LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Ttfctwea W .!:<> 1M3 ,89 
 
 Accessions No. Sj&Ql.l . Class No, 
 
ON PRIMARY INSTRUCTION 
 
 RELATION TO EDUCATION. 
 
" The practical Idea i-s a/tcay* in the Itiyhwt degree, fruitful, awl 
 in relation to actual doing indispensably necessary." KANT. 
 
PRIMARY INSTRUCTION 
 
 IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO TEACHERS IN TRAINING. 
 
 S. S. LAURIE, A.M., LL.1X, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE INSTITUTES AND HISTORY OF EDUCATION, 
 
 UNIVERSITY OK EDINBURGH; 
 M IIIOK OF "EDUCATIONAL LIFE AND WRITINOS OF COMENIUS," ETC. ETC. 
 
 FOl'HTH EDITION. 
 
 EDINBUKGH: 
 
 JAMES THIN, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. 
 
 1890. 
 
L ft 1 51 
 
 iOCj,, 
 
 MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 THIS little book was written to show the Primary 
 Teacher that the aim of the Primary School is 
 ethical : and, further, that the very limitations under 
 which he works may be made contributory to the 
 ultuinment of this aim. 
 
 S. S. L. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, 
 Jan. 1890. 
 
PKEFACE TO FIRST EDITION. 
 
 IN an industrial country like this, the children of the 
 masses can remain only a few years at school. It is, 
 accordingly, the duty of those concerned with educa- 
 tion, either as administrators or as teachers, to deter- 
 mine how these few years can best be turned to 
 account. 
 
 Some time ago (1861-2), influenced by a considera- 
 tion of the brief stay at school made by a large 
 proportion of the population, the English Education 
 ( Hlice suddenly set aside the educational theories which 
 had found favour in the earlier years of Privy Council 
 administration, and issued a code of rules, countenanc- 
 ing, if not based on, the opinion that the main work 
 of the Primary School was to give a certain specified 
 amount of technical facility in the arts of reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic. 
 
 I think that there are few practically acquainted 
 with schools who will not be ready to admit that 
 wine standard of acquirement should be fixed for all 
 elementary schools by a competent central authority ; 
 and that the reaction which gave rise to the somewhat 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 narrow standard now (1867) in operation, was justifi- 
 able and necessary. That reaction, however, expressed 
 itself in a form so extreme that it unquestionably has 
 had a tendency to drive education, in the proper mean- 
 ing of the term, entirely out of the Primary School, 
 where it is most of all needed. That this was not the 
 intention of the Government is sufficiently evident to 
 every reader of the Eevised Code and the Instructions 
 to Her Majesty's Inspectors ; but that it has been too 
 much the practical effect of the Code is beyond question. 
 Should the Education Department become alive to the 
 evil tendency of their rules as they stand, and modify 
 them with a view to remedy admitted defects, teachers 
 may yet rest assured that Government will be sup- 
 ported by the country in continuing to insist on certain 
 standards of acquirement in the three elementary 
 subjects as essential and imperative. 
 
 The object of this volume is to reconcile the school- 
 master to his work, as being, notwithstanding its 
 limited range, pre-eminently an intellectual and moral 
 one. He is on the verge of being admitted across the 
 uncertain line which separates an " occupation " from 
 a " profession ; " but it is vain for him to suppose that 
 he can ever attain professional recognition in any other 
 way than by himself taking an educational view of his 
 daily task, and performing it in a professional spirit. 
 Accordingly, while accepting as, in the main, sound, 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 the view taken by Government as to the subjects 
 requiring close (but not, therefore, exclusive) attention 
 in the Elementary School, I endeavour to show that 
 a large and thorough treatment of these will enable 
 
 the schoolmaster, by the help of a little music and 
 geography, to give effect to his educational ideas, how- 
 ever lofty they may be. My belief is, that he will 
 give effect to those ideas more surely under certain 
 limitations than by dissipating his own powers and 
 those of his pupils over a variety of half-taught 
 subjects. 
 
 /_The teacher's office has been recently further magni- 
 fied by the extension of the suffrage to the operative 
 classes. _\ It is now, more than ever before, necessary 
 that the time spent in school be wisely employed. 
 
 /The public will also, perhaps, be taught by political 
 events to respect, in the primary teacher, the maker 
 of future voters ; arid ungrudgingly, in their own 
 defence, if from no higher motive, to adopt measures 
 for attracting into the profession men who will make 
 it their aim to discipline the intellects and the wills 
 of those committed to their care men qualified to 
 train as well as to instruct?] The return which the 
 public of Great Britain have already obtained for the 
 money and attention bestowed by them on primary 
 instruction is large, and probably unequalled in any 
 other country. But large as this return is, it falls 
 
x Preface. 
 
 far short of the expectations of those concerned in 
 education. And, until means are devised for pro- 
 viding the primary teacher with a career within the 
 circle of the scholastic profession, and thus sustaining 
 the courage of the young and ardent by the prospect 
 of advancement, the intellectual and moral results of 
 the most elaborate educational machinery and the 
 most lavish expenditure will continue to be disap- 
 pointing. 
 
 EDINBURGH, 1867. 
 
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 ERROKS of language and defects in arrangement have 
 been corrected in the second edition of this book. In 
 other respects there is no change of importance. A 
 larger treatment of the subject of education would 
 have led me into historical and psychological questions 
 which would have destroyed the character of the 
 present treatise, the aim of which is definite and 
 narrow. 
 
 The improvements in the English Code, and the 
 still greater advance in the Scotch Code, show a 
 tendency towards the re-instating of the idea of 
 Education in the Primary School. The examination 
 Inj classes required by Art. 19 C. of the latter Code 
 especially to be commended as tending in this direction. 
 The class, not the individual, is the unit of the Primary 
 School. A complete return to the practice of examin- 
 ing individual pupils as members of a class and through 
 and with the class, can alone permanently save the 
 mind of the school. It is the intelligence and morale 
 of the whole school which alone have abiding interest 
 for the Educationist: the recognition of advanced 
 
 :\ 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 instruction under the head of " Specific Subjects " is a 
 matter of comparatively small importance. These are 
 best secured by securing highly qualified men for the 
 office of Primary Teacher. Scotland bears witness to 
 the fact that the higher subjects can receive the most 
 careful attention without a distribution of shillings ; 
 and this simply because the Masters are men of 
 university training. The education question, now at 
 least, is a question of the qualification of Public 
 School teachers. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the Scotch Code will 
 largely influence the English Code, and that, ere long, 
 there will be only one Code for both countries. The 
 terms on which the public money is expended in the 
 one country can never be, for long, essentially different 
 from those on which it is expended in the other. 
 
 S. S. L. 
 
 EDINBURGH, November 1, 1873. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE FUNCTION AND QUALIFICATION OF THE 
 PRIMARY SCHOOLMASTER, AND THE SUBJECTS 
 AND GENERAL METHOD OF HIS TEACHING . i 
 
 1. The Purpose of the School \ 
 
 The purpose of the Primary School The social 
 function of the Schoolmaster The effect of keeping 
 a purpose or practical ideal in view (l).on the con- 
 ducting of the School ; (2) on the Teacher himself. 
 
 2. The Kind of Knowledge necessary to the Primary 
 
 Teacher . . . . . .11 
 
 The knowledge necessary to enable the Teacher to 
 conceive the practical ideal Protest against the 
 opinion that there are no principles in Education. 
 
 3. The General Method of Education . . .14 
 
 To attain the School-ideal we must have method 
 Nature of mind and its growth in relation to methods 
 of instruction and training. 
 
 4. Qualifications of the Teacher . . . .17 
 
 Philosophic aptitude rather than philosophic know- 
 ledge necessary in the Teacher Sympathy a sub- 
 stitute for philosophy Character in the Teacher 
 himself. 
 
 5. Auxiliaries of the Teacher . . . .23 
 
 Natural operation of the young mind Moral accesses 
 to the intellect Class-sympathy. 
 
xiv Contents. 
 
 6. Restrictions of Elementary Teacher ... . 25 
 
 Shortness of attendance Irregularity of attendance 
 Number of classes Character of pupils' homes 
 Necessities of pupils' future lives. 
 
 7. The Lessons to be drawn from the Restrictions of 
 
 the Primary Teacher . . . .33 
 
 Contraction of Teacher's work Principles of selection 
 Subjects in order of importance, primary and 
 secondary Supreme importance of ethical teaching. 
 
 II. THE PRIME SUBJECTS OP THE PRIMARY SCHOOL, 
 
 AND THE METHODS OF TEACHING THEM . 49 
 
 1. THE CONCURRENCE OF GENERAL METHODS AND PARTI- 
 
 CULAR METHODS ..... 49 
 
 2. OBJECTS AND METHOD OF TEACHING BEADING . . 51 
 
 Initiation in the Art of Readme/ . . .52 
 
 The Phonic, the " Look and Say," and the Alphabetic 
 methods Spelling. 
 
 The Juvenile Stage in Teaching Reading . . 65 
 
 Mental progress and progress in Reading should be 
 concurrent Intelligent Reading To teach to read 
 properly is to educate The imagination and the 
 moral and religious sensibilities of children 
 Intelligible Reading. 
 
 Advanced Stage of JReadiny Connection with 
 Anal) /sis and Composition . . .78 
 
 Practical Suggestions hating reference to tJte 
 Reading Lessons generally . '. 83 
 
 3. OBJECTS AND METHOD OF TEACHING WRITING . . 103 
 
 The practical purpose, namely, facility and distinct- 
 ness, to be kept constantly in view Letters to be 
 turned to use as they are learned The power to 
 be applied to copying on slates Writing from 
 dictation. 
 
Contents. xv 
 
 PAGE 
 
 4. OIJJECTS AND METHOD OF TEACHING ARITHMETIC . 113 
 
 Intellectual discipline of Arithmetic School Arith- 
 metic should be practical and economic Method of 
 teaching : the concrete method Moral uses of 
 School Arithmetic. 
 
 III. THE SECONDARY SUBJECTS OF THE PRIMARY 
 
 SCHOOL . . . . . .125 
 
 Education an extensive as well as an intensive process 
 Order of importance of secondary subjects. 
 
 1. Music IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL . . . 129 
 
 General effect of Music on the school Sympathy as an 
 educative agent Sympathy and simultaneity con- 
 trasted (the fmttftmieoiM system) Singing a moral 
 and religious agency Effect on the children 
 Method of teaching Singing. 
 
 2. GEOGRAPHY AND THE METHOD OF TEACHING IT . 137 
 
 Chief error in teaching Geography Practical purpose 
 of teaching Geography Theoretical purpose The 
 two harmonise Indirect uses of Geography 
 Method of teaching Geography. 
 
 3. ON DRAWING . . . . . .146 
 
 4. GltAMMAIl AND THE METHOD OF TEACHING IT . . 148 
 
 5. HISTORY ..... 155 
 
 IV. ORGANISATION OF THE SCHOOL . . .158 
 
 Classification Time-Tables. 
 
 6 
 
 SCHOOL DISCIPLINE OR TRAINING . . .164 
 
 Indirect Moral Teaching Motives Character 
 Rewards and Punishments. 
 
 VI. DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION . . .189 
 
 Initiatory stage Suggestive moral teaching and pre- 
 ceptive moral teaching Juvenile stage (laws of 
 health, economic laws, etc.). 
 
xvi Contents. 
 
 PA.QR 
 
 VII. MINOR MORALS OP THE SCHOOL . . 203 
 
 Courtesy between boys and girls Influence of female 
 schools Politeness Order Cleanliness, etc. 
 Personal habits of Teacher. 
 
 VIII. THE TEACHING OF RELIGION . . . 213 
 
 NOTE ON SCHOOL APPLIANCES . . . 223 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 ON THE CONDITIONS OF PARLIAMENTARY GRANTS 
 TO SCHOOLS . . . . .-. - . 229 
 
 A POSSIBLE CODE FOR PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 235 
 
I. THE FUNCTION AND QUALIFICATION OF THE 
 PRIMARY SCHOOLMASTER, AND THE SUBJECTS 
 AND GENERAL METHOD OF HIS TEACHING. 
 
 I. THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL AND THE FUNCTION 
 OF THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 The purpose of the primary school The social function of the school- 
 master The consequences of keeping a purpose or practical 
 ideal in view ; on the conducting of the school ; personal to the 
 teacher. 
 
 THE defects of conscientious teachers are for the most 
 part to be traced to the want of a purpose, both as 
 regards the general objects of the school and the par- 
 ticular results to be aimed at in the special studies 
 which constitute the school-curriculum. 
 
 " What is it that I ought to propose to myself in 
 School-keeping ? " is the question which a teacher has 
 to answer. His first duty is to form a purpose, to 
 conceive a practical ideal. A clearly-defined purpose 
 is not only the indispensable condition of sound pro- 
 gress in his work, but it is also the measure, from 
 time to time, of the progress which he makes. 
 
2 Primary Instruction. 
 
 The question is, it seems to me, best answered thus ": 
 The object which the schoolmaster ought from day to 
 day to keep steadily in view, is the Formation of 
 Character in his pupils. This is the end of the 
 Primary School, as it is indeed of all education. 
 
 It is true that the subjects of school instruction, 
 and even of the limited instruction which is given 
 in the primary school, are in themselves and their 
 applications very various, and their purpose seems, 
 at first sight, to be inadequately summed up in the 
 brief answer which we have given. For example, it 
 is our business, independently of higher aims, to 
 furnish the pupil with such knowledge as will help 
 him in earning a livelihood ; to provide him with a 
 certain amount of indispensable intellectual food ; 
 and, above all, to instruct him in those moral 
 precepts and duties which it behoves him to know 
 and to practise. This moral teaching, again, can 
 have due efficacy and adequate sanction only if 
 we connect it with the will of God which is the 
 source of all Law : it thus passes into religious 
 teaching, and this even where it does not assume 
 any definite and dogmatic form of Christian Faith. 
 The necessities of the case, accordingly, demand that 
 the pupil's mind shall be informed as well as formed. 
 
 But what is the aim of all this special and detailed 
 instruction ? It is to make men lead better and 
 happier lives : better, intellectually, by giving greater 
 activity, vigour, and precision to the powers by which 
 
77/6' Purpose of the School. 3 
 
 they know and do ; better, morally and religiously ; 
 happier, by elevating the plane on which they would 
 otherwise live. Accordingly, if asked to sum up 
 briefly the end of primary instruction, and to do so 
 in words which indicate its ultimate aim at the 
 same time that they furnish the schoolmaster with a 
 criterion by which to measure every detail of his 
 work, we shall probably be able to find no answer 
 more fitting or more exhaustive than that which has 
 been given above " The Formation of Character." 
 
 In selecting the materials with which we propose 
 to form the character, it is our duty to set aside 
 theoretic views, and to submit ourselves to the needs 
 and facts of the daily life of the industrial classes. 
 The materials to which we are thns limited by the 
 force of circumstances are so humble, that it may 
 with some show of truth be contended that they do 
 not admit of a treatment in relation to a larger 
 educative purpose outside themselves. If this be 
 so, tney are unsuited for the work they ought to 
 do; and the schoolmaster, since no other materials 
 are presumed to be available, must inevitably sink 
 into a mere mechanic. This antagonism, however, 
 between the subjects which we must teach and 
 education, happily does not exist. The necessities 
 of the pupil's future life and the necessities of sound 
 training can easily be shown to harmonise. Even in 
 such formal matters as arithmetic and grammar, we 
 may not only convey a certain amount of knowledge, 
 
4 Primary Instruction. 
 
 but we may so convey it that a certain amount of 
 mental power will be developed and mental habit 
 formed in the process of acquisition. Nor is this 
 all ; for when these subjects are ethically taught 
 that is to say, so handled by the teacher as to be 
 brought into close concrete connection with their uses 
 in common life they attain a moral significance. 
 There is no teaching so theoretically sound as that 
 which has a practical aim. 
 
 If the purpose of the primary school has been 
 correctly stated, something has already been done 
 towards defining the social function of the school- 
 master. If it be true that he is set apart by society, 
 in order that he may direct his daily energies towards 
 the formation of character in the children of the people, 
 and towards enriching their inner life so as to remedy 
 the inequalities of outer circumstances, he cannot fail 
 to feel that he is engaged in an elevating, an inspiring, 
 and, to a large extent, a creative task. He^ is in 
 truth a kind of moral artist. He has a plastic work 
 to do the work of moulding the rude untutored 
 nature of peasant and city boyhood into a shapely 
 form. Nor will any one regard this as an exaggera- 
 tion of the teacher's office, who has had opportunities 
 of contrasting the uncombed, untamed young barbarian 
 of civilization, distinguished for his loose and insolent 
 carriage, his lawless manner, licentious speech, and 
 vagrant eye, with the same child, sitting on the 
 school-bench, well habited and clean, his manner 
 
The Purpose of the School. 5 
 
 subdued into fitness with the moral order around 
 him, his tongue under a sense of restraint and law, 
 his countenance suffused with awakening thought, 
 his very body seeming to be now clothed with the 
 vesture of reason. That such transformations are 
 effected by the best schoolmasters, all know who have 
 come into direct personal contact with educational 
 agencies. 
 
 "From culture unexclusively bestowed 
 
 Expect these mighty issues ; from the pains 
 And faithful care of unambitious schools, 
 Instructing simple childhood's ready ear 
 Thence look for these magnificent results."* 
 
 And surely the man who can point to such results 
 as the product of his labour, rightly claims to have 
 in some sense a creative function. This at least is 
 certain, that it is essential that he himself should 
 take this elevated view of his work and cling to it; 
 for except in so far as it is felt by him to have this 
 character, it may be safely said to be a drudgery the 
 most dreary and soul-tiring in the whole round of 
 human labour an occupation for slaves. 
 
 We speak exclusively of the primary teacher, 
 although all we say applies equally to the secondary 
 schoolmaster. The merely departmental instructor in 
 this or that science or language stands on a lower 
 moral eminence. Both the secondary teacher and 
 the departmental instructor can make only a partial 
 * WORDSWORTH'S "Excursion," B. ix. 
 
6 Primary Instruction. 
 
 contribution to the final result of character, and 
 they do so at an age when the pupil's unconscious 
 moral tendencies are already declared, and the bent 
 of his intelligence is already given. Much loftier 
 and more delicate is the task of the primary 
 schoolmaster : he has to rear successive genera- 
 tions of children, during the years in which they 
 are most open to impressions, during a period of 
 susceptibility when one hour may do the work of 
 a year at a later stage. These children he has, in 
 the widest sense, to train as well as to instruct. 
 His duty is to operate on their faculties and capa- 
 cities while they are yet in their infancy, to stimulate 
 them into activity, and 'to give them their -first direc- 
 tion. The intellect of the child is thus dependent 
 on its earliest instructor more than on any future 
 one on his wise understanding of the manner of 
 its natural operations, the limits of its legitimate 
 exercise, and the objects most readily seized and 
 assimilated at the different stages of its growth. 
 Still more is the moral destiny of the child iri his 
 hands ; for the extent to which the sentiments and 
 imagination are to enter into the future character and 
 give it depth, balance, and harmony, depends more on 
 the way in which they are respected and judiciously 
 fostered in the child's earliest years than on any 
 future influences whatsoever. 
 
 If such be the work of the national schoolmaster 
 if the task of his life be to elaborate out of rude, 
 
The Purpose of the School. 7 
 
 but not unpliable, material some approximation to a 
 good intellectual and moral habit, how indispensable 
 is it that he should be both guided and sustained by 
 the conscious possession of this the ideal aim of his 
 profession ! It is only when he has a clear compre- 
 hension of the real nature and the large bearings of 
 his work that the little things of the schoolroom 
 and it is precisely these that most call for vigilance 
 assume their rightful importance. All the details 
 of his arrangements are then felt to promote or retard 
 the realization of the educative purpose^ of the school, 
 and, in so far as they contribute to the final result, 
 to have a moral value. Small things are no longer 
 petty. Things which would otherwise be considered 
 trivial such as cleanliness, order, light, ventilation, 
 school -furnishings, marking exercises, manners, the 
 just treatment of small incidents acquire a new sig- 
 nificance. Those numerous daily occurrences, which 
 are apt to be regarded as merely vexatious and as 
 traversing the steady onward progress of his work, 
 are now beheld by him in a new light : seeming 
 obstructions are transmuted into auxiliaries of his 
 general method, or into felicitous opportunities of 
 applying it. The teacher, on the other hand, who 
 is dead to the true significance of his task and is 
 unfurnished with a practical ideal, can, at best, take 
 only a partial and technical view of his duties. His 
 various classes and subjects of instruction do not 
 present themselves to his mind as parts of one whole. 
 The school-organisation is probably loose and dis- 
 
8 Primary Instruction. 
 
 jointed, however mechanically perfect it may seem 
 to the cursory observer, the subjects taught and the 
 classes to which they are taught having no intimate 
 and inner connection with each other ; for where no 
 ultimate unity of general result is conceived, none 
 can exist in the particular details. The multifarious 
 operations of the schoolroom hang in clumsy juxta- 
 position, instead of being woven together by the 
 power of a common purpose. Such a teacher looks 
 at his work piecemeal, and does it in fragments. 
 Each lesson seems to terminate in itself, without 
 reference either to the past or the future : to - day 
 seems to have no necessary issue in to - morrow. 
 Every passing event, every collateral circumstance 
 attending his intercourse with his pupils, is to such 
 a man obstructive and irrelevant, if it do not forward 
 the sole object of the day " getting through the 
 lessons." That done, the day's duty is also done : 
 and we may be sure that where the teaching is not 
 animated and controlled by any higher purpose than 
 this, by something which can neither be questioned 
 out of the pupils nor communicated to them in 
 didactic shape, even the mere lesson-saying will be 
 comparatively perfunctory and barren. 
 
 But not only is the possession of an ideal, and of 
 the desire to realize it in his work, indispensable to 
 a primary teacher : it also points out the easiest and 
 shortest road to his end. It may almost be said to 
 take precedence of every other qualification ; for 
 
The Purpose of the School. 9 
 
 where he possesses the imagination and the precision 
 of apprehension which enable him to give definite 
 shape to the final aim of his labours, and, along with 
 these, the resolution to give effect to his conceptions, 
 the teacher may almost be said to be already, and 
 without further training, equipped for his task. For 
 so equipped, he cannot wander very far from the 
 right track ; and should he deviate, his errors will 
 quickly turn to use. Even the principles of organisa- 
 tion and of discipline, and all scholastic methods, are 
 of little value compared with a distinct conception of 
 the ultimate aim of the school sustained by an earnest 
 purpose. Professional instructions in methods, if not 
 quickened by the independent thought of the teacher, 
 deal with the scholastic art from the outside and are 
 dead ; while the teacher we are speaking of has 
 already a firm grasp of a central idea, which not only 
 gives validity and force to the methods which he 
 may adopt, but is itself the living and prolific source 
 of new expedients. 
 
 Further, the possession of a practical ideal enables 
 the teacher to give due proportion to the various 
 parts of his work. The subjects to be taught, their 
 relative value, the limits within which they are to be 
 kept, and the direction which is to be given to them, 
 can be determined only by the help of a foregone 
 purpose. Even good teachers frequently exhibit a 
 certain helplessness in giving to each subject of 
 instruction its due prominence or subordination. 
 
io Primary Instruction. 
 
 They are too often the slaves of traditions : and when 
 new subjects are admitted into the schoolroom, they 
 seern to be allowed to elbow their own way, jostling 
 out of their fair share of attention studies by no means 
 the least important, but probably only the least 
 obtrusive and showy. 
 
 Finally, the possession of a school-ideal sustains 
 and animates the teacher. Without unduly magnify- 
 ing his office, he feels a just pride in the reflection 
 that he is one of the moral agencies of society. The 
 knowledge that it is his special duty to aid in forming 
 the character of others is an inspiring thought. In 
 no profession or occupation is there more need of the 
 consolation which a high purpose gives. For the 
 teacher is denied the fresh source of courage and 
 hope which other labourers derive from the spectacle 
 of a completed work. He is constantly toiling 
 towards an intellectual and moral result which he 
 never, in point of fact, reaches. He is always pro- 
 ducing, but there is never a finished product. His 
 fond hopes and well-founded expectations are being 
 constantly frustrated. Even such successes as he 
 has really achieved it is seldom given him to know, 
 because the pupils pass out of his hands before the 
 ripe fruit of his training is visible. Harassed by 
 petty exactions within the school, and stinted of 
 generous recognition outside it, lie is often depressed 
 if not hopeless, and in the course of years he not 
 seldom becomes the victim of cerebral irritability. 
 
Kind of Knowledge necessary. 1 1 
 
 It is for these reasons that the teacher, above all 
 other men, must seek for his consolation and for the 
 daily renewing of his zeal, in the magnitude and the 
 spiritual aim of his professional task. If he does this, 
 he will find that his attitude to his work is wholly 
 changed, and that " the interest and delight of it far 
 outweigh the labours. For the mere daily life among 
 the young is, to the true teacher, a constant happi- 
 ness/' * 
 
 II. THE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE NECESSARY TO THE 
 PRIMARY TEACHER. 
 
 The knowledge necessary to enable the teacher to conceive the 
 practical ideal Protest against the opinion that there are no 
 principles in education. 
 
 The Formation of Character, which is the great end 
 and aim of the primary school, presents itself to the 
 schoolmaster in two aspects ; the formation of a good 
 habit of the intelligence, and of a good habit of the 
 will. All the materials of instruction which he uses, 
 he must regard in the first instance as nothing more 
 than the implements with which he works towards 
 these great ends. It is fortunate that, however 
 mechanically he may use his tools, they possess, 
 even in the hands of the incompetent, an inherent 
 power of producing some appreciable disciplinary 
 
 * Mr. Arthur Sidgwick's "Lecture on Stimulus," one of the 
 lectures delivered under the auspices of tha, Cambridge Teachers' 
 Syudicate(1882). 
 
12 Primary Instruction. 
 
 result in the minds of learners. But they can have 
 their full and proper effect only in the hands of one 
 who has a clear conception of their precise relation 
 to the results at which he aims, and of the peculiar 
 kind of handling necessary for each different instru- 
 ment. 
 
 Now it is evident that the schoolmaster cannot, 
 in any adequate sense, conceive either the habits of 
 intelligence or of will which are the end of his 
 teaching, or the relation of his instruments to the 
 production of these habits, unless he himself has some 
 knowledge of the nature of the intelligence and the 
 will. Indeed, only to the extent that he has that 
 knowledge, can he form any rational conception of 
 his vocation at all. In other words, it is only 
 through a knowledge of psychology and ethics that 
 he can render to himself an account of what he is 
 doing, and can see to what point his labours are 
 tending. These are the two pillars on which the 
 whole fabric of education rests. It is by no means 
 necessary that the teacher should be a philosopher, 
 but it is quite indispensable that he should philo- 
 sophise. All good teachers do this, whether they are 
 aware of it or riot. They propose to themselves 
 certain specific intellectual and moral ends in teaching 
 each subject of their curriculum, and to this extent 
 they necessarily construct for themselves a kind of 
 crude and undeveloped doctrine of mind. They can- 
 not move a single step without doing so, although the 
 reasons which determine their objects and guide them 
 
Kind of Knowledge necessary. 1 3 
 
 in attaining them may assume to their own minds no 
 formal or scientific shape. 
 
 If this be so, and it seems almost superfluous to 
 endeavour to establish its truth by argument, it is 
 surely of some importance that that knowledge which 
 underlies the work of every schoolmaster should be 
 included in his self -preparation for it. It is mani- 
 festly better for his school and for himself that he 
 should know, with some approach to accuracy, that 
 which he must apply whether he will or not. Doubt- 
 less, some are still to be found, among those who 
 vaunt their purely " practical " views on education, 
 who are of opinion that the primary teacher's work 
 has no connection with the philosophy of the human 
 mind, and that consequently it has no principles and 
 deductive methods worthy of the name. It is not 
 our business or intention here to combat this opinion. 
 It is enough if we gain the earnest teacher's assent to 
 the proposition, that the extent to which he can 
 realise in his own thought those formed habits of 
 the intelligence and the will, the fostering of 
 which is the object of his professional existence, 
 depends on his knowledge of human nature. If 
 he does not admit this, he degrades himself from 
 the position of an educated worker, striving, by 
 means of intellectual processes, to reach certain 
 well-defined moral and intellectual ends, to that 
 of a mere retailer of the alphabet and of an 
 inferior (because male) nurse ; nay, he, in his own 
 person, converts what is a profession in every 
 
14 Primary Instruction. 
 
 sense in which that distinctive term is applic- 
 able, into a trade so unutterably petty and vexatious 
 that only men of small natures would willingly adopt 
 it* 
 
 III. THE GENERAL METHOD OF EDUCATION. 
 
 To attain the school-ideal we must have method Nature of mind 
 and its growth in relation to methods of instruction and 
 training. 
 
 The teacher may have a knowledge of the nature 
 of human intelligence and will, sufficiently clear and 
 precise to yield to him a distinct conception of that 
 good habit of both which constitutes the end of 
 education, but may be so ignorant of the manner, 
 the conditions, and the periods of mental growth, as 
 to be unable to construct for himself a road to the 
 point which he desires to reach. It is true that if 
 the clear perception of the goal be united with an 
 earnest endeavour to reach it, a man whose character 
 is itself formed, or, which is better, striving to form 
 itself, in accordance with the highest standards of 
 rational life, will not deviate very far from the right 
 track. A steady eye, already to some extent practised 
 in the field of moral and intellectual exploration, 
 requires little more than the visible prominence of a 
 goal, to enable it to map out a chart of the country 
 which has to be traversed before that goal be reached. 
 But the devising of some practicable path through the 
 
 * " Teaching," saj T s Dr. Fitch, " is the noblest of all professions, 
 but it is the sorriest of all trades. " 
 
General Method. 1 5 
 
 intricacies of the yet untraversed ground is the first 
 demand on the powers of the teacher, and involves 
 too many delicate and important questions to be left 
 to the improvised and haphazard solutions which the 
 pressure of necessity may from time to time force 
 from him as he proceeds. It is therefore incumbent 
 on him to consider the principles which must deter- 
 mine the path to be chosen, and which lie at the 
 foundation of Method. He has an end to reach, and 
 he must find the way. 
 
 The mind exhibits its life in various forms forms 
 which, though suggesting many questions of specu- 
 lative difficulty, are easily distinguished from each 
 other for the purposes of education. These forms of 
 sensibility or activity emerge into life at different 
 periods of the child's growth, and claim, therefore, 
 from the educator at different periods deliberate 
 attention or careful neglect. The materials of 
 instruction which the teacher is constrained to employ 
 are, in the first instance at least, to be contemplated 
 solely as the aliment necessary for the due sustenance 
 and growth of those sensibilities and powers which, 
 when matured, constitute that mental character which 
 it is his business to form. The wise development of 
 these sensibilities and powers such a development 
 as will help them to consolidate into a healthy and 
 harmonious whole can be promoted only by pre- 
 senting the materials of aliment at the right time and 
 in the right way. The chronological appearance of 
 
1 6 Primary Instruction. 
 
 the activities of niind must not be anticipated, and 
 their modus operandi must not be misunderstood. 
 That food alone must be presented which the mind at 
 the time of the presentation has acquired sufficient 
 vigour to assimilate, and it must be presented in such 
 a shape, and according to such processes, as harmonise 
 with the manner in which the mind itself works. 
 Such a presentation of the substance of knowledge to 
 the learner is a presentation according to Method. 
 Methods of teaching, therefore, deal with the times 
 and ways of using the materials of instruction, and of 
 presenting them to the mind of the learner; and 
 right methods are such times and ways of using and 
 presenting our materials as truly accord with the 
 times and ways of mental growth. The same remarks 
 apply to moral training and discipline as to instruc- 
 tion. Methods of education generally, then, are those 
 processes by which we convey instruction and dis- 
 cipline, with a view to the formation of a right habit 
 of the intelligence and the will. These methods 
 rest on the facts of mental growth that series of 
 processes by which the mind attains its maturity, and 
 that tendency to repeat itself which we call Habit. 
 The two processes cannot be dissociated : there must 
 be a mutual understanding and consentaneity between 
 them if the work of education is to be rightly 
 done. 
 
 It is true that a teacher, himself possessed of a 
 disciplined intelligence, and of a will fortified by 
 
Qualifications of the Teacher. 1 7 
 
 experience, reason, and religious conviction, may be 
 working wisely towards the production in others of that 
 which already exists in himself, and thus be uncon- 
 sciously adapting his processes to a sound method ; but 
 even one so rarely endowed as to be able to dispense 
 with a conscious knowledge of mind and its manner of 
 operation, loses the consolation and invigoration which 
 a man draws from the reflection, that he is working 
 in conformity with certain mental laws of growth, 
 towards an end which he can distinctly conceive and 
 rationally vindicate. 
 
 IV. QUALIFICATIONS OF THE TEACH EM. 
 
 Philosophic aptitude rather than philosophic knowledge necessary in 
 the teacher Sympathy a substitute for philosophy Character in 
 the teacher himself. 
 
 It may be urged, and with plausibility, that to 
 make such high demands on the primary teacher, is to 
 require of him a knowledge of psychology completed 
 in the large sense of furnishing him not only with an 
 analysis of our emotional and intellectual nature, but 
 also of its mode of growth ; and that, inasmuch as no 
 such recognised philosophic scheme exists, we demand 
 impossibilities. The reply to this may be found in 
 what has been already said : it is not necessary that 
 the schoolmaster be a philosopher, either in the sense 
 of elaborating a scheme of psychology for himself, or 
 even of fully comprehending those which others offer for 
 
1 8 Primary Instruction. 
 
 his acceptance. But if he is to be a good and a living 
 teacher, it is indispensable that he should philosophise. 
 A constant spirit of inquiry, with a view to understand 
 the objects of his care, and to adapt fresh means to 
 those ends which experience and reflection enable him 
 from day to day more distinctly to perceive and more 
 largely to comprehend, is essential to the right con- 
 ception of his duty, and to his own sense of manliness 
 and dignity in the discharge of it. If he has this, he 
 has all that is essential ; for where the master-mind 
 of the school is itself thus open, living, and progressive, 
 an intellectual and moral movement is communicated 
 to the pupils which could never flow from a man 
 whose pretensions to theoretic knowledge were greater, 
 but who laboured on in conscientious but dull obedi- 
 ence to a stereotyped system of mind, and to practical 
 rules deduced from it. The habitual study of the 
 capacities and growth of mind is necessary to the 
 teacher, not the mere possession of a series of dead 
 classifications of the human faculties. Accordingly 
 the mental requirement, seemingly so high, is not 
 really greater than we are entitled to expect from 
 every one ; for it does not involve profound knowledge 
 or various attainment, but only an average amount of 
 intellectual capacity, to which, under a sense of duty, 
 a specific direction has been given. A certain amount 
 of psychological knowledge, but that easy of attain- 
 ment, is doubtless indispensable ; but it is the habit of 
 mind, and the attitude which the mind of the teacher 
 takes up with respect to its work, which are the chief 
 
Qualifications of the Teacher. 19 
 
 requisites. Of this the schoolmaster may be assured, 
 that unless he take the philosophic view of his pro- 
 fession and his duties, he will never fully understand 
 the significance of his daily task, or raise himself, 
 either in his own eyes or in those of others, above the 
 position of a soul-vexed mechanic, whose occupation 
 the world will persist in regarding as petty, because 
 the objects of it are small. 
 
 Such, in outline, ought to be the schoolmaster's 
 purpose, method, and qualification. We can imagine 
 only one case in which some knowledge of mental 
 processes and a philosophic attitude of mind can be 
 safely dispensed with, the case of the master who is 
 endowed with sympathetic sensibility. Where this is 
 strong, formal philosophic methods are at once super- 
 seded, and the qualifications for understanding their 
 organic connection with mind are, if not superfluous, 
 at least unnecessary. The sympathetic adaptation of 
 means to ends is the most subtle and successful of all 
 school-methods. There are some teachers, but these 
 are rare, to whom the impressions made on the minds 
 of their pupils, or the silent intellectual efforts which 
 the pupils may be making, communicate themselves 
 instantaneously. The mental processes of others are 
 felt by them apparently without the intervention of 
 any rational process. They seem to possess an intui- 
 tive power of forgetting their own individuality in 
 order to become sharers in that of their scholars. 
 Such men are, generally, free from obtrusive self-asser- 
 
2O Primary Instruction. 
 
 tion and from dogmatism and arrogance of character : 
 their simplicity and geniality of disposition are the 
 genuine expression of a soul which has no ulterior 
 " interest " to serve, and which is therefore free to 
 enter, with single-heartedness and with wholeness of 
 mind, into the sentiment or duty which may at the 
 moment be exacting their service. There are such 
 men, silently eminent in school-life at this day, whose 
 powerful instincts justly discard, without contemning, 
 formal methods, because of the secret of success with 
 which a happy mental constitution has already endowed 
 them. That lively sympathy which leads them to live 
 less in themselves than in the lives of others, and 
 especially of the young, furnishes them with a private 
 key with which to unlock the intellects and hearts of 
 their pupils. They have a genius for education, but 
 we cannot command a continuous supply of them. 
 
 There is something feminine in the character of 
 mind to which we have just referred, and it is, per- 
 haps, in women that we find it most commonly. The 
 sympathetic self-abnegation of the woman, conse- 
 quently, makes her the best teacher of the young up 
 to a certain age. She has unconsciously what a man 
 for the most part acquires consciously, and what he 
 must therefore, even when he has the best intentions, 
 give out consciously. This conscious giving out im- 
 plies an effort on his part which the subtle senses of 
 children are so quick to detect, that he cannot, if he 
 would, establish a perfectly harmonious relationship 
 with them. 
 
Qualifications of the Teacher. 2 i 
 
 To the teacher who, apprehending the high purpose 
 of the school, strives to understand his own processes 
 and to bring his teaching more and more into accord- 
 ance with philosophic methods, school-keeping may be 
 a labour, but it is not a toil : to the teacher of genial 
 nature and sympathetic power, whose processes are a 
 continual and unconscious inspiration, it is scarcely 
 even a labour, but rather the continuing, under special 
 conditions, of his usual habit of life. He is as happy 
 as a man can be. 
 
 But above all and before all the teacher must look 
 to himself. Neither philosophic methods nor sym- 
 pathetic intuition can counteract or supersede the 
 influence of his own character. The power which a 
 vigorous character has of producing its likeness in 
 another, is a fact which does not require to be dwelt 
 upon. In this superiority of personal character, lay 
 the secret of the moral and intellectual successes of 
 many distinguished schoolmasters in past times, who, 
 with clear conceptions of their final aim, went straight 
 at it without recognising, or perhaps caring to recog- 
 nise, the fact, that the minds which they were educating 
 lived and grew as independent organisms and according 
 to certain laws. Such men, it is true, generally fail 
 to succeed with the mass of their pupils, for they 
 throw on their unripe minds the burden not merely 
 of learning, but also of analysing and reducing into 
 method, what is taught. The strong intellects of the 
 school come out the stronger perhaps for the difficulties 
 overcome ; but the ordinary intellect is never fairly 
 
22 Primary Instruction. 
 
 reached either by instruction or discipline to any 
 appreciable extent, though, doubtless, it is morally 
 benefited by the dominant will of the master, and his 
 irresistible exactions. 
 
 Character even without methods never fails, we may 
 be assured, of at least partial success, because the young 
 are both plastic and imitative ; on the other hand, 
 the most clearly-conceived ideal and the most skilful 
 methods, without the element of personal character, 
 will, however successful in particular directions, in- 
 variably fail to attain the great object of the school. 
 The young teacher should constantly bear in mind that 
 an uncontrolled will and an inaccurate and undis- 
 ciplined intellect can never contribute to the formation 
 of a sound intelligence and will in others. An honest 
 understanding, on the other hand, even though limited 
 in capacity and attainment, if combined with a good 
 habit of will, unwittingly exhibits a reality and ear- 
 nestness which do not fail to repeat themselves in 
 those who are brought under their influence. Nay, 
 even where sound methods are in operation, it is 
 character which truly does more than half of the work, 
 using methods as subsidiary means ; or, it may be, 
 insidiously undoes it all, producing effects precisely in 
 proportion to the unconsciousness of its operation, and 
 affording a visible exemplar down to which the pupils 
 tend to grow. A man of limited powers and meagre 
 nature may, under a love of praise, or some other not 
 unworthy but unstable motive, strive with a certain 
 measure of success to convey instruction, and along 
 
A uxiliaries. 2 3 
 
 with it discipline ; but the lesson which character 
 teaches is apart from all intention. What he morally 
 is, that the schoolmaster morally does. Nor will any 
 mere desire should such occasionally visit him to 
 convey a higher moral influence than himself, give him 
 the power to convey it. 
 
 V. AUXILIARIES OF THE TEACHER. 
 
 Natural operation of mind Moral accesses to the intellect Class- 
 sympathy. 
 
 In the natural instinct of acquisition, so conspicuous 
 in children, and in the irrepressible love of activity, 
 the teacher will find co-operating agencies ready to 
 aid him in his labours, and to supply his own short- 
 comings in a knowledge of the processes and growth 
 of mind. In truth, nature is hourly striving to do 
 the work which he, in his impatient ignorance, is too 
 often thwarting. For it is a fact in the operation of 
 mind, that however awkward, inverted, or confused 
 may be the way in which an object whether it be 
 grammar, geography, or the alphabet is presented to 
 the child or adult, there is a strong, though not always 
 successful, analytic effort on the part of the intellect to 
 fall into the proper acquiring attitude towards it, to 
 grope its way through confusion, instinctively setting 
 aside the irrelevant, until it seizes firm hold of the 
 right end of the thread by following which it may find 
 its way to knowledge. In this fact the teacher may 
 
24 Primary Instruction. 
 
 find much encouragement, the best teacher as well as 
 the mediocre, for none are independent of its aid. It 
 is the self - curative energy of mind which makes 
 ultimately educative in their effect, facts, generalisations, 
 and reasonings which, at the time of presentation, fail 
 to reach either the understanding or the feelings of the 
 pupil, and are utterly barren of any immediate result 
 whatsoever, except exercising the memory and gene- 
 rating a distaste for learning. 
 
 Nor is the spontaneous energy of the mind the only 
 natural auxiliary which the teacher finds ready to supply 
 his defects and correct his errors. He has command 
 over the moral avenues to the understanding. It is 
 this fact which explains the success of those teachers 
 who seem to begin everything at the wrong place, and 
 to prosecute it in the wrong way. They are men of 
 vigour, and have an earnest desire to instruct and 
 discipline the minds of their pupils. The constant 
 manifestation of their intellectual and moral energy is 
 contagious : it communicates a wholesome shock to 
 the pupil, and his powers are stretched to the utmost 
 in order to keep pace with a master whose earnestness 
 and strength so conspicuously call forth respect and 
 confidence. 
 
 Finally, the schoolmaster has the potent ally, 
 sympathy of numbers, on his side. All help each 
 in the intellectual effort or moral discipline which 
 occupies the passing moment. The kindling of the 
 eye, as the mind of each member of the class works 
 its way to apprehension and utterance, is communi- 
 
Restrictions of Teacher. 25 
 
 cated from boy to boy, and the success of one is truly 
 the success of all. Class - sympathy furnishes that 
 mental stimulus which a common pursuit, supported 
 by generous emulation, always gives to those who are 
 engaged in it. 
 
 VI. RESTRICTIONS OF THE ELEMENTARY TEACHER. 
 
 Shortness of attendance Irregularity of attendance Number of 
 classes Character of pupils' homes Necessities of pupils' future 
 life. 
 
 A schoolmaster may have a definite purpose, he 
 may perceive the relation of all the various parts of 
 his work to this purpose, he may grasp method in its 
 fullest sense, or possess that sympathetic power which 
 supersedes method ; yet with all these qualifications 
 he will fail, if he is not prepared to face fairly the 
 hard conditions of ordinary school life. His most 
 sanguine professional anticipations will be unfulfilled, 
 and he will find that each successive year brings him 
 only blighted hopes and fresh chagrin, if he do not 
 from the first fairly face and measure the inevitable 
 obstructions that strew his path, rendering necessary a 
 modification of his route, his educational instruments, 
 and his expectations. While maintaining his ideal, it 
 is his fate to work towards it under the severest 
 limitations, and in the face of constant discomfitures. 
 There is, in truth, no profession or occupation sur- 
 rounded by so many discouraging and harassing 
 
26 Primary Instruction. 
 
 difficulties as that of the primary teacher difficulties, 
 moreover, which have to be daily encountered, but 
 which, by their very nature, can never be wholly 
 overcome, because they repeat themselves with every 
 fresh supply of pupils. 
 
