Chapter I: Preface

The views contained in this volume are the result of a prolonged and somewhat varied professional experience. This experience includes the training of more than five thousand young men and of nearly one thousand young women, a large portion of them for the office of teachers; and it has been gained in College, in Boarding School, in a city High School, and in a State Normal School. In all this prolonged and varied experience, I have constantly put myself in the attitude of a learner, and my aim in the present volume is to place before the younger members of the profession, in the briefest and clearest terms possible, the lessons I have myself learned. Beginning with the question, What is Teaching? and ending with the wider question, What is Education? the book will be found to take a pretty free range over the whole field of practical inquiry among professional teachers. The thoughts presented are such as have been suggested to the writer in the school-room itself, while actively engaged either in teaching, or in superintending and directing the instruction given by others. These thoughts are for the most part purposely given in short, detached chapters, each complete in itself. Such a method of presentation, though less imposing, seemed to have practical advantages for the reader too great to be neglected for the mere vanity of authorship. Often one can find leisure to read a chapter of five or six pages on some point complete in itself, when he might not feel like reaching it through an intervening network of connected and dependent propositions. At the same time, it should be observed, the topics though detached are not isolated. There is everywhere an underlying thread of connection, the whole being based upon, if not constituting, a philosophy of education.

CONTENTS.

I. What is Teaching? II. The Art of Questioning III. The Difference between Teaching and Training IV. Modes of Hearing Recitations V. On Observing a Proper Order in the Development of the Mental Faculties VI. Teaching Children what they do not Understand VII. Cultivating the Memory in Youth VIII. Knowledge before Memory IX. Power of Words X. The Study of Language XI. Cultivating the Voice XII. Eyes XIII. Errors of the Cave XIV. Men of One Idea XV. A Talent for Teaching XVI. Teaching Power XVII. Growing XVIII. Loving the Children XIX. Gaining the Affections of the Scholars XX. The Obedience of Children XXI. Rarey as an Educator XXII. A Boarding-School Experience XXIII. Phrenology XXIV. Normal Schools XXV. Practice-Teaching XXVI. Attention as a Mental Faculty, and as a Means of Mental Culture XXVII. Gaining the Attention XXVIII. Counsels: 1. To a Young Teacher; 2. To a New Pupil; 3. To a Young Lady on leaving School; 4. To a Pupil on Entering a Normal School XXIX. An Argument for Common Schools XXX. What is Education?

IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM.