LECTURES ON TEACHING DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DURING THE LENT TERM, 1880, BY J. G. FITCH, M.A. ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER TO THE LATE ENDOWED SCHOOLS LB1025 (cl •F55 1897 HARVARD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION MONROE C. GUTMAN LIBRARY Press of J. J. Little & Co. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. ALTHOUGH eminent writers in both hemispheres have produced works on teaching of superior merit, it must be admitted that the literature of pedagogy is still in its infancy. There is no standard authority, as in law or medicine, to which all teachers can refer and on which they can rely. Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain have written excellent books on the theory of teaching; but they have said little or nothing on the practice of teaching-hardly one word that would aid the young beginner in organizing and managing a school. Many able instructors in the United States, among whom may be mentioned Wickersham and Payne, have done good service in the cause of education by writing works of great value,works more practical than any produced on the other side of the Atlantic except the work entitled Lectures on Teaching by J. G. Fitch. -- Teachers everywhere among the English-speaking people have hailed Mr. Fitch's work as an invaluable aid for almost every kind of instruction and school organization. It combines the theoretical and the practical; it is based on psychology; it gives admirable advice on everything connected with teaching, from the furnishing of a school-room to the prepara tion of questions for examination. Its style is singularly clear, vigorous, and harmonious; so that notwithstanding the dryness of the subject, even the layman can read it with pleasure and profit. Some one has said that it requires as much ability to govern and instruct a district school with justice and wisdom as it does to govern a State; and this thought must have been in the mind of Mr. Fitch when preparing his great work on teaching. His ideal schoolmaster must be a man of rare qualifications, mental, moral, and physical; he must be the equal of any governor in the world. Mr. Fitch in his requirements for good teaching honors the profession. He does not treat it as a piece of job-work to which any half-educated person may turn his hand, but as a professional calling, which, according to Edward Everett, requires learning, skill, and experience. Mr. Fitch has avoided the mistake made by many writers on education who have devoted their attention to a special department. He has neglected nothing. From the Kindergarten to the higher branches taught in the common-school, he has touched upon every department of instruction, manifesting a thoroughness and comprehensiveness of grasp indicative of careful thought and wide experience. Teachers and parents, as well as those just beginning to teach, would find it exceedingly profitable to make Fitch's Lectures on Teaching a sub ject for close and repeated study. June, 1885. PREFACE. IN 1879 the Senate of the University of Cambridge, in com pliance with numerous memorials from Head-masters and others, determined to take measures with a view to encourage among those who intended to adopt the profession of teaching, the study of the principles and practice of their art. In furtherance of this design a "Teachers' Training Syndicate" was appointed, and that body shortly afterwards put forth a scheme of examination in the history, the theory and the practice of Education. The first examination under this scheme was held in June 1880. The Syndicate also resolved to provide that courses of lectures should be given during the academical year 1879-80. The introductory course on the History of Education, and the life and work of eminent teachers, was delivered by the Rev. R. H. Quick in Michaelmas Term. In the following Easter Term, Mr. James Ward, Fellow of Trinity College, lectured on Mental Science in its special relation to teaching; and the second course, which fell to my own share, was delivered in the Lent Term, and related mainly to the practical aspects of the schoolmaster's work. It has been considered by some of those most interested in this experiment that this, the first course of lectures on the Art of Teaching specially addressed to the members of an English University, might properly be placed within reach of a somewhat wider circle of students. In carrying out this suggestion, I have not thought it necessary to abandon the free and familiar |