Cave P 195.5 GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION LIBRARY 1875-76 THE NATIONAL TEACHERS' MONTHLY. even admirable. But few are the schools in even the most favored localities, that are thus supplied with teachers. Ere long the unconscious parent is pained and startled by the intelligence that his child is no longer doing well. He is warned that he has been absent. The influence of evil associates, unperceived by the stupid or careless teacher, or neglected, has overpowered her influence, notwithstanding the immense advantage on her side, and truancy and other moral delinquencies ensue. The bright, gentle, confiding face which was entrusted you by the hopeful parent loses its innocent, cleanly look, and dirt and wile and sullenness overspread it. Correct deportment is despised and good scholarship loses its attractions. He has entered an atmosphere where disobedience, insubordination and rebellion. are rampant, and the time and strength that should be devoted to unfolding the mysteries of knowledge are enlisted in a harsh and hopeless struggle to maintain an odious and barren discipline. Think of the skepticism in human nature, the falsehood learned for truth, and the chicanery engendered in even the pitiful remnant that succeeds in passing through such a section of a school, and be prepared to pity the teacher that receives it. Who can map out the tortuous course of the child thus subjected to fatal temptation and cruel exposure? Happy is that school of a thousand pupils where there is not more than one approximation to this state of things! Behold here, and not in the over-refinement and difficult curricula of the schools, the reason why so many of our pupils leave us prematurely! Behold here, how the ranks of the dupes upon whom demagogues prey, are recruited! Behold here, how the wise foresight and the munificent provisions which our fathers made the scope, function and support of public education, are belittled and brought to naught! Behold here ample, imperative and irrefragable reason for the elimination and destruction (so to speak) of that class of teachers (so-called) who have mistaken their calling, and for guarding well the doors of the profession against further or future entrance of the same! The beneficent influence of the good teacher, and the incomparable and invaluable advantage to the state of a sufficient number of these, are so self-evident and so universally admitted that assertion thereof is superfluous, and argument thereon would be tedious. Who does not know and cannot name boys and girls, led out of dark places and lifted to higher planes by faithful teachers? The influence of the competent teacher embraces every child in his school. The child never escapes from it. It pervades not only the school-room, but reaches outside, consecrates the school-grounds, imparts an aroma to the atmosphere of home, extends its subtle, intangible but saving presence beyond school-life, and lights its object even into the dark valley. It is a continuous force ever exerted in the interest of society. It is a perpetual ally and conservator of the state, and is ever responsive, loyal and true to her. But where is the state to obtain a sufficient number of teachers to do the work which she has undertaken? This question of questions, who can answer? There is no state in the Union adequately supplied with teachers -teachers whose primary and ultimate business is teaching. Of the two hundred thousand teachers in the United States, how many have completed a fair normal course? Doubtless not more than one in twenty of our teachers learned their trade before practicing it. Of course the proportion of good teachers is much larger than this, for every teacher who ever had a competent teacher himself, or who ever attended an institute, or who has had any considerable successful experience, has, to that extent, what is equivalent to normal instruction. But the statement, in its strict and naked truth, illustrates the fearful waste of material that must necessarily be involved in the employment of so many unskilled workmen. The normal schools, state, county and city, are doing a good work. Their influence is in the right direction, and is continually elevating and ennobling the profession and perfecting its work. They are centers from which radiate influences to which we must attribute in justice, and with infinite gratitude, too, the improvements which distinguish the schools of to-day from those which our childhood knew. But the normal schools are not adequately supplying the schools with trained teachers. Their number is too small. If every pupil in our normal departments remained in school until graduation, and then entered upon and persevered in the work of teaching; and if this course were implicitly followed year after year, it would take many years to fully provide our schools with adequately prepared teachers. But nothing can be farther from the fact than this. Few enter the normal school. Fewer remain till graduation. Fewer still who graduate remain as teachers. In the domain of statistics there is not much comfort A little leaven may leaven the whole mass. for us in this matter. But What can we do to facilitate the process of fermentation? We should be prepared to suggest some soothing application for the diseases indicated, even if we have no instantaneously effective antidote or infallible remedy. We should evolve, stimulate and seek to place in the ascendant a system of more exalted statesmanship. We want a class of public men, from whose vocabulary and stock-in-trade, if clap-trap, nonsense and low buffoonery were subtracted, something would remain worthy the attention of intelligent citizens—a class of public men whose interest in, and support of, our schools extends beyond an occasional formal and insincere utterance of glittering generalities or of clownish contempt-a class of public men whose knowledge of human nature and human history, and whose cerebral potentiality, will inspire them to think of and to do something more to secure a supply of competent teachers for the state in her momentous undertaking, than to cavalierly affirm the sufficiency of the base, selfish, unphilanthropic and material doctrine of political economy in reference to supply and demand— a doctrine which, in matters of this kind, has consigned unnumbered nations of antiquity to an unutterable material, mental, and moral oblivion. The schools have need, not of the forgetfulness or the occasional generous remembrance of the "jolly good fellows" of politics, but of the perpetual, intelligent and earnest care of those whom the people honor and trust. It is thus that shams may be strangled in their incipiency and meritorious schemes be promoted. Not that we should become noisy or obtrusive politicians, but that we should take such notes of current events, and form such estimates of public characters, as to infuse into all with whom we come in contact such a perception and appreciation of honesty, intelligence and patriotism, and such a contempt for their opposites, as