is to make a proper selection of topics, and arrange them in the order of their dependence. The nature of the topics will suggest to the skilful teacher what means he must provide for illustration. After providing the means, the next step is to choose a method of teaching. The method is the same as that employed in all right objective teaching, the teacher presents the phenomena to the pupil by means of an experiment; the pupil observes what is presented, and describes the facts he learns. In this way the elementary pupil may obtain a real knowledge of such facts as will enable him when he comes into the high school to enter upon the study of physics considered as a science.

Chemistry.

Chemistry is to be pursued by the same method as that suggested for the study of physics. Some of the simple means needed for illustrating the topics which the subject presents are, -a half-dozen five-inch test-tubes, three eight-inch test-tubes, corks, a half-dozen pieces of narrow glass tubing, a dozen tobacco-pipes, three or four glass fruit-jars, two pint bowls, two tumblers, three tinned iron teaspoons, a three-cornered file, a round file, a lamp, two small glass tunnels, three small porcelain dishes, one two-quart galvanic cell, and chemicals.

Text-Books. The pupils should be supplied with an abundance of good books of reference, to be used not as the original sources of knowledge, but to aid and guide in the study of what the teacher has before taught.

Method of Teaching. The definition of teaching given in the Report of Board, 1879-80, seems to be a sound one, and is as follows: Teaching is that act which consists in presenting objects and subjects to the mind so as to occasion knowledge, mental training, and a good method of thinking and acting. If we can determine what are the principles of teaching, we may learn from them the true method of the art.

A principle is that upon which any thing depends. Principles of Teaching. The ability to teach depends upon (1) the ability to bring into the presence of the learner whatever is to be made the object of thought; (2) to teach elementary before scientific knowledge; (3) to teach the whole before its parts; (4) to teach the parts of objects in their natural order; the parts of subjects, in their logical order; (5) to direct the pupil in his work, without attempting to do the work for him.

The method arising from the practical application of these principles is the oral objective method. To apply this method so as to produce the best results requires a professional training. The normal schools of the Commonwealth offer opportunities for such training.

REQUISITES OF A GOOD TEACHER.

To teach well requires a sound body, a cultivated mind, an extensive knowledge of things, some acquaintance with the laws that control the faculties in their efforts after truth and strength, special training, a successful experience, and unlimited enthusi

asm.

The first and the last of these requisites of a good teacher are, for the most part, the gifts of nature; the others are acquisitions. But whether they are the direct gifts of God, or the products of human labor, they are all necessary to the highest and best results.

The body is supposed to be the instrument that the mind uses in performing all those acts which terminate on external things, or on any kind of things that may hold objective relations. If there is such a thing as an external world existing independent of ideas, and if our physical bodies are the media through which our minds are brought in contact with it, then it would seem to follow, that the validity of our knowledge of the qualities of matter will depend somewhat upon the soundness of our bodies.

If the eyes are blind, then the mind cannot see. If the ears are stopped, the mind cannot hear. Or, if the senses of sight and hearing are unsound, then the mind will be in danger of seeing when no object of sight is present, and of hearing when there is no sound. If the elements of our knowledge are unreliable, the knowledge itself will have nothing real corresponding to it. Unless our simple ideas correspond to their objects, a knowledge of truth is impossible; besides, there is no right activity, except that which results, or has a tendency to result, in the discovery of the truth.

As the mind is affected by its own acts, if a poor body prevents it from reaching out and taking hold of things as they really exist, then such mental acts will be occasioned as will warp and weaken the mind, and render it unfit for reliable service. It is a great mistake to suppose that all exertion of active

power strengthens the mind. Unless the conditions of activity are complete, the more the mind attempts to do, the more confused will it become.

Again, our rational emotions owe their origin and their character primarily to our intellectual acts; but as our intellects are disturbed by physical weakness, so, indirectly, are our sensibilities seriously affected by the unnatural conditions of our bodies. We can never tell whether we have occasion to feel pleasure or pain, why we are melancholy or cheerful, whether there is cause for hope or despair, until we have examined our physical organism to see how the organs are performing their functions. The body is a physical thing, and the mind is spiritual, and we cannot tell through what mysterious medium the two produce their effects, each on the other; but we do know that in this world neither can live without the other: we know also that good physical health is essential to all true activity and to all harmonious development of the powers.