 1. The greatest of these is the short period of 
 attendance at school. The average age at which 
 children leave school is about eleven years in England, 
 and in Scotland about twelve. Insufficient as this 
 term of attendance is when we consider the work to 
 be done, the primary teacher might bravely and hope- 
 fully undertake the task imposed on him if the 
 attendance, though short, were continuous. So far is 
 this from being the case, that days, weeks, months, 
 and even years of absence intervene, breaking up the 
 school so completely as practically to renew its con- 
 stituent parts every two or three years. This is an 
 evil for which no efficacious remedy has yet been pro- 
 posed, except a compulsory law. Until we have some 
 such law a law, that is to say, which makes it penal 
 for any capitalist to employ the labour of children 
 under a certain age who cannot produce a certificate 
 of a certain term of attendance at an elementary 
 school the evil can only be palliated.''' 5 " 
 
 It is probable, however, that teachers and school 
 managers could do much more than they now do to 
 palliate the evil, were they to exert their full influence 
 
 * A Compulsory Law now exists, but does not fulfil 'the hopes of 
 those who advocated it. 
 
Restrictions of Teacher. 27 
 
 to induce parents to abstain from withdrawing pupils. 
 It is certainly impossible to imagine a more legitimate 
 domestic subject for the exercise of a little local 
 despotism. The teacher, when pecuniarily interested 
 in steady attendance, may feel some delicacy in openly 
 endeavouring to coerce the children of the parish into 
 the schoolhouse ; but the motives of school managers 
 cannot be misinterpreted.* 
 
 * In aid of the exhortations and pressure of the managers, various 
 devices might be resorted to in different parts of the country for 
 reducing the amount of absenteeism. In some districts, for example, 
 the absentees are kept at home for two or three months in the year, 
 not because the children are hired by large farmers for field labour, 
 but merely because their parents require a few hours' assistance on 
 their crofts or in herding. It would surely be possible to come to an 
 understanding in such cases with the parents, and by closing the school 
 for the younger and unemployed children at noon after two or three 
 hours' instruction, and reopening it towards evening, if only for one 
 hour, for those who have been occupied in the fields during the day, 
 to combine consideration for the material necessities of the parents 
 with attention to the mental needs of the children. A daily attend- 
 ance so short could, it is true, effect little more than the maintenance 
 of the knowledge previously acquired, but every earnest teacher would 
 hail even this small instalment of a full attendance as a welcome 
 solution of his chief difficulty. For it is not the mere fact that the 
 pupils have made no progress during a three or six months' absence 
 that discourages the master, but that they have visibly retrograded, 
 not only in actual knowledge, but in intellectual facility. They have 
 barely succeeded during the winter months in reacquiring the latter, 
 with a view to the recovery of the former, when their time of with- 
 drawal for field-labour again approaches. So universal is this custom, 
 that the children, after they have attained a certain age, professedly 
 come to school only for what is in some parts of Scotland called the 
 winter "spate," which means an attendance of from ten to fifteen 
 weeks. It is therefore worth considering whether evening schools for 
 lads above eleven could not be held in summer, the teacher being set 
 free from his other duties at an early period of the day, in order to 
 carry forward at a later hour the training of his elder pupils, who are 
 hopelessly lost to him without this supplementary instruction. If the 
 
28 Primary Instruction. 
 
 The teacher has also to deal with an evil even more 
 vexatious and more destructive of discipline than 
 lengthened absenteeism, if not so difficult of cure, 
 the habit of irregularity of attendance, for trivial 
 reasons or for no reason at all, on the part of those 
 who are nominally on the school-roll, and who are 
 too young for the field or the factory. The teacher 
 who can rely on the attendance even of those of 
 his pupils who are under ten years of age for 150 
 days of the school-year, has reason to congratulate 
 himself. 
 
 2. The number of classes which a primary school- 
 master has to superintend, and even personally to 
 instruct, in small and ungraded schools, is seldom 
 sufficiently considered by those who criticise his results, 
 and seems frequently to be lost sight of even by himself. 
 If we bear in mind that the average number of classes 
 in an elementary school is six ; that every one of these, 
 if properly taught, is obtaining instruction in three 
 subjects, and two, if not three of them, in six or seven 
 
 parish will not adapt itself to the school, the school must adapt itself 
 to the parish. 
 
 The above suggestion for mitigating the evil of irregularity, has 
 reference solely to those children who are above a certain age, and are 
 withdrawn for purposes of remunerative labour, in the service either of 
 their parents or of large farmers and other employers of child-labour. 
 To give effect to it requires the co-operation 7 " of the school managers 
 with the teacher; but inasmuch as it fairly admits an existing 
 difficulty, and endeavours to make the best of it, an attempt to give 
 effect to the proposal would, it seems to me, be met by fewer obstruc- 
 tions than encompass almost all other expedients for obviating the 
 great evil of irregular attendance. 
 
Restrictions of Teacher. 29 
 
 subjects, during a school-day not exceeding five hours ; 
 in other words, that about five-and-twenty distinct 
 lessons have to be given daily, and time allowed for 
 assembling, dismissing, and for the formation of classes, 
 the necessity of limiting the range of work, if work is 
 to be effectually done, is sufficiently manifest to allow 
 of our passing at once to the next obstruction besetting 
 the teacher's path.* 
 
 3. The third obstruction is the character of the 
 homes of the mass of the pupils. The uncontrolled 
 will, the coarse language, the want of kindliness and 
 of gentleness of demeanour, the dirty, wasteful, and 
 therefore demoralising habits, the almost total disregard 
 of intellectual or even of fairly civilized family life, 
 which may be seen in too many of these homes, 
 counteract the teacher's labours, and seem more than i 
 any other difficulty to justify despair. But it is 
 needless to dwell on a moral obstacle which the teacher 
 must be contented to endure, working in the face of it 
 as hopefully as he can. It is adverted to here chiefly 
 because it has afterwards to be used for the enforce- 
 ment of some of his school duties. 
 
 4. The next limitation under which the elementary 
 teacher works requires to be stated, not because of its 
 presenting insuperable difficulties, but rather because 
 he is himself very apt to omit it altogether from his 
 
 * Large schools arc now graded, but iu many cases the classes are 
 too lar< p c. 
 
3o Primary Instruction. 
 
 calculations, setting it aside, not deliberately, with a 
 view to the better attainment of his own ideal, but in 
 unthinking slavery to tradition and routine. This 
 limitation is the necessity of selecting such materials 
 of education as will meet the requirements of the 
 pupil's future life. Outside the two prime subjects of 
 moral and religious instruction, we are not left free in 
 the elementary school to choose the materials best 
 fitted to promote the formation of a good habit of the 
 intelligence and the will: and for this reason, that 
 both the moral and intellectual nature require to be 
 informed, with a view to the actual and the most 
 pressing needs of daily life. Nor is this to be regretted 
 by the theorist intent on character only, for through 
 information rightly given the mind gains much of its 
 best discipline. 
 
 The kind of instruction which is generally omitted 
 from the school curriculum is that which is needed for 
 the support and direction of the conscience. We may 
 frequently find among those who have left school a 
 fairly disciplined habit of the intelligence ; but if the 
 materials on which the intelligence has been exercised 
 at school have no connection with the details of daily 
 duty, the work a boy learning his trade has to do, will 
 be done painfully and with very doubtful results. 
 Again, in the more strictly moral sphere, we can easily 
 imagine a youth strong enough to guide himself through 
 difficulties and temptations ; but if the materials with 
 which the will has been informed (if we may so speak) 
 
Restrictions of Teacher. 3 1 
 
 have no direct bearing on the questions which have to 
 be daily answered in the conduct of life, he will be 
 quite abroad in his conclusions when a new thing has 
 to be done or a past error to be rectified : he will 
 almost certainly succumb without resistance to the 
 bad habits which he may have inherited, and the 
 conventionalities which are peculiar to the - class of 
 society to which lie may belong. 
 
 The above remarks have reference specially, but 
 not exclusively, to the pupils of our Elementary 
 Schools. The traditionary motives and inherited 
 customs of the families of those boys who belong to 
 the middle and upper classes of society, modify, 
 though they do not alter, the bearing of the whole 
 education question on their training. This distinction 
 is perhaps too much lost sight of in discussing ques- 
 tions affecting middle or secondary schools. Elabor- 
 ately to impress on boys who come from homes in 
 which baths, daily used, may be found in every bed- 
 room, the physiological necessity of cleanliness, is to 
 carry billets to the wood. Again, with boys from 
 eleven to seventeen, whose characters are drawn by 
 the habits of the class to which they belong into the 
 groove of honour, good principle, and respect for 
 religion, the idea of a free training ought manifestly 
 to dominate. Unrestricted mutual education in the 
 open air under certain general rules and supervision 
 (but without any vigilance that savours of espionage), 
 the repression of luxurious habits, submission to law, 
 
32 Primary Instruction. 
 
 regard for the weak and poor, and the development 
 by these means of a robust morality, probably do 
 more, in such cases, than any possible combination of 
 literary or scientific pursuits, to give wholesome and 
 fruitful discipline. 
 
 But if we turn to the children of the operative 
 classes, we find ourselves on very different ground. 
 The objects of the teacher's care are dispersed at the 
 age of ten or twelve years not drawn into an upper 
 school which will carry onward the instruction and 
 training of childhood, but driven into the labour of 
 life. They are already little men and women, alive 
 to the material responsibilities of existence, and called 
 upon at once to exhibit a certain practical aptitude 
 and a certain quantity of usable knowledge. Before 
 many years have passed, they have to take sole 
 direction of their own conduct, unrestrained and 
 unsupported, as the middle and upper classes are, by 
 strong family ties, conventional standards, and heredi- 
 tary obligations. This it is which makes the educa- 
 tion not the merely technical instruction of the 
 children of the humbler classes a matter of such 
 paramount importance for the State. 
 
 We have already dwelt on the abrupt conclusion to 
 the teacher's labours caused by the early removal of 
 children from school, an evil which he must face by 
 at once adapting himself to the premature termination 
 of his course of instruction and discipline. The 
 
Lessons from Restrictions. 33 
 
 limitation last adverted to imposes on him the further 
 obligation of endeavouring to fulfil the ideal purpose 
 of the school by means of such a course of instruction 
 as will fairly meet the inevitable circumstances and 
 requirements of the future life of his pupil. This 
 naturally leads us to consider next 
 
 VII. THE LESSONS TO BE DllAWN FROM THE RESTRIC- 
 TIONS OF THE PRIMARY TEACHER. 
 
 <' i>n traction of teacher's work Principles of selection Subjects in 
 order of importance, primary and secondary Supreme import- 
 ance of ethical teaching. 
 
 It was impossible to point out the limitations 
 under which the primary teacher has to do his work, 
 without, by implication at least, suggesting the 
 obligations which these limitations impose on him ; 
 and not on him alone, but on all who have to do with 
 the management of elementary schools. In looking 
 more closely at this subject, we shall iind that lli<> 
 limitations imposed by the brief period of school life 
 the irregularity of attendance during that period, the 
 numerous classes demanding the master's constant 
 attention, and the requirements of after-life, all com- 
 bine to teach the same lesson t\ie judicious contraction, 
 of the teacher's work. To maintain this, even in the face 
 of the noisy demand for the admission into the school 
 curriculum of all sorts of sciences and arts which has 
 distinguished the last thirty years, would be more 
 
34 Primary Instruction. 
 
 unpopular than difficult. Drawing, Music, the Physi- 
 ology of Man, Physiology of Plants, Political Economy, 
 Astronomy ; every department of Natural Philosophy ; 
 Geology and Mineralogy ; Military Drill, Agricultural 
 Chemistry, Natural History, Constitutional Law, 
 Technology, Phrenology, Handicraft, have been all, or 
 each in its turn, strenuously advocated in addition to 
 the current and almost universal subjects of Eeading, 
 Writing, Arithmetic, Geography (Political and Physi- 
 cal), History, Grammar, Writing from Dictation, and 
 Religious Knowledge. Any thinking or unthinking 
 man is competent to suggest subjects which it is 
 desirable to teach in our primary schools ; but there 
 is only one point of view from which all such sugges- 
 tions must be estimated, and that is the school-floor 
 itself. And from this point of view a fair considera- 
 tion of the limitations to which we have adverted 
 above will force on every one the conviction, that the 
 education of the primary school cannot be general 
 education at all, in the large and theoretic sense, but 
 must rather have constant reference to certain special 
 and practical ends. Given the facts of the brief 
 duration of school life, of irregularity of attendance, 
 and of numerous classes, there is no alternative open 
 save to select, for the purposes of training and dis- 
 cipline, those subjects which bear most directly on the 
 practical and immediate needs of the child's future 
 life. 
 
 It does not follow that the teacher is, on this 
 
Lessons from Restrictions. 35 
 
 account, for one moment to lose sight of the great and 
 final aim of his work, the formation of character ; 
 nor does he require to curtail those religious and moral 
 instructions which bear most directly on this his final 
 aim. Those instructions must be held sacred. They 
 are as indispensable to the child here as to his pre- 
 paration for a hereafter. They are the direct efforts 
 made to form and inform the will of the child, towards 
 which all other school teachings contribute only 
 indirectly. The limitations under which the school- 
 master works, accordingly, do not necessarily affect 
 either his scholastic ideal or his moral teaching ; they 
 touch only the intellectual materials or implements 
 with which he works. He is not permitted to be 
 either discursive, encyclopaedic, or from some theoretic 
 point of view of his own, eclectic ; he is under a law 
 of social necessity, which restricts him to a narrow 
 and determined path. We do not mean to say that 
 the idiosyncrasy of a teacher's intellect, or some 
 specialty of knowledge, may not justify occasional 
 deviation from the course thus laid down for him. A 
 special love and knowledge of botany or of natural 
 history, or of any department of physics, or of poetry 
 or music or drawing, ought to be allowed free play in 
 the conducting of a school. In such exceptional 
 circumstances, the subject which the master peculiarly 
 affects will probably be so well taught as to do more 
 than any other to give a healthful stimulus to the 
 intellects of the children, and to excite in them a real 
 and lasting interest in ^j"~hnaliirfn _thnriT-1"r~ and 
 
3 6 Primary Instruction. 
 
 their daily wants. Such a result will fully compensate 
 for the loss of what would probably be merely routine 
 instruction in some other department' of study. But 
 allowing for an occasional divergence of this kind, the 
 circumstances of which furnish its own best justifica- 
 tion, it is from the limited and irregular attendance 
 and the future needs of the pupil alone that we must 
 learn the leading subjects of primary school instruc- 
 tion. And these subjects are Eeligion, Morality, and 
 the time-honoured branches Reading, Writing, and 
 Arithmetic, 
 
 How, then, shall we so work under these narrow 
 limitations as to attain the educative ends of the 
 primary school ? 
 
 In confining intellectual school work, in the first 
 instance, to purely technical instruction in the three 
 instruments whereby knowledge may be afterwards 
 attained and turned to account by the pupil himself, 
 we do not omit from our consideration two things : 
 
 First, the universally admitted fact that, unless the 
 mind of the pupil be interested in knowledge for its 
 own sake, as well as qualified to acquire it, the work 
 of the teacher will find its termination on the day on 
 which the pupil leaves the school, and on that day a 
 fatally retrograde process will begin. So far are we 
 from omitting this consideration, that we shall after- 
 wards show that the schoolmaster's craft consists in 
 so teaching the technical subjects, as to avoid this too 
 common result, while, at the same time he attains 
 even higher ends. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
 
Lessons from Restrictions. 37 
 
 it is true, must form the groundwork of all purely 
 ii.lollectual primary instruction; nay more, every 
 other subject must be subordinated to the paramount 
 claims of these. But precisely at this point, educa- 
 tion as such insists on being heard in relation to these 
 subjects, and the art of teaching steps in with its 
 suggestions, its aids, and its methods. At first sight, 
 the necessities of the case seem to subvert the very 
 idea of education in any large sense by compelling 
 almost exclusive attention to certain technical acquire- 
 ments ; but the art of teaching, intervening, demon- 
 strates that even these technicalities will fail to be 
 taught with practical effect,* unless they be taught in 
 such a way, and in so large and comprehensive a 
 spirit, as will virtually subordinate them in their turn 
 to the idea of education. Thus theory and practice 
 are reconciled. The way and the sense in which the 
 indispensable subjects are to be taught so as to secure 
 a truly educative result, fall properly to be considered 
 under the head of " Methods." 
 
 Secondly, we do not, in our limitation of school- 
 work, omit from our consideration the necessities of 
 the future life of the children of the labouring popu- 
 lation, already adverted to, and the nature of their 
 home-training. These point to instruction in the 
 duty and the means of preserving the bodily health of 
 themselves and those dependent on them, and in the 
 principles .of conduct which should actuate them as 
 members of a complicated social organisation. All 
 
 * Although they can be so taught as to satisfy Code standards. 
 
38 Primary Instruction, 
 
 this belongs to the religious and moral instruction, 
 which we presume to be sacred from interference. 
 Surely no one can doubt the vital necessity of insisting 
 on due attention to these personal and economic teach- 
 ings in the common school. To train a child under 
 a constant admonition to obey the laws of God and 
 man; and to act as a Christian ought to act, and then 
 to leave him to grope his own way to the fulfilment 
 of his duty, is a mockery. A command is a merely 
 formal utterance, and contains nothing. It is an out- 
 line to be filled up with the details of facts, reasons, 
 motives, and purposes. 
 
 The inherited habits of the middle and upper classes, 
 and their superior education and intelligence, may 
 possibly enable them to dispense with the details of a 
 manual of morality : they certainly have a tendency 
 to blind them as to the paramount need of specific 
 and detailed instruction in elementary schools on the 
 conduct of life. In these, and indeed in all schools, 
 the how and the why of moral laws, in their relation 
 to the routine of daily duty, require to be explicitly 
 taught and deliberately and emphatically enforced. 
 
 To teach physiology and political economy, save to 
 a few select pupils, would be absurd, simply because 
 there is no time for these studies ; and because the 
 teacher, if he abstracted the time from other subjects, 
 would waste himself in the futile effort to build up 
 in an unripe mind a pseudo-scientific knowledge, and 
 to convey instruction which the conditions of age, 
 time, and circumstances under which he worked would 
 
Lessons from Restrictions. 39 
 
 render it impossible for him to make the basis of 
 sound mental discipline. But to take up gravely and 
 seriously the three great questions of air, food, and 
 cleanliness, in relation to the three organs, the lungs, 
 the stomach, and the skin ; to show what these 
 organs are, why they exist, and how they work ; to 
 show that, so far as this natural fabric of ours is con- 
 cerned, we are these organs, and that to disobey the 
 divine laws under which alone they can healthily 
 operate is, in the gravity of its consequences, a moral 
 offence, to do all this is to enter on a kind of 
 instruction which those familiar with the domestic life 
 of the mass of the people of this country know to 
 have a more important bearing on every higher 
 question of man's life, as a spiritual and immortal 
 being, than any other, save the direct inculcation of 
 spiritual truths themselves. The laws of health, then, 
 which simply mean the rules of health taught with 
 reference to the principles on which they rest, ought 
 never to be absent from the primary school, and 
 ought to be handled by the teacher with all the 
 earnestness and solemnity of moral teaching. I regard 
 instruction in hygiene as moral instruction. 
 
 Again, although the duties which a man owes to 
 his family and to the society of which he is a 
 member, defy all attempt at explicit teaching, unless 
 we enter on the ground of elementary political 
 economy, it is not necessary to go beyond truths 
 obvious and trite. The moralities of getting, spending, 
 and selling, involve a whole series of questions 
 
40 Primary Instruction. 
 
 demanding detailed and impressive treatment and 
 reiteration. Frugality, economy, saving, life insurance, 
 the duty of educating children if only from purely 
 prudential motives, the social and economic effects of 
 lying, intemperance, and unfair dealing, ought all to fall 
 into the moral curriculum of the elementary school as 
 prime subjects. The relation of employer and labourer, 
 a clear understanding of what capital is, and of the 
 fact that wages are paid out of capital (and the conse- 
 quent importance of holding sacred the rights of 
 property, of rejoicing in the accumulations of others), 
 the causes of the rise and fall of wages, the effects of 
 machinery, and the advantages, in some cases the duty, 
 of emigration, are all momentous questions for the 
 future operative : and they are attractive to the pupil 
 if properly handled by the schoolmaster.* 
 
 The present practice, where moral teaching exists, 
 is to inculcate the doing of the right ; the kind of 
 instruction which we consider to be indispensable will 
 show what the " right " is, how it can be done, and the 
 infinite consequences, good or evil, which flow from 
 the right or the wrong act. We are apt to over- 
 estimate an uncultivated man's native power of con- 
 necting causes and remote effects, and to forget that, 
 with the poor, improvidence and other vices may be as 
 often imputed to want of knowledge or of intellectual 
 capacity as to a weak or perverse habit of will. 
 
 * Children leave school so young that the last-named subjects must 
 frequently be left to the teachers of the Evening Continuation Schools, 
 now happily increasing in number. 
 
Lessons from Restrictions. 41 
 
 Such instruction, as we have indicated, covers 
 almost the whole field of practical morality. Its 
 relation to religion, and the further and supreme 
 task which special religious instruction has to ac- 
 complish, will be considered in its proper place. We 
 are not called upon to introduce the above practical 
 moralities pompously or pedantically, as if separate 
 sciences or independent studies, but every master 
 should keep them constantly in view as part of his daily 
 moral teaching. If he consciously does this, he will 
 find, in governing his school and conveying ordinary 
 instruction, sufficient opportunities of instilling all the 
 truths necessary to the future wellbeing of the people. 
 If the reading-books of the school are well con- 
 structed, and have any educative purpose and method 
 running through them, they will suggest at least the 
 text, if they do not supply the detailed treatment, of 
 the moralities of our physical constitution and of our 
 social relations. 
 
 As soon as the teacher has given such prominence 
 in his school work to Eeligious Instruction, to the 
 three technical subjects of Reading (in its larger sense), 
 Writing, and Arithmetic, and to such teaching, as can 
 be given through chese, in practical morality in its 
 detailed application to the duties which physiological 
 laws and the social organism impose, he is then, but 
 only then, at liberty to turn his attention to other 
 departments of knowledge. The subjects above speci- 
 fied are indispensable and primary, and if others be 
 
42 Primary Instruction. 
 
 introduced, they must be kept in strict subordination 
 to these the magistral studies. And here a passing 
 word may be said on the vexed question of Grammar. 
 To teach English Grammar systematically before 
 the child has reached the age of eleven, is, it seems 
 to me, a waste of time. I do not mean to say 
 that it cannot be done, but that the pressure of 
 other subjects makes it a waste of time to do it. 
 Nor, perhaps, at any age is the teaching of English 
 Grammar in the primary school, as it is usually 
 taught, worth the time expended on it, except where 
 it is made distinctly, and at every stage of the pupil's 
 progress, to subserve two purposes namely, first, 
 facilitating the understanding of complex propositions, 
 especially the language of poetry, by bringing into 
 view, and fitting the child to bring into view for himself, 
 the relation of the several parts of sentences : and, 
 secondly, enabling the child to write sentences of his 
 own composition accurately. If thus practically 
 taught in close relation to its real significance and 
 purpose, Grammar may be begun at an early age, for 
 it then becomes a part of the reading-lesson, and is 
 by far the most useful intellectual discipline, when 
 taught with knowledge and precision, to which a child 
 can be subjected. Whatever may be said of boys 
 above eleven years of age, it is certain that before 
 they reach this age they should know little of 
 Grammar save in the above purely practical sense. 
 So limited, it is properly, as we have said, a part of 
 the instruction in reading, and essential to a thorough 
 
Lessons from Restrictions. 43 
 
 teaching of that art, presuming that thorough teach- 
 ing invariably aims at reaching and cultivating the 
 understanding of the pupil. 
 
 The secondary subjects that can put forward the 
 best claim for adoption into the school curriculum 
 are Music and Geography. The moral and disciplinary 
 effects of Music are so remarkable, that its judicious 
 introduction is in reality a means of saving time ; and 
 it is this fact which crowns the numerous arguments 
 which may be urged in its favour. Geography, 
 again, occupies time ; but as it is a subject acquired 
 chiefly through the eye and hand, and therefore both 
 attractive and easy, a daily lesson draws little 
 on the attention or available working power of 
 the pupils. Moreover, by introducing variety, and 
 enlarging the field of vision, it stimulates the intelli- 
 gence of the school generally. Its independent 
 claims for admission into the school are, that, when 
 taught with constant reference to climate, peoples, and 
 industries, it is the least artificial of all the exercises 
 of mind that can be presented to the young. For not 
 only is it important as a discipline in connecting 
 causes with their effects ; it is the most fruitful of all 
 possible subjects in facts, and although an education 
 which turns on absorption of facts is misnamed edu- 
 cation is not even instruction yet the facts involved 
 in a straightforward description of the earth we live 
 on, its climates, peoples, and productions, are so 
 natural an extension of the child's existing stock of 
 knowledge, and can be so attractively taught, that they 
 
44 Primary Instruction. 
 
 enter into his intellect easily and pleasantly as if part 
 of his own personal experience, insensibly broaden his 
 understanding, and give greater depth and solidity to 
 his future judgments. The relation of Geography, 
 when well taught, to the economic lessons already 
 spoken of is also important, as it enables the pupil to 
 realise the nature and extent of industries and the 
 mutual dependence of all mankind : this consideration 
 strengthens the argument in favour of putting 
 Geography next to Music among the secondary sub- 
 jects of the elementary school. 
 
 The elements of Drawing one would fain see enter 
 into the time-table of every primary school where the 
 master is possessed of that organising skill which 
 converts subjects of this kind into time-savers rather 
 than time-occupiers. But on no other condition can 
 Drawing find a place, for the simple reason that, if 
 other more important subjects have their due, there 
 is no place for it as an " accomplishment." It is 
 necessary, however, to except those initiatory attempts 
 at copying outlines of common objects on slates from 
 the blackboard, which are wisely interposed in the 
 midst of other work in the case of very young chil- 
 dren. These exercises properly belong to the infant 
 school, and may be continued in the upper classes. 
 They occupy and refresh the jaded mind, while 
 giving facility to the unpractised fingers, and accuracy 
 to the vague and undisciplined infant eye. To this 
 extent Drawing is in reality a time-saver, and is 
 
Lessons from Restrictions. 45 
 
 taught at a stage of school-life when varied occupa- 
 tion is essential. As a training of the perceptive 
 powers, but not at all as an accomplishment, it should 
 be found in every school. 
 
 History last and least claims attention in the 
 elementary school, and should find a place only when 
 there are advanced classes.* 
 
 Here it is necessary to stop ; for beyond these 
 subjects the primary school cannot go during the 
 ordinary school hours, save in a few exceptional cases. 
 It is true that a competent and well-informed teacher 
 will also give some instruction in the objects of nature 
 by which his pupils are surrounded, and explain the 
 more ordinary machines and physical phenomena 
 which daily come across the pupil's path ; but these 
 he will find treated of in good school reading-books 
 with sufficient fulness, and he cannot thoroughly teach 
 the lessons there given, even as mere reading exercises, 
 without eliciting their meaning, and working them into 
 the pupil's understanding in such a way as to imprint 
 them firmly on his memory. The same remark applies 
 to the elements of natural history, to geology, and 
 accounts of industrial processes : they are of importance, 
 but they are to be treated as subordinate to the primary 
 subjects, and taught out of the full mind of the teacher 
 through the ordinary reading-lessons.t 
 
 * On this subject sec the sequel. 
 
 t Much more inny of course be done in a fully organised and well- 
 staffed school. 
 
46 Primary Instruction. 
 
 So much for the lessons to be drawn by the 
 schoolmaster from the chief of the inevitable limita- 
 tions under which he works. But we cannot leave 
 the subject without again adverting to the most 
 serious limitation of all the habits of life in the 
 homes from which the children daily come, and the 
 lesson which the teacher should draw from them with 
 respect to his moral instructions and moral training. 
 It will be observed that, next to religious instruction 
 and the acquisition of a certain facility in the three 
 main technical subjects of the school, we have been 
 guided in giving precedence to other topics by their 
 moral bearings, because the ethical purpose in forming 
 character must always maintain a strict ascendancy 
 over the intellectual. It is the ethical in man which 
 is the man himself, his personality and will, without 
 which he is nothing in this world, and apart from 
 which he can be nothing hereafter. ISTor, even in its 
 relation to the mere understanding, does the will ever 
 fail to justify its claim to supreme attention in the 
 work of education. For the most superficial observer 
 must have noticed that a vigorous will sends a stream 
 of perspicacity and force into the operations of even 
 an ordinary intellect, and is thus in itself a constant 
 source of true intellectual discipline. 
 
 The necessity of this supreme regard to the ethical 
 aims of the school is, however, forced upon us chiefly 
 by the consideration of the domestic influences under 
 which so large a proportion of children live. The 
 frequent wrangling of the humbler classes, their un- 
 
Lessons from Restrictions. 47 
 
 gracious demeanour towards each other, their careless 
 ignoring, or, what is even more common, their rude 
 repression, of the gentler sensibilities of the young, are 
 sufficient in themselves to divert the genial current of a 
 young child's life into a hard and stony channel. To 
 these demoralising influences we have to add the too 
 common disregard of cleanliness, decency, and order, the 
 frequent domestic struggle for mastery decided ulti- 
 mately by brute force alone, instead of the considerate 
 command and eager submission which are the fruit of a 
 paternal authority resting on moral supremacy and of a 
 filial obedience prompted by respect and sustained 
 by affection. If such be the counteracting agencies 
 limiting, if not subverting, the teacher's work in the 
 mass of the pupils' homes, the lesson which they en- 
 force is the necessity of giving even exaggerated im- 
 portance in the school to the cultivation of the feelings 
 and imagination of the young, and of those ready 
 civilities and mutual courtesies which do so much to 
 confer happiness and dignity on the life of man. Here 
 again, the reading-books of the school, and above all 
 the school library, will be found useful auxiliaries to 
 the teacher, if, while furnishing the means of necessary 
 discipline and instruction, they make provision for the 
 starved imagination and repressed sensibilities of the 
 children of the poorer classes. 
 
 Enough has been now said, by way of suggestion 
 at least, on the lessons to be drawn from the limita- 
 tions under which the primary teacher does his daily 
 
48 Primary Instruction. 
 
 task ; the result of all which is, that he must confine 
 his work within narrow limits, and at the same time 
 constantly overrule it to certain moral and intellectual 
 educative ends. 
 
 Nor is the result to which we have been led such 
 as to discourage the ardent schoolmaster ; for although 
 he is excluded from such a choice of educational im- 
 plements as might, in his opinion, most efficiently 
 promote the theoretic idea of the school the formation 
 of character he is yet supplied with instruments 
 good enough and ample enough for the attainment of 
 his purpose, if they be rightly used. The right use of 
 these is such a use as will convert them into auxili- 
 aries of the ultimate educative purpose of his work. 
 The consideration of this brings us to methods of 
 teaching. For, having pointed out the subjects into 
 which it is imperative that the teacher should throw 
 his main strength, it becomes necessary to show in 
 what way he is to regulate and apply that strength in 
 the restricted field open to him, with a view to train 
 his pupils to those good habits of the intelligence and 
 of the will, which constitute the sum of his professional 
 task. 
 
Methods of Teaching. 
 
 II. THE PRIME SUBJECTS OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL, 
 AM) THE METHODS OF TEACHING THEM. 
 
 I. THE CONCURRENCE OF GENEHAL METHOD 
 AND PARTICULAR METHODS. 
 
 A METHOD, as I have already shown, is a way towards 
 the attainment of an end. The general method on 
 which all education proceeds I have already spoken of. 
 Our duty now is with the particular methods whereby 
 certain special ends may be best attained. For the 
 schoolmaster, inasmuch as he is precluded, by the 
 circumstances under which he works, from selecting 
 the materials of his craft, with sole reference either to 
 the ultimate educative end which he has in view, or 
 to the best conception of general method, is driven to 
 consider the question, whether it be possible to teach 
 the subjects to which he is limited in such a way as 
 to make them 'contribute directly to his ultimate pur- 
 pose, the formation of a good intellectual and moral 
 habit, and to bring the expedients he adopts within 
 the range of philosophic method : and all this without 
 sacrificing the technical knowledge which it is his 
 D 
 
50 Primary Instruction. 
 
 immediate business to communicate, nay, rather 
 promoting it. 
 
 In other words, the schoolmaster is forced to con- 
 sider the particular method belonging to each particular 
 subject of instruction in its relation to general 
 method ; the particular end being the communication 
 to the pupil of a certain power over a specified subject 
 (whether it be Beading, Writing, or Arithmetic), as 
 distinguished from the general and ultimate end of 
 education. The particular method which the teacher 
 is in search of is the most sure, sound, effectual, and 
 therefore the most easy and rapid, way of communi- 
 cating, or rather calling into existence, the required 
 power or faculty. Manifestly, the particular method 
 which has reference to a specific subject, and the 
 general method which has reference to education in 
 the general sense, are not of equal authority in the 
 eyes of the enlightened schoolmaster. Where they 
 conflict, or, we should rather say, seem to conflict, the 
 latter is paramount. But as the general purpose of 
 education can be attained only by the active exercise 
 of the intellectual and moral powers of the pupil in 
 accordance with their natural laws of operation, so it 
 will be found that the particular purpose of instructing 
 him in some specific subject cannot possibly be attained 
 in any way so sure, sound, easy, and rapid, as by that 
 which is in accordance with the same laws. Thus, 
 happily, the particular method which has reference to 
 each separate subject of instruction, and the general 
 method of education which contemplates solely the 
 
Methods of Teaching. 5 1 
 
 development and discipline of the mind, will be found 
 to be in reality one and the same. The truth of this 
 will appear in the course of ascertaining and stating 
 the best methods to be employed in teaching the 
 various special technicalities of the primary-school 
 curriculum. 
 
 At this point of my argument I may explain 
 that it is not my intention in this volume to enter 
 into subtle psychological questions as to the periods of 
 mental growth, or the mode of the mental movement 
 winch is called learning, and of the precise relation in 
 which teaching and education stand to that movement. 
 These, and many other cognate questions, are of great 
 moment in themselves, as uncovering for us the 
 structure of intelligence and the basis and mode of 
 intellectual and ethical growth. A true account of 
 them would necessarily govern all education : but 
 this would belong to a broader and more theoretic 
 treatment than is possible in a book of limited 
 practical aim, such as this. 
 
 II. OBJECTS AND METHOD OF TEACHING READING. 
 
 The particular end proposed in teaching Reading 
 is, if rightly understood, an end much more compre- 
 hensive, and involving much more than is generally 
 supposed. We have already incidentally adverted to 
 the large view which the schoolmaster ought to take 
 
52 Primary Instruction. 
 
 of the three time-honoured foundations of primary- 
 school work Eeading, Writing, and Arithmetic. 
 Beading especially demands and admits of a wide and 
 liberal interpretation. To put it concisely and prac- 
 tically, the teaching of this art is the communicating 
 of a power to read works which constitute ordinary 
 literature, easily, intelligently, and intelligibly. To 
 accomplish this object thoroughly is, as we shall find, 
 to give explicitly or implicitly, so large an amount 
 of instruction and discipline as almost in itself 
 to effect the whole higher purpose of elementary 
 instruction. 
 
 We have now to see how this special end Eeading 
 may be most surely and soundly reached, and to 
 elicit the harmony that subsists between the particular 
 technical end of instruction, when adequately con- 
 ceived, and the general purpose of education. 
 
 1. Initiation in the Art of Reading. 
 
 The Phonic, the " Look and Say " and the Alphabetic methods 
 Spelling. 
 
 To initiate a child into the art of Reading, is to 
 give him the power of recognising the conventional 
 symbols of words, and of uttering them accurately. 
 
 Printed words are different groupings of a limited 
 number of conventional signs, and the labour of 
 learning to read is thus infinitely less than if every 
 word had a distinct symbol written or drawn. Were 
 
Initiation in the Art of Reading. 53 
 
 we in the latter unhappy predicament, the primary 
 teacher would be almost wholly occupied in teaching 
 the ten or fifteen thousand different symbols necessary 
 for the instruction of a child in the art of reading his 
 Bible or the daily paper ; and even after this was 
 accomplished, the pupil would find that an immense 
 number of word-signs were still to him unknown. 
 By arresting words in the act of enunciation, and 
 analysing their sounds into their individual parts, we 
 find that the same sounds are continually recurring in 
 different combinations, and that, while words seem 
 infinite in number, the sounds which enter into them 
 are few. In the English language, even including 
 biliteral sounds, the total number probably does not 
 exceed thirty. To these elementary simple sounds we 
 have only to attach written symbols, and the art of 
 reading becomes simply the ad of recognising these 
 sound-symbols, when we see them, and re-combining 
 them into words. 
 
 Since this is so, it is manifest that the first step in 
 teaching to read ought to be to give the child a 
 knowledge of the elementary sounds and their corre- 
 sponding symbols, we say sounds, not the accidental 
 names of the sounds the powers of the letters, not 
 the letters: the second, to guide him in the attempt 
 to group them into words of the most simple kind, 
 but gradually increasing in difficulty. The first step 
 is only a lesson in form, to be taught as lessons in 
 form ought to be taught, and is purely an act of 
 memory ; the second step is a lesson in the building 
 
54 Primary Instruction. 
 
 up of parts ID to a whole, bringing into play those 
 powers whereby the child has been acquiring all his 
 knowledge up to the date of his entering school 
 namely, the powers of attention, comparison, analysis, 
 and synthesis. 
 
 This, shortly summarised, is the method (we believe) 
 which is best adapted for giving a sound and rapid 
 knowledge of reading and spelling; because, while 
 calling for continual acts of observation and memory, 
 it also subserves the intellectual purpose of affording 
 an easy, because unforced and natural, discipline. 
 We forbear adverting here to the defects which 
 are inseparable from this phonic method, till we 
 have considered the two other modes adopted or 
 advocated. 
 
 And, first, we have the " word and name," or " look 
 and say " system, which teaches that complete words, 
 such as " I see a goat," " The maid milks a cow," " Tom 
 is a boy," are to be taught to the child in the first 
 instance just as they stand, and as totalities, until he 
 has acquired a certain facility in reading. This system 
 is advocated on the ground of its affording more interest 
 to the pupil, and so exciting his powers to more rapid 
 acquisition. But the fact that the analysis into their 
 simple elementary parts, of the sounds which enter 
 into each word, is only postponed, and must be achieved 
 sooner or later, is frequently lost sight of by the teacher, 
 in consequence of the satisfaction which he derives 
 
Initiation in the Art of Reading. 55 
 
 from the quick progress of the child in the knowledge 
 of a certain number of words. 
 
 This system is to be objected to because it reduces 
 written language to a system of pictorial representa- 
 tions of words as wholes, and so compels the child to 
 learn some three or four hundred different pictorial 
 symbols before he begins to suspect that there is a 
 shorter way of getting at the symbols of spoken 
 language a key for each and every word alike. 
 What is the process which, under this system, goes on 
 in the learner's mind ? It is this : after a few months' 
 instruction, in which the eye-memory alone is exercised, 
 he begins to discover that the same simple forms or 
 letters are constantly recurring in all words, and un- 
 consciously to attach to each separate form its own 
 specific phonic power. The teacher is supposed to 
 take advantage of this dawning spontaneous analysis, 
 and to improve it into a knowledge of all the elementary 
 signs, with their corresponding names or sounds, or 
 both. The teacher and pupil, in point of fact, retrace 
 their steps in order to find the key which lay con- 
 spicuously enough at their feet when they started on 
 their journey, in order that, having provided themselves 
 with it, they may resume their work and push on with 
 fresh vigour to the easier solution of all future verbal, 
 ditliculties. The process of analysis and synthesis 
 thus, it is true, comes at last, bringing with it its 
 intellectual advantages; but it comes later than need 
 be, and only after the superfluous difficulty of learning 
 hundreds of different pictorial forms for complete 
 
56 Primary Instruction. 
 
 words has been thrown in the way of the child's early 
 progress. The process of learning must, it seems to 
 us, from the very nature of the case, be ultimately 
 slower according to this method than according to 
 those more generally practised, while the disciplinary 
 benefits of learning to read are unnecessarily postponed. 
 That the process of learning twenty or thirty words is 
 both a pleasanter and more rapid one than that of 
 learning twenty or thirty forms, with their correspond- 
 ing names or sounds, must be at once admitted, for 
 the simple reason, that symbols which have a meaning 
 must be more cheerfully acquired and more easily 
 remembered than symbols that have no meaning. 
 But it is surely absurd to maintain that the learning 
 of two or three hundred symbols for words, even with 
 the suggestive aid of the meanings attached to them, 
 is easier than the acquisition of the twenty or thirty 
 elementary symbols which enter into all words 
 Moreover, it is a mistake to suppose that the learning 
 of the elementary shapes in their unmeaning nakedness 
 is a process insufferably tedious to the pupil. We 
 must not judge children by ourselves. The symbolic 
 forms are novelties to them, and interest them, deeply 
 interest them, as form -lessons, and as such they present 
 no peculiar difficulty. 
 
 The second method of teaching to read is that almost 
 universally practised, and consists of giving the child 
 a knowledge of the elementary forms (teaching him 
 the alphabet, as it is called), attaching to these forms 
 certain arbitrary names, and then proceeding to com- 
 
Initiation in the Art of Reading. 57 
 
 bine these forms and names infco wholes (that is, into 
 words) which have no resemblance in sound, or at best 
 a very remote resemblance, to the names by which 
 the individual forms making up the word have been 
 designated. For example, the child is taught to say 
 em-vri is my; aitcli-o-yew-ess-ee is home; see-a-tee is 
 cat. But inasmuch as see-a-tee cannot sound the word 
 cat, but only stand for it, the process of acquiring the 
 word is manifestly a pure act of memory and associa- 
 tion. 
 
 Now this, the " alphabetic " system (though bad), 
 has several distinct advantages over the " look and 
 say " system. It gives the child a quicker knowledge 
 of words (after the alphabet has been learned), because, 
 by directing his attention to the individual parts which 
 make up the wholes, it facilitates his perception and 
 remembrance of the grouping of the forms which make 
 up complete words. A child who sees a cart for the 
 first time, and has his attention directed first to the 
 wheels and axle, and then to the body and the shafts, 
 and finally to the object as a whole, will afterwards 
 more quickly distinguish a cart from every other sort 
 of vehicle, than if he had looked at the object, first 
 and last, only in its general outline as a unity. So 
 with the written symbol for cart : the naming of 
 see-a-ar-tee cannot by any possibility give or even 
 suggest the sound cart, but it individualises the pupil's 
 attention on the various constituent elements of the 
 general pictorial outline of the whole word, which 
 consequently is more i liyjyiiniil JEJLJillj depicted on 
 
58 Primary Instruction. 
 
 his eye and in his memory. Again, in the act of 
 enunciating the names of the different elements of the 
 symbol, he spells it, and thus acquires a knowledge of 
 spelling simultaneously with that of reading. Further, 
 this breaking up of the word more quickly suggests to 
 him the conclusion which every mode of teaching 
 elementary reading has ultimately in view namely, 
 that each separate sign plays a peculiar part in making 
 up the sound of the whole, and has a certain and 
 specific phonic value. Having acquired an unconscious 
 power of attaching to the various signs and sign-names 
 their peculiar phonic values, his enunciation of the 
 names of the signs, when he comes to a new word 
 (" spelling it over," as it is called), before he pronounces 
 it, is a real help to him; and why? because it suggests 
 the sound of the whole word. Let not the teacher, 
 however, imagine that a child so taught receives any 
 assistance from the naming of the separate signs in 
 making out the word, until he has unconsciously and 
 gradually worked out for himself a complete phonic 
 system. This he must do, and the teacher ought to 
 think of this. There is thus thrown on the child the 
 labour of finding out for himself the sounds or powers 
 of each separate sign which he is dally in the habit of 
 naming, and for a considerable period the facility 
 which this phonic knowledge gives in making out 
 words, has accordingly been wilfully sacrificed ; and 
 along with this facility, an advantage of much 
 more importance has been foregone the intellectual 
 exercise which the independent elaboration of fresh 
 
Initiation in the Art of Reading. 59 
 
 words out of given materials would have yielded to 
 him. 
 
 We are thus brought back to the method which 
 was introduced at the beginning of this chapter as the 
 natural consequence of an analytic system of 'written 
 language that, namely, which takes the individual 
 parts of the words, and gives them, from the first, the 
 sounds which they actually have when grouped to form 
 words ; shortly, the Phonic Method. Given the power 
 of recognising these sign elements, and a knowledge of 
 their force in combination (in other words, given a 
 knowledge of the powers of the letters of the alphabet), 
 it is manifest that the pupil is provided with the 
 means of constructing words for himself. His teach- 
 ing and learning have thus, from the very first, a 
 significance to himself ; and they derive this from the 
 direct and palpable bearing of all he learns on the 
 practical application of his knowledge of sounds to 
 the making out of words and sentences. 
 
