Page:The education of the farmer.djvu/27

 practical teacher what I mean by a really useful method of teaching. The great defect of commercial education, as commonly practised, is the want of a sufficient amount of good oral teaching, and especially of teaching by question and answer. Many of the old-fashioned trade school-books are expressly got up with this view, to save the master time and trouble; a definite lesson to be learnt by heart and said to an usher being the great desideratum. But the parents must forgive me if I make the remark that this is, to a great extent, their own fault; if they will grind down the teacher of their child to the lowest farthing of remuneration, and expect the master to produce a certain show of learning in twelve months, what can be the result but that the master must engage assistants as cheaply as he can, and that he must teach by rote if he is not allowed time for mental training? Do not let me be supposed, however, to speak slightingly of rote and of routine; there is no good education without them: but they are not the whole of education. The exercise of the memory by learning by heart, the habit of learning rules before they are understood, with a view to apply them and to learn gradually to understand them, is all founded on common sense, that is, on a knowledge of human nature wrought out by the experience of ages.

But two points are essential to the success of the old methods. First, as to what is learnt by rote, either it should be definite and practical like the multiplication table, the accidence of the Latin Grammar, and lists of names and dates, which if not learnt by the young, will never be learnt at all; or else the stores laid up in the memory should be intrinsically excellent and beautiful in themselves, a possession for ever, like the Psalms of David or beautiful poetry.

The second point is the frequent application of what is learned. Facts and rules committed to memory must be made living by intelligent application as a means of calling out the reasoning powers; on the other hand, rules which depend on processes of reasoning within the boy's apprehension should be proved first and learnt by heart afterwards, and then rendered familiar by practice.

What is especially required in the middle ranks is a power of judging of quantities, weights, measures, percentages, profits, losses, and of reasoning correctly on such subjects as come in the natural course of business. It is beyond a doubt that success in business and the mastery of those subjects which are useful in after life depends on the strength of the powers of observation and judgment generally, and not on the previous acquisition of formulae or technical rules, though these in their proper place have their value. The fact is, a man should make his own formulæ