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young children.

These exercises properly belong to the infant school. They occupy and refresh the jaded mind, while giving facility to the unpractised fingers, and accuracy to the vague and undisciplined infant eye. To this extent Drawing is in reality a timesaver, and therefore constitutes no exception to the general condition of its introduction already specified.

History last and least claims attention in the elementary school.

So much for the lessons to be drawn by the schoolmaster from the chief of the inevitable limitations under which he works. But I cannot leave the subject without again adverting to the most serious limitation of all-the habits of life in the homes from which the children daily come, and the lesson which the teacher should draw from them. It will be observed that, next. to religious instruction and the acquisition of a certain facility in the three main technical subjects of the school, I have been guided in giving precedence to other topics by their moral relations, because the moral purpose in forming character must always maintain a strict ascendency over the intellectual. The latter serves man in this life, and can be at best only the basis on which his intellectual progress elsewhere can rest; the former is the man himself, his personality and will, without which he is nothing in this world, and apart from which he can be nothing hereafter. Nor does the will ever fail

to justify its claim to supreme attention in the work of education, even in its relation to the understanding. For the most superficial observer must have noticed that a vigorous will sends a stream of clearness, perspicacity, and force into the operations of even an ordinary intellect, and is thus a constant source of real discipline. The necessity of this supreme regard to the moral aims of the school is, however, mainly forced upon us by the consideration of the domestic influences under which so large a proportion of the children live. The frequent wrangling, the ungracious demeanour towards each other, the careless ignoring, or what is even more common, the rude repression, of the gentler sensibilities of the young, are sufficient in themselves to divert the genial current of a young child's life into a hard and stony channel. To these demoralizing influences we have to add the too common disregard of cleanliness, decency, and order, the perpetual domestic struggle for mastery, determined ultimately by brute force alone, instead of the considerate command and eager submission which are the fruit of a paternal authority resting on moral superiority, and of a filial obedience prompted by respect and sustained by affection. If this be a fair summary of the counteracting agencies limiting, if not overturning, the teacher's work in the mass of the pupils' homes, the lesson which it enforces is the necessity of giving even exaggerated importance in the school to the cultivation of the feelings and imagination of the young, and of

those ready civilities and mutual courtesies which do so much to confer happiness and dignity on the life of man. Here, again, the reading-books of the school will be found a useful auxiliary to the teacher, if, while furnishing the means of necessary discipline and instruction, they make provision for the starved imagination and repressed sensibilities of the children of the poorer classes.

Enough has been now said, by way of suggestion at least, on the lessons to be drawn from the limitations under which the primary teacher does his daily task; the result of all which is that he must confine his work within very narrow limits, and at the same time overrule it to certain moral and intellectual educative ends.

Nor is the result to which we have been led such as to discourage the ardent schoolmaster; for although he is excluded from such a choice of educational implements as might most efficiently promote the theoretic idea of the school-the Formation of Character-he is yet supplied with instruments good enough for the attainment of his purpose, if they be rightly used. The right use of these is such a use as will coerce them into submission to the ultimate educative purpose of his work. The consideration of this brings us to Methods of Teaching. For, having pointed out the subjects into which it is imperative that the teacher should throw his main strength, it becomes necessary to show in what way he is to regulate and apply that strength in

the narrow field open to him, with a view to train his pupils to those good habits of the intelligence and the will which constitute the sum of his professional task.

METHODS OF TEACHING.

THE CONCURRENCE OF GENERAL METHOD AND PARTICULAR METHODS.

A method is a way towards the attainment of an end. The general method on which all education proceeds we have already spoken of. Our duty now is with the particular methods whereby certain special ends may be best attained. For the schoolmaster, inasmuch as he is precluded, by the circumstances under which he works, from selecting the materials of his craft with sole reference either to the ultimate educative end which he has in view, or to the best conception of general method, is driven to consider the question, whether it be possible to teach the subjects to which he is limited in such a way as to make them contribute directly to his ultimate purpose, the formation of a good intellectual and moral habit, and to bring the expedients he adopts within the range of philosophic method; and all this without sacrificing the technical acquirement which it is his immediate business to communicate.

In other words, the schoolmaster is forced to consider the particular method belonging to cach particular

subject of instruction in its relation to general method; the particular end being the communication to the pupil of a certain power over a specified subject (whether it be reading, writing, or arithmetic) as opposed to the general and ultimate end of education. The particular method which the teacher is in search of is the most sure, sound, effectual, and therefore the most easy and rapid way of communicating the required power. Manifestly, the particular method which has reference to a specific subject, and the general method which has reference to education in the general sense, are not of equal authority in the eyes of the enlightened schoolmaster. Where they conflict, or, I should rather say, seem to conflict, the latter is paramount. But as the general purpose of education can be attained only by the active exercise of the intellectual and moral powers of the pupil in accordance with their natural laws of operation, so it will be found that the particular purpose of instructing him in some specific subject cannot possibly be attained in any way so sure, sound, easy, and rapid, as by that which is in accordance with the same laws. Thus, happily, the particular method which has reference to each separate subject of instruction, and the general method of education, which contemplates solely the development and discipline of the mind, will be found to be fundamentally one and the same. The truth of this will appear in the course of ascertaining and stating the best methods to be employed in teaching the various special technicalities of the primary-school curriculum.

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