 It is a trivial objection to the phonic method that 
 the sounds of the letters when they stand by them- 
 selves are not precisely the same as they are when in 
 combination ; for example, be-a-te does not, when 
 rapidly pronounced, yield precisely bat, nor does de-o-ge 
 quite yield dog, when allowed to flow into a unity of 
 pronunciation. But the answer to this simply is, that 
 it very nearly yields it (especially if an effort is made 
 to sink the vowel element in the sound), and that in 
 a great number of words it quite yields it ; for example, 
 
60 Primary Instruction. 
 
 s-u-n yields sun, and so forth. Failing the possibility of 
 getting the precise sound of the constituent elements of 
 words, it is surely the next best thing to get something 
 which approximates to it, instead of at once, in despair, 
 throwing up the task of sounding and plunging into 
 an arbitrary naming of the elements a device which 
 only remotely and indirectly contributes to facilitate 
 the acquisition of the art of reading. According to 
 the phonic system, the diphthongs oi, ou, aw, ai, ae, 
 etc., are of course learned as distinct (biliteral) sounds 
 along with the other letters of the alphabet. 
 
 The most serious objection to the system is the 
 obstacle which the numerous irregularities of the 
 English language oppose, causing words to assume 
 sounds as wholes which cannot by any amount of 
 contortion be shown to be derivable from the sounds 
 of their individual parts. For example, the words are 
 and have the child would naturally expect to find 
 sounded with the a long ; while one, two, were, said, 
 and numerous others, present, almost at the outset of 
 the child's career, contradictions to the phonic lessons 
 he is being taught. In reply, we have to point out 
 the fact that the principle on which the method 
 proceeds affords a key to nineteen-twentieths of the 
 words in the language, and that the outstanding 
 irregularities can be taught as such, on the " look and 
 say " system, without any attempt to show that they 
 are capable of phonic analysis. Primers should be 
 constructed on this principle : it is not necessary to 
 exclude dissyllabic words from them if they are words 
 
Initiation in the Art of Reading. 61 
 
 familiar to the child in ordinary conversation, and 
 spelled according to their sound, such as garden, 
 tumble , "body, pony, etc. According to the present 
 almost universal " alphabetic " system, every vocable is 
 an irregularity, and has to be learnt as if no other 
 words had been learnt before it, because the names of 
 the letters can afford no direct help in finding out the 
 sound of the word which they represent. It is surely 
 a manifest gain to be able to furnish the child with a 
 key to the great majority of words, and thereby to 
 reduce stumbling-blocks to a minimum ! 
 
 Again, in learning to read according to the phonic 
 method, the child, in addition to possessing all the 
 advantages of the method ordinarily adopted at present, 
 is furnished with an instrument namely, the sounds 
 of the letters which he can himself apply with a view 
 to fresh acquisitions. He thereby has his love of 
 power and discovery gratified, and in the pleasing act 
 of word elaboration, he finds an exercise of understand- 
 ing, humble indeed in its object, but beneficial in its 
 disciplinary effects, and most interesting to him. The 
 mental act is in truth worthy of all respect and 
 encouragement, as it in no essential respect differs 
 from those higher but similar operations which we 
 admire in the cultivated intellect of the scholar or the 
 man of science. 
 
 In conclusion, although the process demands at first 
 a somewhat larger expenditure of time and patience 
 than the ordinary method, the progress after the first 
 
62 Primary Instruction. 
 
 month or two is very rapid. It will probably occur 
 to the master, that by teaching only two or three 
 letters at a time, and then the little words these will 
 make, the pupil will advance more quickly and 
 pleasantly.* 
 
 Thus we shall find that the soundest and easiest 
 and most rapid way of teaching the technical art of 
 reading, directly contributes, even in its initiatory 
 stage, to that intellectual discipline which is one 
 side of the great object of the primary school ; and 
 further, that it tends to interest the child in his 
 work while facilitating his progress. A question 
 seemingly unimportant thus assumes proportions which 
 make it worthy of the attention of all concerned in 
 education, if it be once admitted that education has 
 any principles at all. 
 
 In Spelling, we find further confirmation of the 
 practical superiority as well as the scientific character 
 of the phonic method of teaching to read. According 
 to the ordinary method, spelling is an act of memory 
 performed by the eye, which carries away an impres- 
 sion, more or less accurate, of the elementary forms 
 entering into a word, and by the ear, which aids the 
 eye by recalling the order in which the names of the 
 
 * While I am satisfied the above phonic method is the best from 
 whatever point of view we may look at it, I would be disposed to 
 supplement it with the old-fashioned nursery habit of teaching each 
 sound in connection with the picture and name of some well-known 
 object e.g., B FOR A BULL, and so forth. By so doing, we call in the 
 laws of mental association to our aid. 
 
Initiation in the Art of Reading. 63 
 
 letters were uttered when spelling out the word with 
 a view to the reading of it. According to the phonic 
 method, spelling may be all this and something more ; 
 for it is an effort to disentangle into its separate parts 
 a complex sound, resulting from the fusion of several 
 elements into one whole ; and therefore it is an in- 
 tellectual act. A child phonetically taught will spell 
 a word which he has never seen. Biliteral sounds 
 are, of course, treated in the same way when spelling 
 as when reading ; and when the child comes to name 
 the letters, he will do so in such a way as to show 
 that these sounds are simple, though denoted by two 
 letters. " Seek " will be spelled s, double e, /j, and 
 " full," /, u, double /, not / /, as is the common 
 practice. But it must be admitted that the mind of 
 the child, as well as of the adult, has a tendency to 
 run instinctively to the easiest way of overcoming a 
 difficulty, and that spelling, consequently, becomes 
 after a time an act of eye-memory more than of 
 intelligence. This being the case, it is remarkable 
 that the habit of exercising infant classes in printing 
 words on slates should have been of so recent intro- 
 duction. If the eye is to remember, it can only do 
 so by looking steadily and looking long ; and it is 
 materially aided by accustoming the child to trace 
 over on the blackboard, and then to form on his own 
 slate, the word, a picture of which he is to keep in his 
 mind for the purposes of spelling. This exercise is 
 equally helpful in teaching reading, nor is it a matter 
 of great importance whether the child succeeds or not 
 
64 . Primary Instruction. 
 
 in delineating accurately the forms before him. The 
 benefit arises out of the mere attempt.* 
 
 Notwithstanding the importance of a right method, 
 even in the initiatory months of a child's education, 
 it is to be admitted that the best results are, after all, 
 invariably attained at this stage (and perhaps at 
 every stage) by moral means, even though these be 
 brought into operation by a teacher unconscious of 
 principle or plan. No one can have watched the 
 vivacity, the playfulness, and the mental activity which 
 some teachers can exhibit in themselves and evoke 
 from their pupils, even in the apparently dry labour 
 of alphabetic and monosyllabic instruction, without 
 being convinced that where such qualifications can be 
 found, all others may be dispensed with, so far as mere 
 progress in the art of reading is concerned. Just as 
 the moral purpose of the school takes precedence of 
 every other, so does the moral vitality of the teacher 
 supersede every other personal qualification, by en- 
 abling him to transfuse into his pupils a spirit similar 
 to that which he himself exhibits, and stirring and 
 elevating the action of young minds. Nor is this 
 true only of the teaching of words and other initiatory 
 knowledge ; it belongs to every subject and every stage 
 of school life. The earnest living interest of the 
 
 * After all, far too much fuss is made over the difficulty of teaching 
 English reading and spelling, arising out of phonic irregularities. To 
 write or lecture about them is a cheap way of posing as an educational 
 reformer. It has nothing to do with education. The decimalising of 
 weights, measures, and money would be a far greater relief to the 
 primary teacher than spelling reform. 
 
Juvenile Stage in Reading. 65 
 
 master in the subjects and the objects of his work will 
 not fail to be reflected in the minds of his pupils, 
 and to be more fruitful in results than the most 
 philosophical methods in the hands of the formal and 
 half-hearted precisian. It is because teachers of genius 
 for their work can be only rarely met with that it is 
 necessary to instruct in method and to inculcate 
 philosophy. 
 
 2. The Juvenile Stage in Teaching Reading. 
 
 Mental progress and progress in reading should be concurrent 
 
 Intelligent reading To teach to read properly is to educate 
 
 The imagination and the moral and religious sensibilities of 
 children Intelligible reading. 
 
 The initiatory process, lasting for a year or a 
 year and a half, as the case may be, ends in giving 
 the child a knowledge of reading, in the lowest 
 technical sense. He can name, and, it is presumed, 
 sound the letters, and combine them into monosyllables, 
 and into the simpler kind of dissyllables. He now 
 knows that the groupings of forms which lie before 
 him on a printed page represent words and sentences ; 
 he knows also, in general, though within certain very 
 narrow limits, what these words and sentences are. 
 We assume that it is quite superfluous in these days 
 to point out the necessity for a carefully graduated 
 and well-considered selection of reading -lessons, or 
 the importance of giving the child words conveying a 
 
66 Primary Instruction. 
 
 meaning, and only such sentences as faithfully re- 
 present, in a somewhat improved form, his own little 
 thoughts and modes of speech. To dwell on such 
 established points would be to waste time. 
 
 The stage of the child's progress in the art of 
 reading on which we next enter, is one which we 
 cannot approach with too much consideration, both of 
 our specific aims and of our means of attaining them. 
 For what does progress here mean ? It means giving 
 to the child more difficult and more numerous words 
 to decipher, longer and more complex sentences to 
 grasp, consecutive narrative to follow and understand. 
 To do this would be unmeaning and futile, did we not 
 presume a mental growth in the child corresponding 
 to the growth of his command over written words and 
 sentences. We presume that his daily experience, 
 stimulated and intensified by school discipline, prompts 
 to the acquisition of new words suited to express in 
 oral intercourse the constant accession of new facts 
 and fresh generalisations which observation has been 
 from day to day forcing upon him, and which have 
 added to the material stock, and indirectly to the 
 capacity and power, of his understanding. If such a 
 progress has not been going on, the pages of his book 
 will be to the child a series of hieroglyphics, which he 
 may be laboriously taught to pronounce, but which he 
 not only cannot interpret, but cannot be taught to 
 interpret. 
 
 The initiatory discipline involved in acquiring the 
 rudiments of the art of reading has, we may conclude, 
 
Juvenile Stage in Reading. 67 
 
 consolidated and methodised both the words and the 
 thought of the infant mind, and laid a firm basis for 
 the future structure of knowledge. If it has not done 
 this, it has not satisfied the condition that the reading 
 should be intelligent. If the reading-lessons of the 
 second stage anticipate, instead of simply meeting, or, 
 at most, slightly preceding, the mental growth of the 
 child, the bond up to that moment subsisting between 
 the lesson to be acquired and the mind acquiring is 
 broken, and the consentaneous and parallel movement 
 of intellectual development and of progress in the 
 technical art of reading gives place to a discord which 
 is irreparable. A great and permanent injury is 
 thereby done to the pupil. The significance and 
 interest which ought to accompany every act of 
 knowledge disappear, and the child is doomed to a 
 future school career essentially dreary and unprofitable. 
 That which ought to have been at worst a labour 
 becomes a toil. I do not say that the pupil will stop 
 short permanently at the point at which he has been 
 abruptly shunted off the intelligible into the unintel- 
 ligible, and that all acquisition is thenceforth rendered 
 impossible ; but what he acquires in school will be 
 an ineffectual knowledge of words and sentences 
 uninspired by meaning and barren of results. One 
 consequence of this will be, that such discipline as he 
 may receive will be so much at discord with the 
 natural development of the mind, and made up so 
 much of shreds and patches, that the trifling benefit 
 which it does confer will not comensate for the 
 
 fUB77BRSJTrS 
 
68 Primary Instruction. 
 
 aversion to all intellectual exercise which it is sure to 
 engender.* By setting at defiance the intellectual 
 order of growth, the teacher chokes off the natural 
 love of intellectual activity. This is the result of 
 overleaping a stage in the pupil's life, and presenting 
 him with reading-lessons which do not truly reflect 
 his mental capacity and needs. 
 
 " But this," it may be said, " is a purely intellectual 
 shortcoming : it may be admitted that it bears directly 
 on one of the presumed aims of the school the forma- 
 tion of a good habit of the intelligence ; but this is of 
 little consequence, inasmuch as we have already abjured 
 such general theoretic aims, under the irresistible 
 pressure of the immediate and practical requirements 
 of the children of the poorer classes : our business is 
 to teach them, as expeditiously as possible, to read." 
 Now, if it be meant that the work in hand is to teach 
 the child to utter, with accurate pronunciation and with 
 fair attention to " stops," the sounds of the human voice 
 represented by certain typographical drawings upon 
 paper, the expensive machinery of popular education 
 should be broken up at once, arid we should leave to 
 the old dame-schoolmistress the work which a few 
 technical rules will enable her to do sufficiently well, if 
 she is supported by an occasional visit of the parish con- 
 stable in the interests of order. It is not such service 
 that the State requires of the schoolmaster, nor is it 
 
 * Teachers should bear in mind that the proportion of the poorer 
 classes who ever read, for the purpose of extending their information, 
 anything save the weekly paper, is by no means large. Nay, that a 
 large proportion do not read even the weekly paper, 
 
Juvenile Stage in Reading. 69 
 
 such services as this that the competent schoolmaster 
 would deign to render. He may aim at what seems, 
 when superficially viewed, to be a merely technical 
 end namely, to teach to read with delusive facility the 
 more common current literature. But the true object 
 of his teaching is much more than this : the reading 
 must be easy, intelligent, and intelligible ; and how 
 shall a child learn to read easily if the acquired words 
 are to him dead things, if the sound recalls to his 
 mind no living reality of his experience, and remains 
 unsupported by any suggestive association ? How can 
 he read intelligently, if he does not understand ? How 
 can he read intelligibly that is, in such a way as to 
 be understood if the sentences which he mechanically 
 enunciates transcend his comprehension ? Accordingly, 
 the competent teacher finds that the process or method 
 by which the technical end in its highest and only 
 rational sense can be attained, must be determined by 
 the intellectual growth and needs of the pupil. Thus, 
 the general theoretic end of education and the special 
 technical end, again in this, the second or juvenile stage 
 of the child's progress, support and justify each other, 
 when rightly understood. 
 
 And to what practical conclusions does this fact 
 compel the thoughtful schoolmaster ? To these : first, ./ 
 that the reading-lessons of the child must, if the art 
 of reading is to be properly acquired, be graduated in 
 difficulty, considered as mere reading-lessons ; secondly, 
 that they must be as various in their language and 
 subjects as the pupil's own experiences, giving these 
 
70 Primary Instruction. 
 
 shape and development, otherwise the phraseology of 
 general literature will be for ever a sealed book ; 
 thirdly, that they must be abundant in respect of 
 quantity, if the reading is afterwards to be easy ; and, 
 fourthly, that the subjects treated, and the style of 
 treating them, must be graduated in accordance with 
 the growth of mind, if the reading is to be intelligent 
 and intelligible. Graduation in words and sentences, 
 graduation in the thoughts and subjects of which these 
 treat, variety, and quantity, such, succinctly stated, 
 must be the qualities of the reading-lessons to which 
 the teacher should, in the juvenile stage, introduce 
 his pupils. In other and more general words, the 
 reading-lessons, if they are thoroughly to attain their 
 merely technical end, are, in respect of quantity and 
 variety, to reflect faithfully, but in a more perfect 
 form, the full range of the child's daily mental life, 
 and in their graduation the order of growth of his 
 capacities. 
 
 It would seem, then, that effectually to teach a 
 child to read, it is necessary to adapt ourselves to the 
 child's intellectual wants as well as to his capabilities. 
 The question of the method of teaching reading, 
 accordingly, passes in the juvenile stage into another 
 and a higher and larger question, the method of 
 training, informing, and disciplining the young intelli- 
 gence itself. The kind of reading which accomplishes 
 this will most effectually secure the technical end ; 
 while the possession of the technical power so acquired 
 
Juvenile Stage in Reading. 7 r 
 
 will be a -guarantee that the child has been thus far 
 educated. 
 
 Were the objects of our care possessed of physical 
 desires and intellectual capacities only, the work of 
 the teacher would be comparatively easy. Lessons, 
 oral and read, on the visible things of daily experience, 
 on the forms, properties, and relations of these, and 
 on a few bodily acts, would constitute the whole work 
 of the school work hard and dry, but, in the hands 
 of one who understood his craft, not therefore unin- 
 teresting, toilsome, or unattractive. But this direct 
 discipline of the powers of observation, comparison, 
 and inference, though essential to good reading, as 
 well as to sound intellectual training, is only part of 
 the work, and that the least difficult part. To teach 
 reading effectually, and to educate in any sense worthy 
 of the name, it is necessary to cover, with our lessons 
 and instructions, the whole field of the child's experi- 
 ence, and to meet all his mental wants. We have 
 accordingly to recognise, interpret, assist, explain, and 
 extend the experience of the child, as a being of 
 imagination and of moral and religious sensibilities, 
 as well as of intellectual faculties. This is the most 
 difficult part of our task, and requires delicate hand- 
 ling. Yet how constantly do we find the wondering 
 germs of sentiment which arise in the young mind in 
 connection with its reading-lessons, treated with a rough 
 and masterful hand ! The teacher seems to forget 
 that, in such matters, he passes out of the region of 
 
72 Primary Instruction. 
 
 mere knowledge and intellect into that of feeling and 
 emotion ; that he enters into the realm of the im- 
 palpable and invisible, and must not attempt to touch 
 too rudely, or indeed, sometimes, to see too definitely. 
 To handle things which are in their essence mysterious 
 and infinite, as if they were the parts of a house or a 
 tree to drag forth into the hard light of a schoolroom 
 the silent emotions that attend the birth of imagina- 
 tion, sentiment, and piety, is to desecrate holy ground. 
 A child must always be treated with respect ; there 
 are occasions when he should be treated with reverence. 
 There are sacred precincts in the school which must 
 be approached with preparation, or not approached 
 at all. 
 
 The precise nature and function of the imagination 
 in children, as in men, we need not here attempt to 
 explain. In the child, speaking broadly, it is that 
 reproductive power which leads, or rather compels, 
 him to build up fresh wholes out of the broken and 
 scattered fragments of his experience, in complex 
 combination with dim instinctive suggestions of love, 
 fear, hope, and wonder. Under this natural impulse, 
 the manifold and disconnected elements of his external 
 observation, and the hidden workings of his sensi- 
 bilities, are dwelt upon, compared, combined, connected 
 as cause and effect, and woven into a kind of crude 
 unity. This vital process, accordingly, though often 
 sub-conscious, is educative in the highest sense, because 
 it is a self-education, and because it embraces within 
 its sphere the whole of the mental life of the child, 
 
Juvenile Stage in Reading. 73 
 
 and brings into easy and healthful play all his powers. 
 The result is an unreality ; but to the child it is quite 
 as real as external nature, simply because it is the 
 product of his own spontaneous activity, and spun out 
 of materials of his own. This instinct of the child is 
 to be respected by the teacher, were it only because it 
 is doing more for his pupil than the master can do. 
 And it is to be respected chiefly by being exempted 
 from all didactic interference. The art of teaching 
 in this matter is to dispense with the art altogether 
 in its usual sense. Sympathy takes the place of art. 
 The teacher will therefore read the imaginative lessons, 
 whether in prose or verse, to the child, and with him, 
 sharing his interest, evolving the stories, explaining 
 away difficult words, and then passing on. He may 
 ask for the repetition of the story in the words of the 
 class ; he may help the children in their efforts to 
 reconstruct it, as a mother might ; but he must not 
 mar its simple unity by putting questions or suggest- 
 ing explanations, nor defeat, by personal applications 
 or dull discourse, the simple lesson which the tale or 
 fable or parable or poem teaches. All these precautions 
 it is necessary to take if the nascent imagination is 
 not to be repressed or misdirected, and if the reading- 
 lessons that appeal to this faculty are not to be robbed 
 of the charm which makes them attractive, and which 
 stimulates the pupils to extend a technical power 
 which is a key to so many pleasing stores. 
 
 If this careful regard to the imagination of the 
 young be obligatory on the instructors of children 
 
74 Primary Instruction. 
 
 of all classes, how much more is it incumbent on the 
 teacher of the children of the poor ! Divorced as 
 these are by poverty, and the want of sympathetic 
 response in their elders, from the pictures, fables, 
 poems, and narratives which now surround, in lavish 
 profusion, the children of the middle and upper classes, 
 they have but the one chance which the day-school 
 affords of obtaining food for their hungry imaginations. 
 Nor will the teacher err, if departing from his book, 
 which, if justice be done to other subjects, can yield 
 but a limited supply of such material, he introduce 
 tales into the schoolroom, to be read by him to his 
 classes, as rewards of good conduct. The time so 
 occupied will assuredly not be wasted ; for, apart from 
 the indirect moral instruction which he will thus 
 convey through the imagination, he will shed sunlight 
 and warmth on the tender mind, without which a 
 genial and healthy growth is impossible. 
 
 But if the dreams and wonderings of the young 
 imagination demand such cautious and sympathetic 
 handling, with how gentle and tender a hand must 
 we approach the vague and timid aspirings of the 
 religious instinct, and the small perplexities and keen 
 sensibilities which belong to the infancy and child- 
 hood of the moral sentiments ! Here, too, unhappily, 
 the school has to supplement nay, too often to 
 supply the moral and religious training which ought 
 to be the work of the home, The influences of com- 
 bined love and awe which accompany spiritual teach- 
 ing in families more favourably situated, the careful 
 
Juvenile Stage in Reading. 75 
 
 consideration or the wise negligence, are denied to the 
 great majority of primary-school children. It becomes, 
 therefore, the special duty and privilege of the school- 
 master to supply this want : with paternal affection 
 to dissociate morality and religion from harshness of 
 manner and tyranny of will, to cast the light of divine 
 love over the invisible, and early to introduce the 
 young to the Gospel story and its personal relation 
 to them. This subject will be handled more fully 
 hereafter. It is touched on here in order to give it 
 its due place in the education of the growing child, 
 and to show the importance of giving it due proportion 
 in the daily reading-lessons, for these we presume to 
 be co-extensive with the moral as well as the intel- 
 lectual experience of the child, to reproduce that 
 experience in a more perfect form, and to satisfy in 
 some degree the vague sentiments, and to complete 
 the imperfect conceptions, which they rouse into 
 activity. By such a course of reading, the pupil early, 
 but insensibly, becomes alive to the fact that books 
 contain a true reflection of himself of what he is 
 and what he may be that they both answer his 
 questions and delight his imagination, and are con- 
 sequently among the best companions and friends of 
 his life. By such a course alone can he be trained 
 to use books. 
 
 Thus we find that by rightly interpreting the 
 reading instruction of the school we educate not 
 only the understanding but the whole nature of the 
 
76 Primary Instruction. 
 
 pupil. That is to say, taking up the raw material of. 
 the child's experience, we give it that shape and 
 definiteness, development and completion, which, un- 
 aided, it would never attain, save in the vigorous and 
 powerful brain of the few. The result of this treat- 
 ment is, that the young groping mind begins, under 
 the wise guidance of its instructor, to feel the path 
 of life less devious and perplexing : observation, the 
 beginnings of knowledge, and the words which denote- 
 these, gradually gain in his consciousness the orderly, 
 arrangement and solidity which afford a substructure 
 for the future growth ; hesitating questionings about 
 the nature and causes of things receive the satisfacr 
 tion befitting the pupil's age ; the waking dreams of 
 the imagination receive a legitimate and healthful 
 encouragement ; the uncertain dawnings of the moral 
 and religious sentiments emerge into a clearer light, 
 and begin to exercise a regulative influence. This is 
 the process of elementary education, and this the work 
 of the elementary teacher. In suck an education he 
 finds his best auxiliary in teaching to read, and by 
 rightly teaching to read he implicitly educates. 
 
 The work of teaching to read is thus, in our opinion, 
 to be identified with that of training both the moral 
 and intellectual nature of the young. The reading- 
 lesson, as the language-lesson, is the thought-lesson. 
 From first to last the seemingly mechanical process of 
 instruction in a technical art is in truth a living and 
 life-inspiring method, resting on a sound, and to that 
 extent a scientific, knowledge of the human mind. 
 
Juvenile Stage in Reading. 77 
 
 The reading - book, if properly constructed, is not 
 merely the auxiliary of the master's method, but a 
 kind of fixed typographical embodiment of that 
 method. It is the visible basis of that intercourse 
 between the mature and immature mind, which con- 
 stitutes education. This method of teaching reading, 
 accordingly, may be fitly distinguished from others as 
 the Educative Method. It not only teaches a boy to 
 read, but initiates him into the general phraseology of 
 literature, awakens his whole soul, and trains him to 
 the intelligent use of books. 
 
 To conclude : intelligent reading must also fulfil 
 our third requirement of being intelligible. To aim at 
 aesthetic reading, except in those few fortunate primary 
 schools which retain their pupils to the age of thirteen 
 or fourteen, is futile : but such reading as will convey 
 to an auditor, with accuracy, distinct enunciation, and 
 emphasis, the thoughts of the prose or poetical lesson 
 of the day, is not only possible, but easy of attain- 
 ment. The pupil who does this, does more than simply 
 take possession of the thought of the writer. The 
 spirit and colour, as well as the thought, of the lesson 
 enter into him ; and in the act of reproducing these 
 for the benefit of his audience, with suitable emphasis 
 and intelligence, they in a special sense become his 
 own. Not only are the sentences themselves a second 
 time appropriated by the art of elocution, but the 
 style and character of the piece, whether didactic, 
 imaginative, humorous, or pathetic, are brought into 
 
78 Primary Instruction. 
 
 relief, and exercise reflexly their peculiar power as 
 fosterers of the germs of taste. 
 
 If intelligible reading of this kind is to be attained 
 easily, or indeed at all, the teacher must give the key- 
 note of the reading when the child is in the initiatory 
 stage, or at latest in the beginning of the juvenile 
 stage. The foundation must be laid at the base, not 
 in the middle, of the building, and laid ~by the teacher 
 himself. Good reading is the successful imitation of a 
 good model, and it is a work of time. No one can 
 leap into the art, or read well to order. 
 
 3. Advanced Stage of Reading Connection with 
 Analysis and Composition. 
 
 Advanced Eeading involves the perusal of more 
 difficult lessons than any yet attempted, varied in the 
 subjects of which they treat, and giving stronger food 
 both to the intellect and the imagination of the pupil. 
 Through these advanced lessons the boy will begin to 
 make acquaintance with the informal, but yet scientific, 
 treatment of the objects by which he is surrounded, 
 and which hitherto have been handled in his reading- 
 books more from the point of view of observation and 
 experience than of law, cause, and effect. Extracts 
 from prose and poetical literature will, even when 
 only at first partially understood, call on his under- 
 standing and imagination to make a wholesome effort 
 to master them, while they furnish him insensibly 
 
Advanced Stage of Reading. 79 
 
 with a standard of thought, and of the life of the 
 mind, which will never quite pass away. As the 
 language of a man is generally a fair measure of his 
 intellectual cultivation, so the power fully to com- 
 prehend what is said or written is a test of the 
 recipient capacity of the person whom he addresses. 
 The effort to understand a difficult lesson, accordingly, 
 is an effort to take a step forward in intellectual life. 
 How little do those reading-books do for the pupil at 
 this stage, which are composed almost wholly of 
 description and narrative ! Let me repeat that in the 
 school the reading-lesson, as the language-lesson, is 
 the thought-lesson. It is the fashion of utilitarian 
 writers to speak with explicit or veiled contempt of 
 the study of words. Sir W. Hamilton takes a more 
 profound view when he says : " A country may be 
 overrun by an armed host, but it is only con- 
 quered by the establishment of fortresses. Words 
 are the fortresses of thought. They enable us to 
 realise our dominion over what we have already 
 overrun in thought, and to make every intellectual 
 conquest the basis of operations for others still 
 beyond." 
 
 In every stage of his reading the pupil has of course 
 been taught to understand the language and thought 
 presented to him. This is essential to the intelligence 
 of the reading, as well as to its intelligibility. The 
 same process is continued in the more difficult reading 
 which he now encounters ; but it will be desirable, if 
 
8o Primary Instruction. 
 
 not necessary, in order fully to evolve the meaning of 
 complex sentences, especially in poetry, to study them 
 in detail, and separate them into their various limbs. 
 Now, to show the mutual bearing of the clauses on 
 each other and on the principal clause, is to " analyse " 
 in the grammatical sense. Eeading in this, its 
 advanced stage, is thus educative no longer solely 
 through the contents of the lessons which are read, 
 but also as being a formal discipline in the organism 
 of language. It is true that the mere perusal, if 
 intelligent, of any composition in prose or poetry 
 brings with it, even in the most initiatory stages, a 
 formal discipline of intellect, apart from the real 
 instruction given by the subject-matter. The intel- 
 lectual process by which a thought is elaborated into, 
 its linguistic form is revealed in the utterance of it, 
 and it is therefore impossible for a child or man to 
 understand the latter without an unconscious partici- 
 pation in the conceptions and reasonings of the mind 
 which gave the thought expression.* Intelligent 
 reading is thus itself indirectly a formal training of 
 intellect. But in an advanced class this unconscious 
 training becomes supplemented by the conscious 
 study of the organic structure of language. This 
 process, which is called Sentence-analysis, is a kind of 
 applied logic, and, as an intellectual discipline, takes 
 
 * This fact shows the importance of putting before the child pure 
 and well- constructed sentences. The lessons in many of the most 
 popular reading-books are not even grammatically written. The 
 standard of English, as well as of thought, in school-books, above all 
 other publications, should be high. 
 
Advanced Stage of Reading. 8 1 
 
 that precedence over every other discipline, which 
 language takes over science. 
 
 Thus we find that Advanced Reading seems natur- 
 ally to call to its aid the study of the elements of 
 Grammar and Analysis. Unfortunately, this discipline 
 in the analysis of language is very apt to degenerate 
 into a hunting after shadowy distinctions, and into a 
 fanciful application of abstract technicalities. Every 
 subject of the school curriculum, however, is equally 
 liable to abuse, and the remedy is to be found only in 
 the steady contemplation by the master of the special 
 purpose of each study. The discipline which gram- 
 matical analysis is intended to give, for example, will 
 be defeated, and the whole subject will run to waste, 
 if the teacher lose sight of its ultimate object, which 
 is twofold: (1) The facilitating of the understanding 
 of complex language, with a view to secure to the 
 higher reading its full disciplinary effect ; (2) The 
 giving of greater precision and accuracy to the thought 
 and expression of the pupil himself in composition 
 exercises, oral and written. If these two eminently 
 practical objects be kept constantly in view, the 
 teacher will not deviate far from the right track. In 
 giving effect to the former purpose, he will certainly 
 find his progress impeded and complicated if he 
 multiplies terms, and if, by insisting too much on 
 technicalities, he disturbs the usual vocabulary of 
 grammar. Analysis is to be admitted into the school 
 only on the plea that it is grammar. Should the 
 
82 Primary Instruction. 
 
 teacher find that it fails to deepen and extend sound 
 grammatical knowledge in the pupil, he may be assured 
 that he is pursuing a false method, and giving undue 
 prominence to trivial sub-divisions and a fanciful 
 terminology. In giving effect to the latter purpose* 
 he will be right if he decline to follow analysis into 
 distinctions which cannot be easily and readily applied 
 in the synthesis of composition. 
 
 In teaching Analysis, a master is apt to be betrayed 
 by the charm of pseudo-science with which laborious 
 technicalities invest a subject, into inverting the 
 proper order of things. He forgets that the boy can 
 analyse only in so far as he first distinguishes the 
 main proposition of the sentence, and apprehends the 
 meaning of the various limbs in relation to it and to 
 each other. The understanding of a sentence is, ac- 
 cordingly, a necessary and first condition of its analysis, 
 and the analysis of it again gives greater completeness 
 to the understanding of it. To comprehend a sentence 
 is in fact to comprehend the living connection of all 
 its parts, and is itself an art of unconscious analysis. 
 The object of conscious analysis is to bring out more 
 distinctly the parts of the organism, to name them, 
 and thereby to give the mind more acuteness and 
 greater capacity for the comprehension of difficult 
 language generally. To comprehend and to analyse 
 are essentially the same linguistic effort. They act 
 and react on each other. So oblivious are teachers 
 apt to become of the real practical significance and 
 purpose of the subjects which they teach, that it is 
 
Practical Suggestions. 83 
 
 necessary thus to impress on them that it is only on 
 the full comprehension of the sentence that sound 
 grammatical teaching can possibly rest. 
 
 So much for the intimate connection of advanced 
 reading with grammatical analysis, and the extent to 
 which the latter can find a place in the primary school. 
 
 It is true that it is quite possible, with the help of 
 logic and Latin, to give a minute grammatical account 
 of every separate word and element of the longest 
 sentence, in its relation to the organic whole of which 
 it forms a part ; but this is an exercise to be attempted 
 only by boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age, after 
 the practical purposes of the study have been sub- 
 stantially attained, and when they begin to follow out 
 the subject as a pure exercise of grammatical and 
 logical ingenuity. In this sense, therefore, analysis of 
 sentences belongs to a stage of education with which 
 we have in the primary school nothing to do, and 
 enters into competition with studies, instructive and 
 disciplinary, among which it will no doubt soon find 
 its proper place. 
 
 4. Practical Suggestions having reference to the 
 Heading-Lessons. 
 
 The usual mode of proceeding in schools is as 
 follows : The lesson of the day, presumed to have 
 been prepared over-night, is read once or twice down 
 the class. The master then usually asks the pupils to 
 
84 Primary Instruction. 
 
 spell and define a few of the more difficult words, and 
 proceeds to examine on the substance of the lesson. 
 His examination, for the most part, simply consists 
 in throwing the categorical propositions of the lesson 
 which has been read, into an interrogative form. He 
 puts the question to the pupils in succession, beginning 
 at the top. This interrogatory exercise, of course, 
 varies in its efficiency in proportion to the intellectual 
 power and earnestness of the master. It assuredly 
 adds little to the child's knowledge of the lesson. Its 
 value consists in its power of rousing in the pupil an 
 effort of intellect to follow the master, and of memory 
 to recall the words which have been read. The benefit 
 to be derived from this kind of examination manifestly 
 depends solely on the amount of intellect exhibited by 
 the teacher, and evoked in the pupils through sympathy 
 with him, and on the seriousness with which he takes 
 up the lesson as something really worthy of being 
 retained in the mind. 
 
 Now it is always desirable, in determining the 
 procedure to be followed with a view to give effect 
 to the right method of teaching any subject, to devise 
 expedients which leave as little as possible to depend 
 on the capacity of the master. In schools, as else- 
 where, we can reckon only on an average amount of 
 ability, and a moderate share of earnestness ; and 
 while we may freely exempt the thoughtful and ardent 
 schoolmaster from all directions imposed ab extra, we 
 must discover rules of working which will give the 
 fullest practical effect to average powers. In every 
 
Practical Suggestions. 85 
 
 profession the mass of men are imitative, not origina- 
 tive, and unfortunately this disposition is strongest 
 in the direction of imitating themselves. Our duty, 
 accordingly, is to give teachers a good start in 
 professional life, so that a good habit may be early 
 formed. By this means we may possibly lend to the 
 ordinary mind some of the power which belongs to 
 the higher.* 5 
 
 The Art of Reading. Keeping in view the above 
 considerations, and the purpose and method of teach- 
 ing reading, as these have been already explained, we 
 would suggest the following course of procedure : 
 
 1. Let the teacher, when he gives out the lesson for 
 the following day, either read it to the pupils, or, 
 where time fails for this, shortly sketch its purport, 
 pointing out the more difficult words. 
 
 2. When the lesson is read, let him not go slavishly 
 down the class from top to bottom, but, letting the 
 children clearly understand that they are presumed to 
 know both the language and the subject-matter, select 
 those who are to read. The reading should be, for the 
 most part, individual ; and if the style be bad, the 
 master should require the pupils to enunciate in concert 
 with him, so that they may gradually acquire this 
 style. To tell a child to " speak out," or to " mind the 
 stops," is an utterly useless expenditure of words. The 
 temptation to adopt the simultaneous method of read- 
 
 * Hence the great utility of Training Colleges, and the necessity 
 there is for the professional training of teachers. 
 
86 Primary Instruction. 
 
 ing should be avoided, but three at a time may occa- 
 sionally be required to read, observing in concert 
 the same pauses and emphasis. This will not only 
 save time, but be of virtue as a corrective of slovenly 
 reading. 
 
 3. There are five qualities in reading, each of 
 which should be made the subject of separate and 
 successive study and training: (1) Correct pronun- 
 ciation of words. (2) Firmness, articulateness, and 
 distinctness in the enunciation of words. Teachers do 
 not seem to be aware to how great an extent progress 
 in reading depends on a habit of firm articulation. 
 (3) Deliberateness in the enunciation of the several 
 clauses making up each sentence : these three qualities 
 secure intelligibility. (4) Emphasis. (5) Expression. 
 The first three qualities form the principal work of 
 the elementary teacher. Emphasis can come within the 
 sphere of his work only when correctness, distinctness, 
 and deliberateness have been attained. But inasmuch 
 as this quality of reading is the fruit of an intellectual 
 perception of the interdependence of clauses, it should 
 be, as soon as practical, required of every pupil. Its 
 existence is the best possible indication, test, and 
 measure of the intelligence which the child has been 
 taught to bring to bear on his reading, and of the 
 suitableness of the books which are put into his hands. 
 Expression, again, belongs to the aesthetics of reading, 
 and has reference to the moral and sentimental appre- 
 ciation of what is read, and should not be imposed until 
 the emotional nature is old enough, not merely to feel, 
 
Practical Suggestions. 87 
 
 but consciously to reproduce, what another person 
 feels. Fine, or rather superfine, reading or recitation 
 by children is, in itself, essentially a delusion and a 
 snare, though it may have its incidental uses, by 
 holding up, purely imitative though the whole in- 
 tonation and exhibition be, a standard of style, and 
 thereby elevating in the eyes of the school the art of 
 reading as an art. 
 
 4. While the pupil is reading, let no corrections be 
 made. When he has ceased, those who have detected 
 errors may hold out their hands. This compels the 
 attention of the whole class to every sentence. 
 Usually each boy attends only to his own sentence. 
 
 5. If the boy who reads gives evidence of want of 
 preparation, enter in a book a bad mark against him, 
 taking care that it is want of preparation and not 
 inaccuracy which is so punished. The more or less of 
 accuracy will be rewarded or punished by the boy's 
 place in the class. To regulate a boy's position on 
 the school merit-scale merely by the number of his 
 mistakes and his place in class, is to confound the 
 intellectual with the moral. 
 
 6. If a schoolmaster wishes to teach his pupils to 
 read well, let him first learn to read well himself. 
 
 The teacher will find the deliberate setting apart of 
 certain occasional afternoons for the special exhibition 
 of reading-style by himself and his pupils, a means of 
 impressing the school with the importance of the subject. 
 The same device may be successfully resorted to in 
 every branch of study. 
 
88 Primary Instruction* 
 
 Examination on the Reading -Lesson. The reading 
 of the lesson being finished, the next object is to 
 extract from it as much knowledge and discipline as 
 possible, if the lesson be intellectual or didactic. The 
 amount of these which may be extracted will depend 
 on the variety and solidity of the reading-book. The 
 character of the lesson of the day will of course 
 determine the extent to which the class is to be 
 examined. We have already dwelt on the peculiarly 
 educative power of the reading-lessons in forming as 
 well as informing the mind, when the school uses and 
 purposes of teaching the art of reading are rightly and 
 largely understood. And we would fain iterate and 
 reiterate the grounds of the opinions already expressed, 
 that the education of the school means, and must mean, 
 the reading of the school, more than all other subjects 
 united. 
 
 The extraction of the educative uses of reading 
 from the lesson of the day is a work so much more 
 dependent on the character and mental wealth of the 
 teacher than the mere art of reading in its narrower 
 sense, that technical rules are almost useless. One 
 man will reach the best results in one way, another in 
 another. It is a matter of idiosyncrasy. One tend- 
 ency, however, every young teacher requires to be 
 guarded against the tendency to expound and preach 
 rather than to teach. Even to explain is not to teach. 
 To explain is to unfold a subject as a subject ; to 
 teach or instruct is to explain the subject in relation 
 to the mental capacity and already existing know- 
 
Practical Suggestions. 89 
 
 ledge of the pupils, at the same time setting in motion 
 and guiding their intellectual activity so that they 
 may meet the explanation at least half-way. The 
 good teacher, in matters intellectual, moves, guides, 
 and controls the work which is being done by his 
 pupils, but he does little more. An exaggerated 
 instance of the tendency to do for the pupils what 
 they ought to do for themselves, is illustrated in the 
 following observations on a school : 
 
 ". . . The master then proceeded to examine on the 
 subject-matter of the lesson. Beginning calmly, and with 
 considerable gravity, he gradually waxed warm, until he lost 
 himself entirely in his subject, utterly forgetting the existence 
 of his pupils. It was, in fact, a dramatic exhibition of the 
 lesson thrown into an interrogative form, the short and 
 scattered replies of the members of the class only serving to 
 sustain the excitement of the ' examiner.' Spite of the 
 energy and superfluous gesticulation which was exhibited, it 
 was quite evident that the teacher was beating the air, and 
 that it never for a moment occurred to him to think of the 
 actual mental condition of his pupils. The consequence was 
 that, when the examination was taken out of his hands, utter 
 barrenness was found. The master, in fact, monopolised all 
 the energy, and laboured under the not uncommon illusion 
 that his own activity and interest were shared by his 
 pupils. . . ." 
 
 The mode of procedure which we have been in 
 the habit of recommending, when it was certain that 
 the recommendation would not fall upon an outer 
 crust of indurated habit, is as follows : 
 
 1. The habit of converting categorical into interro- 
 
90 Primary Instruction. 
 
 gative clauses is not an examination of any efficacy. 
 The lesson should first be viewed as a whole, having a 
 beginning, a middle, and an end, and tbe children 
 should be asked to give an account of it in their own 
 words. One or two of the more fluent attempting 
 this, the rest will be too happy to lie in wait for 
 omissions and errors, with a view to supply and 
 correct them. In this way the lesson, whether it be 
 descriptive, narrative, or didactic, will be reproduced 
 by the combined efforts of the class. The cultivating 
 nature of this exercise, apart from its effect in 
 securing the preparation of the lesson, is at once 
 manifest. Such exercises in oral composition should 
 be given at every stage of progress, and are as much 
 in their place in the infant and initiatory as in the 
 juvenile and advanced classes. This being done, with 
 the help of the master where a point is missed or a 
 difficulty not overcome, the first step in the examina- 
 tion is taken. 
 
 2. The second stage is the familiar and colloquial 
 illustration and extension of the subject of the lesson 
 by the master in more or less detail according to the 
 time at his disposal. He will now call on the pupils 
 for voluntary contributions to the subject in the form 
 of facts or thoughtful suggestions. It is at this stage 
 that the practical application of the lesson will be 
 most suitably made, and the whole brought into con- 
 nection with the daily life and outdoor experience of 
 the pupils. 
 
 3. The third staore there can never be time to com- 
 
Practical Suggestions. 9 1 
 
 plete, but it ought always to be partially accomplished. 
 It has to do mainly with the language of the lesson, 
 and the formal discipline which it yields. The amount 
 of language which a man truly comprehends is, I have 
 said, broadly speaking, the measure of his intellectual 
 capacity. In extending the boy's knowledge of 
 language, therefore, we increase his intellectual grasp, 
 and his knowledge of things things of intellectual 
 and moral, as well as of external and visible, reality. 
 The linguistic discipline, therefore, which reading- 
 lessons give is of the utmost consequence. Accordingly, 
 idiomatic correctness, grammatical accuracy, and great 
 variety in structure and style, should be regarded as 
 indispensable characteristics of a series of reading- 
 lessons. 
 
 A very common mode of examining on the lesson 
 read by the pupils is referred to in the following 
 extract from the report of a visit to a school : 
 
 ". . . The fault I had to find with Mr. 's other- 
 wise thorough mode of examining was that he expected too 
 much from the class. He went to the details of a difficult 
 lesson at once, instead of confining himself to its general 
 purport, and without first making sure that each individual 
 sentence was understood. This is a common blunder. After 
 the general substance of the lesson has been reproduced and 
 illustrated as a whole, the next step ought to be going over 
 the lesson with the book open, and filling in simple, and if 
 possible, Saxon expressions, for the more difficult words and 
 phrases. The sentences once thoroughly understood, the 
 connection of these, constituting the detailed argument of 
 the lesson, should only then be taken up by the master." 
 
92 Primary Instruction. 
 
 Another style of procedure is reported on in the 
 following terms : 
 
 ". . . In the remarks which we have made, we give 
 
 only due credit to Mr. 's great and self-sacrificing 
 
 labours, and may possibly leave an impression on the mind 
 of the reader that this school is almost too good to live ; but 
 a closer inspection reveals a weakness which ensures its 
 vitality if not longevity. This is, in truth, a school of 
 memory and facts. The children are instructed, with a 
 painful expenditure of labour, in facts, biblical, historical, 
 geographical, grammatical, and arithmetical, but their intelli- 
 gence is feeble. When examined from sentence to sentence 
 on the meaning of the words read and the purport of each 
 clause, they displayed an ignorance and a want of capacity 
 to comprehend what had been said to them, which one could 
 scarcely believe to be compatible with such unusual excellence 
 in other respects. After a display of seeming knowledge, 
 which astonishes the listener, a clause of the lesson is taken 
 up, e.g. 'The white ant is an extraordinary species of insect,' 
 and the children are asked the meaning of ' extraordinary.' 
 After every facility and encouragement has been given, the 
 smartest boy ventures on the definition ' insect.' In the 
 same way 'species' is defined to mean 'extraordinary,' and 
 so forth : nor was it possible to establish any intelligent 
 colloquial relations between them and myself. Further 
 examination on the same principle in other things broke the 
 back of the school, and revealed its hollowness." 
 
