Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/256

248 I remember working, with another boy, through many long winter evenings, by fire-light, on the "hard sums" in Walsh's arithmetic, because our teacher, who could not or would not work them, made us believe that we were "right smart at figures," and that it would be infinitely to our credit to have it said at the examination that we worked every problem without the teacher's aid. We made our own keys. We not only solved every problem but wrote it out neatly and elegantly in a manuscript prepared for the purpose. This is the only true method of success.

Who needs a key to common arithmetic? If any, speak, for him have I offended. If the poor blind guide who affects to keep school, and does not teach it, can not solve such problems as are necessary to fit men for ordinary business, there are always found bright boys in every school who can do the work for him.

In the same advertising pamphlet before quoted I find nine readers, constituting "Sargent's Series of Readers." If but one series existed, we might be content to bear the burden with uncomplaining patience, but the number of these series is legion, and like Greeks and Trojans they maintain a ten years war with one another. The very recommendations which urge their respective claims would make a respectable library. Every series contains five or six volumes. Thirty years ago one reader and one spelling book satisfied the wants of common schools, high schools and academies. Murray's English Reader with Webster's Spelling Book were the only leading books I ever used in the town school and academy. When I became a teacher, Porter's Rhetorical Reader was generally substituted for Murray's. These were excellent books, and they have never been surpassed in the excellence of their selections. When once read, they were read again, till most of the finest passages from the old English authors were learned by heart. The educational power of such books cannot be over-estimated. They furnish the current maxims and apt quotations of practical life. Now, as soon as the stories, dialogues, humorous narratives and political orations, which crowd the pages of modern text-books, have been once read, the prurient fancy of the learner, like Oliver Twist, asks for more, and a second reader is furnished. The great objection to one book is that they have read it till they are weary of it; and yet not one pupil who uses the book can read with the best expression and emphasis one single piece of the selections, or give the rhetorical rules fur emphasis, cadence, accent, pitch and melody of a single paragraph. Elocutionists, who astonish the unsophisticated with their oratorical skill, practice upon one piece for months, possibly for years, before they venture to read it in public for criticism. Repetition is the law of success in teaching any art or science.

The great defect in our diversified culture is the want of certain information. We know a little of many things, but have not much definite knowledge of anything. It is in vain for pupil or teacher to exclaim: "I know, but can't tell." No such mental condition is possible. If a man knows, he can tell. Clear conceptions are not, like farewell emotions, too deep for utterance. Hence, it is better to master the first book before we pass to the second; for it is as true of the kingdom of knowledge as of the kingdom of grace: "Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance." Books are now changed so often as to tax the memory of the pupil to tell what subjects he has studied or where he first heard of them; and they tax the purse of the parent still more to pay for them. How are the poor to be furnished with books? Where the books used in town schools arc multiplied by tens and scores, people of limited means cannot supply large families with the mental food required without abridging their material food. Greenleaf's popular sesies of mathematics numbers ten volumes. In teaching arithmetic two only are needed; all beyond this is a mental and pecuniary encumbrance. With Colburn's Intellectual Arithmetic and some good manual of written arithmetic thoroughly studied and understood, any