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When the conclusion has been reached that some muscular movement system should be followed in order to inculcate the best writing habit, it still remains to select the text. Great care should be taken in this. A satisfactory text should abound in instructions to be read until fully understood, and illustrated with a sufficient number of models to answer all purposes of visualization. The text should be of convenient size; the drills and cuts should be arranged in a logical manner. The instructions should be in such simple language that all pupils can comprehend them. A manual with model forms only for the lower grades would prove very helpful, the teacher supplying the instruction. First grade pupils should write on the blackboard, but only from correct models placed there by the teacher in the presence of the pupils. Many primary grade educators favor no writing in the first grade except such as is taught from the board.
She would be far more than an ordinary teacher who could give a class of pupils (without the help of a text) the pictures in her own mind in a sufficiently clear and vivid manner to result in correctly executed work on the part of the pupil. Surely all reasonable aids should be given pupils in their efforts to learn penmanship. A good text is as much needed in this as in any other subject. We should laugh at the idea of teaching arithmetic or English without the aid of the text; yet many good school people seem to think writing can be absorbed in some mysterious manner from more or less indefinite word pictures and a few blackboard copies done in a more or less skillful manner.
Again we hear of schools that arrogate unto themselves the right to change the author’s plan, or to accept it in part, frequently omitting the most important and vital points. There is no unity and no consistency in this manner of doing things. McMurray’s question and answer along this line is pertinent when he says, “What should be the attitude of the young student toward the authorities that he studies?” The answer is, “Certainly, authors are, as a rule, more mature and far better informed upon the subjects that they discuss than he, otherwise he would not be pursuing them.”