 Teachers of this kind are pointed at by Archbishop 
 Whately. " An unskilful teacher," he says, " is con- 
 tent to put before his pupils what they have to learn, 
 and to ascertain that they remember it : and thus 
 those of them whose memory is ready and retentive 
 have their minds left in a perfectly passive state, and 
 
Practical Suggestions. 93 
 
 are like a person always carried about in a sedan chair 
 till he has almost lost the use of his limbs. And then 
 it is made a wonder that a person who has been so 
 well taught, and who was so quick in learning and 
 remembering, should not prove an able man ; which is 
 about as reasonable as to expect that a copious cistern, 
 if filled, should be converted into a perennial fountain."* 
 Aristotle also has told us that it is not by knowledge 
 but by activity that the intellect is perfected. 
 
 An examiner, accordingly, must never fail to 
 remember that his object is to evoke the mental 
 activity of his pupils. The linguistic treatment of 
 each sentence of the lesson by the master, which, when 
 time permits, constitutes the third stage of examina- 
 tion, may be illustrated thus, the pupils "being under- 
 stood to have their books open, otherwise the exercise 
 degenerates into one of memory. 
 
 [It is of course presumed that the class under 
 examination is the most advanced class of a primary 
 school (average age 14); but with an easier lesson 
 and a younger class the mode of procedure would be 
 the same.] 
 
 The pupil reads : 
 
 " Every student who enters on a scientific pursuit, 
 especially if at a somewhat advanced period of life, will 
 find not only that he has much to learn, but much also 
 to unlearn. Familiar objects and events are far from 
 presenting themselves to our senses in that aspect, and 
 * Quoted by Mr. Fitch in his "Lectures on Teaching." 
 
94 Primary Instruction. 
 
 with those connections, under which science requires them 
 to be viewed, and which constitute their rational 
 explanation. 
 
 Q. What kind of student is referred to here ? 
 
 A. The student who enters on a scientific pursuit. 
 
 Q. What is said of such a student ? 
 
 A. That he has much to learn. 
 
 Q. Is anything else said of him ? 
 
 A. That he has much to unlearn. 
 
 Q. The author says that every student of a science 
 has much to learn and unlearn ; but he says that this 
 is more particularly true of a certain class of students : 
 what class ? 
 
 A. Those who begin at an advanced period of life. 
 
 Q. What is meant by the word " student " ? 
 
 A. One who studies. 
 
 Q. And what do you mean by studying any 
 subject ? 
 
 A. Reading about it, and thinking about it. 
 
 Q. The student referred to is, you have told me, the 
 student " who enters on a scientific pursuit " pursuit 
 here means subject : what is meant by a scientific 
 " pursuit or subject " ? 
 
 A. A subject carefully arranged, so as to show its 
 facts, causes, and reasons.* 
 
 Q. This explanation is difficult for you to under- 
 stand ; you will best explain it by an example. 
 
 A. Astronomy, Geology, etc., are " scientific sub- 
 jects " or sciences ; that is to say, the real facts about 
 the stars, not merely what seem to be the facts at first 
 
 * Of course an answer of this sort is worked out by the help of the 
 master, and must be the result of many leading questions and illustra- 
 tions. 
 
Practical Siiggestions. 95 
 
 sight, arranged so as to show their connections and 
 causes, is the science of the stars, or Astronomy (and 
 so of Geology).* 
 
 Q. Can any of you now, looking carefully at the 
 sentence, shut the book, and give me the substance of 
 it in your own words ? 
 
 A. A person beginning to study a science will find 
 that he has much to learn as well as to unlearn, and 
 this all the more if he is grown up before he begins. 
 
 Q. Very good. Now I shall read the sentence as it 
 stands once more. 
 
 You can now easily tell me, in the words of the 
 grammar- book, What is the subject of this sentence ? 
 
 A. "Every student" down to "life." 
 
 Q. Yes, that is the thing spoken about. Now what 
 is said about it ? in the words of the grammar, What 
 is the predicate ? 
 
 A. "Will find" to the end. 
 
 Q. What is the principal word or verb of this 
 predicate ? 
 
 A. " Will find." 
 
 Q. But find is a transitive verb, and therefore part 
 of what follows must be its object : what part ? 
 
 A. The whole of what follows : there are two 
 objects, learning and unlearning, and they are connected 
 by the conjoining or conjunctive word buf\ 
 
 Teacher. We shall now take the second sentence. 
 
 (The teacher here reads it slowly, while the pupils 
 follow with the eye.) 
 
 Q. What is here said about " familiar objects and 
 events " ? 
 
 * See note on p. 94. 
 
 f It may not be necessary to advert to the analysis at this stage 
 
96 Primary Instruction. 
 
 A. That they are far from presenting themselves, 
 etc. 
 
 Q. What things are " far from presenting them- 
 selves," etc. ? 
 
 A. " Familiar objects and events." 
 
 Q. In the science of Astronomy, for example, what 
 would the " familiar objects and events " be ? 
 
 A. The heavenly bodies and their motions. 
 
 Q. Which are the objects, and which the events ? 
 
 A. The bodies are the objects, and their motions are 
 the events. 
 
 Q. Now the author says that these objects and 
 events are " far from presenting themselves in a 
 certain aspect and connection : " what do you mean 
 by " aspect " ? 
 
 A. Appearance. 
 
 Q. What by " connection " ? 
 
 A. Their union with each other, or other things, or 
 their relation to these things. 
 
 Q. What kind of appearance and connections do 
 they fail to present themselves to our senses in ? 
 
 A. The appearance and connections under which 
 science requires them to be viewed. 
 
 Q. Does the author say anything else about that 
 " appearance " and " connection " ? 
 
 A. Yes ; he says that they constitute their rational 
 explanation. 
 
 Q. What " constitutes the rational explanation " of 
 what ? 
 
 A. A certain aspect and certain connections of 
 objects and events constitute the rational explanation 
 of these objects and events.* 
 
 * See footnote on p. 94. 
 
Practical Suggestions. 97 
 
 Q. Can we accurately say that an aspect or appear- 
 ance and certain connections constitute an explanation 
 of anything ? 
 
 A. No. What is meant is that the presentation of 
 them to the mind in a certain light, and with certain 
 connections, " constitutes their rational explanation." 
 
 Q. What is meant by " constitutes their rational 
 explanation " ? 
 
 A. That the kind of presentation referred to is such 
 an explanation as satisfies the reason of a man. 
 
 Q. Now, can any of you, looking carefully at this 
 sentence, shut your book and give me the substance of 
 it in your own words ? 
 
 A. The author says, that " Things to which we are 
 accustomed are not always seen in such a way as 
 science requires them to be looked at, and that the 
 way of looking which science requires, gives us an 
 explanation of these things which satisfies our minds." 
 
 Teacher. Now, take your slates and go to your 
 seats. Your composition-lesson to-day will be putting 
 these two sentences in your own words. In doing 
 this you may make as many sentences of them as you 
 please. 
 
 The above is analysis of sentences in relation to 
 tJwug/ti, and requires no special instruction in logical 
 or grammatical terminology. It is, in truth, merely 
 the explicit evolution of a process which must go on 
 in the mind of every person who reads the sentences 
 with true understanding. Need we point to the great 
 value of such an evolution as a discipline of intellect 
 and an exercise of concentration of the will on an 
 object outside itself ? It is an exercise which dis- 
 G 
 
98 Primary Instruction. 
 
 ciplines every faculty of the mind, and in its efficacy 
 is second only to the critical study of Latin and Greek. 
 Formal or technical analysis, as a logical exercise of a 
 still more minute kind, may be introduced with advan- 
 tage after examination according to the above plan., 
 
 Whatever course be taken in examining on a lesson, 
 this at least may be fairly insisted on in every case - 
 namely, that the teacher shall himself know what 
 he is aiming at in his examination, and shall prepare 
 himself so that he may proceed from point to point 
 logically and coherently. The eye hastily cast over 
 the open page, rather than the thought of the master, 
 almost universally seems to determine what question 
 is to come next. Such cases as the following are not 
 uncommon : 
 
 Extract from Report on School. 
 
 " The teacher of this school is a good scholar, and, so far 
 as I can see, conscientious in the discharge of duty ; but he 
 does not seem to realise in his own mind the purpose or plan 
 of the lessons which he gives, or to think that this is a 
 necessary part of a teacher's duty." 
 
 Occasionally the teacher will find himself compelled 
 to be satisfied with an examination on the general 
 scope of a lesson in the form of oral composition, or 
 with a written reproduction of its general purport. 
 The time at his disposal must determine such things. 
 It will frequently happen, too, that he will depart 
 from the analysis of sentences in relation to thought, 
 and substitute for it the analysis of words, and the 
 
Practical Suggestions. 99 
 
 fruitful exercise of word-building, with the help of 
 prefixes and affixes.* 
 
 If there be one habit of teachers more absurd than 
 another, it is the asking for definitions of the words 
 of a lesson with the book closed. The words are thus 
 treated as isolated vocables, and a signification is given 
 by the pupil or suggested by the master, perhaps quite 
 away from the sense in which the word is employed 
 in the lesson under consideration. No definition of a 
 word is a definition at all unless it can be put in the 
 place of the word defined, and leave the meaning of 
 the proposition unaltered at the same that it is 
 simplified. From this it manifestly follows, that sig- 
 nifications should be asked with the book open and 
 as clause by clause is read.t When all the more 
 difficult words are in this way explained, the pupils 
 should be required to re-read the sentence, putting 
 the simpler definitions in place of the difficult words. 
 This is not paraphrasing (an art much liable to abuse) 
 but substituting : it might, indeed, be called translating. 
 One sentence so reconstructed is of more value as a 
 discipline of the intelligence than the recitation of a 
 whole page of isolated terms with their lexicon defini- 
 
 * The learning of " Roots," in tlie form of isolated Latin and Greek 
 words, is a waste of time. But a knowledge of the most common pre- 
 fixes and affixes, and exercises in constructing words with the help of 
 them, and on the basis of English roots and of Latin roots in their 
 '* English form," are of great utility as a discipline. 
 
 t The printing of the meanings of words at the beginning or end of 
 the lesson interferes with this method, in fact, renders it abortive, s 
 the pupil cannot be prevented from casting his eye to the top of the 
 page, and there "reading off" what he ought " to think out." 
 
ioo Primary Instruction. 
 
 tions. The exercise of substitution or translation seems 
 to us to be a very important one in a language so 
 complex in its elements as the English. 
 
 Valuable as the skilful examination on a reading- 
 lesson may be, the teacher must beware of tarnishing 
 the beauty of a lesson which is addressed to the ima- 
 gination or feeling of the pupil by following the same 
 course with it as with the other pieces in the reading- 
 book. Not every lesson affords fit material for 
 stammering reproduction, much less for the vulgariz- 
 ing process of sentence - analysis. Lessons which 
 appeal to the affections, the sentiments of devotion or 
 of the beautiful, should, after they have been read as 
 usual by the class, have their purport simply and 
 unaffectedly sketched by the master, and be then 
 appropriately and expressively read by him to his 
 listening pupils. In this way only can the lesson 
 they are meant to teach be really taught, 
 
 Course of Reading -Lessons. In selecting the course 
 of reading-lessons through which he has to carry his 
 pupils, the master should have constant regard to the 
 fact, more than once adverted to in the preceding 
 pages, that the great majority of the pupils of primary 
 schools receive all their cultivation within the walls of 
 the schoolroom, and are excluded by their circum- 
 stances from those numerous influences of an intel- 
 lectual, moral, and aesthetic kind which belong to the 
 classes above them in the social scale. It is to meet this 
 
Practical Suggestions. i o i 
 
 state of things that a teacher's objects in teaching reading 
 (as we have already shown) must comprehend not only 
 instruction or information, and discipline of the intel- 
 lectual powers, but also cultivation of the imagination 
 and of the moral and religious capacities of the child. 
 
 In carrying his pupils through a course of reading 
 thus largely conceived, the schoolmaster should not be 
 discouraged by finding that the subject-matter of the 
 more difficult lessons seems to be quickly forgotten by 
 the pupils. If the lesson was properly taught, at the 
 proper time, it will have left behind the solid fruit of 
 increased power. What is forgotten in the process of 
 learning is often as efficacious an educative agent as what 
 is remembered. A perception of this fact must have 
 prompted Bishop Berkeley's pertinent query, " Whether 
 those parts of learning which are forgotten may not 
 have improved and enriched the soil, like those 
 vegetables which are raised not for themselves, but 
 are ploughed in for a dressing of the land ? " 
 
 Nor is the teacher to be discouraged by occasionally 
 finding it difficult to make his pupils fully comprehend 
 the lesson read. Habitually to require pupils to work 
 at the unintelligible is permanently to stunt the mind 
 by obstructing the free action of intelligence. But 
 never to demand of them a conscious effort to master 
 difficulties of thought and language is to weaken the 
 intellectual energy. The power of grasping any 
 sequence of thought that has been the subject of a 
 reading-lesson, depends of course on the maturity of 
 the learner, and his perception of the general relations 
 
IO2 Primary Instruction. 
 
 of the subject to things already thoroughly known by 
 him, and which must always form the basis of any 
 new knowledge. But we are not to suppose that 
 occasional lessons which somewhat transcend the stage 
 of mental development which the pupil has reached, 
 are useless in respect of the mental cultivation which 
 the fresh thoughts give. These thoughts, while adding 
 little to the bulk, may contribute largely to the organic 
 growth of mind by stimulating its vital energy. Still 
 more true is this when we have regard to the formal 
 discipline derivable from the mere language in which 
 the fresh knowledge is conveyed. 
 
 Concluding Hints. A word or two of personal 
 reference to the teacher, bearing on all the work of 
 the school as well as on instruction in reading : ( 1 ) 
 Let him take up such a position on the school floor 
 with respect to his class as shall insure that each 
 pupil will feel himself addressed by every question 
 and explanation, and that every boy in the class will 
 hear every answer given and every sentence read as 
 distinctly as the teacher himself. This position should 
 not be changed during a lesson ; for the concentration 
 of the eyes of the class on the master's face aids the 
 concentration of mind on the subject in hand. (2) 
 Let him discard the book, both when listening to the 
 reading of the class and when reproducing the general 
 purport of the lesson. (3) Let him, in all he says, 
 be deliberate, precise, curt, avoiding all " talk," and 
 remembering that he is merely the guide and example 
 of others whose minds are working. " Long talking," 
 
Objects and Method in Writing. 103 
 
 says Jean Paul, " begets short hearing." (4) Let him 
 keep in mind that the more conversational his tone, 
 the more surely does it reach the minds with which 
 he is conversing, and that all loudness is inconsistent 
 with the quiet and calm process of thinking and learn- 
 ing. (5) Let him attempt little at a time, and do 
 that little thoroughly; and this on moral as well as 
 intellectual grounds. (6) Let him discourage every- 
 thing (such as the childish practice of place-taking,* 
 marking answers, etc.) which diverts himself or his 
 pupils from the sole object of the examination, which 
 is the intellectual communion of teacher and taught. 
 
 III. OBJECTS AND METHOD OF TEACHING WRITING. 
 
 The practical purpose, namely, facility and distinctness, to be kept 
 constantly in view Letters to be turned to use as they are learned 
 The power to be applied to copying on slates Writing from 
 dictation. 
 
 The particular purpose at which the teacher ought 
 to aim in teaching Writing is writing from dictation 
 the sentences of the reading-lesson, in script characters, 
 with facility and distinctness. That this is the end 
 will scarcely in these days be impugned, though few 
 teachers have yet fully realized the fact.t Caligraphy 
 
 * If it be necessary to record and blazon to the village world who has 
 done best at school, let this be ascertained justly, that is to say, by 
 periodical examinations written under the eye of the master. 
 
 t Writing from dictation was rarely practised (not in one school out 
 of fifty) when the above was first written, and there was no initiatory 
 slate-writing. 
 
IO4 Primary Instruction. 
 
 may be said still to hold a kind of traditionary 
 possession of the schoolmaster's mind. The sooner 
 this delusion is expelled the better for the pupil, if 
 not for the aesthetics of penmanship. Caligraphy is 
 to be spoken of with the respect which is its due, 
 when we find it in its proper place ; but we must 
 conclude that that place is not the primary school, 
 when we reflect on the hurtful effects which its in- 
 trusion there has produced. Page after page, book 
 after book, of letters and words and preposterous 
 sentences, are copied by the pupil, with a view to the 
 formation of " a hand," and the sum-total of result at 
 the age of ten or eleven is, except in the case of a 
 small minority, a power of imitating, in somewhat 
 crabbed style, a model set before them a model 
 which is to them merely a series of forms, which they 
 are unable to interpret without assistance. Substitute 
 for this the distinct and accurate writing of the 
 sentences of the reading-lesson as the practical aim 
 to be constantly striven for, and a new significance 
 and increased importance at once attach themselves 
 to the art, while at the same time an intelligent 
 process supplants a merely imitative exercise in 
 form. 
 
 The purpose of teaching writing is determined by 
 no abstract consideration, but solely by the limitations 
 tinder which the teacher works, the general bearing 
 of which on the materials and methods of elementary 
 education has been already discussed. These limita- 
 tions demand that the pupil at the age of ten or 
 
Objects and Method in Writing. 105 
 
 eleven shall be able to accomplish something more 
 available in practical life, and in his own future self- 
 education, than the imitative reproduction of certain 
 script characters. 
 
 Given the purpose, the method whereby it is to 
 be reached will not be difficult to find ; for the 
 final purpose is like a beacon, which not only 
 marks the goal towards which the teacher is mov- 
 ing, but throws a stream of light on every step of 
 the way. 
 
 As a preliminary of all writing method, we have to 
 bear in mind two things (1) That the time is short 
 and the art is long, and therefore we must begin 
 betimes. A slate should be put into every infant's 
 hands on the same day on which he receives his 
 Primer, and the foundation of the art of writing laid 
 by causing him to imitate the printed letters and 
 words of his lessons. As soon as sufficient familiarity 
 has been gained with the elements of reading, about 
 the end of the initiatory stage, he should begin to 
 copy on his slate script letters written by the master 
 on the blackboard. (2) The letters which the pupil 
 forms should not be too large for the stretching power 
 of the muscles of the little hand. With these pre- 
 liminary remarks, we come to the question of method 
 proper. 
 
 The method to be pursued is, by means of the 
 blackboard, to introduce the pupil almost at once to 
 letters, and to print alongside each letter its typo- 
 
io6 Primary Instruction. 
 
 graphical equivalent. This will be imitated on the 
 slate. The letters should be given in the order of 
 simplicity of formation, and combined into words as 
 soon as the letters given admit of it, without waiting till 
 the whole alphabet has been acquired. In this way, the 
 letters acquired are revised at the same time that they 
 are at once turned to their practical use. The percep- 
 tion of a result so early attained in a new art is 
 pleasing to the pupil, because it is novel : it also gives 
 a sense of power, and invests with an unmistakable 
 meaning what is usually a. stupid if not stupefying 
 exercise. It does more, for it supplies a motive ; and 
 a child is quite as open to the influence of a motive 
 which appeals to his intelligence, as an adult. 
 Children compare and reason with a smaller stock of 
 materials than men, with a misapprehension of the 
 true proportions of things, and with less mental 
 vigour ; but it is a great blunder to treat them as if 
 they did not reason at all, and were inaccessible to 
 rational motives of action. The power of immediately 
 putting to use a new acquisition supplies a motive for 
 progress. It also furnishes an incentive. No one 
 can have given the most superficial attention to 
 children, without having learned that their most 
 intense delight is to be found in construction. To 
 make some fresh thing out of such materials as 
 they may have is their highest ambition. The 
 practical and philosophic method of teaching the 
 first elements of reading which we have inculcated 
 takes advantage of this, as has been shown, and 
 
Objects and Method in Writing. 107 
 
 through it gives unconscious discipline : the practical 
 method of teaching writing appeals to the same 
 mental characteristic. 
 
 If the child be so taught as to be able to connect 
 every fresh script-form with something already known 
 in print, and to be able to construct words for himself 
 by help of these forms, a lesson which must always 
 be essentially one of imitation becomes also an 
 exercise of intelligence. The writing out of printed 
 letters and words, and of sentences from the reading- 
 lesson (transcription), on a slate, sustains throughout 
 the whole course of instruction in writing the intel- 
 lectual character of the art, and makes it something 
 more than a mere manual trick. 
 
 The higher stage of the art writing from dictation 
 ought to be introduced early, and will give a new 
 interest to the lessons by giving a new power and 
 revealing a new utility. By calling on the power of 
 attention to what the master dictates, as well as on 
 the power of applying what has been already learned, 
 a certain amount of intellectual discipline is given 
 limited, it is true, but by no means despicable. The 
 teaching of writing thus comprehends spelling, though 
 it by no means supersedes oral practice in that 
 exercise. It is scarcely necessary to point out that, 
 according to this practical method, the pupil acquires 
 the power of reading script while learning to write it, 
 and thus a fresh, though incidental, interest is given 
 to his task. 
 
 Of course the pupil will 
 
io8 Primary Instruction. 
 
 tions to reproduce the shapely forms of his models ; 
 he will know that there is good writing and bad 
 writing as well as good reading and bad reading. 
 But the main purpose will be steadily held before 
 him, and determine every step in his progress 
 namely, the power of writing from dictation a clean, 
 accurate, and distinct copy of his reading-lesson. We 
 shall be much surprised if the practical expedients 
 adopted for securing this result do not also produce 
 better writers, in respect of mere caligraphy, than we 
 now have. Whether they do so or not, fine penman- 
 ship must be rigidly subordinated to facility and 
 distinctness of writing, in order that, at an early 
 period of his career, a child may find himself possessed 
 of a substantial power, which he delights to use, and 
 which will stand him in good stead in his after-life, 
 saving him from that sense of inferiority which want 
 of facility in an almost indispensable art is sure to 
 cause, and giving him a sound basis for further 
 progress. 
 
 It is very far from my intention to discourage 
 beautiful writing and feats of penmanship. But such 
 accomplishments have their fit place in the school 
 curriculum only after the essential and necessary 
 work is done, and ought to be postponed as a distinct 
 aim till the age of eleven. They are to be gladly 
 welcomed and applauded if they are attained by the 
 pupil without his having been required to deviate 
 from the direct path which leads towards a more solid 
 and fruitful acquisition. 
 
Objects and Method in Writing. 1 09 
 
 Thus the practical end has suggested a practical as 
 well as practicable path, and the result is that, in the 
 art of writing as in that of reading, particular method 
 subserves the general method of education ; for the 
 formation of a good mental habit is manifestly pro- 
 moted by substituting, for a method and aim purely 
 mechanical, a method characterized by intelligence, 
 promotive of discipline, and instinct with a solid 
 purpose. In truth, in this as in all other subjects, 
 an intelligent practical aim is also a sound theoretical 
 one. 
 
 Note on Writing and Dictation. 
 
 Writing on paper with pen and ink is usually 
 begun when the pupil is about the age of eight. 
 Copybooks with head-lines are used. As soon as the 
 child is able to form the letters, however, he has been 
 of late years, in all the best schools, usually exercised 
 in transcribing on his slate, words, lines, and sentences 
 from his reading- lesson ; and this exercise is continued 
 throughout the whole school course, in addition to the 
 daily exercise in the copybook. This slate-writing 
 becomes, in the second highest class, writing from 
 dictation ; and in the highest class, the latter exercise 
 is, in the most efficient schools, combined with simple 
 composition exercises. The copybooks used are 
 perhaps less objectionable than they used to be in 
 respect of the quality of the paper of which they are 
 made, while the cheapness of steel pens has put a 
 good instrument within the reach of the poorest. 
 More attention than used to be common is now paid 
 to keeping the pupils to a uniform series of copy- 
 
I io Primary Instruction. 
 
 books, thereby securing a certain amount of system 
 and graduation in the successive exercises. Where 
 the teacher is without assistance, all the pupils 
 capable of using a pen generally write at the same 
 hour daily. 
 
 The thing to be regretted with reference to the 
 state of this branch of instruction, is the late age at 
 which children exhibit any proficiency in it. This, 
 however, is not the fault of the teachers so much as 
 of the parents, and of the bad system of charging 
 fees according to the number of subjects taught a 
 custom which retards the instruction of the junior 
 classes both in this subject and in arithmetic. The 
 parents seem to imagine that, by requiring that only 
 reading and spelling shall be taught to their children 
 for the first two years of their school life, they secure 
 a greater amount of attention to these subjects, both 
 on the part of pupils and teacher, than would be given 
 were writing and arithmetic added ; while the separa- 
 tion of the fee for writing from that for reading gives 
 an apparent justification to this delusion, and brings 
 into play the additional argument of economy.* The 
 rectification of this is easy, and is gradually being 
 forced on the country by the operation of the Educa- 
 tion Code, which in this respect, if in no other, will 
 be universally admitted to be correcting a great educa- 
 tional mistake. 
 
 That the whole school should be engaged in the 
 writing-lesson at one and the same time seems to 
 indicate defective organisation, and a badly constructed 
 time-table. But if we bear in mind that the writing- 
 
 * I leave the above remarks standing, as they are of historical 
 interest. 
 
Objects and Method in Writing. 1 1 1 
 
 lesson is one requiring, quite as much as any other, 
 effective supervision and direction, it is clear that, 
 where there are no assistants, supervision can be 
 secured only by setting the master free for the 
 purpose. Some masters seem to imagine that, with 
 the help of a head-line and pen and ink, instruction 
 in writing will take care of itself, and hence the 
 lessons are frequently valueless. The slovenly pages, 
 the misspellings, repeated in every successive line, the 
 omission on the part of the pupil to refer his eye 
 back to his model, all reveal to the inspector the view 
 which the teacher takes of this part of his duties. 
 Writing requires to be actively taught by the master, 
 especially in the earlier stages and till a good habit is 
 formed, quite as much as any other subject. He 
 should not only vigilantly superintend the writing- 
 lesson, but affix a mark to every copy written by the 
 pupil, and allow places to be taken for this, even 
 though he may discourage place - taking for other 
 lessons. 
 
 These remarks apply to the present method of 
 teaching writing. The more practical method recom- 
 mended in the chapter to which this is a note, requires 
 copybooks specially constructed with a view to its 
 application. The substance of the remarks there made, 
 however, applies to any system, and it is this : Begin 
 children with slate and pencil from the very first day 
 of their entering the school, teaching them to copy 
 printed letters from a wall-sheet or the blackboard, 
 until they can read the Primer, and then introduce 
 them to script letters. In this way much time at 
 present utterly wasted in idleness, or in acquiring a 
 distaste for the confinement of school, will be pro- 
 fitably employed ; and when the child, at the age of 
 
i [ 2 Primary Instruction. 
 
 eight, has pen, ink, and paper given to him, he will 
 be found to be already competent to transcribe the 
 sentences of his lesson-book.' 
 
 In the chapter on Method we have summed up the 
 object of teaching writing. If that object be kept in 
 view, dictation exercises will follow transcription, and 
 enter very early into the daily round of school-work. 
 In connection with this, we would beg teachers to 
 husband their own strength, and read the words 
 they dictate only once to the pupils. Teachers are 
 apt to forget that every lesson, however humble, 
 has a higher than its apparent purpose to serve, 
 if rightly taught. If the words are read out only 
 once, the pupils not only get a lesson in writing 
 from dictation, but also in attention and in con- 
 centration of mind. If any boy fails to follow, 
 he should leave a blank on his slate at the for- 
 gotten word, which blank will of course count as an 
 error. 
 
 It would be to enter into superfluous detail were 
 we to speak of the many little devices (little but not 
 petty or unimportant) which suggest themselves to 
 various minds for expeditiously correcting the mistakes 
 of the dictation exercise, and otherwise giving full 
 effect to it. One thing, however, must be specially 
 urged on teachers, and that is, the importance of 
 requiring the pupils, after the mistakes have been 
 pointed out, to go to their seats and write out several 
 times correctly the words which they have misspelled, 
 afterwards showing the corrections to the boy or boys 
 who have done the exercise without errors, should 
 the master be too much occupied for the work of 
 revision. 
 
Objects and Method in Arithmetic. 1 1 3 
 
 IV. OBJECTS AND METHOD OF TEACHING ARITHMETIC. 
 
 Intellectual discipline of Arithmetic School Arithmetic should be 
 practical and economic Method of teaching : the concrete 
 method Moral uses of School Arithmetic. 
 
 Were the teacher free from all limitations in the 
 formation of his plans for attaining the great end of 
 primary education, he might possibly choose to eject 
 reading and writing from the schoolroom, in so far as 
 these arts are merely technical, and to substitute the 
 intellectual and moral discipline which can be best 
 effected through conversation and personal influence, 
 assisted by the lessons that might be drawn from the 
 objects of external nature, and from the hourly 
 occurrences of life. It is true that, in the initiatory 
 stages of reading and writing, there is, as we have 
 shown, a right and a wrong method, contributing more 
 or less to the discipline of the pupil, as well as to his 
 facility and certainty of acquisition ; but beyond those 
 stages, the educative purpose is really attained, we 
 have seen, through the identification, as much as 
 possible, of the arts taught with the objects for which 
 they are taught namely, instruction, intellectual 
 discipline, and moral and aesthetic cultivation. 
 
 As regards Arithmetic : The art of manipulating 
 numbers with dexterity, and the rationale of the 
 expedients whereby the processes are abbreviated and 
 guaranteed, are merely the evolving and strengthening 
 of a special intellectual power which exerts itself 
 
H4 Primary Instruction. 
 
 spontaneously in all men. One would sometimes 
 be justified in thinking that teachers of arithmetic 
 imagined they were putting something new, if not 
 alien, into the child's mind. Irrespectively of the 
 future necessities of the child, this power of handling 
 numbers would, in its relation to the general and 
 theoretic object of education alone, demand, and amply 
 reward, cultivation. The combinations of parts into 
 wholes, the dissolution of wholes into parts, and of 
 these parts themselves into lower unities, are exercises 
 in the relation of particulars to generals, and of 
 generals to particulars, of great value to the intellect 
 in other applications of its powers. The visible, we 
 may even say the palpable, effects of error, whicli 
 renders nugatory the most strenuous efforts if these 
 are vitiated by the most trifling flaw, must exercise a 
 wonderful influence in giving the habit of accuracy 
 and caution in all exercises of comparison and in- 
 ference. Indeed, so universally diffused is the dis- 
 cipline given by means of the science and art of 
 numbers, that we are perhaps scarcely able to estimate 
 fully the extent to which it contributes to the intel- 
 ligence of the people, and, above all, to a rapid and 
 easy movement of the human understanding in the 
 conduct of ordinary affairs. 
 
 Nor are the above the most important of the dis- 
 ciplinary effects of adding, multiplying, and dividing 
 wholes and parts ; for it is impossible, notwithstand- 
 ing the numerous contrivances for saving excessive 
 tension of mind which enter into the rules in obedience 
 
Objects and Method in Arithmetic. \ 1 5 
 
 to which the pupils work, to elaborate a correct 
 answer to the questions which a good arithmetical 
 manual supplies, without a certain amount of con- 
 scious intellectual concentration. A habit of mind 
 is thereby strengthened which more than any other 
 constitutes the intellectual superiority of one man 
 over another, and of man himself over the lower 
 animals. In acquiring other subjects, the pupil may 
 give or withdraw his attention almost at his will, and 
 yet make sensible progress in the acquisition of know- 
 ledge. In arithmetic there is a certain amount of 
 deliberate and sustained attention indispensable to 
 even the most elementary processes. This discipline 
 cannot be evaded without leaving the work undone. 
 The conscious exertion of the will to keep certain 
 powers of the understanding in operation on a special 
 question until a certain result be reached, is not only 
 valuable in relation to the acquisition of the subject 
 which for the moment may engage the mind, but it 
 increases the mental force available for the study of 
 every other subject. This kind of discipline belongs 
 peculiarly to arithmetic, even when taught merely as 
 an exercise in abstract figures. Finally, training in 
 arithmetical exactness must contribute to truthful- 
 ness of mind and integrity of character. 
 
 All this is true of arithmetic, apart from its prac- 
 tical relations to life, on which alone ultimately rest 
 its claims to enter into the curriculum of the primary 
 school. A consideration of these practical relations 
 
1 1 6 Primary Instruction. 
 
 yields us at once the purpose towards the realization 
 of which the teacher must direct all his efforts, the 
 methods which he ought to follow, and a further 
 insight into the educative nature of this subject of 
 instruction. 
 
 Arithmetic is the science and art of numbers : 
 school arithmetic must always be, more or less, the- 
 adaptation of the art to the future uses of the pupil. 
 Those uses tell us that the purpose of teaching arith- 
 metic in elementary schools, apart from its influence 
 as a discipline, is attained when such command has 
 been given over numbers as enables a young man or 
 woman to calculate with facility all those questions 
 which arise in the ordinary course of life. This may 
 be called Economic Arithmetic. It embraces the 
 addition, subtraction, and division of money, propor- 
 tion, and vulgar fractions. Beyond these subjects no 
 elementary teacher ought to attempt to go if he 
 desires to be impartial in his instructions and do 
 justice to other subjects much more important than 
 advance in arithmetic.^ His aim should be thorough- 
 ness rather than extent of acquirement 
 
 Economic or school arithmetic embraces the 
 domestic, but also extends to the general out-of-door 
 relations of the head of the family. The relation of 
 his wages to the size of his family, to the several 
 heads of legitimate expenditure, such as food, clothing, 
 insurance, sick-clubs, saving, gives full occupation 
 
 * Except in those schools in which pupils stay beyond the age of 
 eleven or twelve. 
 
Objects and Method in Arithmetic. 1 1 7 
 
 for the application of his knowledge, and ought to be 
 constantly present to his thoughts. " Tell me how a 
 man spends his money, and I will tell you the cha- 
 racter of the man," was a remark in a special sense 
 true of the labouring man. Almost the whole range 
 of the duties of benevolence and justice fall under 
 the head of income and expenditure, and resolve 
 themselves into questions of arithmetic, which cannot 
 be encountered, much less solved, by a man unfamiliar 
 with figures. People of the middle class are them- 
 selves so much accustomed to economic calculation, 
 that it does not occur to them how serious an 
 obstacle a deficiency of arithmetical training is to a 
 labouring man, still more to a labouring man's wife. 
 
 Schoolmasters are frequently to blame for the 
 meagre practical issue of their arithmetical teaching 
 among the operative classes ; and the cause of their 
 failure is to be found in this, that having omitted to 
 define to themselves clearly the ultimate object of 
 their labours, they necessarily fail to find a true 
 method, and thus expend much well-meant labour in 
 vain. The quantity of instruction given is generally 
 ample, but much of it is loose and irrelevant. 
 
 By the word Economic, the purpose of arithmetical 
 teaching in schools has been defined ; the method 
 follows from the purpose, and is called the Concrete 
 Method. And here we come on ground so much 
 beaten by theoretical educationalists, that, though it 
 is yet untrodden by the great majority of practical 
 
1 1 8 Primary Instruction. 
 
 teachers, we shall omit those details of ways and 
 means which have been so frequently reiterated. It 
 will be sufficient to summarise the method in the 
 following practical rules : 
 
 (1) Initiate children in arithmetic by means of 
 the objects around them first of all, then by the help 
 of the ball-frame, thereby making their elementary 
 instruction a simple and natural extension of their 
 own daily observation. (2) Simultaneously with this, 
 and after it, exercise the pupils in mental arithmetic. 
 (3) Carry forward the instruction, as it was begun, 
 on the basis of concrete questions arising out of the 
 necessities or experiences of common life, domestic 
 and general, constantly putting these in fresh forms, 
 and giving prominence at every step of the progress 
 to mental arithmetic. 
 
 As matters actually stand in schools, the exercises 
 worked by the pupils have, for the most part, 
 immediate or sole reference to the attainment of a 
 certain familiarity with the relations of number in 
 themselves, and with the rules under which the 
 exercises happen to be ranged : they ought, on the 
 contrary, to bear with the greatest stress on the 
 relations of number to everyday affairs. School 
 arithmetic is not a playing with numbers, but a 
 dealing with the things to which number is attached. 
 If it be not a playing with numbers, much less is it 
 an intricate game with figures. Two lessons the 
 primary teacher will at once draw from these con- 
 siderations : he will avoid slate-work in the initi- 
 
Objects and Method in Arithmetic. 1 19 
 
 atory stages, relying on the presentation of objects to 
 be numbered, and he will see that through mental 
 arithmetic, alone he can approach the child naturally, 
 and without a sudden dislocation of the infant 
 numerical habit of mind. To begin with pebbles or 
 balls, and exercise the mind apart from the manual 
 exercise of the slate, is to accept the foundation 
 which nature has herself laid. For the teacher to 
 despise this, and to endeavour to rear the edifice of 
 knowledge " in a way of his own," is to display 
 ignorant pedantry where he ought to exhibit a wise 
 faith, and to throw mystery and complexity into 
 mental operations which to the child may be easily 
 made clear and simple. In this as in other subjects 
 the true method is to be found by considering the 
 ways of nature, and following and fostering her 
 .spontaneous efforts. 
 
 Having familiarised the child with the adding, 
 subtracting, and multiplying of such numbers as can 
 be taken in by the eye, and in this way comprehended 
 by the understanding, he may then proceed to show 
 the child the use of the slate in aiding the intellect, 
 and in facilitating processes which would to the child, 
 or even to the boy, be a painful if not an impossible 
 effort He will not have failed in the initiatory stage 
 to mass his balls in tens, and so to accustom the child 
 to regard the highest figures as groups of tens of 
 lower and higher multiples, without of course pre- 
 maturely suggesting to the young mind the future 
 applications of this expedient. The gradual intro- 
 
1 20 Primary Instruction. 
 
 duction of difficult questions, which cannot be solved 
 mentally, will first call for the help of the slate ; and 
 the immense facility in solving these questions which 
 slate-work, under certain rules of procedure, giyes, 
 will not be lost on a child taught according to the 
 method of nature. It will be a relief, a surprise, and 
 an encouragement. Further progress will continue to 
 be made with constant recurrence of the concrete and 
 reference to the economic, and thus figures and pro- 
 cesses will be brought down from their abstract 
 relations to the humble and practical needs of the 
 day or the hour. That mental arithmetic should 
 precede manual (which as manual is largely mechani- 
 cal) is as true of every stage of school arithmetic as 
 it is of the initiatory stage, if arithmetic is to teach 
 boys to think. The probable answer to every problem 
 should be thought out by the boy, before he begins to 
 " work the sum." 
 
 In urging on the schoolmaster's attention the 
 definite and " economic " purpose of school arithmetic, 
 and the concrete method of attaining that purpose, we 
 have been guided solely by the consideration of the 
 limitations as to time and utility under which the 
 primary teacher must consent to do all his work. 
 But so harmonious are the relations of life, that we 
 find (as we also found in the subjects of reading and 
 writing) that in obeying the restrictions as to the end 
 and means of instruction imposed by the necessities 
 of life, the teacher not only secures for his pupils 
 
Objects and Method in Arithmetic. 1 2 1 
 
 thorough possession of the art of arithmetic in the 
 purely technical sense, but also best promotes the 
 disciplinary purpose of all elementary education. For 
 even the pure arithmetician, setting aside the practical 
 requirements of the schoolroom or of life, will concur 
 in maintaining that the art of arithmetic is only then 
 thoroughly and scientifically acquired in its elements, 
 when it is acquired in those concrete relations out of 
 which it arose. He will assure us that, except in 
 those rare cases of peculiar native aptitude for 
 numbers which overleap the ordinary processes of 
 education, solidity of foundation and stability of 
 structure can be secured in no way so well as by the 
 faithful pursuit of the method of nature. With 
 whatever sleight-of-intellect numbers and their rela- 
 tions may be handled by professional arithmeticians, 
 the only sound basis for the ordinary arithmetic of 
 practical life, even when viewed in its merely tech- 
 nical aspect, is a concrete basis. It is not too much 
 to say that, in the initiatory classes of an elementary 
 school, the realities to which numbers refer should 
 even take precedence of the numbers themselves in 
 the order of thought : the actual things numbered, 
 rather than numerical quantities, should be constantly 
 present to the pupil's mind. This is essential to the 
 vitality and solidity of the substructure of arith- 
 metical knowledge, however abstract may be the 
 future superstructure. 
 
 But we have to point out a still more important 
 
122 Primary Instruction. 
 
 purpose which the teaching of the relations of number 
 as economic arithmetic subserves. Economic arith- 
 metic, properly taught, must rest mainly on that class 
 of questions which concerns clothes, feeding, housing, 
 and saving. The constant reference of figures to the 
 acts, facts, and dealings of everyday experience, thus 
 brings number to bear on subjects which are, in truth, 
 moral, inasmuch as they have to do with a man's 
 relations to his household and his occupation. It is 
 evident that the familiarising of the mind with the 
 important part which number plays in ordinary affairs 
 will promote what may be called arithmetical prudence 
 in the management of the personal and family getting 
 find spending. The expenditure of the operative 
 classes has, in the vast majority of cases, not the 
 slightest regard to present or future responsibilities. 
 
 If we can get a man to consider seriously how he can 
 best extend the benefits of his earnings to those of his 
 own household, the economic object of education is in 
 him fully attained. If he will only consider the 
 matter, he will see that, although saving is a duty, it 
 does not mean hoarding, and that economy does not 
 mean niggardliness. He will perceive that a regula- 
 tion of expenditure with due regard to the income, 
 and to the various present claims which a man has on 
 himself or which others have on him, is economy, and 
 it is more ; it is also benevolence, honesty, justice, 
 and sense : while a regulation of expenditure with 
 due regard to the certain or probable claims of the 
 future is prospective benevolence, honesty, justice, and 
 
Economic Arithmetic. 123 
 
 sense. These things ought to be taught to the people, 
 and they are scarcely ever taught. This is what the 
 permeation of all the work of the school with moral 
 teaching means. It will be spoken of again under 
 the head of direct moral instruction ; but we wish 
 specially to show in this place, that even a study 
 apparently so abstract as arithmetic can be so taught 
 as to reveal an intimate connection with the conduct 
 of life, and that it is best so taught. And further, that 
 arithmetic, ethically taught in this its economic sense, 
 is moral teaching, and that, while it confessedly con- 
 tributes very largely to the discipline of the intellect, 
 it also aids in the formation of a moral habit of mind. 
 It thus promotes the ultimate object of the primary 
 school in both its aspects. 
 
 Let me also say this : There has been much talk 
 about technical education of late years. This can 
 only be secured by giving a realistic concrete character 
 to all the work of the primary school. 
 
 Note on Arithmetic. 
 
 1. The teaching of arithmetic should be begun 
 earlier than is customary, and always with common 
 objects and then with the ball-frame. I think the 
 ball-frame should have ten, not twelve, balls on each 
 rod. In the initiatory stages, school arithmetic should 
 be always concrete. 
 
 2. Mental arithmetic should " precede " slate arith- 
 metic, and much greater prominence should be given 
 to this at every stage of the pupil's progress. 
 
124 Primary Instruction. 
 
 3. To teach the simple rules without a previous 
 training in the principles of notation, and concurrent 
 instruction in the meaning of the rules which the 
 pupils are taught to apply, is to make uninteresting, 
 if not stupefying, an exercise which ought to be pre- 
 eminently attractive and invigorating. It is, moreover, 
 wilfully to forego a large portion of the discipline of 
 the reasoning powers which arithmetic is supposed to 
 give. A boy, it is true, must work by rules, but he 
 can be safely exercised in and enlightened by prin- 
 ciples, where these have to do with subjects outside 
 himself which are easily capable of verification. 
 
 4. It follows from the preceding paragraphs that 
 the master should never yield to the temptation of 
 indulging the indolence of his pupils by reading to 
 them, or allowing them to read, figures instead of the 
 numbers which they denote. 
 
 5. The ordinary weights, measures, and coins should 
 be seen, handled, and applied to use in the infant school. 
 There should also be a simple weighing-machine. 
 
 6. In arithmetic, accuracy is in a special sense im- 
 perative. The pupil must be taught to see, as indeed 
 he cannot help seeing, that the whole process is 
 utterly futile, except in so far as it is accurate. A 
 function of arithmetic in the school is to teach accuracy, 
 as a function of language is to teach precision. 
 
Secondary Subjects of the School. 125 
 
 III. THE SECONDARY SUBJECTS OF THE PRIMARY 
 SCHOOL. 
 
 Education an extensive as well as an intensive process 
 Order of importance of secondary subjects. 
 
