“That’s the very reason why I got them for you, so that you might learn. Children don’t come to school to do what they know how to do already.”
“Well,” said Lucy.
So Lucy came away from her closet, and sat down before her desk.
“What am I going to learn first?”
“Why, the first thing I want you to learn, is to go alone a little.”
“To go alone?” repeated Lucy.
“Yes,” replied Mary Jay, “intellectually.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” said Lucy.
“Why, you know, when children are very little, they cannot walk at all without somebody to take hold of their hands and lead them. After a while, they learn to go alone. Now, when they first come to school, it is just so with their progress in study. They can’t go alone at all. The teacher has to lead them all the way. After a time, they get along a little way, so that they can study by themselves a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, and, by and by, an hour, without any help; and this is what I call going alone. Now, when a scholar gets so as to go alone a little in her studies, it is a great deal easier to teach her.
“Now,” continued Mary Jay, “my plan is for you to study half an hour by yourself, if I can only contrive lessons which you can understand without help for so long a time; and that is what I call going alone.”