Measuring and weighing. Reading-books.

be got at experimentally with counters or coins. In these truths should be included all that we usually separate under the "First Four Rules," and with integers we may even from the first give a clear conception of the fractional parts of whole numbers, e.g., that one third of 6 is 2.*

Actual measuring and weighing, besides actual counting, go towards actual arithmetic for children.

All this teaching, if conducted as Dr. Vater would have conducted it, would not give children any distaste for learning or make them dread the sound of the school bell.

§ 10. I will suppose a child to have passed through such a course as this by the time he is eight or nine years old. Besides having some clear notions of number and form, he can now read and copy easy words. What we next want for him is a series of good reading-books, about things in which he takes an interest. The language must of course be simple, but the matter so good that neither master nor pupils will be disgusted by its frequent repetition.

The first volume may very well be about animals-dogs, horses, &c., of which large pictures should be provided, illustrating the text. The first cost of these pictures would be considerable, but as they would last for years, the expense to the friends of each child taught from them would be a mere trifle.

§ 11. The books placed in the hands of the children should be well printed and strongly bound. In the present penny-wise system, school-books are given out in cloth, and

* Tillich's boxes of bricks (sold by the B'ham Midland Educational Supply Company, and by Arnold, Briggate, Leeds), are very useful for "intuitive" arithmetic: for higher stages one might say the same of W. Wooding's "Decimal Abacus" with vertical wires.

Respect for books. Grammar. Reading.

the leaves are loose at the end of a fortnight, so that children get accustomed to their destruction and treat t as a matter of course. This ruins their respect for books, which is not so unimportant a matter as it may at first appear.

§ 12. After each reading lesson, which should contain at least one interesting anecdote, there should be columns of all the words which occurred for the first time in that lesson. These should be arranged according to their grammatical classification, not that the child should be taught grammar, but this order is as good as any other, and by it the child would learn to observe certain differences in words almost unconsciously.*

Here I cannot resist quoting an excellent remark from Helps's Brevia (p. 125). "We should make the greatest progress in art, science, politics, and morals, if we could tram up our minds to look straight and steadfastly and uninterruptedly at the thing in question that we are observing. This seems a very slight thing to do; but practically it is hardly ever done. Between you and the object rises a mist of technicalities, of prejudices, of previous knowledge, and, above all, of terrible familiarity." Perhaps

There are In

* The grammar question is still a perplexing one. spectors who require children (as I once heard in a remote country school) to distinguish "7 kinds of adverbs." Then we have children discriminating after the fashion of one of my own pupils, (I quote from a grammar paper,) "Parse it." "It is a prepreition. Almost all small words are prepreitions." In such cases it is very hard indeed to find any common ground for the minds of the old and the young. The true way I believe is to lead the young to make their own observations. The way is very very slow, but it developes power. I have lately seen an interesting little book on these lines, called Language Work by Dr. De Garmo (Bloomington, Ill., U.S.A.)

Silent and Vocal Reading.

it is this "terrible familiarity " that has prevented our seeing till quite lately that reading is the art of getting meaning by signs that appeal to the eye, not the art of reporting to otners the meaning we have thus arrived at. “Accustoming boys to read aloud what they do not first understand,” says Benjamin Franklin, “is the cause of those even set tones so common among readers, which, when they have once got a habit of using [them], they find so difficult to correct ; by which means, among fifty readers we scarcely find a good one." (Essays, Sk. of English Sch.) It seems to have escaped even Franklin's sagacity that reading aloud is a different art to the art of reading, and a much harder one. The two should be studied separately, and most time and attention should be given to silent reading, which is by far the more important of the two. Colonel F. W. Parker, who has successfully cultivated the power of "looking straight at" things, gives us in his Talks on Teaching the right rule for reading. "Changing," says he, "the beautiful power of expression, full of melody, harmony, and correct emphasis and inflection, to the slow, painful, almoșt agonising pronunciation that we have heard so many times in the school-room, is a terrible sin that we should never be guilty of. There is, indeed, not the slightest need of changing a good habit to a miserable one if we would follow the rule that the child has naturally followed all his life. Never allow a child to give a thought till he gets it" (p. 37). Now that the existence of a thought in children is allowed for, we may expect all sorts of improvements. Reading, as a means of ascertaining thought, is second only to hearing, and this art should be cultivated by giving children books of questions (e.g., Horace Grant's Arithmeti

Memorising poetry. Composition.

for Young Children), and requiring the learner silently to get at the question and then give the answer aloud.

§ 13. Easy descriptive and narrative poetry should be learnt by heart at this stage. That the children may repeat it well, they should get their first notions of it from the master viva voce. According to the usual plan, they get it up with false emphasis and false stops, and the more thoroughly they have learnt the piece, the more difficulty the master has in making them say it properly.

§ 14. Every lesson should be worked over in various ways. The columns of words at the end of the reading lessons may be printed with writing characters, and used for copies. To write an upright column either of words or figures is an excellent exercise in neatness. The columns will also be used as spelling lessons, and the children may be questioned about the meaning of the words. The poetry, when thoroughly learned, may sometimes be written. from memory. Sentences from the book may be copied either directly or from the black-board, and afterwards used for dictation.

§ 15. Boys should, as soon as possible, be accustomed to write out fables, or the substance of other reading lessons, in their own words. They may also write descriptions of things with which they are familiar, or any event which has recently happened, such as a country excursion. Every one feels the necessity, on grounds of practical utility at all events, of boys being taught to express their thoughts neatly on paper, in good English and with correct spelling. Yet this is a point rarely reached before the age of fifteen or sixteen, often never reached at all. The reason is, that written exercises must be carefully looked over by the master, or they are done in a slovenly manner. Anyone

Correcting exercises. Three kinds of books.

who has never taught in a school will say, "Then let the master carefully look them over." But the expenditure of time and trouble this involves on the master is so great, that in the end he is pretty sure either to written, or to neglect to look them over.

have few exercises The only remedy

is for the master not to have many boys to teach, and not to be many hours in school. Even then, unless he set apart a special time every day for correcting exercises, he is likely to find them "increase upon him."

16. The course of reading-books, accompanied by large illustrations, may go on to many other things which the children see around them, such as trees and plants, and so lead up to instruction in natural history and physiology. But in imparting all knowledge of this kind, we should aim, not at getting the children to remember a number of facts, but at opening their eyes, and extending the range of their interests.

§ 17. I should suggest, then, for children, three books to be used concurrently, viz., a reading book about animals and things, a poetry book, and a prose narrative or Æsop's Fables. With the first commences a series culminating in works of science; with the second, a series that should lead up to Milton and Shakespeare; the third should be succeeded by some of our best writers in prose.

§ 18. But many schoolmasters will shudder at the thought of a child's spending a year or two at school without ever hearing of the Heptarchy or Magna Charta, and without knowing the names of the great towns in any country of Europe. I confess I regard this ignorance with great equanimity. If the child, or the youth even, takes no interest in the Heptarchy and Magna Charta, and knows nothing of the towns but their names, I think him quite as