 WE pass now from the three main subjects of the 
 primary school to the consideration of those parts of 
 the curriculum which merit a place in the teacher's 
 time-table only if kept strictly subsidiary to those 
 studies which are determined beyond question by 
 the future necessities of the pupil. It is quite 
 common to find in a school two daily lessons of fifteen 
 minutes each in Heading (frequently only one), with 
 Writing from Dictation asserting its existence only 
 once or twice a- week, while Geography, Grammar,- 
 History, Music, Drawing, and even something called 
 " Science," receive each a certain share of daily 
 attention. This is a well-meant misuse of time. 
 We do not underrate the educational value of these 
 subjects. By means of them alone it is easy to 
 see that the end of all primary education might be 
 attained. But it is of prime moment to secure for 
 those subjects which are indispensable to the future 
 life and self-education of the pupil that priority and 
 
126 Primary Instruction. 
 
 pre-eminence in school-work which is their due. It 
 is true that the cultivation of the subsidiary branches 
 of instruction, in proper subordination to the more 
 essential, has a tendency, by giving variety, to com- 
 municate greater vivacity and intelligence to the 
 whole of the school-work, and thereby materially to 
 further the acquisition of the magistral subjects 
 themselves. But a just ground of complaint has 
 been, that these subsidiary subjects frequently receive 
 more attention than they can fairly claim, and that 
 they introduce into the elementary school that greatest 
 of all modern educational heresies the teaching and 
 learning of a little of many things, rather than much 
 of a few things. This is to eject thoroughness and 
 real proficiency from the school, and with these, as 
 a matter of course, all intellectual discipline worthy 
 of the name. 
 
 It is, at the same time, a narrow theory of education 
 which teaches that mental discipline is possible only 
 when we rigidly confine the intellect within a narrow 
 groove of study. Education is an extensive as well as 
 an intensive process. There is a mental cultivation as 
 real in the broadening of the field of observation, in 
 the mere incorporation, if assimilation be impossible, 
 of different classes of names and things, in other 
 words, of different departments of knowledge, as in 
 the severest application of the mind to one or two 
 intellectual objects. Where quantity in education ia 
 ignored, you will certainly in the general case have a 
 narrow man, though the intense application of his 
 
Secondary Subjects of the ScJiool. i 2 7 
 
 mind within a circumscribed sphere may have given 
 him clearness, precision, and vigour : a man of force, 
 without substance, of mind, without ideas. Where, 
 again, there is quantity without great intensity, you 
 will generally have breadth, openness, fairness, adapta- 
 bility of intellect ; but the intellect will be of inferior 
 edge and of less decision, unless the wide and compre- 
 hensive instruction be supplemented by considerable 
 native energy of character. Where this native energy 
 is ready-made to our hands, a wide comprehensiveness 
 is probably preferable to a close intensiveness of 
 discipline. It lays a broader foundation, it puts a 
 youth in possession of the elements of a more various 
 cultivation, it brings more facts within his intellectual 
 vision as he passes through the after - education of 
 business and life, and supplies him with larger elements 
 of judgment. An impartial and judicious breadth 
 which lives in the constant anticipation of clearer 
 light, or of new objects coming within the range of 
 apprehension, is a better thing (if there be any higher 
 purpose or meaning in education at all) than that 
 incisive keenness of vision which is often the 
 characteristic of a mind which builds up judgments 
 by the help of foregone conclusions, lives in an 
 atmosphere of intellectual conventionality, limits 
 possibilities by experience of a meagre past, and even 
 casts all the fresh lessons of life in a prematurely 
 formed or traditionary mould. 
 
 These remarks are made lest it should be supposed 
 
128 Primary Instruction. 
 
 that we in any way slight the extension of the school- 
 master's conception of his work. So far is this from 
 being the case, that, in the method of teaching reading, 
 we have already provided for, the cultivation of every 
 side of the juvenile mind, for the satisfaction, in 
 legitimate ways, of the inquiring intellect, as well as 
 of the moral and imaginative instincts. It has been 
 shown how, in the act of teaching reading, the teacher 
 may and must take a large view of his processes, if he 
 hopes to reach a successful result. If he take such a 
 view, he will assuredly give a depth and comprehen- 
 siveness to the subject-matter of the primary-school 
 curriculum which, to say the truth, few have been 
 privileged to meet with even in those schools which 
 affect to be too much engrossed with the higher 
 subjects to pay sufficient attention to homely require- 
 ments ; and he will do so without sacrificing other 
 subjects. It is precisely because the three indis- 
 pensable subjects of elementary study require to be 
 handled with a larger and more liberal grasp, and 
 in conformity at once with a broader method and a 
 more practical and realistic purpose, that we have 
 dwelt with so much emphasis on their pre-eminent 
 claims and specific educational functions. And 
 further, it is with a view to give time for the 
 more comprehensive method that so large a space 
 is claimed for them in the daily school - work, 
 and that all other subjects, save direct moral and 
 religious instruction, are relegated to a subordinate 
 place. 
 
Music in the Primary School. 1 29 
 
 The subordinate subjects will be taken up in the 
 order of importance assigned to them in the chapter on 
 the Teacher's Limitations namely, Music, Geography, 
 Grammar with Composition, Drawing, History ; pre- 
 suming always that, in the case of girls, Needlework 
 and Cutting-out take precedence of all other subsidiary 
 subjects. 
 
 I. MUSIC IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. 
 
 General effect of Music on the school Sympathy as an educative 
 agent Sympathy and simultaneity contrasted ("The Simul- 
 taneous System ") Singing a moral and religious agency KilVct 
 on the children Method of teaching singing. 
 
 Musk' is much more to the elementary school than 
 the ornament is to the capital of a shaft. It has itself 
 a substantial duty to perform in the structure of the 
 edifice. Under its influence the disjointed fragments 
 of education take a living, compact, and harmonious 
 shape in the growing minds of the pupils. (With 
 music, the New Testament, and a slate, a man could 
 educate a imlion. 
 
 Sympathy of numbers is far too important an agent 
 in the elementary school to be omitted from the 
 calculations of the teacher when estimating the forces 
 which he can bring into operation for the attainment 
 of his ends. The multitude of nis pupils, which at 
 first is a source of so much perplexity and difficulty, 
 itself gives birth to a remedy for the evil it causes ; 
 for the perplexity and difficulty to which numbers 
 
1 30 Primary Instruction. 
 
 give rise are far more than counterbalanced by the 
 compensation which sympathy yields, a compensation 
 sufficient, when turned to full account, to transform an 
 apparent disadvantage into a "potent auxiliary. The 
 sympathy of numbers deepens a sentiment to an almost 
 incalculable extent, The thought of each individual 
 " seems to be justified by the mere fact of being shared 
 with a multitude, and it is intensified and deepened 
 by receiving common expression. '.Hence both men 
 and children readily respond, either for good or evil, to 
 mass-management. The teacher, accordingly, cannot 
 afford to ignore a moral force so important. Even 
 in purely intellectual matters, sympathy is a great 
 auxiliary ; but in .all that concerns emotion it is 
 omnipotent. And precisely in the degree to which a 
 teacher can import subtle^moral and emotional elements 
 into his manner of giving even intellectual lessons, will 
 he be able in this department of his work to calculate 
 on the co-operation of sympathy, his best ally. 
 
 (The sympathetic teaching of intellectual subjects, 
 such as reading, writing, geography, and arithmetic, 
 runs to seed in what is called the " Simultaneous 
 Method;' which is no method at all, but merely A 
 device or expedient facilitating the application of a 
 method. This expedient is still popular in some 
 districts of England, in the French army schools, and 
 in America, but there is in Scotland too deep an 
 understanding of the real purpose of education to 
 admit of its ever obtaining a strong hold. It puts 
 forward two pleas for adoption, and both plausible. 
 
Jlfusic in the Primary School. 131 
 
 It claims to excite the attention of all as one, and thus 
 give every child in a class of twenty the benefit of 
 twenty questionings, whereas on any other plan, only 
 one would reach him ; and secondly, it claims to 
 diffuse the knowledge conveyed, by making all the 
 pupils think and utter the same thing at the same 
 time. Even if the first claim were well founded, it 
 would be a confession of weakness on the part of the 
 teacher. A good teacher, that is to say, a teacher 
 interested in his subject and in his pupils, has no 
 difficulty jn sustaining the attention of all the pupils 
 of a class, without swamping the individuals that 
 compose it. Should he occasionally, from temporary 
 or accidental causes, fail in his efforts to command 
 attention, he has at least the satisfaction of knowing 
 that the expedients he employs do not hold out a 
 continual inducement to his pupils to resign their 
 intellectual independence, and to seem to know what 
 they do not know. ( To conduct a class in such a way 
 that all shall benefit by what each says 01; does is, 
 certainly, the first essential of class-teaching : to evade 
 the difficulty by the use of an expedient which does 
 not guarantee the end sought, is to admit incapacity, 
 to indulge indolence, and to cultivate sham. The 
 greater exertion required from the teacher who en- 
 counters and overcomes the difficulty of fixing the 
 minds of his class on a common object, is well rewarded 
 by the results visible in his pupils, and above all by 
 the knowledge that he is not sacrificing their mental 
 discipline to his own ease or to a fallacious semblance 
 
132 Primary Instruction. 
 
 \ 
 of efficiency. A good teacher knows that no discipline 
 
 can be real which is not individual, and he declines to 
 adopt expedients which throw a false glare of success 
 over school-work, while defeating the true ends of 
 education. 
 
 The second claim made by the simultaneous 
 device is based on a misunderstanding of the nature 
 and operation of sympathy. Sympathy is really 
 efficacious in the acquisition of' intellectual subjects 
 only in so far as it is a moral agency. The excite- 
 ment and vivacity which a teacher can produce by 
 conducting his class in a vivid and interesting manner, 
 the desire to respond with intelligence, if not with 
 knowledge, which he is able to awaken, are strengthened 
 by being shared, and unquestionably tend in a remark- 
 able degree to quicken and invigorate the understand- 
 ings of the pupils. In response to this moral activity 
 on his part, the teacher expects the co-operation of 
 sympathy in his earnest efforts to exercise and expand 
 the individual intellects before him. But the simul- 
 taneous utterance of a reply to a question is the very 
 reverse of this sympathetic process. Sympathy, we 
 may almost say, is an organic, simultaneity a mechanical, 
 act ; and precisely to the extent to which the latter 
 is mechanical, does it tend to establish routine, and to 
 degrade the whole work of the school, converting both 
 pupils and master into machines. 
 
 Leaving this device, which perhaps scarcely merits 
 serious consideration, we have only to pass from the 
 
Music in the Primary School. 133 
 
 intellectual in education to the moral to find simul- 
 taneity and sympathy almost convertible terms. The 
 affections, the sentiments, and the emotions of children 
 are most powerfully influenced when the teaching, 
 addressed to all, receives a common and united re- 
 sponse. The more skilfully the appeals 1 made to the 
 consciences and feelings of the young call to their help 
 the common conscience and the common feeling of all, 
 the more deep and lasting will they be in their effect. 
 Hence the moral and religious value of Music in the 
 primary school. 
 
 It is on the fact that it is a direct moral and 
 religious agency that Music (by which is meant mass 
 and part singing from notation) rests its claim to rank 
 first among the subsidiary subjects of instruction. 
 The united utterance of a common resolution of per- 
 severance, heroism, love of truth and honesty, or of a 
 common sentiment of worship, gratitude, or purity, in 
 song suited to the capacities of children's minds and to 
 the powers of children's voices, devotes the young hearts 
 which pour forth the melody to the cause of humanity, 
 morality, and religion. The utterance of the song is ? 
 in some sense, a public vow of self-devotion to the 
 thought which it expresses) The harmony of the 
 singers falls back on the ear, arid seems to enforce the 
 sentiment to which the music has been married, in 
 accents pleasing and insinuating, not harsh and pre- 
 ceptive. The humanity and religion of song thus drop 
 gently, and without the parade of formal teaching, 
 
134 Primary Instruction. 
 
 into the heart of the child, and in this form they are 
 
 welcome. 
 
 / 
 
 But Music is not only in itself a direct moral 
 agency and a medium for direct moral "teaching : it is 
 also the best auxiliary to the other moral and religious 
 instruction of the schooL because it repeats what has 
 been already conveyed in a dogmatic or biographical 
 form, and it does so with melodious and grateful 
 associations, which suggest, if they do not reveal, the 
 inner harmony of the spiritual life. Nay more, may . 
 we not say that the musical utterance of a sentiment 
 suggests to the young mind the fundamental union of 
 goodness, truth, and beauty an union dimly appre- 
 hended, it may be, but perhaps none the less deeply 
 felt ? If this be so, there are the beginnings of a true 
 culture in school-music. 
 
 Nor are these the only claims of Music on the 
 primary teacher : singing is natural to man, and while 
 affording a healthy outlet to the emotions of childhood, 
 it refreshes and invigorates the physical frame. In 
 this way it becomes in the schoolroom, when wisely 
 used, an economiser of time andji supporter of disci- 
 pline. It may be compared to an engine constructed 
 with a view to charge the general body with fresh 
 vitality, and so from time to time to renew the 
 sympathy of the school. 
 
 We must not suppose that either the moral or the 
 physical influence of Music on children is different in 
 kind, though it may be less in degree, than its influ- 
 
Music in the Primary School. 1 3 5 
 
 ence on the adult. That influence has been so aptly 
 described by Bishop Beveridge, that I may not unfitly 
 quote the words here : 
 
 "That which I have found," he says, ".the best recreation 
 both to my mind and body, whensoever either of them 
 stands in need of it, is Music, which exercises at once both 
 rny body and soul, especially when I play myself ; for then, 
 methinks, the same motion that my hand makes upon the 
 instrument, the instrument^ makes upon my heart. It calls 
 in my spirits, composes my thoughts, delights my ear, 
 recreates my mind, and so not only fits me for after-business, 
 but fills my heart at the present with pure and useful 
 thoughts ;/ so that when the music sounds the sweetliest in 
 my ears, truth commonly flows the clearest in my mind.) 
 And hence it is that 1 find my soul is become more harmoni- 
 ous by being accustomed so much to harmony, and adverse 
 to all manners of discord, so that the least jarring sounds, 
 either in notes or words, seem very harsh and unpleasant 
 to me." 
 
 On the method of teaching singing from notation it 
 is not neeessaryTo say much, because success in this 
 subject depends entirely on the spirit in which it is 
 taught. In the earlier stages the child will, of- course, 
 be taught by imitation and without notes ; in the 
 more advanced, notation will be introduced, and as 
 soon as possible, part-singing. We think, however, 
 every teacher should seriously ask himself this 
 question with respect to method : Is not instruction 
 based on the ordinary notation more likely than any 
 other to give the pupil that kind of musical knowledge 
 and capacity which will enable and induce him to 
 
136 Primary Instruction. 
 
 carry the power which he may acquire, out of the 
 schoolroom into the family and the church and the 
 village street, and thus lead him to continue and pro- 
 pagate the sweetening and elevating influence under 
 which he himself has been happily brought ? If so, 
 the ordinary notation seems to me to be preferable to 
 the tonic sol-fa, and men of experience say that it is 
 not more difficult of acquisition.* However this may 
 be, it is certain that the teacher who takes up this 
 important instrument of discipline and instruction 
 with intelligence and cordiality, will not go far astray, 
 if he steadily subordinate his method and his purpose 
 to the moral and aesthetic ends which the subject is 
 intended to subserve. 
 
 vAt the risk of repetition, let me, in conclusion, say 
 that even where Music is pretty successfully taught, 
 its relation to the general routine of the school, and its 
 ] potent moral and religious influence in the formation 
 [_of character, are not yet properly understood.^ If the 
 pupils can " exhibit " a song or two, the master too 
 often thinks his work in this department is done. 
 This is a great error. The function of "Music is to 
 lighten the labour, cheer the spirits, intensify the 
 sympathy, and fortify the hearts of the children, and, 
 more than this, to harmonise the whole work of the 
 school. Music ought, therefore, like the spirit of re- 
 ligion itself, to permeate the labour of the day. If it 
 did so, it would not fail, while powerfully promoting the 
 
 * On this point we would refer the teacher to Dr. Currie's " Common 
 School Education." 
 
Method of Teaching Geography. 137 
 
 ultimate purpose of the school, to sweeten the temper 
 and promote the vivacity of both teacher and taught. 
 
 As to the matter to be sung, suitable hymns and 
 national songs should take priority over all else. 
 
 II. GEOGRAPHY AND THE METHOD OF TEACHING IT. 
 
 Chief error in teaching Geography Practical purpose of teaching 
 Geography Theoretical purpose The two harmonise Indirect 
 uses of Geography Method of teaching Geography. 
 
 When Geography is taught in an elementary school, 
 the most common error is attempting too much. 
 Every inspector of schools must have endured, with 
 such patience as he was endowed with, the exhibition 
 of a fragmentary knowledge of Russia, Germany, or 
 China, side by side with utter ignorance of the course 
 which a vessel would take on its way from London to 
 Sydney, or of the physical features and products of 
 our native country. This arises from no want of 
 energy and assiduity in teacher and pupil, for it is 
 often the superabundant supply of these qualities 
 which expends itself in such grotesque exhibitions. 
 The reply to a mild suggestion that the children might 
 be more profitably employed, generally is, that they 
 have already " gone over " Great Britain and Europe ; 
 to which the rejoinder that they require to retrace the 
 ground from which their footsteps have been so 
 quickly obliterated, remains unanswered. 
 
 In this, as in other subjects, the error arises from 
 the neglect to define and keep steadily in view, the 
 
1 38 Primary Instruction. 
 
 practical purpose, the limits, and the method of the 
 subject to be taught. 
 
 The purpose of teaching geography in the primary 
 school is to give the pupil a general knowledge of the 
 configuration of the earth, of the leading nations which 
 occupy it, their chief industrial products as these are 
 determined by climate and physical conformation, and 
 the relation in which Britain stands to the rest of the 
 world in the matter of exports and imports. Our 
 own country should be at once the starting-point 
 and terminus of the whole geographical journey. A 
 much fuller knowledge of Great Britain and her 
 colonies should consequently be given than of other 
 regions ; but to build on this special knowledge, and 
 without the broad basis furnished by general geo- 
 graphy, would be to exclude the pupil from all 
 elements of comparison, to confirm him in his national 
 prejudice, isolation, and stolidity, and to deprive geo- 
 graphy of its peculiar educative power. 
 
 Theoretically viewed, the educative function of geo- 
 graphy is the antithesis of arithmetic and grammar 
 being extensive, while the functions of the latter are 
 intensive. It gives intellectual breadth, adds to the 
 stock of facts in their relation to causes, expands the 
 moral sympathies, and tends to moderate rash judg- 
 ments. Accordingly, geography, well taught, has 
 both a moral and intellectual influence, and contributes 
 as directly as any mere information can to the ultimate 
 end of the schoolmaster's labours the formation of 
 
Method of Teaching Geography. 139 
 
 character. It has also this peculiarity : it is the 
 easiest of all exercises in the perception of the con- 
 nection of cause and effect ; for both causes and effects 
 are, in the region of ordinary geography, visible and 
 palpable. Its lessons, moreover, are capable of daily 
 application by the child to the phenomena by which 
 he is surrounded, and are in this way fruitful of dis- 
 cipline outside the school. To substitute for this 
 admirable exercise the names of the places in each 
 country where men most congregate, and of the large 
 mountains and streams, is to convert a body of in- 
 struction which is alive with various teachings into a 
 lifeless sketch. No process could be more ingeniously 
 devised for eliminating the rubbish from an important 
 study, and presenting that rubbish to the pupil in the 
 abused name of the subject of which it is the mere 
 accident. It is not " practical " teaching as opposed 
 to " theoretical ; " for by no method of teaching the 
 subject could it be more effectively exhausted of all 
 practical meaning. The real significance of geo- 
 graphical knowledge, in the case of the peasant and 
 the operative, is its tendency to give breadth, and to 
 store the mind with those larger facts regarding the 
 earth and man which, when learned, lie quietly in the 
 mind, germinate there, and contribute to that uncon- 
 scious growth to which every man perhaps owes more 
 than to the conscious elements of his mental progress. 
 To attain the " practical " purpose of school geo- 
 graphy, as we understand it, is to attain these very 
 high results ; and thus it is that in this, as in other 
 
140 Primary Instruction. 
 
 subjects of elementary instruction, the theoretic and 
 practical purposes of school - instruction become 
 identical. 
 
 In elementary education the sphere of the intel- 
 lectual and moral vision is so crowded with objects, 
 every separate subject is so overcharged with meaning 
 and variety to the opening mind, and the temptation 
 to dissipate the attention, and thereby to subvert sound 
 intellectual discipline, is so strong, as to require that 
 the teacher exercise constant vigilance. An infinite 
 multiplicity of forms and facts besets the fresh young 
 brain from morning till night, and makes its natural 
 life fragmentary and, for purposes of knowledge, 
 ineffective. To correct this is a portion of the 
 teacher's task. The work of the school, accordingly 
 (and this applies to every stage of education), is, in 
 a certain sense, an artificial work. It rests on the 
 method of nature and obeys it ; but it is the intrusion 
 of the hand of man for the purpose of making a wiser 
 and a better and more efficient man than would other- 
 wise grow. Till the power of a sustained act of will 
 directed towards some definite object is supposed to 
 be developed, we rightly leave the child almost wholly 
 to nature, our training being negative rather than 
 positive ; but when the time comes for education 
 proper (which is always training and discipline) to 
 begin, our business is to direct his powers into fixed 
 channels with a view to fixed ends. Hence the great 
 importance in education of narrowing the attention of 
 
Method of Teaching Geography. 1 4 1 
 
 pupils to the subject immediately and directly in hand, 
 and of checking all discursive talk, under whatever 
 specious pretext it may be introduced. In teaching 
 geography, however, the teacher may find an outlet 
 for that discursive tendency which also has an im- 
 portant part to play in education, and a legitimate 
 occasion for giving what is called " general informa- 
 tion," and for exercising the general intelligence. In 
 dealing with this subject he may wisely indulge him- 
 self and his pupils in being deliberately discursive and 
 conversational. 
 
 Nor are the uses of Physical and Industrial Geo- 
 graphy exhausted by the wide range which we have 
 already given to the educative functions of this branch 
 of study. For, this is always characteristic of a sound 
 aim pursued by a right method, that it is fruitful in 
 its disciplinary effects beyond our immediate capacity 
 to perceive. In this connection it is enough to advert 
 to the manifest support which geography rightly 
 taught gives to economic arithmetic, to an intelligent 
 apprehension of the reading-lessons, and to direct 
 moral teaching. 
 
 Method. There is no school subject in which the 
 end so clearly points out the way and means as it 
 does in the case of geography. The knowledge to be 
 acquired is real as opposed to formal, and from the 
 first step to the last of the process of acquisition, 
 reality must never be lost sight of. The first notions 
 of geography must not be given from a map, which is 
 
142 Primary Instruction. 
 
 only the representation of a reality, and, from the 
 necessity of the case, a singularly bad one : but from 
 the solid earth itself. The schoolroom and the parish 
 constitute the microcosm in which all geography is 
 visible, and are for the child the measure of the world. 
 In this, above all subjects, the teacher ought to start 
 conversationally from the point which the child has 
 himself already unconsciously attained, and from his 
 circumscribed point of view. Indeed, this is one 
 essential fact in the art of educating that a child or 
 man can truly know a thing only in so far as the 
 knowledge is a living growth out of what is already 
 known. A learner may stock his memory to any 
 extent with propositions disjointed, or even logically 
 connected, but they can be to him nothing save a 
 memory exercise, unless they have been successfully 
 grafted into the main stock ; for instruction, like 
 education in the large sense, is an organic, not a 
 mechanical process. 
 
 The first lesson in geography, accordingly, ought to 
 be an analysis of the general and vague notion which 
 the child has of his own parish. Its plains, hills, 
 streams, its arable and pastoral soil, its mines, quarries, 
 manufactures, furnish an epitome of the whole round 
 of physical industrial geography. It is melancholy to 
 see a teacher labouring, with the help of a text-book 
 and a map, to convey to the child the notion of a 
 lake, a river, a gulf, and an island, when these are all 
 to be seen outside the school-door, if not in good 
 weather, at least in bad : just as we have seen a 
 
Method of Teaching Geography. 143 
 
 teacher striving drowsily to make a class of fifteen 
 years of age understand the morphology of a plant as 
 explained by some unskilful hand in a reading-lesson, 
 careless and unconscious of the convolvulus and fuchsia 
 bending through the open window into the room. 
 
 An analysis of the parish and instruction in the 
 cardinal points (the children making their own observa- 
 tions at noon) leads at once to the drawing of a rude 
 map of the parish on the blackboard by the master, 
 to be afterwards delightedly copied on slates by the 
 pupils. 
 
 This done, the neighbouring parishes and the county, 
 lead by easy steps to the general (quite general) and 
 industrial geography of Britain, rough maps being con- 
 structed on the board as in the case of the parish. 
 
 The pupil is now to be told that big as Britain is 
 to him, it is a mere corner of the earth. His imagina- 
 tion will thus gradually expand until he begins to 
 have some notion of the magnitude of the earth in 
 which he lives, and of the multitude of its people. 
 
 A globe should then be set before him, the round- 
 ness of the planet taught, if not explained, and the 
 great divisions of land and water and their relative 
 positions thoroughly acquired. 
 
 A wall-map of the world may then (but only then) 
 for the first time be unfolded, and the leading countries 
 in the different quarters of the globe, a few of the 
 principal mountain-ranges and towns, and the staple 
 industry of each country, with the name of the 
 inhabitants, taught. 
 
144 Primary Instruction. 
 
 Then should follow an inquiry into the causes which 
 determine the localisation of the different industries, 
 and an exposition of the interdependence of nations. 
 Much time should be spent over imaginary travelling 
 with merchant-ships from one port to another. If 
 geography be not pushed into undue prominence in 
 the school-work, we see in what has been sketched at 
 least two or three years' work. 
 
 Lastly should follow a more minute account of 
 Britain and its industrial relation to other nations, 
 especially to its own colonies.* 
 
 The practice of map-drawing on the slate, however 
 rude (for it is the attempt, not the success, that 
 teaches), should accompany these instructions as an 
 auxiliary to the general method. 
 
 To the apology so frequently made that there is no 
 time for map-drawing, the reply is sufficient that the 
 best schools find time. But if it be desired to avoid 
 the unfavourable criticism on the school organisation 
 which is conveyed in such a reply, the teacher may 
 safely be told to substitute slate map-drawing for one 
 of his oral lessons. The slightest reflection will con- 
 vince any man that a single attempt (succeeding in 
 the attempt is a matter of secondary moment) to 
 outline a wall-map of England or Scotland on the 
 slate will do more to fix in the pupil's mind the shape 
 of the country and the relative localities of the prin- 
 cipal rivers and towns than four or five oral lessons. 
 
 * The particular geography of Palestine should be taught in con- 
 nection with Bible reading. 
 
Method of Teaching Geography. 145 
 
 Map-drawing furnishes a fresh illustration of the 
 truth more than once adverted to in the course of this 
 volume namely, that the best method of teaching 
 any subject is, if the most philosophic, then also the 
 most practical ; if the most sound, then also the most 
 sure and rapid ; if that which extracts out of the 
 particular subject to which it is applied the highest 
 discipline it affords, then also that which contributes, 
 over and above all this, to the general discipline of 
 the mind in a manner not always obvious at the first 
 view. For even in this humble exercise of map- 
 drawing we have all the characteristics which we have 
 enumerated, and the further benefit of a discipline of 
 the eye in accuracy of perception, of the hand in neat- 
 ness and cleanness of execution, and also, to some 
 extent, a training of the sense of the fit, the harmonious, 
 and the lower forms of the beautiful. Teaching the 
 right subject in the right manner, according to right 
 methods, and with right aims, is in truth a great art, 
 fruitful in more important results than even those 
 men whose life-craft it is imagine. 
 
 Every step of the process towards the limited 
 and practical end of geographical teaching is itself 
 thoroughly practical, and the wall-map is never allowed 
 to divert the attention of the pupil too much from 
 that which it badly represents, or destroy the feeling of 
 the reality of things and places about which he learns.* 
 
 * The best way of testing the practical, and therefore the educative, 
 character of geographical teaching, is to take the " Times" advertise- 
 ments of sailings, and make the pupils follow the vessels to their 
 destination, and explain why it is that they go to these places. 
 K 
 
146 Primary Instruction. 
 
 When Physical Geography is taught, it is almost 
 always taught as a special and advanced department 
 of study. Now, this is entirely to mistake its proper 
 uses in the elementary school. The physical geography 
 of the school, as distinct from the science of physical 
 geography, is such an account of a country, its posi- 
 tion, configuration, soil, and climate, as explains its 
 industries and its people. The very first steps in 
 geographical instruction, therefore, should associate the 
 parish, county or country which is the suhject of the 
 lesson with these facts, as being the things mainly 
 worth knowing. 
 
 III. ON DRAWING. 
 
 Drawing, in the elementary school, means, or ought 
 to mean, the art of representing, from the round, 
 common objects in outline. If the subject be kept in 
 proper subordination, more than this is unattainable, 
 save by the few pupils who, having a natural talent 
 for form, prosecute the art for their own pleasure as 
 well as possible profit. All such exhibitions of special 
 inborn talent it is the teacher's duty to encourage, 
 taking care, however, that he does riot allow his satis- 
 faction in the few to moderate his interest in the 
 many. There is no artistic training in school-drawing, 
 as above defined. That is possible only through the 
 imitation of beautiful forms, which, moreover, are 
 imitated because they are beautiful. To this a few may, 
 
On Drawing. 147 
 
 in peculiarly favourable circumstances, almost reach ; 
 but all attempts to introduce drawing into elementary 
 schools, on the aesthetic footing, have been and will be 
 futile, except under peculiarly favourable circumstances. 
 The limitations under which the teacher works, and 
 the exigencies of the time-table, settle this point 
 beyond all question. Art, as such, can find a place 
 only by superseding some more important subject ; and 
 even then it will generally cease to be art-training 
 before it finds its way out of the fingers of the pupils. 
 The school walls, however, should be adorned with 
 objects of art. To draw on the slate cups and saucers, 
 then maps, and chairs and tables, and finally, and 
 above all, leaves and flowers, and geometrical figures 
 and tools, this sums up all that can be accomplished 
 in the elementary school. 
 
 This amount of instruction in drawing may always 
 be attempted by a teacher possessing such powers of 
 organisation as to extract out of the lighter subjects of 
 instruction, relaxation for the pupil, thereby ultimately 
 saving time while bringing into play a new disciplinary 
 agent. And a disciplinary agent of no mean signi- 
 ficance drawing is. For all our observation from 
 infancy upwards is a continual process of outlining an 
 object or part of an object from other objects or parts. 
 The greater or less success with which this is done, 
 indicates the greater or less accuracy of the observing 
 powers. To bring these powers out into a more 
 conscious exercise by encouraging attempts to repro- 
 duce external forms as outlined by the eye, is an 
 
148 Primary Instruction. 
 
 exercise tending powerfully to cultivate clearness, 
 precision, and truth of perception. 
 
 The nature of the discipline which drawing affords 
 fixes the time of its introduction into the school-work. 
 It belongs to the infant and initiatory classes mainly, 
 and only partially to the more advanced classes. Self- 
 evident as this is, masters continually invert .the order 
 of its appearance on the school stage, treat it as 
 an " accomplishment," and teach it only to a select 
 few. 
 
 Whether the teacher be able to introduce this 
 important instrument of intellectual discipline into his 
 school or not, he himself is certainly only half equipped 
 for his task as an examiner and illustrator of lessons, 
 if he has not the power of appealing to the under- 
 standing through the eye whenever the nature of the 
 lesson makes this desirable. 
 
 IV. GRAMMAR AND THE METHOD OF TEACHING IT. 
 
 The nature and aim of Grammar, as a discipline 
 and an acquirement, contain implicitly the method of 
 teaching it. A few explicit words on the steps of the 
 process, however, will not be superfluous. 
 
 Grammar is of little utility in the primary school, 
 we have already said, except in so far as it is ap- 
 proached from the syntactical point of view, with 
 distinct reference to these ultimate aims, sentence- 
 analysis and sentence - construction. The whole of 
 
Method of Teaching Grammar. 149 
 
 grammar, accordingly, starts from the idea of the 
 simple sentence subject and predicate. Until the 
 child is able to comprehend this, he can make little 
 real progress in grammar. Copying from his lesson- 
 book, reading, the habit of accurate speaking when 
 answering questions, and dictation exercises, will mean- 
 while accustom his eye and ear and tongue to the 
 difference between grammatical and ungrammatical 
 expression. He will not be allowed to trespass beyond 
 the limit of this imitative grammar into the field of 
 analysis, until he is able to understand and apply the 
 fundamental proposition of the whole science (if so it 
 may be called) namely, "a simple thought as well 
 as its corresponding proposition consists of a subject 
 and a predicate." The predicates, which require an 
 object for their completion, will be easily learned, and, 
 with this, the opposition of subject and object, the 
 fact of the subjective or nominative case, the agree- 
 ment of the nominative and verb, and the government 
 of the objective case by transitive predicates. This 
 method is further justified by the fact that the analysis 
 of the simple proposition lays the basis .of composition 
 as well as of grammar ; and I may add that a thorough 
 familiarity with the few propositions summarised 
 above, implies an amount of grammatical knowledge 
 far exceeding what is usually attained in the whole 
 present course of grammatical instruction in primary 
 schools. 
 
 In taking the first and most important step (the 
 understanding of the parts of a simple sentence), the 
 
150 Primary Instruction. 
 
 knowledge of the noun and verb, and of number, is 
 inevitably acquired. A slight extension of the ele- 
 ments of the sentence for example, the extension of 
 " The dog eats his dinner " into u The black dog greedily 
 eats his cold dinner" and so forth introduces the 
 various parts of speech and the three persons, and 
 thus gives the pupil a knowledge of the classification 
 of individual words from the point of view of syntax, 
 and of their organic connection with other words. He 
 sees that it is this organic connection which determines 
 their names and characters, and begins to comprehend 
 grammar as the formal exposition of a sentence, and 
 as furnishing the rules of sentence-making. Text- 
 books are to be avoided. 
 
 Composition. Sentence-making, or Composition, will 
 then be begun by the exercise of constructing simple 
 sentences out of words supplied to the pupil ; an 
 exercise very valuable in its relations to grammar, 
 because it furnishes constantly recurring examples of 
 the right and wrong in speech and writing. This 
 initiatory exercise having been sufficiently practised, 
 the pupil cannot afford to ring many changes on the 
 technicalities and ingenuities of sentence-building, but 
 must plunge at once into the writing of short accounts 
 of what he has seen or heard or read. The teacher 
 will read to his pupils an anecode or biography, or the 
 description of a country, an animal, or a mechanical 
 process, and call on them to reproduce it grammatically 
 on their slates in their own words. This exercise in 
 
Method of Teaching Grammar. 1 5 1 
 
 reproduction having been corrected, will be produced 
 again on paper as a home exercise. Steady practice 
 of the kind thus brietiy indicated will, in a wonder- 
 fully short space of time, secure results surprising to 
 those who have never had experience of the aptitude 
 of boys in this direction when their intelligence has 
 been already cultivated by means of sufficiently various, 
 instructive, and disciplinary matter in the course of 
 their reading-lessons, and when they have overcome 
 those obstacles of writing and spelling which properly 
 belong to an earlier period of school-work. 
 
 Composition should be much encouraged, not merely 
 because it is of great disciplinary and practical value 
 in itself, but because it furnishes a standard by which 
 the master may safely measure many of the results of 
 his labours. Grammar, spelling, writing, and general 
 intelligence, are all tested by the power of composing 
 an independent account of the lesson of the day, or of 
 a story read aloud by the master. Moreover, by keeping 
 steadily in view this final practical result, the teacher 
 will be guided as to what he should or should not do 
 in the years of teaching which must precede the attain- 
 ment of it. 
 
 Although the subject of composition now receives 
 considerable attention, some teachers curiously, we 
 had almost said ingeniously, fail, even with the best 
 intentions, to produce any facility in the art worthy 
 of the labour they bestow on it. This comes of the 
 omission to organise the course of instruction. As 
 soon as the pupils can write fairly from dictation, the 
 
1 5 2 Primary Instruction. 
 
 teacher at once plunges into narrative composition. 
 He will find the progress made by his pupils much 
 more intelligent, as well as more rapid and assured, if he 
 spend two preliminary months in exercising them in the 
 construction of single sentences, simple and complex, 
 writing on the blackboard the words which are to 
 enter into these sentences. By this kind of initiatory 
 exercise alone can the boy learn to know what is, and 
 what is not, a sentence. When he knows this and 
 can apply his knowledge, but not till then, he may 
 be required to write an account of his lesson or of 
 some tale read to him. Meanwhile the habit of 
 oral composition, already spoken of in connection 
 with examination on the lesson of the day, may be 
 formed. 
 
 The importance of grammar for boys and girls lies 
 in this, that it is a valuable exercise of mind in the 
 making of verbal distinctions, and therefore cultivates 
 the power of distinguishing in general ; and, above all, 
 of distinguishing between things which are objects of 
 reflection (notional), and not merely objects of external 
 observation. 
 
 Generally speaking, the principal defect found in the 
 teaching of grammar in schools is want of accuracy 
 and precision. This defect manifestly vitiates the 
 whole teaching, and makes it worse than useless. For 
 if the distinctions made cross each other, or are vague 
 and indefinite, parsing is an illusion : if they are too 
 numerous, they defeat their own end. Grammatical 
 
Tltetkod of Teaching Grammar. 153 
 
 teaching can have only three possible objects in a 
 school the formal discipline of the intellect, the 
 more thorough understanding of reading-lessons, or the 
 art of composition. The first is not only not promoted, 
 it is unquestionably retarded, by looseness of definition 
 or the slurring over of difficulties ; the second and 
 third are not to be attained by mere parsing, unless it 
 take the form of analysis, and be supported by actual 
 practice in the art of constructing sentences and 
 paragraphs. 
 
 Merely " fair " results in a subject of this kind are 
 of little practical value, disciplinary or other. Hence 
 the opinion stated in a former part of this volume, that 
 systematic grammatical teaching should be postponed 
 till after the pupil has attained the age of ten, or 
 better, eleven, except so much of it as is necessary 
 to throw light on the understanding, speaking, and 
 writing of sentences. For this purpose syntactical 
 rules, declensions, etc., are quite unnecessary. The 
 names of the parts of speech are perhaps needed in 
 order to abbreviate explanations and references, but 
 beyond these the essential knowledge is, as I have 
 pointed out, a knowledge of the elements of a sentence, 
 and of the relationship of principal and subordinate 
 clauses. 
 
 Analysis. All of Analysis that it is necessary to 
 teach in the primary school may be comprised in four or 
 five propositions. The point to attend to is the constant 
 application of a limited amount of knowledge to the 
 
154 Primary Instruction. 
 
 reading-lessons and to exercises in oral and written 
 sentence - making. When pupils remain at school 
 beyond the age of eleven, however,, a portion of the 
 time cannot be better spent than in detailed parsing, 
 based on sentence-analysis. I never yet found thorough 
 and thoughtful parsing which was not based either 
 on some knowledge of Latin, or on training in the 
 analysis of sentences. 
 
 But in teaching sentence-analysis, masters are apt 
 to make the great error (the error which pervades 
 almost every department of instruction) of attempting 
 too much, and thereby securing showy quantity instead 
 of thoroughly good quality. The point to keep in view 
 is this, that the sole object of all grammatical analysis 
 as such, and apart from its practical object Composi- 
 tion is to enable the pupil to perceive the connection 
 and interdependence of the words and clauses of a 
 sentence, and through this of a thought. The import- 
 ance of grammar in this respect, when it is properly 
 taught, is pointed out in the following extract from 
 the report of a visit to a school: 
 
 " . . . An examination on the syntax of a piece of 
 poetry which was selected, revealed the intimate connection 
 which subsists between grammatical teaching (in the sense 
 of elementary analysis) and the comprehension of everything 
 said or written which goes beyond a mere repetition of 
 ordinary peasant talk. If boys have not been trained to the 
 detection of the syntactical relation of the words and clauses 
 of sentences, it is evident that except when there is a 
 naturally strong intellect, or that^cultivation in language and 
 thought which the children of the educated classes uncon- 
 
History. 155 
 
 sciously absorb from day to day they will utterly fail to find 
 their way through either prose or poetry if the construction 
 is in the least degree involved. This is nearly equivalent to 
 saying that they will fail to understand the works of our 
 best authors." 
 
 To avoid the facile descent to rote-work, which 
 belongs to the subject of grammar and analysis as 
 much as to any other, although the very conditions of 
 its existence would seem to render rote impossible, 
 pupils should always be required, when parsing, to give 
 in full the definitions and rules which they are pre- 
 sumed to be applying, and to re-explain technical 
 words. The master should never assume that they 
 know the " why " of the statements which they so 
 glibly utter. English sentences, moreover, should be 
 parsed and construed precisely like Latin, in so far as 
 practicable. 
 
 v. HISTORY. 
 
 To the young man whose mind is already disciplined 
 by severe scholastic pursuits, no subject will so readily 
 yield all the elements of culture as History. In truth, 
 the study of history is perhaps the foundation of all 
 true culture as distinguished from mere knowledge. 
 To the schoolboy, on the other hand, history is of 
 value only in so far as it brings to his knowledge 
 wonderful deeds done in the discharge of patriotism 
 and duty. In all other respects it is utterly barren 
 of good results, and involves a futile expenditure of 
 
156 Primary Instruction. 
 
 valuable school - time. A dim outline of royal 
 genealogies ; of dates, the intervals between which are 
 full of plottings and counter-plottings ; and of facts 
 which, however capable of interpretation by the 
 matured capacity, are, to the raw experience of the 
 child or the boy, little more than an exhibition of the 
 worst passions that afflict humanity, and all these 
 epitomised into small compass, that they may be sold 
 for eighteenpence such is the History of the primary 
 school. It seems to me, therefore, that the reading of 
 history in the primary school is little better than an 
 abuse of time. And when we further consider that 
 this subject, so fruitless of good results, obtrudes itself 
 into a region which ought to be sacred to the varied 
 instruction which may be given through advanced 
 reading, geography, and writing, it cannot be too much 
 discouraged. The thing chiefly to be regretted is that 
 teachers, otherwise intelligent and earnest in the dis- 
 charge of their duty, should be led astray by the 
 mere semblance of solid instruction which is yielded 
 by bald historical records. Some twelve or fifteen 
 dates in the history of England, and the principal 
 events that gather round them, are all that boys need 
 know. 
 
 The proper place of history in the primary school 
 is in the mouth of the master and in the library. 
 The pupils will require little encouragement to read 
 it if it be written in a style to suit their age, and 
 they will always welcome gladly a public reading 
 of the narrative of some great event by the master 
 
History. 1 5 7 
 
 himself, as an occasional reward of good conduct, or 
 as a relief from the tedium of the day's routine. In 
 this way all the great events and great characters 
 of history may become known to boys and girls. 
 
 Note. The above remarks do not apply to history 
 as Mr. Fitch (see " Lectures on Teaching ") would have 
 it taught. But I do not think it possible to teach it 
 as he proposes, except to boys and girls of fifteen and 
 upwards. 
 
158 Primary Instruction. 
 
 IV. ORGANISATION OF THE SCHOOL. 
 
 Classification Time-Tables. 
 
 To teach four subjects to each of sixty or eighty 
 children of different ages and of different stages of 
 progress within a school-day of five hours, is a task 
 which, at the first glance, seems to be almost imprac- 
 ticable, and is always difficult. It is necessary to devise 
 expedients for overcoming the difficulty. To apply 
 these expedients is to organise. 
 
 It is as a means of getting through his own share 
 of daily school- work that the teacher first finds him- 
 self compelled to betake himself to organisation ; and 
 all the most serious errors still prevalent in the organ- 
 ising of schools flow from the pertinacity with which 
 the teacher persists in looking at organisation from this 
 his original point of view. The true object of organisa- 
 tion is to secure that the pupils get through their 
 work, not that the teacher gets through his. The 
 subject in its details must be looked at from first to 
 last in its relation to the pupil alone. Each child of 
 the sixty has a certain amount of reading, writing, 
 arithmetic, etc., to acquire before the hour of dismissal. 
 In acquiring it he will of course receive the help of 
 
Organisation. 159 
 
 the master, who has already determined the nature and 
 extent of the work to be done ; but it is the pupil who 
 has to acquire it, not the master who has to instil it. 
 The teacher must, it is true, during the day come into 
 direct personal contact with every pupil, test his work, 
 clear up his difficulties, confirm his knowledge, and, 
 above all, open up the way to the next step of his pro- 
 gress. This it is his duty to do : this constitutes his 
 direct teaching. But direct teaching is a small part of 
 his work in respect of quantity, though it is presumed 
 to be the highest in respect of quality. The indirect 
 personal teaching which is effected through organisa- 
 tion, by means of which he arranges and guides the 
 independent activity of the children in the attainment 
 of the day's task, is a matter of perhaps more 
 importance than the quality of the direct teaching, to 
 the success of the school. 
 
