I repeat it, that a thorough and enlightened survey of the whole school should be taken, and plans formed for elevating the whole mass in those great branches of knowledge which are to be of immediate practical use to them in future life.
If the school is one more advanced in respect to the age and studies of the pupils, the teacher should, in the same manner, before he forms his plans, consider well what are the great objects which he has to accomplish. He should ascertain what is the existing state of his school both as to knowledge and character; how long, generally, his pupils are to remain under his care; what are to be their future stations and conditions in life, and what objects he can reasonably hope to effect for them while they remain under his influence. By means of this forethought and consideration he will be enabled to work understandingly.
It is desirable, too, that what I have recommended in reference to the whole school should be done in respect to the case of each individual. When a new pupil comes under your charge, ascertain (by other means, however, than formal examination) to what stage his education has advanced, and deliberately consider what objects you can reasonably expect to effect for him while he remains under your care. You can not, indeed, always form your plans to suit so exactly your general views in regard to the school and to individuals as you could wish. But these general views will, in a thousand cases, modify your plans, or affect in a greater or less degree all your arrangements. They will keep you to a steady purpose, and your work will go on far more systematically and regularly than it would do if, as in fact many teachers do, you were to come headlong into your school, take things just as you find them, and carry them forward at random without end or aim.
This survey of your field being made, you are prepared to commence definite operations, and the great difficulty in carrying your plans into effect is how to act more efficiently on the greatest numbers at a time. The whole business of public instruction, if it goes on at all, must go on by the teacher's skill in multiplying his power, by acting on numbers at once. In most books on education we are taught, almost exclusively, how to operate on the individual. It is the error into which theoretic writers almost always fall. We meet in every periodical, and in every treatise, and, in fact, in almost every conversation on the subject, with remarks which sound very well by the fireside, but they are totally inefficient and useless in school, from their being apparently based upon the supposition that the teacher has but one pupil to attend to at a time. The great question in the management of schools is not how you can take one scholar, and lead him forward most rapidly in a prescribed course, but how you can classify and arrange numbers, comprising every possible variety both as to knowledge and capacity, so as to carry them all forward effectually together.
The extent to which a teacher may multiply his power by acting on numbers at a time is very great. In order to estimate it, we must consider carefully what it is when carried to the greatest extent to which it is capable of being carried under the most favorable circumstances. Now it is possible for a teacher to speak so as to be easily heard by three hundred persons, and three hundred pupils can be easily so seated as to see his illustrations or diagrams. Now suppose that three hundred pupils, all ignorant of the method of reducing fractions to a common denominator, and yet all old enough to learn, are collected in one room. Suppose they are all attentive and desirous of learning, it is very plain that the process may be explained to the whole at once, so that half an hour spent in that exercise would enable a very large proportion of them to understand the subject. So, if a teacher is explaining to a class in Grammar the difference between a noun and verb, the explanation would do as well for several hundred as for the dozen who constitute the class, if arrangements could only be made to have the hundreds hear it; but there are, perhaps, only a hundred pupils in the school, and of these a large part understand already the point to be explained, and another large part are too young to attend to it. I wish the object of these remarks not to be misunderstood. I do not recommend the attempt to teach on so extensive a scale; I admit that it is impracticable; I only mean to show in what the impracticability consists, namely, in the difficulty of making such arrangements as to derive the full benefit from the instructions rendered. The instructions of the teacher are, in the nature of things, available to the extent I have represented, but in actual practice the full benefit can not be derived. Now, so far as we thus fall short of this full benefit, so far there is, of course, waste; and it is difficult or impossible to make such arrangements as will avoid the waste, in this manner, of a large portion of every effort which the teacher makes.
A very small class instructed by an able teacher is like a factory of a hundred spindles, with a water-wheel of power sufficient for a thousand. In such a case, even if the owner, from want of capital or any other cause, can not add the other nine hundred, he ought to know how much of his power is in fact unemployed, and make arrangements to bring it into useful exercise as soon as he can. The teacher, in the same manner, should understand what is the full beneficial effect which it is possible, in theory, to derive from his instructions. He should understand, too, that just so far as he falls short of this full effect there is waste. It may be unavoidable; part of it unquestionably is, like the friction of machinery, unavoidable. Still, it is waste; and it ought to be so understood, that, by the gradual perfection of the machinery, it may be more and more fully prevented.
Always bear in mind, then, when you are devoting your time to two or three individuals in a class, that your are losing a large part of your labor. Your instructions are conducive to good effect only to the one tenth or one twentieth of the extent to which, under more favorable circumstances, they might be made available. And though you can not always avoid this loss, you ought to be aware of it, and so to shape your measures as to diminish it as much as possible.
We come now to consider the particular measures to be adopted in giving instruction.
The objects which are to be secured in the management of the classes are twofold:
1. Recitation. 2. Instruction.