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loud and long praises of this mode of teaching by persons of all grades, from the amateur teacher of a class in a Sunday school, up to the eloquent and influential minister; but so far as our own personal recollections serve us, and all our subsequent experience, we will venture to affirm, that of all modes of instruction we know, it is the most distasteful to children. And the reason is obvious, for it is a miserable imitation of real conversation—a mere sham, an imposition at once discovered, and immediately rejected with dislike. Not that children reason thus, or that they can explain the grounds of their dislike, but the natural respect for that which is true, and contempt for that which is false and stimulated, comes into exercise and causes the counterfeit to be treated accordingly. Every thing, then, of this formal kind of questioning and answering, is to be carefully avoided.

Again, the trainer should most carefully shun everything like lecturing, or preaching. However useful a lengthened and well-arranged discourse may be in the instruction of adults, continuous speaking is eminently unsuited for the instruction of children. Just as in conversation, the parties speak alternately for brief spaces, (the instructor, however, usually taking a little more space than the instructed,) so it ought to be in the gallery lesson. The experiment has been frequently tried, and a very little reflection on the results, will convince our readers of the propriety of the rule we are here enforcing. We ask them for instance, did they ever see a child of from six to twelve or fourteen years old, asleep under a sermon? If their experience has at all coincided with their own, we know what the answer will be. Such a thing must be admitted to be no unusual phenomenon. But we ask again, and with equal confidence as to the answer; did our readers ever see a child of such an age asleep at a Bible lesson, given on the principles of the training system? If such a thing has ever been seen, they will allow it to be a matter of extreme rarity; a result which we have not witnessed for years together, even in galleries containing usually from 150 to 200 children. And this is not to be ascribed to a difference of the choice of subjects; for we have selected for the comparison a Bible lesson, the topics of which closely resemble those of the pulpit. The difference is to be ascribed entirely to the different mode of treatment; the one being founded upen the natural principal exemplified in every day life; the other being regulated so as to suit a highly artificial state of public feeling and mental culture. The propriety, or impropriety of the latter, is a question which we do not touch; we merely advert to these opposite results to show that in the case of children continuous addresses are unsuitable and ineffective. Some persons may, perhaps, regard the former as more capable of dispute. We can recall to our recollection many instances in which feeling of the most solemn character has been excited during a gallery lesson, and even that peculiar thrill has been called forth, which only the most eloquent and powerful speakers are capable of producing; and this has been done without the slightest departure from the principle we are here inculcating.—The Glasgow Trainer's Monthly Record.

EXTRACT.

AUTHORITY.-The following are some general maxims which may be of service to any one in authority.

The first is to make as few crimes as he can and not to lay down those rules of practice, which, from a careful

observation of their consequences, he has ascertained to be salutary, as if they were so many innate truths which all persons alike must at once, and fully, comprehend.

Let him not attempt to regulate other

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ORGANIZATION.

1. State what circumstances of a school must be taken into account before forming a routine of daily employment and a syllabus of instruction.

2. What are the chief modes of organization adopted in elementary schools in this country? Describe fully the monitorial, simultaneous, and mixed methods.

3. What purpose of a school do you propose to accomplish by organization, and what are those objects which no organization can secure?

4. Show how you would organize a mixed school, and state what are the peculiar difficulties your organization has to meet.

DISCIPLINE.

1. Show how you would register the attendance and progress of your children. Of what use is such a record?

2. What evils in a school is it the object of discipline to remedy

3. Is it desirable, and to what extent, to employ the co-operation of the children in the government of a school? What evils has such a practice a tendency to foster?

4. On what principles should the government of a school be conducted? What habits should it endeavour to secure?

METHOD INSTRUCTION.

1. What objects are to be kept in view in teaching Geography? Describe fully the methods to be pursued.

2. Show fully the method by which you would make a child acquainted with the local value of any figure up to tens of thousands. Write a sum in subtraction containing every difficulty, and show how you would teach it.

3. What principles should guide you in teaching spelling, and what methods should you pursue

4. Write out a thorough analysis as you would present it to a class in a Reading lesson, of the first two paragraphs of the Introduction to Vegetable Physiology, Section III. of the Irish Fifth Book.

METHOD-EDUCATION.

1. State fully what things are essential to the efficient use of the gallery so as to secure collective teaching.

2. Define the term method, describe its province and show its importance. State the methods to be employed in the preparation of lessons, with those which are required in actual teaching.

3. Write down as you would present to a class of children the Lesson on "Roots" in the Fifth Irish Book, and then state what methods you have pursued in doing so.

4. Describe the importance and object of the Bible Lesson, with the

methods and preparation necessary to its efficiency.

NOTES OF LESSONS.

1. What advantages arise from the division of labour?

2. Name four trees of tropical climates which belong to the monocotyledons; describe their mode of growth, with any particulars you know respecting them.

