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to teach themselves, and direct your special attention, consequently, to the worse half of your class.

(1) Sum up every step in a lesson on the blackboard, and then use the board for a rapid revision of the lesson before dismissing the class.

(m) In examination, be earnest; and your boys will feel that you are earnest, if the earnestness is real, and not merely an earnest desire for vain display or the earnestness of the street-preacher. Think of the pupils, not of yourself: in short, attend to the class and the class will attend to you.

(n) Note.-The great art of all teaching and all examining, depends on the power the teacher has of assuming in imagination the attitude of ignorance towards the subject that is to be learned, and thereupon advancing to the knowledge of it in company with the pupil.

READING.

(a) Let each pupil finish his sentence before you allow any corrections.

(b) Never allow your pupils to read "straight down" the class. Name the reader.

(c) Let the upper class pupils always read more than one sentence.

(d) When your class is reading, do not use a book yourself. Listen simply. In this way you compel clear enunciation.

DICTATION AND COMPOSITION.

(a) In dictation make your pupils write over the words they mis-spell, three times correctly on a slate.

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(b) Illustrate common errors in spelling by means of the black-board.

(c) In like manner with common errors in Composition.

(d) In teaching elementary narrative composition, make the pupils write each complete sentence as a separate paragraph.

GRAMMAR.

(a) In parsing, make each pupil complete the parsing of a clause, and not parse simply one word.

(b) Fall back on reasons and rules when parsing, in the case of every mistake that is made.

(c) In Latin and English parsing, after the oral lesson has been given, send the boys to their seats to write out the parsing (or a portion of it) in tabular form.

GENERAL.

Have half-a-day a week set free for revisal of whatever is taught; and the more that revisal is done on paper the better. The evening previous to the revisal should be set free for preparation.

Husband your powers at the beginning of the school-day.

The rod and all physical penalties exist because of four things, want of self-control in the schoolmaster; want of ethical purpose in the schoolmaster; want of method in teaching; want of good organization and classification. Where all these things are present instead of absent, the rod will be very rarely if ever resorted to. In any case, never punish except for

deliberate wrong-doing. Blame privately, praise publicly.

PLACE-TAKING

has been invented by masters for the purpose of securing attention and stimulating the boys to work. It is a bad substitute for good teaching. At the same time, place-taking may be practised because it gives vivacity to a class; but the merit list of the term or year should be determined only to the extent of 10 per cent. of the marks as ascertained by the class-places held from day to day. This merit list should be fixed almost wholly by the results of fortnightly examinations.

Prizes are hurtful: a certificate of having attained first, second or third class in the year's work is all that is needed, except in the schools which wish to advertise themselves by sending their pupils home with gaudy books1.

1 In this case a little sagacity will enable you to devise measures which will ensure every boy carrying home a gilt advertisement on some pretext or other.

APPENDIX.

NOTE. The following Code was printed at the end of the third edition of my book on "Primary Instruction" several years ago. I here reprint it to give it further circulation and also as a complement to the Lectures on the "Curriculum of Secondary Schools," and "Liberal Education in the Primary School."

When this Code first appeared some experienced educationalists regarded it as a 'pious imagination' and smiled at my confidence in it. More than one-half of it is already worked into the Scottish Code. The rest will be substantially adopted in due time.

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