 Questions of organisation constantly tend to pass 
 into questions of discipline, which, however, is a 
 distinct and higher agency. The objects of organisa- 
 tion are attained when the arrangements for the 
 working of the whole school as one class or one pupil 
 are completed. The machine being thus finished in 
 all its parts, the discovery and application of the 
 motive power has next to be considered ; and this 
 belongs to the subject of discipline. 
 
 The first step in organisation is to reduce the 
 number of individuals to be operated upon, by group- 
 ing them into homogeneous masses, in other words, 
 to classify. The theoretical perfection of classification 
 
1 60 Primary Instruction. 
 
 is the arrangement of the pupils into groups, each 
 individual of which is precisely at the same stage of 
 mental development and acquired knowledge as all 
 the others. As this, however, is impracticable, and 
 as an equal amount of acquisition in respect of certain 
 technical accomplishments, such as reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic, is indispensable, and this irrespec- 
 tively of the general capacity of the pupil, acquired 
 knowledge necessarily becomes the sole basis of 
 classification. Nor is acquired knowledge altogether 
 an inadequate test of the development of the pupil's 
 mental powers. In the rough, it may be said that 
 boys having a similar knowledge of reading are at a 
 similar stage of development. Reading with under- 
 standing of what is read, accordingly, affords on the 
 whole the best basis of classification in the primary 
 school. In a subject like arithmetic it is a very 
 easy matter to give different sets of questions to the 
 same class. 
 
 A master will generally find that where his pupils 
 do not exceed eleven years of age, five groups, the 
 lowest being subdivided, will suffice. Each of these 
 five classes has to learn and to be taught a portion of 
 four subjects, or more, within five hours. Now, what 
 the master has in the first place to arrange is the 
 order and times of learning. Having divided the 
 time of the whole school into sections of fifteen or 
 twenty minutes each, his next duty is to provide for 
 the occupation of each group during every section of 
 the time with such a succession of work as shall, by 
 
Organisation. 1 6 1 
 
 its variety, prevent too continuous a strain on the 
 pupil's mind. To do this is to construct a time-table. 
 This must be constructed by the master from the 
 point of view that he is the director of a living 
 machine rather than a teacher. He must know what 
 each portion of his machine is capable of doing, what 
 it ought to do, and he must arrange for its doing it. 
 If a teacher cannot tell what each group, and each 
 pupil in the group, ought to be doing at any one 
 point of time in the course of the school-day, and if 
 he cannot tell at the end of the day how much or how 
 little has been done, his school is not thoroughly 
 taught. Let him keep in mind that it is the arrang- 
 ing of the work and the directing of the powers of his 
 pupils which is his first and main duty. Effective 
 instruction is possible and discipline is attained only 
 when the pupil does by far the larger share of the work. 
 
 The machine being thus constructed and set in 
 motion, the school is organised. The chaotic 
 materials which lay to the teacher's hand are built 
 up into a harmonious whole, having a meaning and 
 a purpose. AVe have called the organised school a 
 machine : it ought rather to be called a living 
 organism, the various limbs of which are inspired by 
 one central purpose, and dependent on one regulating 
 head. To organise is simply to convert a mob into 
 an organism. 
 
 The words " Classification " and " Time-table " sum 
 up the whole of organisation. The extent to which 
 
1 62 Primary Instruction. 
 
 each group is brought into immediate personal contact 
 with the teacher depends on the relation which the 
 numbers taught bear to the teaching power, and on 
 the master's skill in multiplying his presence. A 
 flagrant evil in connection with large schools is the 
 conversion of the most cultivated and experienced 
 of the teachers the headmaster into a mere 
 organising superintendent and registrar a species of 
 scholastic shop-walker. 
 
 An average attendance of sixty gives quite as large 
 a school as ought to be attempted single-handed, and 
 even in a school of this size a monitor will be needed 
 for at least half the day. 
 
 The teacher will of course occasionally depart from 
 the strict order of the time-table, for the purpose 
 of giving prominence to some special department of 
 instruction. The direct moral instruction, for example, 
 is presumed to be given in connection with the read- 
 ing and the religious lessons ; but the occasional 
 suspension of the work that may be due at a particu- 
 lar hour, for the purpose of explaining some moral 
 duty, of enforcing some point of discipline, or exhibit- 
 ing some religious truth in its practical bearing, will 
 be frequently found necessary or desirable. Again, 
 a whole afternoon may be devoted occasionally to 
 singing, or to specimens of good reading given by the 
 master himself and his best pupils.* 
 
 * The subject of organisation is fully treated in many books on 
 "School Management." But all subjects of this kind have to be 
 taught to schoolmasters only in their leading principles : they are best 
 acquired in the schoolroom. This icmaik also applies to registration 
 
Organisation. 163 
 
 The further duty of the teacher, as distinct from 
 an organiser and the originator of an organisation, 
 falls to be considered under the head of School 
 Discipline. 
 
 and other small technical matters. The young teacher should he 
 taught to give such matters their due subordination. Lecturing on 
 them is a waste of time and of brain power. They are to be learned 
 conversationally and practically on the school floor. 
 
164 Primary Instruction. 
 
 V. SCHOOL DISCIPLINE OR TRAINING. 
 
 t 
 
 ludirect Moral Teaching Motives Character .Rewards and 
 Punishments. 
 
 THE living organism being constructed and set in 
 motion, its just and true action will depend on 
 two things : the method according to which each limb 
 is made to work, and the means taken for securing that 
 the work is really done. The former subject has been 
 already sufficiently considered under the general head 
 of Methods : the consideration of the latter embraces 
 what is somewhat vaguely called School Discipline. 
 
 School discipline is, in the first instance, instituted 
 for the purpose of securing the attainment of the ends 
 of organisation namely, a certain quantity of appre- 
 ciable work. After it has been instituted, however, it 
 becomes at once and directly subservient to a higher 
 end, the ultimate end of the school itself, the 
 formation of good habits, intellectual and moral. Not 
 efficient work, but efficient working, is the immediate 
 as well as the final purpose of discipline as such. In 
 other words, discipline, quickly losing sight of its 
 original narrow object, contemplates chiefly the 
 manner and spirit of working, and is so intent on 
 this that it can afford almost to disregard the results 
 
School Discipline. 165 
 
 of teaching in respect of quantity of work actually 
 accomplished. The manner of working is a wide 
 and important question. Ib embraces obedience to 
 school-rules as to time, place, circumstance, and style : 
 it implies, moreover, the exercise of diligence and the 
 practice of accuracy and honesty. Discipline is 
 therefore pre-eminently a moral question, and may be 
 said to be the whole indirect moral teaching of the 
 school, as that is embodied in the hourly practice of 
 each member of it. 
 
 The mere obedience to school-rules however trivial, 
 simply because they are rules and proceed from a 
 recognised authority, is in itself a moral act ; while 
 the practice of diligence, accuracy, and honesty, con- 
 tributes directly to the formation of the habit of 
 perseverance in duty, and of that intellectual con- 
 scientiousness which enters so largely into general 
 integrity of mind. The formation of habits is the 
 chief moral purpose of education ; the instilling of 
 sound opinions, the clearing' away of error, and the 
 correcting of occasional perversity of judgment or of 
 will, being all merely subsidiary to the constant in- 
 sistance on the doing of certain duties in a certain 
 way, with a view to the formation of a good mental 
 habit. When those individual acts, which were 
 originally conscious efforts of will, have been so 
 frequently repeated that they are the product of un- 
 conscious tendency, habit is formed. And as discipline 
 has for its direct object the individual acts of every 
 boy composing the school, it maybg^jB^grded as 
 
1 66 Primary Instruction. 
 
 covering the whole field of moral training, as dis- 
 tinguished from moral teaching. 
 
 Without the practice of obedience and the other 
 duties above enumerated, the subordinate result of a 
 certain quantity of knowledge attained in the various 
 school studies is manifestly beyond the reach of 
 teacher or pupil. It would seem, therefore, that the 
 whole of the work of the organised school starts from 
 discipline as its first condition, proceeds according t 
 discipline, and finds its proper consummation in the 
 mental effects of discipline. The technical results 
 that is to say, the acquisition of a certain quantity of 
 knowledge are not overlooked ; nay, they are reached 
 only in so far as discipline is effected. In a sense, 
 therefore, discipline covers the whole field of educa- 
 tion. 
 
 We have endeavoured in previous chapters to show 
 that procedure according to a right method of teaching 
 and learning each subject, while it contributes to the 
 training of the intellectual powers, is at the same 
 time the most effective way of securing the largest 
 result in respect of positive knowledge. It now 
 appears that even sound methods will fail, if un- 
 supported by effective discipline, and that, therefore, 
 the cultivation of the practical morality of the school 
 is not merely the indispensable handmaid of method, 
 but the sole guarantee of merely technical results, at 
 the same time that it is the most direct means of 
 promoting the ultimate ethical aim of the school as 
 we have interpreted that aim. 
 
School Discipline. 167 
 
 To treat of school-rules for the conduct of study, 
 and of the best means of making the pupil diligent, 
 accurate, and honest in his work, would be foreign to 
 our present purpose. The teacher who understands 
 the nature and purpose of discipline is never at a loss 
 for ways and means. These are indeed numberless. 
 To the teacher, on the other hand, who cannot see 
 wherein discipline really consists, and what it aims 
 at, ways and means, expedients and devices, become 
 mere tricks, destitute of all moral significance and 
 purpose. Five points, however preliminaries, rather 
 than elements, of discipline even the wisest disciplin- 
 arian requires to be reminded of : First, It is necessary, 
 in intellectual instruction, to confine each successive 
 object of study within narrow limits as to quantity 
 and duration. If sustained attention is to be expected 
 from children, the continuous strain of the same 
 subject ought to be limited to fifteen or twenty 
 minutes, except in circumstances of peculiar interest. 
 The intervals of entire relaxation, again, ought to be 
 frequent, however short. Secondly, It is necessary, in 
 matters of morality, to avoid making demands on the 
 powers and obedience of the young greater than they 
 can easily respond to. Thirdly, It is essential always 
 to see that an order given is obeyed by all. Fourthly, 
 Let your handling of every question involving discipline 
 lie objective: that is to say, free from all personal 
 feeling. Fifthly, Be just. 
 
 But the clearest comprehension by the teacher of 
 
i68 Primary Instruction. 
 
 the nature and purposes of discipline, the wisest 
 elaboration of the subordinate ways and means whereby 
 the pupils' efforts after obedience, diligence, accuracy, 
 and honesty are to be guided and supported, may 
 break down. Anarchy of the will and dissipation of 
 the intellectual powers may be the sole fruits visible 
 in the schoolroom, even where there are the best 
 intentions and the most assiduous labour. The teacher, 
 in other words, may fail as a disciplinarian. How is 
 this failure to be avoided and the reign of discipline 
 established ? By supplying motives to the pupil. 
 Even the rare boy who likes study for its own sake 
 is not always disposed to study. His powers are not 
 under such perfect control as always to submit cheer- 
 fully to the rules of time and place. Fitful exertion 
 is the habit of the yet undisciplined mind, however 
 well disposed for knowledge. The majority of the 
 minds in a school have not even this disposition : at 
 best they study with a view to the conquest of a 
 difficulty or the performance of a duty, both motives 
 being generally associated. On such motives a teacher 
 must rely, and his first duty is to make the operation 
 of them easy. The path must be so smoothed that 
 the difficulty which has to be overcome may not be 
 insuperable to the intellect, and the duty required 
 may not be too great a strain on the moral power, of 
 the pupil. But the most potent of all motives, and 
 one essential to the sustained and regular working of 
 all others, is the love of the master's approbation. 
 To insure that this motive will operate in a con- 
 
School Discipline. 1 69 
 
 sistent way, and irrespectively of the master's changing 
 moods, certain fixed and public means (such as marks, 
 which result ultimately in slight privileges or rewards) 
 must be taken for testing and noting the successes of 
 the pupils. The schoolmaster, however, must beware 
 of committing the vulgar error of using the word 
 successes to indicate that difficulties of an intellectual 
 kind have been overcome. He has to do with dis- 
 cipline, and this has to do both primarily and ulti- | 
 mately with moral training, not intellectual attainment. / 
 The consciences of children are much injured, and 
 their desire to labour in the discharge of their school 
 duty weakened, if not utterly extinguished, by the 
 rough-and-ready style of estimating moral qualities 
 according to their measurable results in intellectual ) 
 acquisition. That man is a clumsy ' manipulator of 
 the tender mind who does not scrupulously and 
 anxiously distinguish the gain in intellectual and 
 moral habit from the coarse and more palpable profit 
 of mere attainment. The whole purpose of this 
 volume is to insist on the former as the true aim of 
 the primary school, and to illustrate its favourable 
 influence on intellectual acquisition, with a view to 
 vindicate its claim to constant and supreme, if not 
 exclusive, consideration. To test the moral qualities 
 by the amount of intellectual ground traversed, is 
 as unjust in itself as it is beside the whole higher / 
 object of education. 
 
 The master, then, in distributing the great motive 
 influence of the school, his approbation for rules 
 

 
 1 70 Primary Instruction. 
 
 obeyed, diligence exercised, accuracy and honesty of 
 work, must have regard to the working, not the 
 work. Each child whom he can ascertain to have 
 laudably striven, must receive the meed of approbation 
 which is his due. If a doubt exist as to there having 
 been a lond fide effort, it is safer to give the pupil 
 the benefit of it. Justice must lean to mercy's side. 
 The master must not cover his want of time or 
 ability to sift the moral elements of a question by 
 assuming the aspect and manner of supernatural 
 penetration and sternness. Under mercy there lies 
 a kind of large justice which, in the schoolroom, is 
 rich in moral return. The school conscience will more 
 easily recover from an unwise leniency than forget 
 groundless severity. 
 
 Many teachers seem, even in these days, to imagine 
 that good discipline and severity of manner and 
 language are inseparable ; whereas, on the contrary, 
 severity defeats every object of discipline. Where 
 the painful silence of awe pervades a school, all the 
 technical results, however high, ought to be rigidly 
 discounted by an inspector. What amount of ac- 
 quaintance with words and things can compensate for 
 the loss of a freely- work ing conscience ? Silence and 
 slavish obedience do not constitute moral order. 
 Teachers sometimes require to be reminded that there 
 is such a thing as a seeming order which is in every 
 moral sense anarchy. 
 
 But what if a teacher finds that the motives usually 
 
School Discipline. 1 7 1 
 
 successful in schools fail in his particular case to move 
 the wills by which he is surrounded, even when aided 
 by an organisation which makes duty plain and easy 
 to all, and by methods of instruction which harmonise 
 with the natural operations of the pupils' intellects ? 
 His rules are fair, but the pupils will not obey them ; 
 his demands on their intellects and wills are reason- 
 able, but they decline to respond to the demand ; he 
 is ready to distribute approval and disapproval justly, 
 but they do not care for his approbation. The answer 
 is easy : the master is deficient in moral power, and 
 must at once take himself out of the school into some 
 other more congenial sphere of work. For, the praise 
 and censure of the teacher constitute the keystone of 
 the whole edifice of the school ; and if we withdraw 
 from these their legitimate power, discipline dissolves 
 and organisation crumbles to pieces. Even the adult 
 yields, whether he will or not, to the dispensing 
 authority with which the visible pre-eminence of good- 
 ness or of strength invests a fellow-man : the child is 
 a still more willing slave. For his subjection the mere 
 semblance of moral superiority is enough. But it must 
 be the moral superiority of real or apparent strength. 
 
 To goodness and love the child responds with 
 affection ; but affection does not always prompt 
 obedience in the undisciplined mind : on the contrary, 
 we find affection and systematic obedience to be not 
 uncommonly conjoined, where no other influence super- 
 venes. The young are not yet a law to themselves ; 
 and so constituted is the moral nature of man, that 
 
1 7 2 Primary Instruction. 
 
 children are happier when an extraneous law supplies 
 the defect inherent in their tender age. They instinc- 
 tively welcome the strength which claims their 
 allegiance. That teacher consequently must be a 
 very weak (though he may be a very good) man who 
 cannot, even with the help thus amply given by the 
 children themselves, become the standard of right and 
 wrong to his pupils, the external and visible ex- 
 ponent of duty. He must be destitute of the first 
 requisites in a teacher : namely, a sense of law domi- 
 nating his own life, and an impulse, conscious or 
 unconscious, to communicate this sense of law to 
 others. Law must be conspicuous in his words and 
 acts, manifesting itself in self-control and anxious 
 subjection to the spirit of the rules which he imposes 
 on others ; and this is the same thing as saying that 
 he must himself have, and visibly have, a good habit 
 of will. How can we expect that a man destitute of 
 force of character should be capable of forming the 
 character of others ? Character is, in truth, as we 
 have before said, the first necessity in the teacher : 
 the second is, that in his efforts to bring others under 
 the influence of law, he shall exhibit in his dealings 
 the characteristics of law, namely, clearness, vigour, 
 dogmatism, imperativeness, and consistency. Given a 
 teacher so endowed, or striving, nay, only seeming to 
 strive, after such endowment, and the difficulties of 
 discipline vanish, except in so far as they are the 
 adventitious results of faulty organisation or blundering 
 methods. 
 
School Discipline. 1 73 
 
 It Las been said, some pages back, that the intellec- 
 tual and moral stimulus which each child draws from 
 his neighbour in other words, co-operation and 
 sympathy far more than counterbalance the appar- 
 ently insuperable difficulties which numbers present 
 to the teacher, when he, for the first time, enters his 
 school : organisation turns the scale in his favour as 
 against the tutor of one or few. Still more efficacious 
 are numbers in the maintenance of discipline, and this 
 because of its moral, and therefore emotional, character. 
 The complicated machinery of the school is so inter- 
 laced and interdependent, that the moral movement of 
 any one part tends to move the rest ; and where the 
 majority of hearts move, the minority almost involun- 
 tarily fall in with the movement, which thus becomes 
 general. 
 
 The primary object of discipline, we have seen, is 
 to guarantee the objects of organisation ; but as this 
 has to do with the manner of working, discipline 
 becomes "a moral question. It involves, as I have 
 already said, the whole subject of indirect moral 
 training, in so far as it relates to the intellectual work 
 of the school. Further consideration of the subject 
 shows that discipline has even a wider sweep, and 
 that it may be defined as the means resorted to for 
 giving practical effect to the whole of the moral as 
 well as the intellectual instruction contemplated by 
 the master. It thus opens up questions the most 
 various and delicate, arid is co-extensive with the 
 
i 74 Primary Instruction. 
 
 subject of education itself in its higher sense. The 
 conduct of the pupils towards each other, and towards 
 their teacher personally, falls within its range; and 
 this is a department of discipline which perhaps tells 
 more largely on the formation of a good moral habit 
 of mind than even the thorough and conscientious 
 discharge of the day's work. The regulation of mutual 
 intercourse, moreover, affords the only means available 
 for correcting the evils which prevail in the homes of 
 children, for cultivating truthfulness, and for subject- 
 ing unregulated wills to th'e operation of humane and 
 Christian feeling. These and other aims of direct 
 moral teaching I shall speak of in the sequel. The 
 best way of enforcing moral instruction, with a view 
 to transmute precept into habit, is what we have 
 specially to consider under the head of Discipline. 
 This has been partially indicated, and it is further 
 illustrated in what follows.* 
 
 Rewards and Punishments. 
 
 Even the schoolmaster who is powerful enough to 
 centre the discipline of the school in his approving or 
 disapproving word, can ill afford to dispense with the 
 assistance which a system of rewards and punishments 
 
 * The defective view of the large objects of discipline frequently 
 shows itself in all that has to do with the petty moralities of the 
 schoolroom. Politeness and cleanliness, are not insisted on, and the 
 moral influence of such arrangements in the schoolroom as please the 
 eye is generally overlooked. 
 
Rewards and Punishments. 175 
 
 gives. There are some men who, having stopped 
 short at the first step of moral analysis, set up, both 
 in the family and the school, the calm ungenial ap- 
 proval, or stern disapproval, of conscience or authority 
 as exhausting for those under them all legitimate 
 motives of conduct. It is unnecessary to combat this 
 theory of government in so far as it has reference to 
 the matured mind, because our business here is only 
 with the young. In their case assuredly, the natural 
 tendency which all men feel to follow up their ap- 
 proval by communicating to the person approved some 
 pleasure over and above the moral satisfaction which 
 is the inner reward of having deserved well, should be 
 generously yielded to. Liberality in approval, if not 
 misplaced, generates liberality in the service of obedi- 
 ence. Moreover, by carrying out the approval of the 
 right act into consequences which are in themselves 
 pleasing, the Tightness of the act is permanently 
 associated with the agreeable. An adventitious, but 
 yet perfectly legitimate, support is thereby provided 
 for the yet unfashioned will. 
 
 If approval may be so signalised, it follows that 
 disapproval also fairly claims to be supported and 
 enforced by adventitious associations of pain. In 
 itself disapproval is punishment, if there exists in the 
 mind of the child regard or respect for the authority 
 which disapproves. In such a case, the sense of a 
 link of attachment or reverence suddenly 'snapped is 
 often painful in the extreme more painful than any 
 kind of adventitious punishment. Nay, physical 
 
176 Primary Instruction. 
 
 chastisement sometimes lessens the moral suffering in 
 such cases, and is hailed by the culprit as a relief. 
 
 Adventitious punishments consist in the further 
 association of pain to body or mind over and above 
 that which the mere act of disapprobation causes ; 
 but, like rewards, they are to be regarded simply as 
 accessories in the maintenance of discipline. They 
 deepen the impression which disapproval makes on a 
 hard or low type of mind, and thereby aid in the 
 development of conscience : they give unmistakable 
 and vivid expression to the authoritative moral dis- 
 pensations of the master, but so dubious is their moral 
 effect that they should be resorted to only in extreme 
 cases. 
 
 But let it be observed that adventitious punish- 
 ments are only auxiliaries, to be resorted to only 
 in desperate cases. If they are allowed to become 
 the principals instead of the subordinates in moral 
 discipline, and to supplant the expression of dis- 
 approval, of which they are only the accidental 
 consequences, they usurp a sovereignty which does 
 not belong to them. As the moral power of the 
 teacher or parent decreases, adventitious punishments 
 always increase, and vice versa. Of this fact there 
 can be no doubt, and the teacher may safely and 
 profitably measure himself by it. A reliance on ad- 
 ventitious punishments invariably reveals the inherent 
 weakness of the teacher. This reliance is avenged ; 
 for it is only by a cumulative intensity of punishments 
 that the teacher can in such circumstances continue 
 
Rewards and Punishments. 1 77 
 
 to maintain his supremacy, and effect, in the barest 
 way, even the technical objects of school-keeping. 
 Ere long, a school so governed becomes a spectacle of 
 one rude material force, predominating, or striving to 
 predominate, over other and lesser forces, amid the 
 silence of rebellious fear or the confused murmurs 
 of just resistance. A melancholy contrast this to 
 the school governed by the scarcely conscious power 
 of a lofty purpose and a disciplined and earnest will ! 
 
 A collection of all possible punishments which 
 attained the ends of discipline, without bearing too 
 hard on the mind or body of the child, would be a 
 valuable aid to the teacher and the parent. Such 
 a collection might help to check the sin of over- 
 severity, which will be found only as the offspring 
 of some form of passion, a state of mind forbidden 
 to the teacher by every moral consideration. That a 
 teacher or parent should always exhibit judicial calm- 
 ness in the presence of the wrongdoing of children is 
 neither desirable nor necessary. Such affected superi- 
 ority to natural and legitimate emotions is artificial, 
 and while failing of its aim in respect of the pupils, 
 it exhausts the teacher. So long as anger is under 
 the control of the will, it is as effective in the 
 discipline of the school as it is natural in the ordinary 
 relations of life. Its effectiveness, however, is in pro- 
 portion to the rareness of its manifestation. It must 
 not be expended on peccadilloes or errors, but reserved 
 for serious and deliberate faults of a vicious kind. 
 II 
 
i/8 Primary Instruction. 
 
 Worse than occasional passion is chronic crossness 
 or peevishness, the most unhappy mental state of all. 
 Peevishness is, in fact, the continuous passion of petty 
 souls, and much more detrimental to the moral life 
 of the school than occasional outbursts of violent 
 wrath. It exhibits itself in a continued series of 
 small acts of injustice. It is itself a continual act 
 of injustice towards all within its range. Where 
 it exists there can, of course, be no such thing as 
 discipline, the sole object of the pupils being to avoid 
 the fractious word, and evade the task for which there 
 is no reward. 
 
 As over-severity is much more frequently the result 
 of passion than of errors of judgment, the teacher has 
 only to control his temper in order to be just in his 
 punishments. This precaution having been taken, 
 there is still a wide field of petty inflictions. The 
 general rule which ought to regulate punishments is, 
 that they shall be as nearly as possible the natural 
 consequences of the transgression. A boy who comes 
 late to school is fitly punished by reproval, and by 
 being left in the schoolroom while the other boys are 
 at play. A boy who forgets to bring his reading- book 
 to school is justly punished by being excluded from 
 the lesson, receiving bad marks as if for non-prepara- 
 tion, and being required to prosecute some isolated 
 and disagreeable task as a substitute for the reading. 
 A boy who tells a lie is rightly punished by being 
 forbidden to speak ; a boy who insults another 
 should be required to make an apology ; a boy who 
 
Rewards and Punishments. 1 79 
 
 steals from another, to apologise to the whole school 
 and make twofold restitution ; generally, a boy who 
 does anything badly should be required to do it over 
 again ; and so on. 
 
 But as many cases arise both in the family and in 
 the school which are transgressions not in themselves 
 but only because they are disobediences, and which have 
 therefore no natural consequences except the dis- 
 approval of the parent or teacher, but for which this 
 disapproval is not a sufficient punishment, it becomes 
 necessary to attach certain artificial penalties to 
 certain wrongdoings. And here the just and judicious 
 teacher is often the victim of much conscientious 
 perplexity. It is very difficult to write a catalogue 
 of punishments suited for various cases, but some 
 assistance may be given if we point out the general 
 heads under which penalties may be classified. It 
 will be found that they all fall under the two heads 
 of Deprivation and Infliction. Punishments of de- 
 privation have two advantages over punishments of 
 infliction. They do not afford so easy a channel for 
 the passion of the teacher ; and they are constantly 
 fresh. Boys grow callous to frequent inflictions, 
 whether of poenas or the rod, but there is a perennial 
 and ever-fresh aggravation connected with deprivation 
 of time or pleasures or privileges. Punishments of 
 infliction are either mental or corporal, according as 
 they touch the mind or body first : but fundamentally 
 there is no broad distinction ; for the affections of the 
 body pain the mind, because of their association with 
 
1 80 Primary Instruction. 
 
 censure, while the toil and harassment of the mind are 
 often more painful to the body than corporal chastise- 
 ment. Bad marks ending in public disgraces, poenas, 
 exclusion from the current routine of the school, 
 especially when supplemented by punishments of 
 deprivation, ought, if the teacher be competent for 
 his task, to be sufficient for all purposes of discipline 
 without having recourse to flagellation. Pcenas, how- 
 ever, or additional work, should not consist of the 
 repetition or extension of the usual lessons, because 
 this associates legitimate work with the hatefulness of 
 a penalty. 
 
 There are occasions, however, but these very rare, on 
 which the cane, unhappily, must be resorted to. I 
 have no sympathy with objections to flogging on the 
 score of its cruelty or indignity. An interval, however, 
 should always elapse between the offence and the chas- 
 tisement. It is much more merciful to castigate a boy 
 than to wear his nerves to exhaustion by appeals to 
 sentiment, affection, or duty, which minister to the 
 vanity of the hard, and the morbidness of the gentle 
 and sensitive. Nor is pcena-giving less severe in the 
 physical pain it often causes than the application 
 of the taws or rod ; while, when carried to extremi- 
 ties, asl^common among masters of inexperience or 
 of shallow moral endowment, it has the further vice 
 of making both pupil and teacher dwell too long on 
 an offence. Punishments should be prompt, sharp, 
 decisive, and there end ; the object being not to 
 inflict pain, but to deter from future offences, and to 
 
Rewards and PunisJiments. 1 8 1 
 
 restore the moral equilibrium of the offender and 
 of the offended school-conscience. This object once 
 attained the more expeditiously it is attained the 
 better no more should be heard of either offence or 
 punishment. A teacher or parent should never bear 
 grudges. The young interpret such exhibitions as 
 sulkiness and injustice, and do not fail to learn the 
 lesson for themselves. A boy should be allowed to 
 start afresh after punishment, and without stain. 
 There should be no dregs for a culprit to drain. For 
 these reasons, corporal chastisement has, in extreme 
 cases, a distinct advantage over many others which 
 seem more merciful. 
 
 The objection that a flogging hurts a boy's self- 
 respect is true only in this sense, that he feels that 
 he is being treated as a person on whom physical 
 coercion alone can have any influence. The fact that 
 it is always associated with this indignity, furnishes 
 the only sound reason for the total expulsion of the 
 practice from the school and the family. The sub- 
 stitution of physical compulsion for moral authority 
 unquestionably tends to lower all boys of good 
 dispositions, and weakens the sense of free respon- 
 sibility. And, inasmuch as the object of moral 
 discipline is to develop the conscience of a freeman, 
 not of a slave, it is prima facie degrading to both the 
 punished and the punisher to treat a child or a man 
 as if he had forfeited his humanity, and could be 
 brought to see and do the right only by having bodily 
 pain presented as the alternative. As a system of 
 
1 82 Primary Instruction. 
 
 discipline, it will be found to rest on an ultra- 
 materialistic theory of ethics. If, therefore, the 
 master find it necessary to call to his aid corporal 
 penalties, he has good reason to pause and to question 
 himself. If his self-examination leaves the blame of 
 resorting to the last extremity on the head of the 
 offender, he has no alternative but to make the 
 solemn example of a rational being driven like a 
 brute, because he is inaccessible only to brutal 
 motives. Only the parlour educationist will deny 
 that boys (and men) exist, possessed of moral hides 
 too indurated to be sensitive to purely moral 
 appeals. 
 
 As corporal chastisement, however, is to be regarded 
 as an extreme measure, negative and deterrent rather 
 than positive in its moral effects, and as standing 
 apart from all other adventitious aids to discipline, 
 this peculiarity of the punishment should be con- 
 spicuously brought out by the teacher ; and in every 
 school, accordingly, there should be a chastisable and 
 unchastisable class. A certain number of wilful 
 offences, revealing a conscience too callous to be 
 influenced by ordinary motives, should bring with 
 it the disgrace of being reduced to the class of boys 
 punishable with the rod. The descent to this school 
 purgatory, however, should be difficult and slow : the 
 ascent and return to the light of responsibility and 
 moral freedom plain and easy. 
 
 There is a flagellation of the mind worse than any 
 castigation of the body. The masters who resort to it 
 
Rewards and Punishments. i 8^ 
 
 call it satire ; but the impartial spectator detects that 
 it is simply uncontrolled passion finding an outlet 
 under the thin delusive veil of irony. Sarcasm and 
 ridicule make the courageous feel callous and revenge- 
 ful, and the sensitive oppressed and abused. It is an 
 unmanly use of superior strength so to lacerate the 
 feeling of the defenceless. It is also dishonest and 
 disloyal to the school constitution ; for this engine of 
 punishment finds no recognised place in the school 
 code. It is therefore unconstitutional, and justifies 
 rebellion. Boys call it " bullying." Infliction, not 
 affliction, marks the limit of legitimate punishment. 
 
 It would seem that we are as yet only on the 
 threshold of the large and complex subject of discipline. 
 Unavoidable references to school-rules, to obedience, 
 diligence, accuracy, and honesty, have necessarily led me 
 to speak of moral training in general, as well as in its 
 special relation to the merely intellectual daily work 
 which each pupil has to do ; and also to dwell for a 
 brief space on the natural and artificial supports of 
 discipline. But, after all, we have adverted only to 
 principles of action : the whole field of detail is still 
 untrodden. To enter upon it would be to write a 
 school manual, which is not my present object. The 
 master who brings to his work a habit of will which 
 is itself an example to others and a guide to himself, 
 will fill up the details of a general outline with ease. 
 Even the average teacher, if in earnest, will evolve 
 from general principles his own details, which will 
 
184 Primary Instruction. 
 
 have the additional advantage of being his own, and 
 therefore vital and efficacious. 
 
 A few additional words, however, for the help of 
 beginners who feel they need it, may be serviceable, 
 even though put in a curt form, and disjoined from 
 their connection with the educative aims and principles 
 of the subject as a whole. And first of all, let the 
 young teacher give heed to the admonition and the 
 example which come down to him through nearly two 
 thousand years, alike from the Pagan philosopher and 
 the Saviour of the world Reverence childhood. The 
 task he has to do requires a delicate and respectful, as 
 well as a strong hand. Secondly, Let his rules be just, 
 and easily obeyed. Thirdly, Let him not expect the 
 will of a man where there is the heart and brain of 
 the child or the boy. Fourthly, Let him not strain 
 too far the power of application when he has to deal 
 with young brains. Fifthly, Where there has been 
 assiduity, let him accept a little well done. Sixthly, 
 Let him trust the honesty of his pupils, but remove all 
 occasions of stumbling. Seventhly, Let him be vigilant, 
 but let him disdain inquisitorial prying or deputed 
 espionage. Eighthly, When he doubts in the matter of 
 truth-telling, the fulfilment of obedience, or the propriety 
 of punishing, let him always give the pupil the benefit 
 of the doubt. Ninthly, Distinguish offences, and let 
 punishment be in proportion* to the offence. Tenthly, 
 Let him so act that the school will feel that it is 
 regard for the moral law rather than for his personal 
 authority that regulates his praise and blame, his 
 
Rewards and Punishments. 185 
 
 rewards and punishments. And, finally, and above 
 
 all, let him do unto others, even to children, as he 
 would that others should do unto him. 1 * 
 
 The difficulties which both parents and school- 
 masters experience in the regulation of punishment, 
 lead me to add to the above remarks a few extracts 
 from the writings of one of the most eminent edu- 
 cationists of this century : 
 
 " If the word be always suited to the action, and every 
 L'iu<l;ition on the side of merit and demerit be candidly and 
 distinctly characterised by the terms employed, and by the 
 tone and look with which they are delivered, such an 
 ascendancy may be gained over the minds of youth, that a 
 word or significant gesture will have more weight, and make 
 a deeper impression, than an angry expostulation or heavy 
 blows. Praise and blame, when sparingly and judiciously 
 dealt out, are engines of incalculable power. But, on the 
 other hand, if a master, for some trifling misdemeanour, pour 
 forth a volley of abusive epithets, he has nothing, of course, 
 in reserve for heinous offences but flagellation ; and if, on 
 the other hand, he be either extravagant or partial in his 
 commendation, it will have little or no value. 
 
 " I would push the economy of praise and reproof so far as 
 to pitch the tone of both a note or two below the natural 
 scale. This is a useful rule in commending, because it 
 enhances the value of a strong expression. But it is in 
 reprimand and punishment that its importance is best seen ; 
 though, I fear I must add, in practice least understood. 
 
 * The subject of Drill as an aid to moral discipline, as well as to the 
 development of a healthy "physique," belongs perhaps more to 
 the detail of a school manual than to a general statement of principles 
 aud methods. 
 
1 86 Primary Instruction. 
 
 There prevails among schoolmasters such a dread of relaxing 
 wholesome discipline, that when a public example is to be 
 made, even the most temperate and conscientious think 
 themselves called upon to colour the offence a little highly, 
 and to express even more indignation against the culprit 
 than they actually feel. This I conceive to be a capital 
 blunder. The very reverse of it is a great secret in the 
 management of youth. No infliction can benefit the sufferer, 
 or serve as a warning to others, which is not felt and acknow- 
 ledged to be just by the great body of his schoolfellows. The 
 moment it exceeds the measure which the impartial spectator 
 can sympathise with, it generates compassion for the offender, 
 and dislike of the punisher. . . . 
 
 " On the other hand, there is nothing that so completely 
 disarms the bad and unsocial passions of a boy as kindliness ; 
 nothing so popular as stopping short of the severity which 
 strict justice might award. Nor will such forbearance, if it 
 appear to flow from enlightened principle and affection, ever 
 tempt to a repetition of the offence. . . . 
 
 " ,. . . To dispense with corporal punishment in all minor 
 school offences, and to reserve it for cases of moral delinquency 
 or turpitude. ... Of the latter kind are deliberate lying, 
 dishonesty, wanton cruelty, indecency in word or deed ; of 
 the former, neglect of preparation, failing to answer questions, 
 or to say by heart, coming late, being inattentive, or talking 
 in school-time, teasing a schoolfellow, etc. 
 
 " . . . If a boy was reported by the monitor to be unpre- 
 pared on the lesson, the gentlest interference on my part was 
 to call him out of the division and admonish him privately. 
 If he could assign no reason for his failure, he was dismissed 
 with a word of advice, and a hope that this negligence would 
 not occur again ; but at the same time, with an assurance that 
 if it did, I should feel it incumbent on me to reprove him in 
 presence of his division. This had never, probably, occurred 
 to him as an aggravation of his disgrace, but the very mention 
 of it was sufficient to make him think so, and he returned to 
 
Rewards and Pimishments. 187 
 
 his place resolved to avoid it, and not perhaps without a 
 sentiment of thankfulness for the attention to his feelings 
 implied by this preliminary warning. . . . 
 
 " The next step in increase of severity was to reprimand 
 before the whole division, care being taken, in this as in all 
 other cases, that reproof should be administered more in 
 sorrow than in anger. This mode of reprehending was that 
 most frequently practised, because it gave an opportunity of 
 instructing and warning others, though it was often exchanged 
 for the gentler mode of giving the boy an audience apart, 
 when I read in his eye that he had a private reason to assign, 
 which he was unwilling to impart to any ear but mine. 
 
 " For minds of less sensibility, or greater tendency to go 
 wrong, there remained a reproof before the assembled class, 
 mild or sharp, as suited the character addressed. 
 
 " But as there must, of course, be many in a numerous 
 class either too sluggish or too thoughtless and playful to be 
 permanently or uniformly affected by any of these motives, 
 the last resort was to what was technically called a * poena,' or 
 a written imposition. . . . Nothing can be more equitable, 
 than that a boy who fails to prepare a lesson at home, or 
 give attention to the construing in the class-room, should be 
 obliged to write it out, and be curtailed of his play. It was 
 an improving exercise, too, and thus accomplished the most 
 desirable ends of punishment correction and warning. . . 
 
 ". . . For a considerable time after these methods 
 had completely superseded corporal punishment in all that 
 regarded the lessons, it was still had recourse to now and 
 then, as the appropriate means of deterring from grave acts 
 of immorality. . . . 
 
 " . . . The great secret in this, as in the instance of 
 minor misdemeanours, is to estimate fairly the gravity 
 of the offence, so long as it is spoken of in the abstract, 
 and to fix its place correctly in the scale of demerit ; while, 
 at the same time, the individual culprit is allowed the benefit 
 of all the circumstances which can be honestly urged in 
 
1 88 Primary Instruction. 
 
 extenuation. When the master seems to take pleasure in 
 dwelling on these, the punishment he does inflict will appear 
 to be extorted from him, as it really is, by the demands of 
 justice, and will create no feeling in the breast either of the 
 sufferer or the spectator which is not friendly to virtue. 
 Precept thus enforced by example is the most impressive of 
 all moral lessons. 
 
 "But so regularly did the dread of corporal chastisement 
 increase in proportion to its mildness and rarity, that, during 
 the latter half of my rectorship, it was entirely discontinued ; 
 partly, and chiefly, in consequence of the manifest improve- 
 ment in the morality of the boys ; partly, because the feeling 
 of honour had become so nice as to make it too severe an 
 infliction for any school offence that could be committed. 
 The solemnity and the lecture were still continued when 
 occasion offered. . . 
 
 " Among the various substitutes for corporal punishment, 
 I have made no mention of one which was and is in very 
 common use : that of turning a boy down in his class, often 
 by ten or twenty places at a time, in consequence, not of the 
 better saying of those below him, but by the ' fiat ' of the 
 master. To him this mode of deterring and punishing 
 recommends itself by the tempting facility of applying it. 
 It is generally used in the cases of talking or trifling in the 
 class-room, or being late. For the former it is admissible, 
 if preceded by a demand for the next word, or an order to 
 repeat the clause last construed. As to being late, a fault 
 to which boys are so liable that it must be sharply dealt with, 
 it was checked not by loss of place, but more effectually by 
 stationing the general censor outside the door, to collect the 
 names of the late as they arrive, and note them for a 
 ' poena,' to be delivered next morning. Forfeiture of place 
 for such offences is both unjust and inexpedient." From 
 Professor Pillans' Contributions to the Cause of Education, 
 p. 340. 
 
Moral Teaching Initiatory. 189 
 
 VI. DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION. 
 
 Initiatory stage Suggestive moral teaching and direct moral teaching 
 Juvenile stage (Laws of Health, Economic Laws, etc.), 
 
 MORAL instruction, as distinguished from the moral 
 training, means the inculcation of moral duties in a 
 preceptive form. It is a kind of colloquial preaching 
 on the part of the teacher, the more colloquial the 
 better, indeed, wholly ineffectual if it be not 
 colloquial, incidental, and suggested by the occasion. 
 
 Initiatory Staye. When the mind is sufficiently 
 matured to apprehend a principle of conduct, con- 
 sciously to adopt it, and to give it effect, preceptive 
 teaching is of unquestionable value. In proportion, 
 however, to the weakness of the power of will in 
 other words, in proportion to the youth of the pupil 
 precept is, at the time of its inculcation, of little value. 
 The moral sentiment of the very young is most effectu- 
 ally reached through the moral habit, and the moral 
 habit can be formed only by ordering a child to do 
 certain things in a certain way, giving him the help of 
 the example of his teacher and fellows in doing them, 
 and taking means to make sure that they are done. 
 But this, as we have seen, is to discipline or train. 
 
190 Primary Instruction. 
 
 Discipline signifies the enforcing of the doing of the 
 moral law by means of motives, which motives, again, 
 are supported by the reward and punishment of ap- 
 proval and disapproval. 
 
 We have said that by the enforcement of the doing 
 of moral acts alone in other words, by means of dis- 
 cipline moral sentiments and principles thoroughly 
 enter into the mind of a child as intelligible and 
 living guides of conduct. The form of words is, how- 
 ever, by no means altogether useless. To throw into 
 a preceptive form the moral acts which the teacher is 
 continually insisting on, is of value as subsidiary to the 
 practice of them. Precepts serve as a guide and a 
 standard of measure to the child, and their significance 
 gradually dawns on him. Especially after reward for 
 rightdoing, or punishment for wrongdoing, a gently- 
 urged precept will be dropt into a prepared soil, and 
 will take root. 
 
 There are two kinds of preceptive teaching the 
 Suggestive and the Direct. The suggestive is the 
 more efficacious, because it is associated with a 
 concrete example. In the doing of right acts, the 
 child is presumed to be supported by the example of 
 his teacher and fellows. By sharing the moral life 
 exhibited daily in the school, he gradually becomes a 
 constituent part of it : it is the example of those 
 around him that points both the moral and the way. 
 This is true of the indirect moral instruction of dis- 
 cipline : it is equally necessary that the direct moral 
 
Moral Teaching Initiatory. 191 
 
 instruction of the school, in so far as it is conveyed by 
 books or conversation, should be in the earlier years as 
 much as possible the instruction which the example of 
 others gives, that is to say, the instruction of biography, 
 fable, and anecdote. The lessons of fair play and 
 peaceableness, for example, almost defy abstract pre- 
 ceptive teaching in the case of the very young, but 
 enter vividly and graphically into the mind through 
 the story of the two boys and the nut, which ends in 
 the arbiter eating the kernel and liberally dispensing 
 half a shell to each of the little disputants. Next to 
 seeing a good example before us is imagining that we 
 see it, and this we do when we read or hear of it. 
 
 Direct precept, if less efficacious than suggestive, 
 has yet a useful part to play. It is true that all 
 moral precepts are laws of conduct' generalised from 
 particular acts and their consequences, and therefore 
 to demand of a child that he shall strain his intellect 
 to grasp fully a moral generalisation is to demand an 
 impossibility. Even such seemingly simple generalisa- 
 tions as, " To steal is wrong," " All must be just in 
 their dealings," " Generosity is a duty," " Truthfulness 
 must be observed," and so forth, although committed 
 to memory and produced when required, are under- 
 stood by the child only in so far as they are illustrated 
 by particular acts coming within his personal cognis- 
 ance. If the teacher says, "Do not take your 
 neighbour's pencil, as I saw you do this morning, for 
 that is to steal, and to steal is wrong," he is intelli- 
 gible. A certain number of acts thus from time to 
 
192 Primary Instruction. 
 
 time become known to the child as stealing, from 
 which he infers the wickedness of other acts which 
 have a common characteristic with them, and in this 
 way he extends his moral knowledge with his moral 
 experience, until at last there flashes upon him, in its 
 full force and meaning, the generalised precept, " Thou 
 shalt not steal." This is the process by which the 
 understanding of moral principles is reached by the 
 growing mind. But, true as this is, the moral 
 generalisation is not wholly valueless to the child, 
 even when not fully intelligible at the time of its 
 being imparted. He himself is, by the very instincts 
 of his nature and the necessities of his external 
 condition, groping his way to some such general 
 statement of duty, which will bring harmony into the 
 chaos of his moral life by bringing law. To furnish 
 him, at the outset of his journey in search of duty, 
 with the conclusion to which the wisdom of the past 
 has come, is like giving a young builder a plan of the 
 house we require him to build for himself. It is only 
 a semblance, but it assuredly must facilitate and 
 expedite the attainment of the reality. 
 