3. Of what use are the "Leaves of Trees," to the plant, soil and atmosphere.

4. Illustrate the following sentence: "What life is, we know not; what life does we know well."

The answers to this series of questions are to be drawn up as Notes of Lessons, and should exhibit not only a knowledge of the matter, but of the best method by which it could be conveyed to children.]

EXAMINATION QUESTIONS FOR PUPIL TEACHERS.

FOURTH YEAR.

(FEMALES.)

3. Find the Interest of £189 6s. 6d.

1. Analyse:"Many of the endow for 341 days, at 34 per cent. per

ments and talents we now possess, and of which we are too apt to be proud, will terminate entirely with the present state; but virtue will be our ornament and dignity, in every future state to which we may be removed."

2. Give the roots of the following words :

Reflect

Infamous
Collapse Legislature.

Progress

3. What names are given to different kinds of English verse?

Give a brief account of the organization of the School in which you are placed.

1. Describe the mountain ranges of North America and the plains of South America.

2. Name the countries into which Asia is divided.

Describe the reign of Queen Anne.

1. Add together 11, 14, 15, 18. 2. How many of an inch are there in of a yard.

annum.

FIFTH YEAR.

1. Analyse the following verse :

"When Tubal struck the corded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,
And wondering, on their faces fell
To worship the celestial sound."
2. Give the roots of the following
words:-

Edify Benefactor Homicide
Seclusion Creature Dexterity
Analysis Synthesis Hypothesis.

1. Find the Compound Interest for £320 for three years, at £5 per cent. per annum.

2. A person does 2 of his work in 3 days; in how many days will he finish it.

Write a brief essay on the industrial occupation of girls; its methods and utility.

1. Mention the battles which have taken place between the English and Scotch, and shew their results.

2. In what places have English kings held their courts, and when.

No. 23.

PAPERS FOR THE SCHOOLMASTER.

JANUARY 1, 1853.

The New Year.

We again have crossed the threshold of another year. In every department of this busy life, the thoughtful mind will review the varied incidents which lie mingled in the year that is past, and gather from the retrospect materials of hope for the year that has now begun. In the particular department of Education, we congratulate its friends that its progress is sound and sure, and as rapid as can well consist with healthiness and stability. It is true that no universal system, which by including all religious sections without offending any religious prejudices, has yet been discovered; but the progress of the present scheme, which some regard as but preliminary, has been most satisfactory. The measures proposed to Parliament by the two rival Manchester Associations are for a time at least unsuccessful; but the ready and hearty welcome which they met with, argues favourably for the future. Meanwhile the Annual Examinations just terminated at the various Training or Normal Institutions, exhibit the capabilities of the present system, be it preparatory or final. We are informed upon credible authority, that no less than fourteen hundred candidates for Certificates of Merit, and Queen's Scholarships have presented themselves. When we bear in mind the careful training under Christian influences, and the anxious selection which distinguish this large class, we are approaching the time when the real adaptation of the existing system to the wants of the country will be put to the test.

The number of timid men who viewed education as another name for anarchy, and knowledge for idleness, who feared that a generation, who could understand what they read, would despise manual labour, forgetful that every Sculptor, Merchant, Colonel, and Secretary of State, were as dependant upon the use of their fingers, as the farm labourer and domestic servant, are either unquestionably on the decrease, or ashamed to express their jealousies. The large Towns and Cities where manufacturers have been taught the value of intelligent heads, united to skilled hands, have all pronounced, by the employment of the existing system, in favour of a wide and solid Popular Education. The country districts where labourers vegetate and die, like the potatoes, form the chief obstructives to the spread of Education. They have too long accustomed themselves to attach no value to their servants, except as implements, and to consider it no part of their Christian duty to treat them as rational and intelligent beings. But the very fact that they are compelled to labour, constitutes the very argument with the reflective mind, that they should enjoy the elevating and countervailing blessings of a sound and judicious education. Deprived of this, what attributes remain to them but those animal ones which unite them to the mere beasts of burden? It is the high mission of the Elementary Teacher to arrest this degenerating tendency, which placing him in something of the same relation to the Minister of religion in which the Baptist stood to the Redeemer, makes applicable to his teaching the same description, as of "one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight." Let him unite in his work the religious with the moral, the industrial with the intellectual, that is, let him aim at moral training by religious motives, and let him exalt the intellec tual principle without incapacitating for healthy and physical endurance, and he may well look through the prejudices of man upward for success, assured that He who pours the light of heaven alike through the casement of the cottage and the chiselled windows of the palace, who paints His Bow of the covenant upon the glorious arch of the sky, and upon the humble dew-drop that trembles upon the leafless hedge-row, who bids emphatically that "to the poor the gospel should be preached," will bless his endeavour and recognise

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