Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/72

 56 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

reviews ; only geniuses were expected to master the tasks when first set, — and what did it matter? For each year's additional maturity would clear up a por- tion, at least, of the mysteries of the previous year, and in due time the pupil would graduate from the common school with a very fair acquaintance with the branches taught. But the plan was an absolute failure unless the pupil re- mained in school until the puzzles in arithmetic, the riddles in grammar, and the facts in geography were solved or arranged.

New Hampshire is suffering beyond estimate to-day because the same plan, to a considerable extent, is followed in altered circumstances. This may be disputed, and we shall be pointed to the array of primary arithmetics, geogra- phies, language lessons, and elementary readers ; but a book does not necessarily teach, any more than a plough necessarily turns a furrow. We claim that these inherited methods of teaching, which availed fairly well under the condi- tions we have described, are constantly used in spite of the silent protest of the primary book in the teacher's and scholar's hands. For example, in our State figures are generally taught before facts in number, the forms of words before their meaning, rules before principles, chronologic history before details of events ; in other words, the teaching is analytic instead of synthetic, and this was the characteristic of the teaching of fifty years ago. Once it mattered little if a boy called words until he was in his teens ; if percentage was jug- glery and English grammar a guess or the facts of geography were independ- ent ; some strong-willed, enthusiastic master would put life into dead word forms, would show that there was a beautiful system to percentage, that English grammar had fixed laws, that the facts of geography were interdependent. The pupil had only to wait, and if the master did not come, the endless re- views would reveal to him most of these facts

The want of our State to-day is a high grade of elementary instruction. Three quarters of the pupils of the graded schools, and a painfully large per cent, of those who attend the ungraded, leave before they are fifteen. The demand for child labor in our State is large and constantly increasing. Can the wasteful method of a generation ago be continued to-day? Follow it and where is the child at fifteen ? He leaves school with nothing fixed, for the clearing up term of the old system has not yet come to him. He cannot read understandingly, nor can he clearly express himself orally, or on paper. What is the remedy for this? Professional training. By this I mean, first, the study of the development of each subject ; the teacher must learn in what order the mind in childhood grasps number, history, and geography ; how in reading it grows into a recognition of the idea, the thought, and the thought paragraph ; in other words, that beautiful develop- ment of each study which chords with the laws of mind growth, and which makes of teaching a science. Can this development be learned by prac- tice? Geniuses learn in this way, for they alone can criticise themselves. Is there anything more pitiable than to see the strong man or woman ignore the thought stored in books and to be won at the schools, and waste years in de- veloping a subject de novo? If this development is to be learned, where can it be gained better than in a training school ? Can it be acquired by observa- tion ? The untrained teacher cannot observe ; he cognizes results, but does not understand causes. He rarely sees the method ; he sees only the mode. But this knowledge of the development of subjects is not teaching, although an indispensable preparation for it. Teaching is leading, and he who leads wisely is a good teacher. Now leadership in the ungraded school, with its small classes, was difficult enough ; but what shall we say of the folly which expects mere girls, just from the high school, to lead classes of forty? Enthusiasm cannot do this, it is as apt to be a destructive

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