 The theory of education which, so far from regard- 
 ing direct preceptive teaching as a help, considers it 
 to be an overlaying and overburdening of the child's 
 mind, and which would lead him on in his moral per- 
 ceptions step by step, and only at a certain moment of 
 his development, and not till then, give the generalised 
 truth which, if earlier given, would be in its full scope 
 unintelligible, is fundamentally sound. But it is not 
 
Moral Teaching Initiatory. 193 
 
 to be pushed too far in practice. Is it not possible 
 to pamper the intellect and will ? If the teacher 
 had full control over the first sixteen years of his 
 pupil's life, and were carefully to macadamise and 
 bridge his path in accordance with this theory, he 
 might, perhaps, reach the end which he proposed to 
 himself ; but only to find that it had changed its 
 character. He would be vanquished in the moment 
 of victory. The pupil would probably reach the goal 
 of a clear comprehension of principle and precept in their 
 practical significance, enfeebled by the very facilities 
 and monotony of his too easy route, while his comrade 
 who had arrived at the same point across country, 
 unaided, and after many difficulties, obstructions, and 
 stumblings, would come in, later it might be, but 
 exhilarated by difficulty and braced for fresh exertion. 
 The teacher and the parent must bear in -mind that 
 life from first to last is a progress and a struggle, and 
 that the purpose of education is not to give possession 
 of a certain quantity of facts, or even of moral prin- 
 ciples, but to give mojal power ; not, even in intellec- 
 tual matters, much less, then, in moral, to confer attain- 
 ment, but to qualify for pursuit. The only essential 
 equipment for every man is the weapons, an object 
 to pursue, and vigour of faculty. The school does its 
 work best when it makes the mode of acquiring the 
 weapons, whether they be moral or intellectual, itself 
 the means of training the faculties of pursuit. 
 
 The early storing of the memory, accordingly, with 
 generalised moralities may serve an important purpose, 
 N 
 
1 94 Primary Instruction. 
 
 by training to the recognition of law simply as law, by- 
 suggesting difficulty, compelling intellectual effort, 
 and giving the consciousness of self-effected progress 
 when their full significance is finally seen. But all 
 such direct preceptive teaching is to be admitted 
 into the initiatory classes of a school only as distinctly 
 subsidiary to particular instruction in the qualities of 
 individual acts by means of reading, conversation, and 
 above all, the discipline of obedience. This particular 
 instruction and the disciplinary training which it 
 is almost impossible to separate from it, constitute sub- 
 stantially the whole moral education during the initi- 
 atory stage. It is necessary to insist on this, lest 
 teachers should imagine that they have acquitted 
 themselves of their duty when they have inculcated 
 fine sentiments and right principles. This is not 
 teaching, but preaching. It is through the doing of a 
 thing, as has been already said, that principles of 
 conduct can alone take living root in a child's mind. 
 A schoolmaster, accordingly, discharges his duty, not 
 by enunciating or inculcating the right, though this is 
 both necessary and desirable, but by watchful noting 
 of the acts of his pupils towards each other, as well as 
 towards himself, by explaining the nature of wrong 
 acts as they arise, and by causing the right act to be 
 done instead of the wrong. The forms which stealing, 
 lying, injustice, cruelty, malice, and envy take are 
 difficult to number, even among adults, but among 
 children they are infinite in their petty variety. In 
 the reading-lessons, in the incidents of the school, and 
 
Moral Teaching Initiatory. 195 
 
 in the events of the parish will be found ample 
 material for the exemplification, illustration, and per- 
 sonal application of the various virtues and vices, both 
 in their patent and their insidious forms. Individual 
 acts will be on these occasions referred to their proper 
 preceptive head ; and the command, whether it be 
 prohibitive, " Do not bear false witness," or hortatory, 
 " Love thy father and thy mother," will be thus 
 apprehended as a vital fact, not as a dead phrase. 
 
 Throughout all, the teacher must constantly bear in 
 mind that it is only in their petty exhibitions that the 
 child can know even the greatest vices or virtues ; 
 and it is with these petty things, consequently, and the 
 precepts which they suggest, not with abstract and 
 large utterances, that the teacher has, in the elemen- 
 tary classes, mainly to do. The thousand trivialities of 
 daily life constitute the moralities of children. Every 
 incident in the life of a child is a moral incident; and 
 these are so numerous and so ever-changing, as to baffle 
 the teacher's attempt to interpret them, much more 
 to anticipate them. But, fortunately for him, as well 
 as for his pupil, the rule of conduct which covers all 
 other minor precepts, and suits all possible cases, is ready 
 to hand in a form at once the most widely general, 
 the most closely individual, and the most easy to 
 comprehend. " Do unto others as you would that 
 others should do unto you," is a command which 
 should be kept constantly before children, and per- 
 sistently introduced as the measure of all their little 
 acts. It will help the teacher as well as the child. 
 
196 Primary Instruction. 
 
 Where the tone and system of the school are good, 
 the correction of petty immoralities is quick and easy. 
 A glance, an upraised finger, or a single word, is 
 generally sufficient. But even if it should cost time 
 to correct them, the time must be given. The very 
 purpose of the teacher's professional existence is the 
 formation of character; and of the two elements of 
 character, a good habit of the will claims his supreme 
 attention. Nor is any time wasted even for intellectual 
 purposes which is devoted to the formation of a habit 
 of will in harmony with the sentiments and imperative 
 laws of right conduct. 
 
 I have dwelt on the seeming trivialities of moral 
 instruction, because it seems to me to be necessary to 
 urge on teachers that moral instruction can be effectual 
 in the primary school, especially in the initiatory classes, 
 only when conveyed in a particular and disciplinary, 
 rather than in a general and preceptive form, and be- 
 cause it is beyond doubt that moral training, in all its 
 comprehensiveness and importance, has not so prominent 
 a place in the minds of primary schoolmasters * and in 
 the scheme of school duty, as it unquestionably ought to 
 ' have. The master has a tendency to think chiefly of 
 certain intellectual results, and in matters of morality 
 to consider himself absolved from all other and loftier 
 aims if he merely proclaims a certain number of moral 
 truisms, inflicts occasional punishment, and keeps out- 
 ward order. 
 
 * Still lesS in the minds of secondary schoolmasters. 
 
Moral Teaching -Juvenile Stage. 197 
 
 Juvenile Stage. When the pupil passes out of the 
 initiatory into the juvenile stage, his power of realis- 
 ing the practical detail which precepts indicate and 
 sum up increases : he begins consciously to adopt 
 them, and when he errs, to err less through ignorance 
 or weakness than through wilfulness. As precept in 
 its abstract form now becomes intelligible and capable 
 of easy explanation and illustration, it may enter 
 formally and with more effect into the daily work. 
 The principles which are to regulate his conduct 
 towards his fellows and his master are already pretty 
 well known to the boy in particular instances, and 
 are consequently now easily made intelligible in their 
 general and summarised expression. Even at this 
 stage, however, and long after it has begun, the short 
 biography, the fable, and the parable, are still the 
 best instructors in moral duties. 
 
 Precepts and the grounds of them being now 
 comprehensible to the pupil, and therefore really 
 operative in the formation of good habits, it is the 
 duty of the teacher, while confirming the particular 
 moral lessons of the initiatory stage, to prepare for 
 himself a scheme of preceptive teaching, as much as 
 possible adapted to the circumstances of his pupils. 
 As, in regulating, refining, and elevating the character 
 of the petty acts of the school, the master is presumed 
 to have had in view the counteraction of the pre- 
 valent evils of home influence, so now, in inculcating 
 the precepts which are to guide the boy's future, he 
 
198 Primary Instruction. 
 
 must have regard to those errors to which the class to 
 which the pupils belong is most prone. 
 
 We have, in a previous part of this volume, when 
 speaking of the limitations and conditions under 
 which the primary teacher works, adverted to the 
 kind of preceptive teaching most imperatively de- 
 manded at this stage. We showed there that the 
 preceptive teaching must be reasoned. It is easy to 
 imagine a lad to have learned the general preceptive 
 duties of justice, honesty, truthfulness, generosity, 
 and even to be honestly striving after the practical 
 realisation of the Golden Rule of conduct, and yet 
 utterly to fail in doing the just and right act. And 
 why is this ? His intellect has not been instructed 
 on the final issue of many of the acts which he 
 considers to be harmless, or, if wrong, venial ; espe- 
 cially those' numerous acts which he imagines to 
 terminate in himself alone. In the regulating of his 
 body, for example, he has not been taught that he 
 owes a duty to himself as an intellectual and moral 
 being, and to the Creator who endowed him with his 
 physical frame. Least of all has he learned to follow 
 out into their evil effects on others, the consequences 
 of his * own infringement of the physiological laws 
 under which he lives, and to find in wilful self-neglect, 
 or 'self-injury, the causes of pain and injustice to his 
 fellow-men. In all these respects there is the inner 
 habit of conscience, which suggests that there is a 
 right and wrong, but it is an uninstructed conscience, 
 which cannot see wherein the right or wrong consists. 
 
Moral Teaching Juvenile Stage. 199 
 
 The intimate connection of mental and bodily health, 
 and the moral obligation of maintaining the latter, 
 requires, it seems to me, to be directly and carefully 
 taught. Above all, the illusion under which young 
 men generally live, that their body is their own, with 
 which they may do as they please, and that men of 
 irregular habits are, as the saying is, " no one's enemy 
 but their own," has to be anxiously dispelled. That 
 every man owes his body to his family, to the State, 
 and to the God who made it and placed it here, 
 is a part of the moral law. It is a part, however, 
 the abstract preceptive statement of which is utterly 
 useless. It requires to be evolved in connection with 
 a knowledge of the special laws under which we 
 breathe, eat, digest, and labour, if it is to enter into 
 the reason and not merely into the memory of the 
 pupil. Our purpose in the school should be to make 
 such things as familiar as the knowledge that to take 
 another's property is theft and punishable by law. 
 The necessity and the duty of ventilation, of regard 
 to the preparation of food, of attention to cleanliness 
 and to exercise, and of temperance, are all easy of 
 explanation in connection with the grounds on which 
 they rest. They must be worked into the mind as 
 part of its ordinary moral stock. Without the prin- 
 ciples on which they rest, such teaching would be 
 manifestly useless. " Be just to your body that ^ou 
 may discharge your other duties efficiently, and that 
 you may be just to others dependent on you and 
 derived from you," is an abstract generalising of the 
 
2oo Primary Instruction. 
 
 duty, which is as useless as other abstractions which 
 cannot be readily translated into the numberless 
 particular acts to which they refer. The very- object 
 of school teaching of morality is to give, not only the 
 what but the how and the why of duty to instruct 
 and guide the conscience. 
 
 The next most important translation of the rule 
 of justice into the duties of common life, is the 
 inculcation of frugality and providence. The relation 
 of sick societies, annuities, and life insurance, to the 
 self-respect and independence of a man, and to the 
 proper discharge of the duties which he owes to his 
 family, should be slowly, carefully, and frequently 
 explained and illustrated. In the course of doing so, 
 the connection of providence with the other virtues 
 the motive which it gives to the control of the lower 
 appetites and passions, and the sense of moral freedom 
 and self-respect which it engenders, force themselves 
 into view, and furnish the means of reimpressiug 
 the great moral laws under a fresh aspect and in new 
 relations. 
 
 Reasoned preceptive teachings such as these, adapted 
 of course to the age of the pupils who receive them, 
 are not only an important, but an essential part, 
 of any primary - school moral instruction worthy 
 of the name. The thing to be regretted is, not 
 that there is any serious obstacle in the way of 
 finding room for them in the scheme of school- work, 
 but that even thoughtful teachers scarcely ever 
 deliberately set before themselves the direct teaching 
 
Moral Teaching Juvenile Stage. 201 
 
 of practical morality, although it is one of their 
 primary duties. 
 
 In how many schools of the " people " are the 
 duties of servants to masters inculcated, and in how 
 many schools of the wealthier classes are the duties 
 of masters to servants, and to the poor generally, even 
 adverted to ? 
 
 The buying and selling of labour, and the many 
 moral and social questions which depend on the right 
 understanding of this, belong rather to the Evening or 
 Continuation School, where boys of from thirteen to 
 seventeen years of age assemble to resume and carry 
 forward the instruction of their boyhood. 
 
 Note on Moral Instruction. 
 
 A master should draw out for himself a scheme of 
 school moralities, to be taught as occasion arises, if 
 need be, making occasion. The inculcation of truth- 
 fulness, honesty, integrity, justice, love, obedience to 
 authority, in the ever-varying forms which they assume, 
 should be deliberately set down by every teacher as 
 part of his daily round of work, and should be de- 
 signedly presented again and again to the pupils in 
 the various forms of parable, biography, and precept. 
 National and biblical proverbs also should be brought 
 under contribution. It is probable that boys who go 
 through a full primary-school curriculum obtain from 
 their Catechism, Bible, and reading-books (if these are 
 well constructed), in an irregular and haphazard way, 
 such a course of instruction in morality as we de- 
 siderate. But this would certainly be more effectively 
 
202 Primary Instruction. 
 
 given if, when any moral question incidentally 
 in the course of other work, it was recognised by the 
 master and felt by the pupil to stand out from the 
 other topics preceding and following it, as a matter of 
 pre-eminent importance. This can only happen where 
 all such incidental teachings form part of a pre- 
 arranged scheme of moral instruction. The pupil 
 should, of course, be kept in ignorance of any such 
 formal scheme ; but the master, by working in ac- 
 cordance with a preconceived purpose, would be led 
 to give more weight and prominence to casual lessons, 
 and thereby to impress his pupils more deeply with 
 the vital importance of the truths he might from time 
 to time expound or enforce. Above all things, let the 
 teacher avoid text-books of Morality. 
 
 The teacher may be reminded, in conclusion, of Mr. 
 Stow's description of the playground as the " uncovered 
 schoolroom." 
 
Minor Morals of the School. 203 
 
 VII. MINOR MORALS OF THE SCHOOL. 
 
 Courtesy between boys and girls Influence of female schools- 
 Politeness Order Cleanliness, etc, Personal habits of teacher. 
 
 THERE is a close connection, especially in mixed 
 schools, between the petty moralities of daily life and 
 the growth of proper mutual relations between the 
 male and female pupils. It is in these petty moralities 
 indeed that, as regards certain vices, the teacher's chief 
 power and chief duty lie. It belongs to a higher 
 instructor, at a later stage, to elaborate principle out 
 of the groundwork of propriety of sentiment and 
 decency of external deportment. There is no reason 
 in the nature of things why the mixing of boys and 
 girls together, under proper supervision, should tend to 
 lessen the respect of the one and the modesty of the 
 other. Shyness in mutual intercourse is certainly quite 
 eradicated by this means ; but in the rooting up of 
 this species of tare, the wheat of real modesty is not 
 necessarily pulled up with it. We guard ourselves, 
 however, by presuming proper supervision and good 
 school discipline. Where these are absent, the con- 
 sequences are lamentable. Respect for girls is broken 
 down entirely, and the feebler sex is regarded by the 
 
2O4 Primary Instruction. 
 
 stronger as merely fair game for what is in truth 
 insult. And a worse result than this follows : the 
 feebler sex itself half accepts as legitimate fun what 
 it ought to resent as rudeness and insolence, and the 
 sense of shame and vexation ere long gives place to 
 the mock modesty of the averted giggle. That teacher 
 or inspector must be blind indeed (probably with the 
 blindness which familiarity causes) who, even without 
 wishing to see them, has not had such results of lax 
 discipline in mixed schools again and again forced upon 
 his notice. On the other hand, the well-disciplined 
 mixed school affords opportunities of regulating the 
 conduct of boys and girls towards each other, and so 
 giving a natural and healthy direction to sentiments 
 which must in any case spring up. The morbid and 
 wondering suspicion of each other, which is apt to be 
 the result of entire separation or jealous vigilance, is 
 in itself a vice or the anticipation of a vice, the 
 immediate forerunner of the very evils which it is our 
 object to prevent. Such feelings cannot exist where 
 boys and girls are allowed to consort together and to 
 look each other frankly in the face as friends. There 
 ought to be no difficulty, where this custom is once 
 established, in insisting on courtesy and propriety 
 from the one sex, and gentleness and decency from 
 the other, thereby accustoming both to the recognition 
 of a difference which is not intended by nature to be 
 an antagonism. 
 
 At the same time, while the actual facts of the case, 
 so far as we have observed them, acquit the mixed 
 
Minor Morals of the School. 205 
 
 school system of being the positive cause of one of the 
 prevalent vices of our country, it is, if it may be so 
 put, a negative cause. To the improved demeanour, 
 and to the cultivation of the more purely womanly 
 characteristics of school girls, we must look for the 
 amelioration of the relations that now subsist between 
 the rustic and factory youth of both sexes. This, we 
 suspect, cannot be thoroughly attained without sur- 
 rounding the girl with gentler and softer influences 
 than those to which she is subject when sharing with 
 boys an education expressly arranged with a view to 
 the special needs of the latter. It is necessary that 
 girls should breathe the purer and gentler atmosphere 
 of the female school if the more womanly virtues are 
 to live and grow. It is gratifying and encouraging to 
 see the readiness with which the tender sensibilities 
 of girls, even of those who at first sight are very 
 unpromising, respond to the gentle influence of the 
 female school, where one has been instituted. It is 
 impossible to shut our eyes to the unexpected moral re- 
 sults of separate training, or resist the conviction that 
 the extension of girls' schools, under properly-trained 
 mistresses, is one of the most powerful moral agencies 
 at present within our reach. The deficiencies of 
 "mistress's grammar" are far more than counterbalanced 
 by the prominence given in the school to industrial 
 skill, itself both a womanly accomplishment, and 
 exercising a feminine influence on the pupils.* 
 
 * On the influence of female schools, see the Rev. Canon Norris' 
 ' Education of the People." 
 
206 Primary Instruction. 
 
 This subject is a large and important one, worthy 
 of much fuller treatment than can be given to it 
 here ; but before leaving it, I may quote from the late 
 Mr. Brookfield's Eeport for 1860 a few concise and 
 felicitous words which sum up the argument. After 
 admitting the intellectual inferiority of schools taught 
 by mistresses, he says : 
 
 " But though figures are inflexible, and a remorseless 
 average discards the modifying influence of chivalry, it must 
 be remembered that, after all, this average itself confesses 
 that in every hundred girls' schools there are fifteen which 
 indicate the ablest, the most suitable, and the most judicious 
 management, and forty which are by no means to be com- 
 plained of, and which, according to the prevailing standard, 
 must be considered no less than fairly satisfactory ; while of 
 all the hundred (with very rare, surprisingly rare, exceptions) 
 the cleanly appearance, the quiet propriety of demeanour, 
 the modesty of speech and manner, and, so far as I can learn, 
 the moral rectitude by which they are characterised, give 
 evidence of their being placed under an habitual influence 
 incalculably more important than any intellectual quali- 
 fications, and entitle our schoolmistresses to be pronounced 
 one of the most praiseworthy and valuable classes of the 
 community." 
 
 A consideration of the feelings and the outward 
 behaviour which should govern the intercourse of boys 
 and girls in a mixed school, will reveal the defects of 
 the present system of training, or rather of disregard 
 of training, in little things, where boys alone are con- 
 cerned. The teacher's business is, while avoiding 
 everything that is inquisitorial, and disdaining reports 
 brought by others, to exercise such a general super- 
 
Minor Morals of the School. 207 
 
 vision as will enable him to know the spirit which 
 pervades his school, and to guide and correct its 
 exhibitions when necessary. There is a limit to " not 
 telling," and a master, while discouraging all " tale- 
 bearing," must create such a public sentiment of 
 honour, that, on the occurrence of certain acts, the 
 whole school will, with one voice of indignation, " tell ; " 
 and if one or two only dare to be loyal to the school 
 and to honour, they ought to be held up for imitation 
 as having done a brave deed. If in such circum- 
 stances the school does not with common voice 
 respond to the call of the master and laud the 
 boys who have saved its reputation, the sooner it 
 is broken up as a moral nuisance the better for 
 society. 
 
 The master must make the school feel unmistak- 
 ably that his weight is always on the side of weakness 
 and gentleness, and against the rude assumptions of 
 physical strength. It is not enough that he take the 
 opportunities which will be abundantly afforded him 
 of reproving deceit and falsehood, of correcting 
 injustice, and of contemning meanness ; he must 
 convince the rough boys under his charge that the 
 younger and less able of their fellows demand more 
 than ordinary considerateness from them. The strong 
 man owes more, as a mere act of equity, to the weak 
 than he owes to his equal in strength. Mutual con- 
 sideration among schoolboys becomes the more im- 
 portant the lower the stratum of the population from 
 which the children are drawn. 
 
208 Primary Instruction. 
 
 Now, mutual consideration involves much : not 
 merely substantial justice and truthfulness, but 
 kindliness, pity, helpfulness, gentleness, and also 
 civility and politeness. A distinction may be drawn 
 between civility and politeness. By politeness is 
 meant the forms of civility, civility again meaning 
 that feeling of respect for others and of what is due 
 to them which exists more or less in every mind 
 which has emerged from the unadulterated self- 
 assertion of barbarism, and which may exist without 
 politeness. To insist upon the forms of this feeling 
 even where the reality does not exist, is not, however, 
 to be condemned as we condemn the requiring of the 
 outward show of love when it has no root in the heart. 
 To require a child to love is to lay the foundation of a 
 false nature. But, while we admit the radical error 
 of exacting the show of love, we must not carry too 
 far the principle which leads us to condemn all mere 
 forms of right feeling. The attitude and the words 
 of prayer, for example, should be always demanded 
 whether the pious emotion be active or dormant, 
 because, in requiring these, we only insist on what it 
 is possible to give at will namely, submission and 
 reverence to our Creator and Preserver. As it is 
 perfectly legitimate in the region of religious senti- 
 ment to order what can be responded to by an effort 
 of will, so also in matters of mutual courtesy of deeds 
 and words. Further, where by skilful treatment the 
 finer sentiments can actually be stirred into activity 
 in the young, to insist on their natural expression in 
 
Minor Morals of the School. 209 
 
 outward forms is so far from encouraging hypocrisy 
 that it is often welcome to the child. 
 
 Teachers should also bear in mind that all ex- 
 pression of sentiment by means of external forms is 
 like the expression of struggling thought in words. 
 It gives it clearness, definiteness, and substance. It 
 reacts on the mental state, and confirms it. Hence 
 the utility of mere forms of civility. In requiring 
 the form, the teacher either helps the pupil over the 
 awkwardness of showing what he feels, or he reminds 
 him that the feeling is wanting and ought to be 
 supplied. In either case he has conferred a moral 
 benefit on the pupil. The repetition of those formal 
 acts of politeness for which the school and the play- 
 ground afford scope, tends, by constantly suggesting 
 the corresponding sentiments, to establish civility 
 (which, after all, is only a kind of refinement of 
 justice) as a habit of will. Such and so great is the 
 effect of due attention to the petty moralities of the 
 schoolroom and playground. It is scarcely necessary 
 to add that, apart from direct instruction and his own 
 example, the only way in which the teacher can attain 
 the results at which we point in matters of propriety 
 and courtesy is by detecting the wrong-doer, and 
 causing him to do over again, and rightly, the act 
 which in his haste or his selfishness he has done wrong. 
 
 Passing from those minor morals of the schoolroom 
 which concern the conduct of the pupils towards each 
 other or their master, we come to those which imme- 
 diately concern the pupil himself. Lounging in class 
 
2 1 o Primary Instruction. 
 
 with bauds in pockets should be interpreted by the 
 master as a mark of disrespect to himself as well as of 
 inattention to the lessons. Personal cleanliness, enter- 
 ing and leaving the schoolroom as a boy of decent 
 manners is expected to enter and to leave a private 
 house, quiet formation of classes without jostling, are 
 all of importance in creating that habit of mind of 
 which good manners is the fruit. Very many of our 
 teachers seem to have quite lost all delicacy of percep- 
 tion in such matters, and they consequently submit to 
 practices which, to the unhardened visitor of schools, 
 are intolerable. It is by no means so uncommon as 
 it ought to be, to find boys standing in class order, or 
 rather disorder, at irregular intervals, with hands in 
 pockets, and from time to time spitting on the floor. 
 It is always best to find some one notion, the posses- 
 sion of which removes from the mind all difficulties 
 in the way of applying principles. The notion which 
 facilitates the solution of all difficulties in the matters 
 of which we are now speaking is this, that the school- 
 room is the master's house, where he holds a daily 
 " reception," and that no manners or practices can be 
 suffered in the one which would be discountenanced 
 in the other. 
 
 The general rule given above has the further 
 advantage of throwing light on those minor moralities 
 of the school, which depend on the example of the 
 teacher himself. The courtesies and the personal 
 habits which he inculcates he must practise ; and he 
 will find no safer guide whereby to regulate his 
 
Minor Morals of the School. 2 1 1 
 
 personal demeanour towards all around him than the 
 reflection that he is in the position of the master of 
 a house receiving guests guests under somewhat 
 peculiar conditions certainly, but still, in all essential 
 respects, guests. He will scarcely venture to dis- 
 charge the duty of host dirty, unshaven, and in 
 slippers ; nor will he dare to take unfair advantage 
 of the fact that his pupils are compulsory guests, to 
 speak to them in a style which would empty the 
 room were they free to leave. He cannot in any case 
 expect his pupils to behave better than himself. 
 
 Let a teacher cultivate the personal habits and 
 cheap characteristics of a gentleman, and carry these 
 into the schoolroom with him, and, in the matter of 
 the minor moralities, nothing more will remain to be 
 done,* in so far as he personally, or his influence, is 
 concerned. 
 
 The last department of petty morals concerns the 
 arrangements of the schoolroom itself. They all fall 
 under the heads of cleanliness, order, light, and 
 ventilation. A dirty floor, and dirtier walls and 
 windows, untidy arrangement of little things such as 
 ink-wells, copybooks, pens the accumulations on the 
 master's desk, the uncleaned blackboard, the absent 
 chalk and towel, the dusty maps and globes, the 
 slovenly hearth and absent fender, what must be 
 the moral effect of such wilful renunciation of every- 
 thing in the furnishings of daily life that makes 
 
 * The bearing of school-gardens on the 
 would merit consideration here did spacej 
 
2 1 2 Primary Instruction. 
 
 civilisation better than barbarism ? With such sur- 
 roundings as these it is absurd for the teacher to talk 
 of school ideals, or indeed of education in any lofty 
 or refined sense. To teach attention to the laws of 
 health in the midst of dirt and in an unventilated 
 room, and to require activity of brain in the midst of 
 a tainted atmosphere, are mockeries. The existence 
 of such contravention of the very first conditions of 
 education seems in these days almost incredible, and yet 
 how many schools are there in which cleanliness and 
 ventilation are systematically and properly attended to ? 
 
 I The sense of the beautiful, even in the lower forms 
 
 of a sense of order, propriety, fitness, and decency, is 
 closely allied with moral perceptions. Hence the 
 moral suggestiveness of good external arrangements, 
 and their influence in promoting the higher objects of 
 the school : they extend to the poorer classes the 
 refinements of civilisation, and make them sharers to 
 some small extent in the higher quality of mind from 
 which those refinements spring. Well-lighted, well- 
 ventilated, well-cleaned, well-arranged schoolrooms, 
 with good wall -colouring, flowers, and a few works of 
 art in conspicuous places, are not only the best 
 external aids to the mere doing of the day's work, 
 they are also moral agencies. These things belong to 
 the education of influences as distinct from formal 
 instruction, and are the more potent because they are 
 \ silent. 
 
The Teaching of Religion. 2 1 3 
 
 VIII. THE TEACHING OF RELIGION. 
 
 IN the inculcation of moral duties, whether this be 
 done by the direct instruction of precept and example, 
 or by the indirect and more efficacious way of training, 
 the teacher must employ the sanctions of Religion. 
 He must early associate the authority of God with the 
 imperativeness of the Moral Law. Divine revelation 
 is not necessary to the discovery, nor the divine 
 sanction to the obligations, of morality, but both are 
 means of re-establishing and sanctifying what nature 
 and reason teach. Nay, more, such is the frailty of 
 man, and such the inherent tendency to wrong, that 
 morality requires all the support which it can draw 
 from the constant impression on the growing mind 
 that it has its first source and ultimate sanction in 
 the divine reason. To teach morality in its infinite 
 ramifications, illustrating its relations to personal and 
 social well-being, and with constant reference to the 
 God who created us and in whose hands our destinies 
 are, is the highest duty of the schoolmaster. It is 
 also that part of his national function which can alone 
 permanently give it dignity and secure for it the 
 respect of the people. 
 
 It is the idea of God that stirs the deepest ethical 
 
2 1 4 Primary Instruction. 
 
 emotion of which our nature is capable, and raises the 
 plane of human life from the moral to the spiritual. 
 And it is conspicuously in this, the greatest lesson 
 which the child can learn, that educational methods 
 intervene and insist on being obeyed. The subject is 
 too momentous to be left to the rude handling of those 
 who seem to think that the mere fact of God is all in 
 all, and the mode of presenting it nothing. The 
 earliest impressions are the strongest, and in matters 
 connected with our emotional nature this is in a 
 special sense true. The teacher must pause, therefore, 
 and consider, as he approaches the deepest recesses of 
 the young soul. He goes there to give right shape 
 to the confused sense of an all-pervading, unknown 
 power, on which foundation must be built up the 
 idea of God. This idea, let us remember, is to be to 
 the child the basis of his whole religious life. 
 
 How, then, shall we introduce the child to that 
 which must,, whether he will or not, be the founda- 
 tion of h'is whole spiritual and eternal life ? This 
 assuredly is a solemn question, and to the teacher full 
 of great responsibilities. The parent and not the school- 
 master, it is true, should lay this foundation ; but even 
 where the latter finds it laid, his religious teaching 
 must have constant reference to the work which has 
 been already begun. 
 
 In religion, as in everything else, a child can know 
 a new thing only as it stands related to things already 
 known. It has also to be remembered that things 
 abstract have to the child or the boy no significance 
 
The Teaching of Religion. 2 1 5 
 
 whatsoever : it is only in a concrete form that any- 
 thing can enter into his intelligence. Even in very 
 palpable moral duties, to speak to a child or a very 
 young boy about being just, true, merciful, and honest, 
 is, we have found, to speak to the winds. It is a 
 comparatively useless process, so far as the pupil is 
 concerned ; and at the same time it interposes between 
 him and his natural guide and instructor a multitude 
 of unmeaning words, thus cutting him off, by the 
 intervention of the barrier of the unintelligible, from 
 that candid and confiding moral relationship which is 
 his greatest -(-though unconscious) happiness, and the 
 essential condition of true moral influence in the 
 teacher or parent. That he is not to do this or that 
 particular act because the person he loves or respects 
 disapproves of it, and because it is unkind and wrong, 
 he can understand ; but it is long before he can 
 generalise these various individual acts under their 
 proper terms, and guide his conduct by the generalisa- 
 tion. If this be true in morals, how much more 
 necessary is it, in a matter so delicate and difficult as 
 early religious teaching, to connect the truth we give 
 with concrete forms, and with other things already 
 known, by which its meaning may be realised ! 
 
 Happily, the faith which has to be taught in our 
 schools furnishes us with the great fundamental truth 
 of the religious life in a form which fulfils all the 
 requirements of the most exacting method. That the 
 great unseen Power, of which the vague surmisings 
 
2 1 6 Primary Instmction. 
 
 fitfully arise in the hearts of children, is a Father 
 loving them and wishing to do them good this first 
 truth, if faithfully taught, explains the mysterious in 
 the spirit of love, and gives from the first a Christian 
 direction to those feelings and thoughts regarding the 
 Unseen, those premonitions of knowledge and faith, 
 which observation and reading from time to time 
 inevitably generate in the minds of children. If 
 this simple and gentle thought of God the thought 
 which Jesus Christ revealed to us be honestly and 
 fully rooted in the tender mind, I think we can then 
 almost afford, so far as method is concerned, to let all 
 future religious instruction take the direction which 
 the teacher's idiosyncrasies may give it ; insisting only 
 on one condition, that the abstract statement of 
 systematic truth be postponed to the biographical and 
 concrete forms in which divine wisdom has seen fit to 
 embody that truth. 
 
 The teacher must be careful in the order of his 
 teaching. He must not first instil into the unfolding 
 mind the God of law and judgment, rectifying and 
 exalting that idea afterwards by the true doctrine of 
 Christ. This is to assume that the revelation of Christ 
 regarding God, and man's relation to Him, is merely a 
 supplement to the notion of a God of law and judgment, 
 whereas it is a superseding of that imperfect notion by 
 means of a higher the notion of fatherhood and love. 
 This new idea must be made to lie at the root of the 
 idea of God in the minds of the young, His character 
 as Lawgiver and Judge being shown to arise out of, 
 
The Teaching of Religion. 2 i 7 
 
 and to harmonise with, the higher conception. When 
 afterwards enforcing religious doctrines and duties, the 
 teacher must anxiously keep in view this the fatherly 
 character of God. For a child may obey what he 
 believes to be the commands of God: he may fear 
 (Jod, and have Him often in his thoughts; but to love 
 (lot I is in the very nature of things an impossibility, 
 except in so far as he apprehends clearly that God 
 lirst loved him, and that the chief and ruling attribute 
 of the Divine Being is love. 
 
 The oral religious instruction which precedes the 
 reading of the New Testament is, in the majority of 
 schools, so far as I can discover, of the most desultory 
 and capricious kind. Now, it is the teacher's duty to 
 organise and methodise his instructions in religion, and 
 to provide milk for the babes as well as stronger meat 
 for the maturer minds of the school. So far from 
 dealing perfunctorily with the religious instruction of 
 the youngest pupils, the master should exert himself 
 specially for them, labouring to simplify truths and to 
 adapt them to their childlike conceptions. The ele- 
 vating, purifying, and harmonising ideas of Christian 
 truth should be early infused into a child's mind, that 
 they may grow there with his growth and strengthen 
 with his strength, and thereby become, unawares, a 
 constituent part of himself. They should possess him, 
 not he them. It is only by thus preoccupying the 
 infant mind at the most impressible period of its life, 
 that religion can be woven into the character, and that 
 
2 1 8 Primary Instruction. 
 
 a religious people can be reared. Hence the infinite 
 importance of a more thorough religious training of 
 infant classes a training so thorough as perhaps to 
 be possible only through the agency of separate infant 
 and initiatory departments in all our parishes, under 
 the management of qualified female teachers. 
 
 The teacher's next duty is to present Christian 
 doctrine in the richly coloured but simple language of 
 the New Testament, interesting the child personally in 
 that story of love and sacrifice which is the foundation 
 of the Christian faith, causing him to feel that it is to 
 him personally and truly a message of goodwill. 
 
 It is evident, however, that a method, however 
 admirable, may be nullified by the mode of applying 
 it. If we convert the life of Christ into a series of 
 school lessons, failing to make any pause when we 
 approach holy ground, whereby to distinguish the 
 religious lesson from others, we shall certainly do our 
 best to weaken the effect of the gospel teaching. The 
 ancient custom of using the Bible as a reading lesson- 
 book originated at a time when no other manual was 
 to be had, and is now continued merely through the 
 force of habit. We can imagine nothing which could 
 bring more genuine satisfaction to a teacher who is in 
 earnest about laying sure and strong foundations of the 
 spiritual life in his pupils, than the permission to 
 dispense with the Bible as a task-book, that he might 
 give it a distinct place of its own in the schoolroom. 
 Some progress has already been made in the with- 
 
The Teaching of Religion. 2 1 9 
 
 dravval of the Bible from the category of lesson-books. 
 It is no longer employed for the purposes of grammar 
 and spelling. It is to be hoped that the use of it as a 
 reading lesson-book will also gradually give way before 
 a clearer apprehension of the objects and methods of 
 religious teaching. The Bible should be approached 
 with solemnity, handled with reverence, and daily read 
 by master and pupils together rather as a relaxation 
 from ordinary tasks than as itself a task. In the one 
 subject of religion, if in no other, it seems to us that 
 the teacher might advantageously assume the attitude 
 of a fellow-learner with his pupils, and lay aside the 
 magisterial airs of assumed infallibility and hard 
 superiority, which too often accompany the Bible 
 lesson. How else can Christianity preserve in the 
 school its distinguishing characteristic as an exhibition 
 of divine goodwill stirring the heart to love, or retain 
 those elements of mystery, infinitude, and awe, which 
 feed reverence and call forth worship ? 
 
 The third stage of religious teaching is the cate- 
 chetical or dogmatic. This kind of teaching is 
 frequently begun at a wrong time. It is not a 
 matter of indifference that the gospel story be first 
 received into the mind of the child in all the native 
 purity, power, and charm of the form in which it has 
 been given to man. Even St. Paul gives the difficult 
 food of generalised and theoretic doctrine only to 
 those who had already heard him deliver, and that in 
 language suited to their previous habits of thought, 
 the glad tidings of great joy, peace on earth, goodwill 
 
220 Primary Instruction. 
 
 towards men. Let us follow this example, and as far 
 as possible postpone abstract dogmatic teaching until 
 the concrete dogmatic teaching of the Gospels has 
 become a possession. 
 
 The age at which abstract catechetical instruction 
 should be begun, however, is a question that cannot, 
 unfortunately, be determined solely by the previous 
 training and preparation of the pupil. The early 
 removal of children from school imposes on the 
 teacher the obligation of giving them premature 
 mastery over the form of words which embodies their 
 faith. We have at least the consolation of thinking 
 that this practice, though undesirable, is not so irra- 
 tional and indefensible as some educationists assume. 
 The teacher, in the primary, secondary, and university 
 schools alike, is constantly outrunning his pupils. 
 The conscious or unconscious exertion of the mind 
 to grasp what is a little in advance of its present 
 powers is itself a discipline. Not only so, the form 
 of sound words, whether they summarise intellectual, 
 moral, or religious truths, is itself a valuable acquisi- 
 tion. It provides a kind of mould into which the 
 growing experience shapes itself, until at last the 
 form is vitally apprehended by the mind as the true 
 and fit expression of the inner fact. It does not 
 retard, though it may not always hasten, growth and 
 maturity. Thus far the unfortunate necessity of pre- 
 mature dogmatic instruction may be fairly defended 
 on rational grounds ; but the dogmatic instruction 
 should itself be carefully graduated and simplified. 
 
The Teaching of Religion. 2 2 1 
 
 No less important than the substance and order 
 of religious teaching is fitness of manner in the 
 teacher when conducting the instruction of a class. 
 What is desiderated in every subject is truth of 
 manner, and this in handling religious topics above 
 all others. That is to say, the teacher must be felt 
 by his pupils to believe in the value of the lesson 
 he gives, and to live it. If there be this belief, the 
 outward expression of it in the eye and the uncon- 
 scious gestures will be true to the character of the 
 subject which is before the class. The hard, dicta- 
 torial, and undevotional style in which masters are 
 too often wont to give religious instruction, and their 
 awkward, unjoyous mode of conducting songs and 
 hymns, have led me gradually to the conviction that 
 the education of very young children should be con- 
 fided solely to mistresses. The man, when entering 
 on the religious lesson (if lesson it ought to be called), 
 seems to be less capable than the woman of feeling 
 the delicacy as well as the greatness of the subject, 
 and of adapting himself to these conceptions. He 
 too readily forgets that he is dealing \\ ith the emotions 
 of his pupils and these the deepest and purest 
 emotions of which human nature is susceptible and 
 that his own mental attitude should be that of calm, 
 solemnity, and reverence. 
 
 A manner in discord with the gentleness, the love, 
 the holiness, the purity, and loftiness of the sacred 
 theme, degrades and even perverts the teaching. The 
 sentiments of love, awe, devotion, purity, are the bases 
 
222 Primary Instruction. 
 
 on which must repose the superstructure of divine 
 truth, and these will hardly be stirred into activity 
 except as the reflex of what is seen by the child to 
 actuate another. The manifestation by the teacher 
 himself of these appropriate feelings evokes in the 
 pupils a sympathetic response, and secures a ready 
 ear and heart for the truths which they herald. This 
 emotional response secured, the work of the teacher 
 is more than half done : until it be secured, his work 
 is not even begun, however frequent and elaborate his 
 didactic utterances, or however exacting his dogmatic 
 demands. It is grievous to think how seldom such a 
 response is even aimed at, when we reflect on the 
 readiness with which the infant mind answers to 
 everything which touches the imagination or the 
 emotions. The golden opportunities of childhood 
 are wasted, and as years advance the heart becomes 
 less accessible. 
 
 In the survey of school methods which we have 
 now completed, we have unavoidably treated the 
 various questions which have arisen from the point 
 of view of the teacher rather than of the taught. 
 We have not endeavoured the arduous task of follow- 
 ing and unfolding the operations of the growing mind 
 in the work of its own education. The teacher will 
 not, on that account, fail to see that the methods 
 which it is the teacher's duty to employ have their 
 origin in an analysis of the mental operations of the 
 
Note on School Appliances. '223 
 
 pupil, and are to be held as valid only in so far as 
 they truly harmonise with these. The chapter on 
 General Method lays this down as the foundation of 
 educative processes. The trainer of the young incites 
 and excites to a progressive movement of the under- 
 standing and the will ; but his object in doing so is 
 simply to meet, or at most slightly anticipate, the 
 action of the young mind, which must initiate and 
 conduct the movement for itself, if the movement is 
 to be really educative. Right methods are simply 
 the right way of co-operating with the vital processes 
 of the pupil's own intelligence, with the view of 
 evoking these, and helping them to the end which 
 they are seeking. 
 
 Note on School Appliances. 
 
 No elementary school is adequately supplied with 
 apparatus which has not at least (1) A large black- 
 board affixed to the wall : (2) A smaller moveable 
 blackboard specially intended for the junior classes : 
 (3) A blackboard ruled for music : (4) A pair of 
 globes : (5) A set of maps, including a large physical 
 map of the world : (6) A numerical ball-frame : (7) A 
 supply of objects for object-lessons, etc. : (8) Coloured 
 pictures illustrative of Scripture narratives : (9) Simple 
 materials for exercises in colour and form, size, weights, 
 measures, and coins: (10) Specimens of the birds, 
 minerals, and plants of the district: (11) A few 
 works of art on the walls. 
 
.224 Primary Instmction. 
 
 School- libraries are, when they are met with, they 
 should be compulsory, composed of works \vhich the 
 children do not care to read. It is obvious that as 
 reading from the library is presumed to be a voluntary 
 act, the books in it must be attractive if the library is to 
 be of any use. A liberal supply of fairy tales, fables, 
 ballads, voyages (imaginative and real), illustrated 
 books of natural science, history, biography, and such 
 religious books as contain in themselves an interest 
 apart from the fact that they treat of religion, ought 
 to form the staple of the library. Moreover, sets 
 of books suited to the different stages of progress in 
 the school should be provided. The great mass of 
 the children of the country never heard of Jack the 
 Giantkiller, the Babes in the Wood, or Robinson 
 Crusoe ! A mind growing up with imagination so 
 starved must consolidate into something strangely 
 different from the richly-fed minds of the children 
 of the middle and upper classes. When there exists 
 a school-library really suited to the needs and desires 
 of the young, permission to take the books home may 
 be granted as a reward for lessons thoroughly acquired. 
 The school will be a brighter place for little children 
 when, the lesson once thoroughly acquired, a story- 
 book or picture-book will be put into their hands 
 to amuse, and through amusement, to instruct. Why 
 should not the teacher himself occasionally take a 
 book from the library-shelf and read a story to his 
 school ? It would relieve the monotony of his work, 
 and help to maintain friendly and pleasant relations 
 between himself and his pupils. 
 
 Sheds in which organised instruction in carpentry 
 could be given, especially in bad weather, would be of 
 great service in many ways. 
 
