professional resources ; it wdll aid you in gathering up the fragments of life's teaching " that nothing be lost." In the higher classes, and for all lessons which take the form of lectures, it is a good practice to scholars' let the scholars have note-books, to take down note-books, at the moment any details which are likely to escape the memory. But such note-taking is of no value whatever, unless the notes are used afterwards as helps to the writ- ing out of an amplified and careful summary of the con- tents of the lesson. Mere note-taking is often one of the most delusive and unfruitful of practices. Consider for a moment, what is the purpose which the taking of notes 94 Lectures on Teaching. ought to serve. I have seen students in reading Fronde's history, or Mill's Logic, sit down with the book on one side of them and a large note or commonplace hook on the other into which they have laboriously made copious ex- tracts. There seems to be a good deal to show for this effort ; but the result often is that the author's thoughts have merely been transferred out of one book into another ; and the proportion of these thoughts which have actually found a lodgment in the student's intelligence is very small indeed. There has been a mechanical process of appropriation, not a rational one.^ The true way to make notes of a book when you read it iTote-takinff ^^ — ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^-"^ — ^^ mark in the margin generally. -j-j^g passages which you feel to be of most value, and to make at the end a little index of references, which will differ from the printed index, in being specially suited to you, and calculated to help you in consulting the book hereafter. But except for these purposes, I would not read with a pencil in hand, or copy out ex- tracts. It is far better to read through an entire chapter or section, while the whole faculty is bent on following the reasoning or understanding the facts. Then when you have closed the book, and while your memory is fresh, sit down, and reproduce in your own words as much of the contents of the chapter as you please. By this means you will have been forced to turn the subject over in your own mind, to ruminate a little, and so to make it your own ^ " Men seldom read again what they have committed to paper, nor remember what they have so committed one iota the better for their additional trouble. On the contrary, I believe it has a direct tendency to destroy the promptitude and tenuity of mem- ory by diminishing the vigor of present attention and seducing the mind to depend on future reference," — Sydney Smith. The School-room and Its Appliances. 95 But unless this process of rumination goes on^ there is no security that any of the knowledge you are tr3dng to ac- quire is actually assimilated. And the same rule applies to the use of note-books during lectures. Many students make a great effort to seize rapidly whole sentences and to set them down at the time ; but while they are writing one down, another follows which gravely modifies the first, and this escapes them. Thus they get a few disjointed fragments, torn from their proper connection, and they fail to gain any true intellectual advantage from the whole. I am aware that the judicious use of a note-book depends a good deal on the special character of the teaching ; and that a good many lecturers in the Universities and else- where expressly adapt their prelections to the case of stu- dents who take notes. I have heard very able lectures which took the form of measured, brief, but very pregnant sentences, in which the lecturer had been at the pains to concentrate as much thought as possible ; these sentences being slowly uttered, with a sufhcient pause at the end of each, to allow quick writers to take down the whole ver- latim. Undoubtedly the note-book result in such cases seems to have considerable value. But it may well be doubted whether the most effective teaching ever takes the form of a dictation lesson ; still more may it be doubted whether when this method is adopted enough is done to make the students thinkers as well as receivers, on the subject which they learn. Whenever the object of the lecture is to expound principles, to illustrate them in an ample and varied way, and to show the learner rather the processes by which the results are arrived at than the formulated results and conclusions themselves, you fail to derive any real advantage from very copious note-tak- ing. It is distracting, not helpful. You get a few de- g6 Lectures on Teaching, tached sentences, perhaps, which in an unqualified way and out of their true perspective are no fair representa- tion of the lecturer's meaning : tlie continuity of his ar- gument is broken while you are picking out these frag- ments ; and you fail wholly to get the particular kind of stimulus and help which the lecturer wants to give. If, on the other hand, you will listen attentively, seek to follow the reasoning, and to possess yourself not only of the aphorisms and conclusions, but of the processes by which they have been arrived at ; and perhaps now and then jot down a characteristic phrase, a heading or some hint as to the order of the thought ; and tlien, on get- ting home, revolve the whole matter in your mind, and write down in your ov/n words an orderly summary of your recollections, there will be a genuine acquisition. You will be sure that some at least of what you have tried to learn has been actually assimilated. And I would counsel the adoption of the same rule in permitting your scholars the practice of note-taking. Teach them how to use note-books. Do not let them suppose that the re- production of your phrases is of any use. Do not mistake means for ends. It is a chemical not a mechanical com- bination you want. It is the writing out of memo- randa after the lecture