Report Volume 24 - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1870 Excerpt: ... school-boy, with a nature so complex, so pliable, whose impressions received expire not with the term. It is wrong, radically wrong. It may be answered that Normal schools do not create ability. True, but they call it out and give it direction; they develop tact on the part of the teacher for leading and instructing a child; they unify the system of instruction through a state, and tend to make the textbooks used uniform. What we want in our teachers is not only tact and ability, but we want that training that shall give direction to effort. Efforts are commendable, but they may be misdirected, and their force wasted, and perhaps worse than wasted for want of skill. No bungling hand can make fine and proper impressions. In visiting schools I have been struck with the inability of the scholar to apply the knowledge gained. Many scholars have studied grammar several terms, and yet have not seen any truths therein taught that direct how to read, write and speak the English language correctly. They are utterly innocent of having attached any significance to the study. A great amount of time is devoted to the study of arithmetic, and yet its principles are too rarely mastered. At every step to be taken the scholar is mastered--he too seldom masters; his resources are his teacher, not himself. After the youthful scholar has mastered his letters and begins to advance in the sciences, his curiosity should be skillfully excited, and his reasoning faculties artfully drawn out; he should be questioned, and allowed and induced to question. If every principle approached is mastered as it should be, the growth of the mind keeps pace with the body; and as the scholar advances still farther in the sciences, his boyish curiosity soon deepens into love of research and inves...