The teacher, then, should strive for a sound body with as much fidelity as for sound learning and good methods. In the pursuit of this important end he should receive aid and cooperation from all those who hold authority over him, as well as from those who are subject to his control. The amount of service required of him should have some well-defined and rational limit. His vacations and resting days should be appointed with reference to the fact that school-teaching is the most exhausting labor known to the race; that rest is for the renewal of those vital forces which the mind uses in the exertion of its power, and that ample physical rest is as necessary to mental life as it is to the life of the body.

The conditions of work, productive work, are strength, courage, and an abundance of good material to work with and upon. The ability to rest depends upon the existence of leisure, cheerfulness, and an aversion to the exertion of active power. But courage and cheerfulness, two essential conditions of rational effective work and successful rest, are yet impossible to the teacher, if he is made the subject of ignorant or unsympathetic criticism. We were made to work together for common ends. Discord is as unnatural as disease. Individuals acting alone are weak, but when combined into harmonious communities they become strong, and can do any thing which human effort is adapted to accomplish.

What I have said of the relations of good physical health to mental health, and to all reliable mental activity, of the relations of cheerfulness and courage to physical health, and of the relations of a sympathetic co-operation to cheerfulness and courage, is neither new nor beyond the experience of every successful teacher, and every superintendent of schools. But the importance of these things is not always observed; and there follows, as an inevitable consequence, a waste of strength, and a loss of that joy which is an inseparable companion of healthful labor.

Good health is a condition for successful teaching, while knowledge and objects of knowledge are the means. If we turn our attention to the ends every intelligent teacher aims to secure, we shall learn what he must know to secure them.

He must know, among other things, for what purpose his school is organized, and his pupils taken from their homes, both by the laws of the state and by the free will of parents, and placed for a time under the parental as well as the educational care of a school-teacher. If it is that they may acquire useful knowledge, then the teacher must know what is useful knowledge, and by what processes it is best acquired. If it is such a training of the powers as will enable the children, when they come to be members of society, to perform justly the duties of social life, then he must know in what such training consists, and to what processes the mind must be subjected that it may be produced. If the child is to be treated in his school-work as though he were an end unto himself, then the teacher must lead him to perform such acts in study, in recitation, in play, and in obeying school-rules, as will train him into the possession of a good individual character.

As the teacher is to do all these things, viz., teach useful knowledge and train the children into good citizens, and good persons, he must understand the philosophy of teaching, and be master of the branches of learning which utility and human development require to be taught. The philosophy of teaching that one accepts will determine his practice. If he has no wellunderstood philosophy, then he will have no orderly or consistent method. If his principles are false his methods will be unnatural, and false also. No teacher ever taught well who believed that simple ideas of things can be awakened in the mind for the first time by words, or that definitions and rules

should be committed to memory by elementary pupils before they are able to understand their meaning, or that a science can be taught to one before he has observed the facts of the science; or that the mind can acquire power without exercise; or that the acquisition of practical knowledge is the only acquisition that has any practical value. A teacher increases rapidly in value from the time he begins to study his work with reference to its results on the minds and characters of his pupils. He becomes a philosopher as soon as he begins to inquire into the nature of his pupils, and to study for the principles out of which he is to form his theories and his practice. From that time he will not voluntarily introduce into his school a topic of study without knowing the relations it holds to the ends of school life. He will no longer attempt to teach a branch of knowledge he does not himself understand. He will not continue to violate the laws of the human mind by the use of a wrong method of teaching or of school government.

But, however useful knowledge may be, it is not to be sought as an end in itself. Simply to know something, is not enough for beings who are so constituted that activity is life, and conscious activity is conscious life.

The great struggle of life is for power; and the one condition, Hamilton says, under which all our powers are developed is exercise. A repetition of an act adds to our faculties a facility in their use. This fact we know: the philosophy of it we cannot understand. We never perform our acts in the best manner until we have tried to perform them many times.

The value of skill appears in all forms of labor; but nowhere is it more imperatively demanded, or productive of more important results, than in that labor which has for its object the communication of knowledge, and the cultivation of human character.

The teacher, then, must add to his physical strength, and to his knowledge, a special training for his work. This he can obtain in two ways. One is by a long experience produced by teaching under self-direction; the other is by study and practice under one who is already a master. Both methods have produced good teachers; but the latter is to be chosen rather than the former, for we cannot afford to have our teachers groping their way toward skill with the chances against them of ever finding it.

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