which serves this purpose and is of real intellectual value ; not the notes taken during the lecture itself. And of these notes you have no assurance that they have served any good purpose unless they are ultimately translated out of your phraseology into the student's own language. On the larger subject of School-books and Manuals much might be said. But it would obviously be beside the mam purpose of these lectures if I were to take upon myself to recommend particular The School-room and Its Appliances, 97 books, and so possibly to do injustice to the authors and publishers of many excellent books which I have never seen. The truth is that goodness and fitness in a school- book are not absolute but relative terms. They depend entirely on the person who uses it. That book is the best for each teacher which he feels he can use best, and which suits best his own method and ideal of work. Even if the best conceivable criticism could be brought to bear on all the innumerable manuals now in use, and they could be arranged in the order of abstract merit, such criticism might not help you much. There would still remain for each of you the responsibility of making your own choice. Indeed some of the best and most vigorous teaching I have ever heard has been given by teachers who were con- sciously using a very bad book, and who were goaded by it into remonstrance and criticism, which were in them- selves very instructive and stimulating to the learner. I remember well my own teacher of mathematics. Profes- sor De Morgan, and his animated polemic against Dil- worth and Walkinghame, and especially poor Eobert Simson's edition of Euclid. His anger, his pitiless sar- casm, as he denounced the dulness of these writers and exposed the crudeness of their mathematical conceptions, were in themselves well calculated to sharpen the percep- tions of his students. The bad book in the hands of a skilful teacher proved to be better than the best book in the hands of an ordinary practitioner. I am not, how- ever, prepared to recommend ^e use of bad , books as a general expedient. But it cannot be too clearly under- stood that the right choice of a book depends entirely on the use you mean to make of it. If you are, as every teacher ought to be, fluent and skilful in oral exposition, you will need very little of the sort of 98 Lectures on Teaching. explanation which school-books <3ontain; your chief want will be supplied by books of well-graduated exercises, by which your oral teaching may be supplemented, fixed, thrust home, and brought to a point. But if, on the other hand, you want explanations, rules, and a knowledge of principles, mere books of exercises will not suffice. You need the treatises more or. less full, — say of grammar, of arithmetic, of geography,— and I will not promise that when you have got the best of them your pupils will be able to make progress with their help alone. The best explana- tions in school-books are concise, and therefore generally inadequate. They need expansion and much comment. The Educational Eeading Eoom at South Kensington is a great resource. In it you will always find very easy of access all the newest and best school-books, which you can sit down and examine, and from which it is not difficult to determine what form of manual will suit your purpose best. Some of the tests by which the goodness of a school- book may be determined are not however diffi- Some tests of a good cult to lay down. Take a Eeadiner-book for school-book. "^ ^ . example. You have here to secure: that it is well printed and attractive, that it is not silly and too childish, that the passages selected are not too short and scrappy, but continuous enough to be of some value in sustaining thought, and that every lesson contains a few — a very few — new words which are distinct additions to the reader's vocabulary. Above all it concerns you to be much more anxious about the style than about the amount of information which is packed into the book. So also of a book of History or Science, I should not choose that which comprised in it the greatest mass of facts, but that which was best written and most likely to encourage the student The School-room and Its Appliances. 99 to desire a larger and fuller book. As to French, Latin and English Grammars, to hooks on Arithmetic and Geography, it concerns us much more to secure a good logical arrange- ment of rules; proper distinction of type between impor- tant and unimportant facts, between typical rules and ex- ceptional rules ; with good searching and well-arranged exercises, than anything else. One good test of a Grammar or delectus, or of a manual of any kind, is this : Does it, as soon as it has helped the student to know something, instantly set him to do something which requires him to use that knowledge, and to show that he has really ac- quired it ? E.g. If it explains a new term, does it require the learner soon to use that term ? If it states a rule, does it give him instantly occasion to put the rule in practice ? If it points out a new logical or grammatical distinction, does it challenge him forthwith to find new instances and illustrations of that distinction ? These seem to me to be the chief purposes which a book can serve — to supple- ment oral teaching, not to furnish an excuse for dispensing with it. I suppose the task of making compendiums, and trying to reduce the essence of a good many books into a cheap school manual, is a depressing one. At all events school-books must, I fear, as a rule be placed in the cate- gory — let us say — of uninspired writings. Their authors often evince a great want of imagination and a curious incapacity to discriminate between the significant and in- significant, between the little and the great. That is pre- cisely the deficiency wdiich a good teacher has to supply, and it