To assign the lesson in accordance with the ability of the class to acquire, requires judgment, knowledge and a large share of common sense. THE CLASS. -Selected. No teacher can make good scholars who does not manage the recitation skillfully. It is in this he will need his greatest tact, for he has much to lose or much to gain. If he fail he will have taught his pupils to hate school and study, will have paralyzed their efforts to learn, and will have created habits that must continue to cripple their energies through life. If he succeed, he will have the proud satisfaction of seeing the budding faculties of the human soul bloom under the culture of his hands, and happy hearts made wiser and better, will thank him for his kindness and care. -J. P. Wickersham. Class work enables the pupil to compare himself with others; but more than this it enables the teacher to see the child as nature has made him,-ambitious or indolent, honest or tricky, frank or deceitful, jealous or rejoicing in the success of his mate. Child nature is revealed in the class as it is nowhere else. THE TEACHER. -Selected. "What thou dost not know thou canst not tell." What a teacher knows superficially he teaches superficially. As no one can teach all he knows so one must know a subject thoroughly before he can teach it thoroughly. -J. N. Patrick. In considering a teacher's qualifications the power of exacting an interest in the recitations of his school may not be overlooked. No man can be successful for any length of time without this. This comprises what is usually implied by aptness to teach. -David P. Page. Let me put this before you. Your class is reading history. They come across the narrative of the battle of Marathon; the lesson-hearer examines them on the facts and puts at the top of his class the boy who writes them down most accurately from memory. Well, what has he written down? an auctioneer's catalogue of a series of actions. -Edward Thring. In The aim of the teacher should be to make himself useless. other words, the school should aim to lift the pupil to the plane of an independent thinker, capable of giving conscious direction to his intellectual life and of concentrating all his powers upon anything that is to be mastered. -Nathan C. Schaeffer. sson should be fitted on to what has preceded and to what is to llow. Each recitation should begin with a brief review of what as been gone over recently, and should close with a “preview" the next. -Ruric N. Roark. Another common mistake in giving lessons is the attempt to ach by the inductive method knowledge which can only be ught directly. The facts of history and biography, and some of e facts of geography and other elementary branches can only e taught directly, and the attempt to teach such knowledge by ductive or other indirect process is a waste of time and effort. -Emerson E. White. As a means toward these ends the pupil should have learned me portions of the subject-matter in an exact form, and should produce the substance of the lesson in his own language. HOROUGHNESS. -W. H. Payne. First, it must be taken into account that the word "thoroughess" has no fixed meaning, but is a relative term. Thoroughness one time and place is not thoroughness at another time and ace. Thoroughness in one person is not thoroughness in nother person, and thoroughness in the same person is not the me thing at different times. -B. A. Hinsdale. One of the main problems in teaching is how to get things membered that are useful but not interesting. The ordinary stance is the multiplication table. This is acquired by repetion, and nobody who has not taught knows what a tremendous mount of repetition is required. -R. H. Quick. Child study will perhaps find its most profitable field of investiation in the matter of arrested development. If it can tell the acher how far to push thoroughness toward the borders of echanical perfection, and where to stop just before induration nd arrest set in, it will reform all our methods of teaching. And can and will do this. The new psychology, in its two phases of rect physiological study of brain and nerves, and its observation I child development, will show us how to realize by education e ideals of the highest civilization. The prolonged infancy of an will be in less danger of curtailment through vicious school ethods. NQUIRY. -William T. Harris. There is no calling more delightful to those who like it; none hich seems such poor drudgery to those who enter upon it luctantly or merely as a means of getting a living. He who kes his work as a dose is likely to find it nauseous. -J.G. Fitch. had taught for years, and that his answer was, "I wish my boys to drink from a running stream, and not from a stagnant pool.' -Emerson E. White. An ignorant man has been defined as one "whom God has packed up and men have not unfolded." The best forces in such a one are perpetually paralyzed. Eyes he has, but he cannot see the length of his hand; ears he has, and all the finest sounds in creation escape him; a tongue he has, and it is forever blundering. -Newell Dwight Hillis. QUESTIONING. First, however, we may be fitly reminded that the art of putting questions is one of the first and most necessary arts to be acquired by a teacher. To know how to put a good question is to have gone a long way toward becoming a skillful and efficient instructor. WRITTEN RECITATION. -Selected. What an eye-opener a searching written examination would be in schools where teachers talk and explain much, and the pupils recite very little; where the instruction is given largely in the form of running talks without a halt to test results! -Emerson E. White. There are several good ends to be gained from a written recitation that are not reached by the oral. (1) It gives a drill in rapid writing, making the pupils use penmanship only as an instrument. (2) Writing a recitation accustoms the pupils to spell by eye. (3) Through a written recitation each pupil may be tested upon the whole lesson. (4) Writing the recitation affords a training in one of the most valuable forms of expression. -Ruric N. Roark. QUESTIONS FOR EXAMINATION 1. What is the meaning of the word recite? 2. Name the three factors concerned in the recitation. 3. What cautions are mentioned in connection with assigning the lesson? 4. What advantage has class recitation over individual instruction? 5. What is the relation of the teacher to the recitation? 6. Name the three principles which are generally recognized. 7. What is the object of the recitation? 8. In what respects is the written recitation sometimes advantageous? 9. What is your idea of the meaning of "being thorough"? 10. In the light of this lesson what, in your mind, constitutes a good recitation? CHAPTER XIII ORAL INSTRUCTION By Man's Voice the Heart is Stirred The living word is the most powerful agent of instruction. -Rosenkranz. The living voice gives richer nourishment than reading. -Quintilian. Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power. While a philosopher is discussing one truth a million may be propagated among the people. -Horace Mann. Oral instruction presupposes on the part of the pupil: (a) willingness to learn; (b) capacity or ability to learn; (c) manifest interest in the subject before him. It also presupposes on the part of the teacher: (a) superior knowledge; (b) familiarity with the subject; (c) ability to communicate knowledge; (d) ability to adapt knowledge to the mental capacity of the pupil. A -Selected. PRACTICAL age demands practical aims in education, as in everything else. To think, to speak, to act with accuracy, judgment, and promptness, to hold all the intellectual powers in subjection to the reason and the conscience is the education demanded by the American people. stated. The question of greatest interest to the teacher is not how to teach, but how to teach each branch so that it may best minister to the mental growth of the child. Improved methods of instruc- The subject tion should not have reference to the adoption of some favorite device or scheme, which too often is only learning to ride some other person's hobby, but to conducting the education of the child in |