will render patent to all the world, not only the utter littleness, but. the swift punishment of the man who will betray his convictions to palliate ignorance, or sacrifice principle to secure the support of crime. How shall we esteem the policy of establishing private schools? Many teachers assume their fitness to discharge the onerous duties which the state has undertaken in behalf of her children. Every little while some one high up in our ranks, tired of poverty, of official stupidity and contumely, goes out from us presumably to wealth, liberty, comfort, and a possible usefulness, in some private school. Who will lift up a reproachful voice in protest? Is this calculated to hasten the day when our schools will fulfil the object of their establishment? Is it not dividing, weakening and antagonizing the teaching forces everywhere? Does it not tend to raise up a generation of citizens who have not sympathy with the state's most essential work, nor faith in its efficacy? Is it not a species of disloyalty to the profession? Finally, we should seek to enlist under our banner and inspire for our vocation our noblest pupils. We should impress them with the usefulness of the teacher's work; how it prepares its objects for the enjoyments and duties of life. We should bring within their view the beneficence of our calling; how reaching down into the humble abodes of the poor and the ignorant, it elevates and ennobles the offspring and makes them the peers of the proudest in the land. We should fire their ambition with the greatness of our calling; showing that in all the vast circle of man's employments, there are none affording greater scope, requiring more ingenuity, or offering more magnificent opportunity for the exercise of all the virtues. We should prompt them to lofty aims with the nobility of our calling; picturing how the true teacher grows, not only in intellect, but in trustfulness and kindness and faith in human nature; how he can feel going out from him a mysterious and far-reaching influence that attracts and sweetens and blesses all with whom it comes in contact. We should comfort them and ourselves with the rewards of our calling; telling how, as year after year our pupils go out from us into the world, there comes back to us from a thousand homes the grateful remembrance of kindnesses rendered, of reputations saved, of ambitions directed to loftier aims, and of careers ennobled ; and above all, beyond all, surpassing the beauty of poet's dream or angel's vision, point out to them that climax of earthly spectacles-the children of our country all taught by competent teachers. JAMES HANNAN. SOME POINTS IN ADVANCED ARITHMETIC. (A TRAINING CLASS EXERCISE.) I' I. SECURE FAMILIARITY WITH PROCESSES. NTRODUCE every new rule with a preliminary drill on that rule. 2. Let the drill be upon the processes of the rule and not on the theory. 3. Conduct the drill by having the pupils read each step while the teacher or one of the pupils performs the work, at the same time, on the board. 4. Have the pupils perform the same work on their slates that is being put on the board. 5. Let every new point be brought out by the pupil from the book. 6. So, step by step, complete an example by the rule given in the book. 7. Have them commit the rule to memory, by having them solve examples by that rule. 8. Lead them to a recitation of the rule, by having them state the steps in the solution of an example under that rule. 9. Never introduce a new subject by having the pupils commit to memory the rules and definitions belonging to that subject. II. SECURE POWER OF EXPRESSION IN EXPLANATION. 10. Having thus familiarized the pupils with the processes, fix those processes intelligently in their minds, by requiring with every example a careful explanation of every step according to the steps of the rule. II. Here exert your patience and ingenuity as a teacher in securing correct, systematic, and cogent expression of thought. 12. Having thus secured, 1st, a thorough mastery of the processes of the rule; 2d, the power of expression in the explanation of examples under the rule, proceed to the third step, namely, the demonstration of the rule. 13. In case the class is not sufficiently strong, this step may be omitted; but supposing it to be undertaken, let it be after the processes have been thoroughly mastered and a genuine curiosity as to the "reasons why" has been excited. III. SECURE POWER OF DEMONSTRATION. 14. Have the demonstration come from the pupils as a result of their own excited, curious investigation. 15. Give the demonstration as a special lesson. 16. Be judicious in the selection of a pupil for this exercise. 17. Now, after the class has demonstrated the rule as well as they can, then you, as a teacher, can demonstrate it with some profit to the pupils. J. P. EDWARDS. IF HISTORY FOR YOUNG FOLKS. F Mr. Higginson had called his little book a Sketch of the History of the United States, and had left the public to determine who might read it with profit, we could easily have praised it for its moderation of tone, its selection of salient points, its accuracy in matters of fact, and its recognition of the comparative importance which a history of the United States must carry in general history. An encyclopædia of history might accept this volume as a modest article, and the general reader who had possessed himself of its contents might proceed with some complacency to the study of more important histories. An intelligent Madre, for example, noting some difference between the English and American traders who visited his coasts, might thank the English captain for putting into his hands so clear and concise an account of that portion of the English-speaking world comprised in Mr. Higginson's sketch. An American, also, who had picked up at random a knowledge of his country's history, might well be grateful for so simple and orderly a narrative, giving him quickly the historical succession and connection of events. But the book by its title and its avowed purpose requires to be examined by other tests. The author states that he has adopted two plain rules -"to omit all names and dates not really needful, and to make liberal use of the familiar traits and incidents of every day." Further he adds: "It will be noticed that less space than usual is given, in these pages, to the events of war and more to the affairs of peace. This course has been deliberately pursued. It is desirable, no doubt, that the reader should fully understand the way in which every important war began and ended, and that he should read enough of the details to know in what spirit it was carried on. Beyond this, the statistics of sieges and battles are of little value, and are apt to make us forget that the true glory of a nation lies, after all, in orderly progress." This statement has a certain negative value as defining a theoretical history for young people, and we should not quarrel with it, if in the *YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By Thomas Higginson. Illustrated. Lee & Shepard, Boston. 1875. |