Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/86

68 The setting of appropriate and faultless copies on the Blackboard every day is an additional burden too hard to be borne. If such an infliction were imperative it would end in setting most hurried and inferior copies, and in frequent undesirable repetitions of the same copy, the writing thus degenerating to an alarming degree.

Not only will it thus hamper our already restricted action and further weaken our already impaired teaching power, but its effect in large schools will be both unequal and oppressive, for usually there are some of the teachers who cannot write a copy sufficiently excellent to serve as a model, hence the strain upon the best writers will prove not only burdensome but conducive to no small amount of irritation, or at least to anything but good feeling and harmonious co-operation. On the other hand the pupils themselves are seriously endamaged by this plan of Blank Book writing. Can juveniles imitate a copy on the Black Board at a distance of from twelve to thirty feet as readily, easily, and as perfectly, as they can a copy not three inches from their penpoint? No one will deny that it is very much easier to facsimile a writing or drawing copy from the book, size for size, than to imitate by reducing the large sized copies on a blackboard at a considerable distance from the pupil. Consequently the Minimum of Imitation is a feature peculiar to the Blank Book System and it is no answer to say that this Black Board work will help the pupil in Drawing. Writing is of too great importance to take the Subordinate position of handmaid to Drawing. Quite the reverse. Drawing is admittedly the handmaid to writing and will take care of itself.

The difficulties thus thrown in the way of young beginners undoubtedly protract the final issue by retarding the pupils' progress. Possibly the opponents of Headline Copy Books have overlooked the great loss of time to the children that ensues from the adoption of Blank Books. With conscientious pupils this loss is serious indeed and with careless children the loss, though in a different way, is greater still. An honest child will repeatedly and continually stop to look at his Blackboard Copy, his rate of progress is therefore relatively abnormally slow. A heedless child by