Note on School Appliances. 225 
 
 With respect to the choice of school text -books, 
 we would urge on the attention of schoolmasters the 
 important consideration, that the reading - books of 
 elementary schools constitute the whole literature of 
 the children of the operative classes. They should 
 keep this in mind, as well as the remarks in the 
 chapter on the Object and Method of Teaching Reading, 
 when selecting text-books for their pupils. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 CONDITIONS OF PARLIAMENTARY GRANTS 
 AND A MODEL CODE, 
 
Appendix. 229 
 
 ON THE CONDITIONS OF PARLIAMENTARY 
 GRANTS TO SCHOOLS.* 
 
 WHAT ought to be the "Conditions of the Parliamentary 
 Grant " ? The answer is one with which all, I suppose, 
 will agree the conditions should be educational con- 
 ditions. All concur in this, I presume ; but some will 
 concur only immediately to diverge in their various 
 interpretations of the answer. But I hope to arrest 
 such divergences, at least till I have laid down 
 my next proposition, which will sound, I fear, a little 
 stale : 
 
 The great object of education, in so far as it is 
 not technical, is to train and discipline intelli- 
 gence, and to train and mould the moral and 
 religious nature of man. This, of course, cannot 
 be done without giving a certain amount of know- 
 ledge, but this knowledge ought always to be 
 subordinated to the leading purpose of the school, as 
 thus laid down. 
 
 I think it follows directly from my leading pro- 
 position, that if the school is to be measured by the 
 inspector as an educational institution, it is to be 
 
 * Extracts from a Paper read at the Educational Congress held in 
 Stirling, under the auspices of the Educational Institute of Scotland, 
 3rd and 4th January 1889. 
 
230 Primary Instruction. 
 
 measured (1) by the extent to which it is a moral 
 and intellectual laboratory ; (2) by the extent to which 
 the children have acquired facility in using the 
 instruments of all subsequent self-instruction, namely 
 the three E's. (3) What shall be our third measure of 
 the school ? Assuredly this, the extent to which boys 
 and girls are retained in school so that they may get 
 the full benefit of their earlier years of instruction, and 
 the teachers the full reward of their labours. (4) The 
 school should be measured by the appropriateness of the 
 instruction. The moral and intellectual condition of 
 mind at which education aims can be obtained only by 
 exercising, and by feeding, the intellectual and moral 
 nature appropriately, and the school should accordingly 
 be measured by the extent to which the subjects of 
 instruction constitute a truly educative curriculum. 
 There are no specific subjects in education. All that 
 is needful to secure the supreme result a rational 
 mind and a good will has to be included in the 
 necessary curriculum, and to enter into every part of 
 the school in graduated order, from the infant classes 
 to the Eighth Standard. To give sixpence for this 
 and a shilling for that is to burlesque the whole idea 
 of education. 
 
 1. First, then, I have said the school is to be judged 
 by the inspector as an intellectual and moral laboratory. 
 How is he to do this (always supposing him to be 
 competent) ? Simply by sitting in the school for three 
 or four hours and seeing the various classes from top to 
 bottom do their ordinary work under their own teacher 
 or teachers. It is by the organisation of the school, 
 the ease of the discipline, the activity of the intelligence, 
 
Appendix. 231 
 
 the moral spirit you see " alive " in it, that you can 
 alone estimate it as an intellectual and moral laboratory ; 
 and these things you will never see as they truly exist, 
 except in so far as you let the school go on with its 
 ordinary work, and, above all, see the teachers teaching 
 the classes. When the teacher has taught, uninterrupted, 
 for a time, the inspector then enters into a conversation 
 with the class on the subject of the lessons. A few 
 hours' intercourse with the various classes enables him 
 to form a sound judgment. 
 
 2. The second, but subordinate proposition I laid 
 down, eonsensu omnium, was that the school was to be 
 measured by the extent to which the children had 
 acquired facility in using the rudiments of all subsequent 
 self-instruction the three E's. In applying this pro- 
 position, I part company with the teaching body, and 
 lean to the side of the Department. There must -be 
 a certain amount of individual examination here, and 
 a certain check on the payments made. But the 
 examination should be so conducted as not to seem in- 
 dividual. The child reads in his usual way, he writes 
 in his usual way, and he works sums in his usual 
 way ; the exercise in each case being, of course, pre- 
 scribed by the inspector. The inspector has a list of 
 the class before him, and he quietly notes those who 
 fall short of a reasonable standard, asking doubtful 
 cases to try a second time ; and a third time if need 
 be. If he find that 80 per cent, in a class say of 
 twenty come up to the standard, he should pass the 
 whole twenty for the grant. The four who fail are to 
 be kept in the same Standard for another year, much 
 to their own advantage ; but it does not punish either 
 the teacher or the Board. 
 
232 Primary Instruction. 
 
 " All very well/' you, the teachers, say ; " but when 
 the percentages come down we shall be compared with 
 other schools, and so Board and parents alike will 
 measure us by the percentages although they them- 
 selves lose nothing." But why should percentages 
 come down at all ? The classes have passed, the full 
 grant under the three E's has been earned, and that is 
 all anybody need know. Those pupils who have to 
 repeat their work are known to the teacher and School 
 Board clerk before the inspector leaves the school, and 
 there is no more about it. It is a quiet, friendly 
 arrangement in which the schoolmaster takes part. 
 
 For each failure above 20 per cent., however, I 
 would deduct at least twice the grant which that child 
 might have earned in that subject. Suppose five out 
 of twenty failed, the report would show a deduction 
 on account of one from the total that could be earned. 
 Even this slight amount of pressure, I know many 
 teachers will object to. But if the school is well 
 organised and well taught, why should they fear it ? 
 
 As a further check on the teacher, Sixth Standard 
 reading should be tested by unprepared passages. 
 
 3. My third proposition was, that schools should be 
 measured by their success in retaining boys and girls 
 beyond the compulsory Standard. Grants should be 
 so arranged as to encourage this. I do not discuss 
 the precise functions and responsibilities of School 
 Boards in this matter. My business now and here is 
 with the Parliamentary grants alone. If a Fifth 
 Standard can earn 17s. a head, the Sixth should earn 
 22s., the Seventh 26s., and the Eighth 30s. I would 
 put it even higher, were it not that we are entitled to 
 expect local Boards also to do their duty. I think I 
 
Appendix. 233 
 
 carry with me every educationist in Europe when I say 
 to the Department, that unless you do this, you are 
 wasting the public money. As well prune, tend, and 
 manure a young vine for the first seasons of its life, 
 and then, when a crop of grapes is about due, decline 
 to expend more tending and more manure. With 
 what result ? That your vine gives you a miserable 
 harvest of grapes. Is this good gardening ? Is this 
 economy ? 
 
 Now, if there is to be a Seventh and Eighth Standard 
 with higher grants, there must be a curriculum a 
 very flexible and elastic curriculum, but still a cur- 
 riculum. I do not wish to prepare boys for the 
 university ; I wish simply to educate the people ; but 
 to do this in such a way that promising boys and 
 girls may have a chance of rising if they have ability 
 ami power of work. 
 
 4. My fourth proposition was that, to attain the 
 ends of the school, appropriate materials for exercising 
 the intelligence and nourishing the soul must be 
 provided. Grants accordingly should be made de- 
 pendent on the provision of an adequate curriculum, 
 properly organised. 
 
 Observe now the logical outcome of the preceding 
 observations as regards the Code itself. The Code 
 would be simply a Teacher's Handbook, and an Inspectors 
 d'uide, constructed in a friendly and educational spirit, 
 not like a manual of convict-prison regulations. The 
 rule for payments would be so simple that he that 
 runs might read and understand. The Department 
 would be a kind of big and genial father to teachers. 
 The inspectors would not be merely officers of the 
 
234 Primary Instruction. 
 
 Department, not merely, as they sometimes are, 
 scholastic bagmen, carrying about their satchel of 
 samples and measuring - tape and price - list, but 
 educationists co-operating with the teacher, helping 
 him out of his difficulties, and esteemed as valued 
 professional friends. 
 
Appendix. 235 
 
 MODEL CODE. 
 
 A POSSIBLE CODE FOR PUBLIC ELEMENTARY 
 SCHOOLS. 
 
 XOTE. The following Code was printed at the end of the third 
 edition of my book ou " Primary Instruction " several years ago. 
 When this Code first appeared, some experienced educationists 
 regarded it as a " pious imagination," and smiled at my confidence 
 in it. More than one-half of it is already worked into the 
 Scottish Code. The rest will be substantially adopted in due 
 timp, I do not doubt. 
 
 INFANT SCHOOLS AND STANDARD I. AGE 5-7. 
 
 The objects of the Infant School are : 
 1. Moral and Religious Training. At this 
 period of life the child is singularly receptive, and, 
 though unstable, is open to all moral impressions. He 
 is to be trained to control passion and to practise 
 justice. Above all, kindliness and the feeling of 
 reverence are to be evoked. These ends are attained 
 by the telling of stories (without preceptively empha- 
 sising the " moral " of them), by simple songs, but 
 chiefly by the regulation of the conduct of the chil- 
 
236 Primary Instruction. 
 
 dren to each other and to their mistress, and by the 
 order and easy rule which pervade the school. They 
 cannot, by possibility, be attained by force or mere 
 law, but only by kindliness, persuasiveness, firmness, 
 and friendliness of manner on the part of the teacher. 
 The prime qualification in the teacher is a genuine 
 interest in little children. 
 
 2. The Training of the Percipient Intelligence. 
 This is attained (a) By means of Object-lessons on 
 familiar things, and the training of the children to 
 discriminate colours, forms, weights, measures, and 
 money : the weights and measures, etc., should be of 
 course seen and handled by all. (b) By teaching the 
 Elements of Heading, Writing (on slate), and Arith- 
 metic ; the arithmetic being entirely taught by means 
 of the objects in the schoolroom and the ball-frame, 
 and always as mental arithmetic with some help, at 
 least for the first year. 
 
 [The memory is strengthened by all these exercises, 
 and by learning simple verses of a moral and religious 
 kind by heart.] 
 
 Quantity. At the end of this infant period (seven 
 years of age), the child should be able to read the 
 book usually prescribed for the First Standard, copy 
 on his slate neatly a sentence of the reading-book, 
 and spell the greater number of the words in it. In 
 arithmetic he should be able to add and subtract 
 mentally and on the slate up to one hundred, and to 
 count and write up to one thousand. 
 
 Note. Singing and manual exercises and musical 
 drill will form an essential part of the occupation of 
 the infant school, and where these are not present no 
 grant will be given. 
 
Appendix. 237 
 
 STANDARD II. AGE 7-8. 
 
 Moral and Religious Training. The moral and 
 religious teaching and training must be continued pre- 
 cisely in the same way as in the infant school. 
 (Moral songs and hymns should be learned by heart, 
 and sung.) 
 
 Realistic Instruction. The object-lessons of the 
 infant school should be revised and extended, always 
 keeping within the range of familiar objects. The 
 clothes we wear, and the food we eat, will at this stage 
 suffice for the planned course. But natural objects, 
 such as flowers and stones, should be occasionally 
 introduced and examined and described by the pupils. 
 
 Language Instruction. Reading : * In addition to 
 the lesson-book, the children should be allowed to take 
 home from the school library simple illustrated story- 
 books. They will be expected to read with ease the 
 Second Standard reading-book, to spell the greater part 
 of the words in it, and to respond intelligently to an 
 examination on any lesson in it at the choice of the 
 inspector. The teacher will read stories, etc. to the 
 children. 
 
 The intelligence will be further cultivated by re- 
 quiring the children to give oral accounts of their 
 lessons daily, in class. 
 
 Writing. Writing on paper in copybooks will be 
 introduced, and writing from dictation daily on the slate. 
 Transcription exercises (of sentences in a lesson that 
 has been read) will be given as home lessons. 
 
 * Reading in any Standard means easy, audible, and intelligible 
 reading. Nothing less than this can be recognised by the Inspector. 
 
238 Primary Instruction. 
 
 Arithmetic. Measures and weights, and money, 
 will be revised and extended, always with the objects 
 present to the senses, and simple addition and sub- 
 traction, mental and on the slate, required. [The home 
 exercises should consist of a repetition of the sums 
 done in the school.] The multiplication table, up to 
 " five times " inclusive, should be thoroughly acquired. 
 The facility with which elementary exercises are per- 
 formed, not the amount professed, is at this stage the 
 essential point. 
 
 Geography. In geography, the cardinal points 
 with reference to the schoolhouse should be taught, 
 and the beginnings of geography laid by constructing 
 on the blackboard a map of the parish with the help of 
 the children. The parish, with its plains, streams, etc. 
 (in rural districts), and industries, should be taken as 
 an object-lesson, so as to give clear fundamental con- 
 ceptions of future geographical terms and teaching. 
 The county map will next be drawn. 
 
 Drawing of simple forms will be practised at least 
 twice a week. 
 
 Note for the Inspector. While requiring adequate 
 familiarity with the work professed, the inspector will, 
 above all, consider the moral spirit and the intellectual 
 activity and freedom of the class in estimating the 
 work of the teacher. 
 
 STANDARD III. AGE 8-9. 
 
 Moral and Religious Instruction. At this stage, 
 the moral and religious instruction should be con- 
 tinued in the same way as in previous Standards. 
 
Appendix. 239 
 
 Easy poems, of a literary character, should be learned 
 by heart. Pure literature promotes moral training. 
 The New Testament should not be read ; because the 
 difficulty of spelling it out gives rise to painful 
 associations with religion, and such early impressions 
 cannot easily be effaced. A selection of Bible stories, 
 simply written, might, however, be read, and such 
 scriptural doctrines taught as are naturally suggested 
 by these. 
 
 The lessons in prose and poetry of the school reading- 
 book will also suggest instruction of a moral character. 
 
 Realistic Instruction. Object-lessons should be con- 
 tinued, and should consist of the revision and exten- 
 sion of past subjects ; and to these should be added 
 object-lessons on such things as buildings, furniture, 
 houses, pen, ink, paper, chalk, pencils, and things 
 generally used by children ; also lessons on animals 
 and their uses, i.e. native animals almost wholly. 
 
 Language Instruction. (a) Reading : The reading- 
 book should be varied in its matter, and contain, 
 along with literary extracts, lessons on the objects of 
 nature. The school library, composed of simple child 
 stories and easy accounts of birds and beasts, should be 
 freely used. 
 
 (6) Oral Composition, in the form of giving a 
 consecutive account of the lesson of the day, should be 
 practised : and the children should be thoroughly 
 familiarised with the subject and predicate of a 
 sentence, i.e. the whole subject and whole predicate. 
 
 Writing. Dictation-lessons, as well as oral spell- 
 ing-lessons, should be given daily, and the children 
 required to write out at home at least five or six 
 lines of some lesson that has been read, and to add a 
 
240 Primary Instruction. 
 
 list of the words which have been found most difficult 
 in the lesson of the day. 
 
 Geography. The map of the parish should be 
 reconstructed on the blackboard, and the children 
 required to reproduce it on their slates until they can 
 do it so well that it may be demanded on paper as a 
 home exercise. The physical features of the parish 
 should be dwelt on, so that exact notions of geographical 
 terms may be acquired. Further, the general geography 
 of the world should now be taught on a large globe. 
 Transition may be made to a large map of the world 
 towards the end of the year. 
 
 Arithmetic. The multiplication table, to ten in- 
 clusive, should be thoroughly acquired ; and simple 
 division and multiplication, "first mentally and there- 
 after on blackboard and slates, should be taught. 
 The sums done in school, or a few of them, should 
 always be reproduced at home, and brought up 
 on the following day. Eapid working should be 
 practised with very simple sums in all the four simple 
 rules. 
 
 Drawing to be continued, and writing in copybooks 
 practised. 
 
 STANDARD IV. AGE 9-10. 
 
 Moral and Religious Instruction. This should now 
 be given, on the basis of the New Testament, the 
 master always approaching this subject with reverence 
 of manner. There should be no place-taking. After 
 the lesson has been read, and an oral account of it 
 given, the master will quietly and deliberately read 
 the lesson to the children, as they listen with their 
 
Appendix. 241 
 
 books shut. The Life of Christ as a whole should be 
 read, two or three simple dogmas taught, and the Ten 
 Commandments explained and learned. 
 
 Realistic Instruction. Object-lessons will now be 
 given in a more extended form, and embrace all the 
 artificial objects which contribute to the life and 
 comfort of the peasant and artisan, including foreign 
 products, and an explanation of our dependence on 
 commerce for these. Lessons on animals and their 
 uses, with the help of good diagrams, will be 
 continued. 
 
 Language Instruction. (a) In reading, prose, 
 verse, and lessons literary, didactic, narrative, and 
 naturalistic, should be intermixed, with a view to 
 cultivating in the pupil a command of variety of 
 language and idiom, and comprehensiveness of in- 
 telligence. The library books given out should be 
 of the Robinson Crusoe and Miss Edgeworth types. 
 At this, as at all stages, the children will be expected 
 to respond intelligently to an examination on the 
 lessons read, and the school reading-book must increase 
 in difficulty from Standard to Standard, and contain 
 sufficient matter. 
 
 (b) The making of sentences out of given words 
 should be practised, and the pupils taught on the black- 
 board what constitutes a sentence, for which their 
 now familiarity with subject and predicate will have 
 prepared them. As soon as possible, short stories 
 (e.g. fables of ^Esop) will be read to the children, and 
 they will be required to reproduce them on their slates. 
 
 Writing. Dictation-lessons as well as oral spelling- 
 lessons should be given daily, and the children required 
 to write out at home at least five or six lines of some 
 q 
 
242 Primary Instruction. 
 
 lesson that has been read, and to add a list of the 
 words which have been found most difficult in the 
 lesson of the day. These home exercises may now 
 be on paper with ink. 
 
 Geography. The general geography of the world 
 should be taught carefully ; and fuller, but still very 
 general, instruction given in the geography of the 
 native country, i.e. Englatfd and Scotland, always 
 with special reference to physical, industrial, and 
 commercial characteristics. (Connect this with the 
 object-lessons.) Outline maps of the native country 
 should be filled up (within narrow restrictions). 
 
 Arithmetic. Sums in the four simple rules, in- 
 cluding long division, should be largely practised. 
 Compound rules taught, and reduction of weights and 
 measures. The weights and measures themselves should 
 be again seen and handled, as in the infant school. 
 
 Drawing to be continued (following some progressive 
 series of books, and) introducing solid objects as models. 
 
 STANDARD V. AGE 10-11. 
 
 Moral and Religious Instruction. This will be 
 given in connection with the lessons read, and the 
 incidents of the school. Simple poetry of a moral 
 character to be learned by heart. The continued 
 reading of the New Testament, and the learning of 
 certain Scripture passages and of hymns by heart, is 
 the work of this Standard, along with the easier parts of 
 dogmatic catechetical instruction (where this is given). 
 
 Realistic Instruction and Nature- Knowledge. Object- 
 lessons (or lessons in common things) should be fully 
 
Appendix. 243 
 
 revised and extended, and the elements of a knowledge 
 of the heavens, of the measurement of time, and of 
 physical geography as growing out of the knowledge 
 already possessed of the parish, be now begun. Intro- 
 duction to an elementary knowledge of the human 
 body and the laws of health will be also at this stage 
 given. Realistic Instruction now passes into Nature- 
 Knowledge. 
 
 Language Instruction. (a) Reading as in Standard 
 IV., but in a more advanced book. The library books 
 should be as in Standard IV., with the addition of 
 voyages and travels. A book of history, written 
 biographically and dramatically, will now also be read 
 in school ; and the leading dates (ten or twelve at 
 most) in British history taught, with all the principal 
 events that cluster round these dates. 
 
 (b) Dictation and composition exercises as in Stan- 
 dard IV., but more advanced. The composition 
 exercise written in school should now be prescribed 
 to be re-written as a home exercise on paper. The 
 b-'^i linings of English Grammar may be attempted 
 towards the end of the year. 
 
 Geography. In geography, the general geography 
 of the world will be revised, the British Colonies 
 being now specially adverted to. The geography of 
 the native country will be revised and slightly 
 extended. Outline maps of the World will be filled 
 in. 
 
 Arithmetic. Constant practice of the compound 
 rules and bills of parcels ; and towards the end of the 
 year an introduction to the rule of three and simple 
 fractions. Accuracy and rapidity of working is to be 
 expected at this stage in the case of all ordinary sums ; 
 
244 Primary Instruction. 
 
 and daily and numerous questions should be given 
 bearing on the ordinary concerns of life. 
 
 Drawing to be continued according to a progressive 
 series of books : also from solid objects. 
 
 STANDARD VI. AGE 11-12. 
 
 Moral and Religious Instruction. Moral and 
 religious instruction as hitherto, with an addition to 
 the dogmatic portion. 
 
 Nature- Knowledge : While oral lessons on " com- 
 mon things " will not be neglected, the object-lessons 
 at this stage pass into physical geography and 
 physiography. Sufficient instruction will also be 
 given on the human body to enforce the laws of 
 health. Diagrams to be used. Lessons will also be 
 given in the nutritive qualities, and the preparation, of 
 different kinds of food. 
 
 Language Instruction. (a) Heading : A more ad- 
 vanced collection of various pieces will be read, and 
 some one continuous piece of literature read along 
 with it, such as one of Scott's poems. A variety of 
 select short poems will be learned by heart. 
 
 There will also be added a History of England and 
 Scotland, supplemented by the oral instruction of the 
 master. The dates of fifteen or twenty great events 
 or periods, including the names of one or two of the 
 greatest writers of these periods, will be required. 
 
 (b) Dictation as hitherto. Composition of historical 
 narratives and of business letters will now be required, 
 
 (c) In Grammar, ordinary parsing and general 
 analysis. 
 
Appendix. 245 
 
 Geography. Outline maps of Great Britain and of 
 the world will be filled up, and special attention paid 
 to the British Colonies. In connection with industrial 
 and commercial geography, the leading facts and 
 principles of elementary economics will be taught. 
 
 Arithmetic. The pupils will be expected to work 
 with freedom and ease ordinary questions in propor- 
 tion and fractions, vulgar and decimal ; but commer- 
 cial and industrial arithmetic must chiefly be taught. 
 [In the case of girls, model house-books of weekly 
 expenditure will be required instead of fractions.] 
 
 Drawing from objects will be required, and the 
 introduction of geometrical or mechanical drawing. 
 
 Those who are likely to remain longer at school 
 should now also profess the first stage of some foreign 
 language Latin or French. 
 
 STANDARDS VII. AND VIII. AGE 12-14. 
 
 Moral and Religious Instruction. This is best 
 conveyed by the reverent reading and explanation 
 of the New Testament in more detail than in previous 
 Standards. The Catechism will be taught and ex- 
 plained throughout. 
 
 Language Instruction. (a) Headings in English His- 
 tory (such as Green's or Creighton's). The reading 
 with intelligence, emphasis, and expression, of a book 
 of Milton, or a historical play of Shakespeare. 
 
 The study of the said book or play, with reference 
 to its thoughts, its logical sequence of development, 
 and its characteristics of style. 
 
 A piece of good literary prose (such as the readings 
 in history above named) similarly studied. 
 
246 Primary Instmction. 
 
 Evidence that the boy has read by himself, or 
 cursively with the master, one of the longer poems of 
 Scott and the greater part of Goldsmith ; or, instead 
 of these, selections from the poetry of Great Britain. 
 
 (b) The grammar and general analysis of one of 
 the books read ; and the vocables of the book 
 professed, with their cognates. (Analysis should 
 never be too detailed.) 
 
 (c) The composition of a narrative of any part that 
 may be selected by the inspector from a limited 
 period of British history, the period to be chosen by 
 the boy himself. Commercial correspondence. 
 
 (d) The second (and with the more advanced, the 
 third) stage of Latin or French. 
 
 Geography and Nature- Knowledge. Revision of 
 physical geography, and of commercial and industrial 
 geography, with special relation to economics, and 
 with continued map-drawing. Laws of health. 
 
 Arithmetic and Mathematics. Commercial arith- 
 metic and problems requiring the exercise of thought 
 in proportion (involving fractions) ; about half of 
 Euclid, Book I., or Mensuration. (Specific subject, 
 Book-keeping.) 
 
 Drawing, geometrical and from models. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 General. At every stage the pupil is presumed to be 
 familiar with all the stages that precede it. 
 
 As to History. In the first four Standards the 
 teacher will orally narrate the leading incidents of 
 
Appendix. 247 
 
 British history, reading to the pupils ballads and other 
 poems written in connection with these. In the 
 Fifth Standard a book of British history will be read, 
 the dates of only the critical events being required ; and 
 the master will here also draw on the poetry of the 
 country, e.g. when dealing with the battle of the 
 Baltic, he will read Campbell's verses ; when speak- 
 ing of Flodden, he will read Aytoun's ballad ; of the 
 Spanish Armada, he will read Macaulay's fragment ; 
 when treating of the French wars, the Wars of the 
 Roses, and the period of Wolsey, he will draw on 
 Shakespeare, and so forth. 
 
 As to Singing. It is required that singing be 
 taught in the school daily, and, after a certain stage, 
 from notation. Sewirg, knitting, and mending are to 
 be taught to all the girls, and, in the advanced stages, 
 cutting-out. 
 
 As to Home Lessons. Home lessons sJiould con- 
 sist of mechanical .work (except in the preparation 
 of the reading - lesson), or of the reproduction in 
 writing of work already done in school (orally or on 
 the slate}. 
 
 Where a school has a Ninth Standard, the instruc- 
 tion will continue the same as in the Seventh and 
 Eighth Standards, with the addition of more advanced 
 instruction in a foreign language and in mathematics, 
 including geometrical and mechanical drawing and 
 letter-writing. To these subjects a larger proportion 
 of school time will now of course be given. A more 
 scientific character will also be given to Nature- 
 knowledge. It will take the form of initiation into 
 the elements of chemistry, botany, or mechanics, 
 always with special reference to industries. 
 
248 Primary Instruction. 
 
 INSTRUCTIONS TO THE INSPECTOR. 
 
 The Department is aware that you are thoroughly 
 conversant with all the subjects usually taught in 
 schools. You have studied the principles, methods, 
 and history of education, and have yourself either 
 taught a school of your own, or been trained to teach 
 in a Normal Practising School during your proba- 
 tionary period. It is not, therefore, necessary to issue 
 detailed instructions for your guidance. It will con- ' 
 duce more to the proper discharge of your duties to 
 leave you free. You have only to be reminded that, 
 as bishops of your educational dioceses, you are fellow- 
 workers with the teachers in the education of the 
 children of the country, and that in this capacity your 
 duty is to understand them, to appreciate their difficul- 
 ties, and to act as a sympathetic friend and intelligent 
 counsellor. The teacher should hail your visit, not 
 fear it. Your duty is to co-operate with him in attain- 
 ing the ends the State has in view in instituting a 
 national system of education. 
 
 Having first acquainted yourself with the organisa- 
 tion, the instruction-plan, and general character of the 
 school you are visiting, you will, as each Standard 
 passes under your inspection, direct your attention 
 mainly to the moral spirit and intelligence of the 
 children. These you will be aided in ascertaining by 
 allowing the teacher to teach the class in your presence, 
 from a lesson selected by you, as well as by personally 
 examining. If you are satisfied with the school as a 
 whole, and with each Standard, in these essential 
 respects, you will pass the whole of each Standard for 
 
Appendix. 249 
 
 the full capitation grant, provided not more than 
 20 per cent, fail to pass in the three subjects of 
 Heading, Writing, and Arithmetic. The number of 
 failures, if below 20 per cent., will not be officially 
 communicated either to the teacher or the school 
 managers. 
 
 As to the instruction, generally, outside these three 
 technical acquirements, you will in the advanced 
 Standards accept any subject of instruction (such as 
 agriculture or the elements of a science) from the 
 master in lieu of the Code requirements, if that sub- 
 ject is taught in the spirit of these requirements, and 
 promotes the aim of the school, which aim always is 
 the intelligent, moral, and religious upbringing of the 
 young. You will estimate the quality of the teaching 
 by the practical outcome as well as by the method 
 and style of the master. 
 
 If the school be specially remarkable for the excel- 
 lence of its organisation and discipline, and for the 
 intelligent results attained, you will report it for an 
 additional capitation grant of 2s. or 4s. ; and you will 
 state the grounds of your recommendation in your 
 report to the chief-inspector of your district, who will 
 endorse your recommendation should he see fit. But 
 you will be careful to exclude from the specially com- 
 mended class those schools in which there is any 
 indication of overwork, in which play and freedom 
 are not amply provided for, and also those in which 
 the discipline is not mild and just, and does not show 
 itself to be so in the manners and bearing of the 
 children. 
 
 You will see that it is impossible for you to 
 discharge your duty to a school in the spirit of the 
 
250 Primary Instruction. 
 
 Code (unless it be a school already well known to you) 
 if you hurry your inspection, or seem to hurry it. 
 
 Should a school fall short of satisfying you in the 
 essential respects referred to above, you will, after due 
 warning, recommend a reduction of 2s. per pupil, and 
 this even though 100 per cent, should pass in Reading, 
 Writing, and Arithmetic. 
 
 Your occasional informal visits will be directed 
 chiefly to the cleanliness, ventilation, playground, 
 private offices, and general discipline of the school. 
 
 MONEY GRANTS. 
 
 There will in future be no grants for specific sub- 
 jects, as these are now embodied in the ordinary work 
 of the school. 
 
 1. The grants for the Infant Department will 
 remain as at present. 
 
 2. The grants for the various Standards will be 
 determined by capitation. The basis of the capitation 
 will be the number of children who have been in 
 attendance for not less than six months during the 
 school year. 
 
 Standard 1 14s. 
 
 Standard II 14s. 
 
 Standard III. . . . . 15s. 
 
 Standardly 15s. 
 
 Standard V -16*. 
 
 Standard VI. . . -. . 20s. 
 
 Standard VII 25s. 
 
 For Merit Grant, see Instructions to Inspector. 
 
Appendix. 251 
 
 3. For every failure beyond 20 per cent, in Read- 
 ing, Writing, and Arithmetic respectively, a deduction 
 of 10s. will be made from the total grant otherwise 
 earned. 
 
 4. The age at \vhich the pupils are presented for 
 examination does not affect the grants. 
 
 5. Where education is efficiently carried on beyond 
 the Sixth Standard, a special grant of from 15 to 
 30, according to the report of the Inspector, will be 
 made to the master personally, provided he is qualified 
 to teach the advanced subjects by being either a 
 Graduate or a Literate in Arts, or by having passed 
 an examination satisfactory to the Department. 
 Only one school in each parish will be recognised 
 for this supplementary grant, the school to be 
 selected by the School Board. Such schools will be 
 distinguished as Elementary Schools of the First 
 Class.' 
 
 DEDUCTIONS. 
 
 (a) Where singing is not taught, a deduction of 
 Is. per child will be made on the school grant otherwise 
 earned. 
 
 (I) If school libraries suitable to the various stages of 
 progress are not provided, and arrangements made for 
 the free use of the books, Qd. per child will be deducted 
 from the grant. 
 
 (c) The grant will be reduced by its excess above 
 20s. per scholar in average attendance; but the per- 
 sonal grant to the teacher [5 above] will not be 
 affected. 
 
252 Primary Instruction. 
 
 PUPIL TEACHERS. 
 
 1. Pupil Teachers will be selected by the School 
 Board from among those candidates who have passed 
 the Sixth Standard. 
 
 2. Their instruction will be in the line of the 
 Seventh and Eighth Standards, and will always include 
 Latin and Geometry, except where the teacher is unable 
 to teach Latin, in which case French or the elements 
 of some science must be professed. 
 
 3. At the end of his apprenticeship he will pass such 
 an examination in Political Geography, Map-drawing, 
 and in the outlines of British History as will enable 
 him to dispense with these subjects when he enters a 
 Training College. 
 
 4. The local inspector will require the pupil 
 teacher to report annually the books he has read in 
 English Literature (including History), and converse 
 with him regarding their contents. 
 
 ASSISTANT TEACHERS. 
 
 The Department will determine from time to time 
 those who are to be recognised as Assistant Teachers ; 
 but none shall be recognised for a longer period than 
 one year who do not hold either a Certificate of 
 Merit, or (in addition to such other qualifications as 
 may be required) an Educational Diploma from some 
 University or recognised Colleg^^cience and Arts. 
 
METAPHYSICA NOVA ET VETUSTA : A Return 
 to Dualism. By SCOTUS NOVANTICUS. (Professor S. S. 
 LAURIE.) Second Edition. 300 pp., pt. 8vo, cloth, 6s. 
 
 "I congratulate you very sincerely on the production of this remarkable little 
 book. Its results are among the best in philosophy ; at the same time that your 
 deduction of them from the simple act of percipience is at once original and 
 happy." From Dr. Hutchison Stirling. 
 
 "The book is an analysis of Perception independently undertaken, but with full 
 knowledge of, and reference to, the Kantian investigation. . . . The whole is 
 worked out with much sureness of touch and with real philosophical insight. The 
 author's knowledge and use of German thought is flavoured by a certain sturdy 
 Scotch independence as well as by an infusion of Scotch caution. . . . The book 
 makes the impression of having been written by one who has held himself at some 
 distance from the philosophical schools, and who has embodied in his work the 
 results of his mature thought. . . . Relativity (with the author) is something quite 
 different from Relatedness. . . . What is said by the author is said with admirable 
 clearness." From "Mind," October 1884. 
 
 "... As a connected reasoned body of doctrines, the explanation offered by 
 'Scotus Novanticus' constitutes a new philosophical theory. . . . By the help of 
 this versatile will-force, the writer endeavours to solve the great problems of 
 philosophy. . . . If the reasonings and conclusions are not always satisfactory, the 
 book will still be interesting to the readers of philosophy on account of the light 
 it throws on several important, points of speculative inquiry, and also for the 
 thoroughness with which the doctrines are developed and carried out." From 
 " The Scotsman." 
 
 " The anonymous work ' Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta,' by ' Scotus Novanticus,' 
 well deserves the careful attention of all who can appreciate a sustained piece of 
 reasoning. . . . The book displays much maturity of thought throughout, and the 
 author, whoever he is, possesses a complete grasp of philosophical distinctions. . . . 
 Though he works out his theory forcibly in his own way, he has evidently been 
 largely influenced by Kant and the post-Kantian Idealists, particularly perhaps by 
 Fichte. ... It may be described as a succinct but comprehensive sketch of a 
 metaphysical psychology." from " The Contemporary Revitw." 
 
 "... In the instance before us, while the subject handled is a large one, the 
 treatment it receives (notwithstanding the brevity of the book) is wonderfully full. 
 'Scotus Novanticus' wastes none of his space in rhetorical verbiage nor in wordy 
 excursions into the picturesque fields adjoining his subject proper, but confines 
 himself strictly to the province within which it lies. His style is terse yet lucid, 
 and his book, though hard reading, as it is almost bound to be from its nature as 
 from its succinctness, never fails to be interesting. ... In this little work the 
 anonymous author attempts nothing less than to trace the genesis and history of 
 our knowledge our knowledge of the outer world as well 'as of the workings of 
 mind itself. ... It would be impossible for us here to give anything like a full 
 nd explicit account of the contribution which is here offered. ' Scotus Novant ims ' 
 wastes no words, and his treatise reads like a mathematical demonstration. . . . The 
 work will well repay a careful study, and is a valuable contribution to the subject 
 with which it deals. We heartily commend it to students of Philosophy whether 
 they may be materialists or not." From " The Scottish (Quarterly) Review." 
 
 "While, as we shall afterwards point out, we consider this work a failure as nn 
 argument for Dualism, we cannot lielp congratulating the author on the product!* n 
 of a work so distinguished by subtle analysis and philosophic power. ... We say 
 >u Dualism is illogical, because in no work have we seen the activities of the mind 
 
Notices of the Press. 
 
 more clearly exhibited or their necessity for the constitution of knowledge more 
 convincingly argued. More than this, he has freed himself from the paralogisms 
 which strangled Kant when dealing with such notions as Being, Causality, and the 
 Absolute. ... It only remains to add that the style is clear, terse, and vigorous." 
 From " The Glasgow Herald." 
 
 "This is the work of a powerful and original thinker." From "The Modern 
 Review," October 1884. 
 
 ". . . . Professor Laurie's ingenious and original little book. . . . Comprehensive 
 treatise ... it abounds in admirable expositions and acute criticisms : and 
 especially indicates a clear insight founded upon accurate knowledge into the 
 insufficiency of the empirical psychology as a base of metaphysical philosophy." 
 From a "Study of Religion," by Dr. James Mdrtineau, 1888. 
 
 ETHICA, OR THE ETHICS OF REASON. By 
 
 SCOTUS NOVANTICUS, Author of " Metapkysica Nova et Vetusta." 
 
 ' ' About twelve months ago the author of this volume published a work entitled 
 1 Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta : a Return to Dualism,' in which he advanced a 
 notable theory regarding the origin and nature of human knowledge. . . . 
 
 " In the ' Ethics of Reason ' the direct influence of Kant and Hegel is especially 
 evident ; still these old elements of doctrine, as well as the terminology, are here 
 used in an independent way by a writer who elaborates a theory marked by 
 distinctive features. . . . 
 
 "To understand fully the doctrines thus propounded by 'Scotus Novanticus,' 
 his reasonings must be studied in his own expositions, and as he has reasoned them 
 out and connected the different parts into a system. All that we can say is that 
 the various branches of the subject are unfolded with ability and ample knowledge 
 of existing moral theories. . . . 
 
 "The work is the production of an original and profound thinker who is well 
 aware of the difficulties of his thesis. The argument is managed with skill and 
 dialectic power. The treatise is well entitled to the attention of students of 
 Philosophy." From " The Scotsman." 
 
 " The ' Ethica' repeats the characteristics of the ' Metaphysica,' and is an equally 
 noteworthy contribution to the determination of ultimate philosophical positions. 
 The book is not controversial in character, and is as sparing as its predecessor in 
 the specific allusions to other writers ; but we are able to feel that the abstention 
 is advised, and that the author's theory has been elaborated in full view of modern 
 discussions. As he proceeds on his own way, doctrines receive their correction, 
 amplification, or quietus, though their authors are not referred to. ... 
 
 "Enough has perhaps been said to prove that the argument deserves to be 
 studied by all who aim at clear thinking on ethical questions." From "Mind," 
 October 1885. 
 
 " As we expected, the acute and logical author of ' Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta ' 
 has followed up that work with another, in which his leading principles are applied 
 in the field of ethics. Here, as in his former work, he is very close and cogent, 
 scorning to allow himself any of the easy and rhetorical illustrations with which 
 some writers in philosophy are prone to make up their chapters. Whatever may 
 be said of his ideas, his style, it will be admitted, is one that is to be commended 
 alike for its directness, simplicity, and serviceableness. We have read the book 
 with an increasing conviction of the author's originality and power, and of the 
 benefit that his books may confer, even in this regard, on philosophical students. 
 So carefully is his main argument drawn out that we cannot find space to outline 
 it here, but must content ourselves with indicating one or two of his salient 
 positions. . . . 
 
 "The author's application of his principles to the development of the Altruistic 
 Emotions, to Law and Justice, is admirably consistent and suggestive ; though, of 
 course, in the process he has to deal somewhat severely with the definitions of the 
 moral sense, the moral faculty, and conscience, which have been given by not a 
 few writers on philosophy, ethics, and theology. Many of Kant's positions are 
 incisively criticised, and lacunas, as the author conceives, supplied. As a criticism 
 of ethical systems, no less than as a piece of dialectic, and a positive contribution 
 to ethical science, it is suggestive and thorough. We can cordially commend the 
 
Notices of the Press. 
 
 book. It will raise questions, no doubt, and answers will be forthcoming on various 
 points ; but the questioners would do well to take a hint from the author in the 
 style of answering them." From " The British Quarterly Review." 
 
 " Instead of the psychological method of inquiry formerly so much in fashion in 
 the treatment of ethics, we have here a method which is transcendental in 
 character. . . . - 
 
 " Here, as indeed throughout the volume, 'Scotus Novanticus' shows how ably 
 he enii r-undiicta process of reasoning throughout its various stages, avoiding every 
 temptation to depart from the definite line of argument which he has marked out 
 for himself. . . . 
 
 " This is an exceedingly able work. It contains much forcible writing, and shows 
 the author to possess a singular power of sustained thought. Wo admire the way 
 in which he keeps himself free from entanglement in view of side issues, and at the 
 same time is able to indicate their bearings on the main theme. For the expression' 
 of abstract thinking the style could hardly be better. It is direct, and hence 
 forcible, and, though using the language of philosophy, is free from unnecessary 
 technicalities." From " The Glasgow Herald* April 10, 1885. 
 
 " The author's mode of working out his thought may seem to symbolize his 
 ethical theory itself. The sense of efl'nrt that is a part of all moral action ends, as 
 he shows, in a sense of harmony. Now 'Scotus Novanticus' requires from his 
 iv.'idtrs a distinct intellectual effort in order to grasp his thought; but if they are 
 willing to make this effort, they are really rewarded by having in their minds an 
 idea of a coherent system which has many features of originality, and which, 
 regarded as a whole, produces (whether we agree with it or not) that sense of power 
 to contemplate the world and action from a general point of view which is cha- 
 racteristic of the philosophic attitude as distinguished from the attitude of science 
 and common sense." From, " The Westminster Review." 
 
 "This volume is characterized, we need hardly say, by all the excellent qualities 
 that distinguished our author's previous work. . . . 'Scotus Novanticus' is a 
 skilful and patient analyst of the phenomena of mind, and writes in a style that 
 conveys very clearly what he wisnes to express. It is a case of clear thought 
 mirroring itself in clear language. ... We remarked in regard to his 'Meta- 
 physica" that it read like a mathematical demonstration : we have the same to say 
 of this. 'Scotus Xovanticus' has evidently a wholesome horror of 'padding.' 
 His argument is about as condensed as it could well be. Then he is so careful in 
 the use of his terms that we run a risk of misleading our readers by employing 
 them without also giving his precise definitions of them. We refer our readers, 
 therefore, to the work itself. It will amply repay careful study, and only by 
 careful study can the argument be fully appreciated. . . . ' Ethica ' in a careful 
 study, and a valuable contribution to ethical science." from " The Scottish 
 (Quarterly) Review." 
 
 "The present treatise contains a very close discussion of the chief points in 
 debate between the different schools of moralists; and the author seems, in my 
 judgment, to be remarkably successful in harmonizing the elements of truth in 
 C.-K }|. ... It is not possible here to do more than single out a few points from a 
 book which rewards a careful study." From " Tlw Contemporary Review." 
 
 ON THE "METAPHYSICA" AND "ETHICA" 
 TOGETHER. 
 
 " There is nothing absolutely new in [Dr. Martineau's] doctrine [as to necessity 
 of conflict, etc.]. . . . It has been admirably expounded in a rei-ent volume of great 
 force of thought and scientific precision of analysis, under the title of ' Ethica, or 
 the Ethics of Reason.' This volume bears to be by ' Scotus Novanticus,' author of 
 a preceding volume entitled ' Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta.' Both volumes are 
 marked by much vigour and lucidity, grasp of philosophic distinctions, and 
 capacity of following and combining threads of thought to their end. . . . We 
 have pleasure in recommending them to the attention of all students of Philo- 
 sophy." From " The Edinburgh Review." 
 
 " Das erste dieser beiden eng zusammengehorigen Biicher desselben ungenannton 
 Vcrf. (des Prof. S. 8. Laurie) lasst sich als eine Phenotnenologie des Geistes behufs 
 der Constituting einer erkenntnisstheoretischen Mctaphysik bezeichnen, die von 
 
Notices of the Press. 
 
 Knntischen, streng rationalistischen Gesichtspunkten ausgehend, sich von da mit 
 Hiilfe weiterer an Fichte und Hegel erinnernden Elemente zu einer vollstandigen. 
 eigenthiimlichen Ansicht der Sache erhebt." 
 
 " In der Behauptung der Idee der Personlichkeit steht der Verf. durchaus auf 
 Kantischem Boden ; sein Streben 1st aber die theoretische und praktische Seite der 
 Vernunft einander moglichst zu nahern, um eben aus ihr als einem einheitlichen 
 Princip eine vollstandige systematische Erkenntnisseinheit zu deduciren, wobei er 
 sich dem absoluten Idealismus der nachkantischen deutschen Philosophie anna- 
 hert. Das Unternehmen des 'Scotus Novanticus' kann als einer der achtbarsten 
 Versuche unserer Zeit, in Ankniipfung an die durch Kant begonnene philosophische 
 Bewegung zu einer, mehr als bisher geschehen ist, abschliessenden Form eines 
 speculativen Systems zu gelangen, betrachtet werden." C. S. (PaoFESsoR SCHAAR- 
 SCHMIDT). From " Die philosophische Monatshefte," xxii. 6, 7. 
 
 " . . . . deux Merits regents fort remarquables sign^s du pseudonyme de ' Scotus 
 Novanticus.' Ce sont des essais fort inge'nieux de conciliation entre les me'thodes 
 objective et subjective applique'es a la recherche des origines de la connaissance et 
 de la loi morale." M. G. ROLIN-JACQUEMYNS. From "La Revue de Droit inter- 
 national." 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE : LONDON AND EDINBURGH. 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES ON EDUCATIONAL 
 SUBJECTS. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 HANDBOOK TO LECTURES ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Third Edition. J. THIN. 
 
 THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER, AND OTHER 
 EDUCATIONAL PAPERS. 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH AND Co., London. 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 
 JOHN AMOS COMENIUS. 
 
 Third Edition. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 THE RISE AND EARLY CONSTITUTION OF 
 UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH AND Co. 
 APPLETON, New York. 
 
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