PRINTED BY SHERMAN & CO.

TO THE
Teachers of the United States,
AND ESPECIALLY TO THE ALUMNI OF THE PHILADELPHIA HIGH SCHOOL, AND OF THE
New Jersey State Normal School
THE FOLLOWING CHAPTERS ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

The views contained in this volume are the result of a prolonged and somewhat varied professional experience. This experience includes the training of more than five thousand young men and of nearly one thousand young women, a large portion of them for the office of teachers; and it has been gained in College, in Boarding School, in a city High School, and in a State Normal School. In all this prolonged and varied experience, I have constantly put myself in the attitude of a learner, and my aim in the present volume is to place before the younger members of the profession, in the briefest and clearest terms possible, the lessons I have myself learned. Beginning with the question, What is Teaching? and ending with the wider question, What is Education? the book will be found to take a pretty free range over the whole field of practical inquiry among professional teachers. The thoughts presented are such as have been suggested to the writer in the school-room itself, while actively engaged either in teaching, or in superintending and directing the instruction given by others. These thoughts are for the most part purposely given in short, detached chapters, each complete in itself. Such a method of presentation, though less imposing, seemed to have practical advantages for the reader too great to be neglected for the mere vanity of authorship. Often one can find leisure to read a chapter of five or six pages on some point complete in itself, when he might not feel like reaching it through an intervening network of connected and dependent propositions. At the same time, it should be observed, the topics though detached are not isolated. There is everywhere an underlying thread of connection, the whole being based upon, if not constituting, a philosophy of education.

CONTENTS.

  1. [What is Teaching?]
  2. [The Art of Questioning]
  3. [The Difference between Teaching and Training]
  4. [Modes of Hearing Recitations]
  5. [On Observing a Proper Order in the Development of the Mental Faculties]
  6. [Teaching Children what they do not Understand]
  7. [Cultivating the Memory in Youth]
  8. [Knowledge before Memory]
  9. [Power of Words]
  10. [The Study of Language]
  11. [Cultivating the Voice]
  12. [Eyes]
  13. [Errors of the Cave]
  14. [Men of One Idea]
  15. [A Talent for Teaching]
  16. [Teaching Power]
  17. [Growing]
  18. [Loving the Children]
  19. [Gaining the Affections of the Scholars]
  20. [The Obedience of Children]
  21. [Rarey as an Educator]
  22. [A Boarding-School Experience]
  23. [Phrenology]
  24. [Normal Schools]
  25. [Practice-Teaching]
  26. [Attention as a Mental Faculty, and as a Means of Mental Culture]
  27. [Gaining the Attention]
  28. [Counsels:]
    1. [To a Young Teacher];
    2. [To a New Pupil];
    3. [To a Young Lady on leaving School];
    4. [To a Pupil on Entering a Normal School]
  29. [An Argument for Common Schools]
  30. [What is Education?]

  1. [What is Teaching?]
  2. [The Art of Questioning]
  3. [The Difference between Teaching and Training]
  4. [Modes of Hearing Recitations]
  5. [On Observing a Proper Order in the Development of the Mental Faculties]
  6. [Teaching Children what they do not Understand]
  7. [Cultivating the Memory in Youth]
  8. [Knowledge before Memory]
  9. [Power of Words]
  10. [The Study of Language]
  11. [Cultivating the Voice]
  12. [Eyes]
  13. [Errors of the Cave]
  14. [Men of One Idea]
  15. [A Talent for Teaching]
  16. [Teaching Power]
  17. [Growing]
  18. [Loving the Children]
  19. [Gaining the Affections of the Scholars]
  20. [The Obedience of Children]
  21. [Rarey as an Educator]
  22. [A Boarding-School Experience]
  23. [Phrenology]
  24. [Normal Schools]
  25. [Practice-Teaching]
  26. [Attention as a Mental Faculty, and as a Means of Mental Culture]
  27. [Gaining the Attention]
  28. [Counsels:]
    1. [To a Young Teacher];
    2. [To a New Pupil];
    3. [To a Young Lady on leaving School];
    4. [To a Pupil on Entering a Normal School]
  29. [An Argument for Common Schools]
  30. [What is Education?]