Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/81

Rh usually because the person is inclined to become a machine, and a well-constructed machine is better than a poor one. The few so specially gifted as not to need so much detail and drill suffer no permanent injury by the temporary restraint of their powers of independent action. The habits formed in the thorough training school will but aid their steps into new paths in the wide field beyond its walls. To the careful, unremitting drill of her method and practice school work is largely due the fact that the Oswego Normal School has turned out so large a product of successful



teachers as compared with her production of mere talkers and essay writers. No one else deserves so much credit for this as Miss Cooper, The maxims, The idea before the word, The concrete before the abstract, One step at a time, Never tell a child what he can find out for himself, were constantly applied by her as the plumb-line and try-square to test all work. Her method of inculcating principles and teaching the art of questioning was philosophical. The student was required to write out a series of logical questions and answers for drawing out the ideas to be taught; not once, but daily for twenty weeks, in a series of graduated lessons in each of the subjects to be taught in primary