his knowledge. It will, for instance, add greatly to the teacher's power of interesting his class and of impressing facts upon them if he knows something of ancient history, of the old power of Egypt and Assyria, of Babylon, Persia, and Greece, of the great migrations of the human race, of the old civilization of Mexico and Peru. How much more likely is a child to remember the features of India whose imagination has been impressed by vivid accounts of Alexander's invasion of the Punjaub, of the Moguls, the gradual encroachment of the British traders, the victories of Clive and Wellesley, the Sepoy Mutiny, and other stirring incidents connected with our rule in India. How much more interesting will the steppes of Central Asia be if his master can tell him something of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. By treating geography in this style, he will make them connect every land with its past and present inhabitants; bringing to bear a double force of association and imagination. A child so taught no sooner hears or reads of any country than he recalls some memorable event, some famous hero, something that he daily sces or handles, or some natural feature of interest. The above may be an ideal sketch, but it is no bad thing for a teacher to have always before his mind a high ideal at which to aim. CHAPTER V. 1. HISTORY.-2. COMMON THINGS.-3. DRILL. 1. History -4. MUSIC. IF the teacher's time will be wasted unless he can induce his scholars to prepare the details of geographical knowledge at their own homes, much more will it be so if they do not get up the bare facts and dates of History out of school hours. But unless the teacher read all he can of the period which the children are studying, his lessons will not be such as to encourage children to do this. In dealing with the early history of Britain, he should draw vivid pictures of the appearance, manners, dwellings, and religious rites of the ancient Britons, of the swamps and forests which made the climate so wet and gloomy. In coming to the Roman invasion he will give them such descriptions as he is able to glean of that marvellous people. He will give them some idea of Roman houses, dress, and art; their roads, camps, &c.; will interest his class in the various efforts of the Britons to stave off defeat, their gradual acquiescence in complete subjugation, and the helpless state to which they were consequently left after 350 years of Roman occupation. He may illustrate the story by the state of modern savages under a European conqueror, as in New Zealand, South Africa, North America, and elsewhere. Lessons previously given on the East Coast of England will have prepared the scholars' minds for others on the piratical hordes of Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Norsemen, swarming westwards across the North Sea, up Forth, Tweed, Tyne, Tees, Humber, Wash, Thames, and other openings into the defenceless country. There are now many good treatises (such as Green's History of the English People) in which the history of the past may be so studied as to enable a student to trace the development of the present. A teacher should study these, and endeavour to interest children in the main facts and turning-points of history, instead of loading their memories with barren lists of dates and dynasties, battles and butcheries. Unless he can do this well he will do better to leave the subject untouched. 2. Common Things. Children above seven years of age, unless it may be in model schools attached to training colleges, seldom if ever receive systematic instruction in what for want of a better term may be called Common Things. There is no doubt, however, that it would be a great boon were such instruction regularly and systematically given. Such lessons, besides supplying useful and much-needed information, might be so given as to be also a valuable means of education. They would moreover be within the reach of many sensible teachers who yet lack the higher gifts required for teaching geography or history really wełl. There would then be a continuity now often lacking in a child's education. In the Infant School he would receive elementary teaching in such of the simpler phenomena of daily life as he is able to understand. In the senior departments he would have more advanced lessons on the same things, and as he grows older the range of subjects would include such knowledge as is necessary to the comfort of home life. Thus a girl leaving school at the age of twelve should be a good needlewoman, able to mark, mend, and make her own and her brother's underclothing. She should know the uses and prices of common clothing materials, and the most economical way of cooking simple food. This would tend to remove the reproach that our lower classes are the most wasteful and fastidious in the world. Systematic instruction should be given to both sexes on the laws of health, and on such parts of animal physiology as are needed for an intelligent knowledge of those laws. The necessity and means of airing sitting and bedrooms should be brought forcibly home to the poor; so too should the duty of cleanliness, not merely of hands and face, which they will have picked up by sheer habit in school attendance, but of the whole skin, as also of clothes and dwellings, with the reasons which recommend it, and the penalties with which Nature visits neglect of her sanitary laws. Boys should have special instruction in elementary physics, so as to understand something of the forces with which they will have to deal. The teaching should be such as will tend to implant in them a sense of their ignorance and a desire to learn more as they grow older. Thus the action of syphons, pumps, screws, inclined planes, levers, wedges, wheels, axles, and pulleys; dew, rain, hail, frost, clouds, ice, snow, winds, thunderstorms,- —are all subjects of which a good teacher will be anxious to let his boys know something definite before they leave school for work. Treatment of horses, cows, pigs, dogs, and generally kindness to animals, should be taught, and it will be well if lessons be given on labour, wages questions, providence, and thrift. Both sexes should be taught the proper treatment of common accidents, burns, scalds, clothes taking fire, cuts, bruises, drowning. Good reading-books will supply the necessary materials for lessons on all these subjects. But each teacher would do well to draw up some graduated scheme of instruction, so as to secure the utmost possible advantages to all his scholars, and to induce parents to prolong their children's stay at school, in the assurance that the time there spent will have been time well spent, even for the mere purpose of money-earning in after life. 3. Drill. A few minutes at each meeting of the school may be judiciously spent in calisthenic exercises or drill, especially in towns, and in cold weather everywhere. In many boys' schools such instruction is regularly given by a drill sergeant, but it is no less important that girls, who are less likely to develop their frames and strengthen their limbs by boisterous games, should be exercised by their own teachers more frequently, and for fewer minutes at a time. Many of the exercises commonly taught by drill instructors are eminently suitable for girls. The following, not given in any manual, will be found useful in school time because it can be practised by children standing in close order, and is calculated so to bring into play all the muscles of the chest as in a few minutes to make the frame glow with warmth. Doubling his fists, let every child raise to his chin his two forearms and press them together so closely that both elbows and little fingers touch, then turn each forearm round so that thumbs and elbows touch, after which each arm must be forced backward till the elbows press the sides and the knuckles are in a line with the shoulders. It will be found difficult at first to make children force their elbows into contact in front, but this is essential to the value of the exercise. 4. Music. Mr. Hullah states that children under six have been taught to sing simple tunes at sight in three months by about seven lessons of twenty minutes duration, eked out by an occasional five minutes. This statement, coupled with the well-ascertained fact that none find singing at sight so difficult as those previously accustomed to sing by ear, ought to encourage capable teachers to train their youngest scholars to read music, and thus to supply them with the means of relieving the sameness and weariness of their after lives by a refined and refining enjoyment, and one which will tend to keep them from gross tastes and coarse amusements. CHAPTER VI. NEEDLEWORK. NEEDLEWORK should occupy the first hour of afternoon school. Out of five hours one should be devoted to knitting. Special pains should be taken to see that every girl has clean hands, and that no time be wasted either in setting to work or afterwards. The hints given on class management must be strictly followed, for bad discipline is not less fatal to progress in this than in other lessons. Children's intelligence should be developed by questions on the reasons for using different stitches and materials for different garments. Reading aloud during needlework is not desirable, as the teachers will be constantly giving instructions on some portion or other of the work, and the time allotted to the subject in school hours is too short to admit of anything likely to divert attention. Oral lessons 1 on needlework should be given in the same manner as oral lessons on any other subject. When a new stage of the subject, stitching or gathering for instance, is required to be taught to any class, the teacher will draw up her notes and give the lesson in the ordinary way. When the practical part of the subject is going on, the Black Board will be placed in front of the class, with the rules of that portion of the subject in which the class is engaged written down. If on going 1 Oral lessons will be much facilitated by use of Griffith and Farrau's Demonstration Frame. |