can only be supplied by vigorous oral teaching. The usefulness and need of School Libraries depend very much on the character of the school. In every Libraries. Boarding School they are indispensable ; as children have leisure to be filled and tastes to be formed. loo Lectures on Teaching. and a life to live which is not wholly that of the school. But even in Day Schools there is great need for such ad- juncts to the materials for instruction^ and this need is becoming more and more recognized. Until a good library is attached as a matter of course to every one of our ele- mentary schools^ a great opportunity of refining the taste and enlarging the knowledge of the young will continue to be wasted^ and the full usefulness of those institutions will remain unattained. After all^ it is the main business of a primary school^ and indeed a chief part of the busi- ness of every school, to awaken a love of reading, and to give children pleasant associations with the thought of books. When once a strong appetite for reading has been excited the mere money difficulty of providing the library in a school for the poor is already half overcome. For sub- scriptions from children and their parents, gifts from kindly friends, are obtainable without much difficulty, whepever a teacher makes up his mind that the object is worth attaining, and casts about in earnest for the means of attaining it. ISTow granting that you have to form a school library. How to ^^' ^^^^^ your advice is asked by those who desire choose them. \^q purchase or give one, what sort of books will you select ? That is a question worth thinking about. In the first place, you will get books of reference, good manuals, such as you need for amplifying a school lesson. You constantly have to say in teaching: " There is a fuller account of this incident in such a book." " There are some anecdotes about this animal, or a poem descriptive of this place, by such a writer." Or ^^ I should like you to read up the life of this eminent man before we have our next lesson." And for purposes like these it is of great importance to have the best books of reference — books fuller and larger than mere school-books — within reach. The School-room and Its Appliances. loi ■---^^ _ This remark applies to all schools alike. But besiaes this, it adds to the value of a child's school-life, if something can be done by it to direct his reading and to teach him how to fill his leisure profitably. In a secondary day- school, to which pupils come from orderly and intelligent homes, this particular purpose is of less importance than elsewhere, because it may be presumed that educated pa- rents will look after the leisure reading of their children. It is in schools for the poor, and in all boarding-schools, that a general library is most needed. Yet in making the selection I would not, in the first place, fill the library with children's books, 11 1 1 1 -. 1 -1 Not always though of course there should be a sjood many children's ^ D ^ books. of them. Children often rebel, and with good cause, against books written purposely for them as a class. Such books are often too obviously written down to the level of a child's understanding. The childishness and simplicity which are affected by many persons who write children's books have a falsetto ring about them wdiich an intelligent child soon detects. He is no more content to confine his reading to books written specially for him as a child than you or I would be to read such books as are considered specially appropriate for persons of our age and profession. We want, and a child wants, to read some books, not specially meant for us or the class to which we belong, but which are good and interesting in them- selves, and were meant for the wdiole world. Nor would I confine my selection of library books to what ^^^ t, ^^^^ are technically called good books. I mean to ^ooks." books which are consciously instructive and moral. You do not want to be always reading such books yourselves. You know, even those of you who are most earnest in efforts after self-improvement, that you do not regulate all your reading with the distinct intention of getting in- I02 Lectures on Teaching, struction and improving yonr mind. Assume this to be true of a child. Eemember, if he is ever to love readings he must have room left to him to exercise a little choice. Think how rich the world is, how much there is to he known about it, its structure, its products, its' relation to other worlds, its -people, the great things that have been done in it, the great speculations that have been indulged in it, the very varied forms in which happiness has been enjoyed in it. And do not forget that, beyond the regioii of mere information about these things, there is the whole domain of wonderland, of fancy, of romance, of poetry, of dreams and fairy tales. Do not let us think scorn of that pleasant land, or suppose that all the fruit in the garden of the Lord grows on the tree of knowledge. Wonder, curiosity, the sense of the infinite, the love of w^hat is vast and remote, of the strange and the picturesque — all these things it is true are not knowledge in the school sense of the word. But they are capable in due time of being transformed into knowledge, — nay, into something better than knowledge — into wisdom and insight and power. So let us abstain from any attempt to direct a child's general reading in accordance with our own special tastes. Let us remember that all children have not the same in- tellex^tual appetites, and that the world would be a very uninteresting wo^ld if they had. We need not be disap- pointed if even our favorite pupils show reluctance to read the books which we specially recommend, and anceshouid" ^0 admire what we admire. Of course, we differen?*^^ have first to take care that all lessons are Stes!*^ ^^^^'