In the School-Room Part 10

How it is that by an act of volition we can summon again into the mind an idea which has formerly been present, and which is now absent, we have the same difficulty in explaining which we had in explaining how, by an act of volition, we can banish a thought which is now present, or by the power of attention can detain some one thought to the exclusion of all others. To think what particular thing it is that we wish to remember, is in fact to have remembered it already. It is an obstruse and difficult inquiry, into which it is not necessary now to enter. A more important inquiry, and one connected directly with our present theme, relates to the different kinds of memory, and their connection severally with the faculty of attention.

Quickness of memory is that quality which is most easily developed, especially in young persons. It is also its most showy quality, and the temptation to give it an inordinate development is strong. The habit of getting things by rote, is easily acquired by practice. It is astonishing what ma.s.ses of Scripture texts young children will get by heart, when under some special stimulus of reward or display. I have often refused to publish marvellous feats of this kind, not because I thought the accounts incredible, (unfortunately, they were too true,) but because I thought they were a species of mental excess, and they should no more be encouraged than bodily excesses. A little girl in my own Sunday-School once actually committed to memory the whole of the Westminster a.s.sembly's Shorter Catechism in three days! Six months afterwards she hardly knew a word of it. It had been a regular mental debauch. A few more such atrocities would have made her an idiot.

College records tell us of what are called "crammed men," that is, men who literally stuff themselves with knowledge in order to pa.s.s a particular examination, or to gain a particular honor, and who afterwards forget their knowledge, as fast as they have acquired it.

There is a well authenticated instance of a student who actually learned the six books of Euclid by heart, though he could not tell the difference between an angle and a triangle. The memory of such men is quickened like that of the parrot. They learn purely by rote. Real mental attention, the true digester of knowledge, is never roused. The knowledge which they gorge, is never truly a.s.similated and made their own.

A quality of memory vastly more important than quickness, is tenacity.

To hold on to what we get, is the secret of mental, no less than of pecuniary acc.u.mulations. The mind, too, like other misers, clings most tenaciously to that which has cost it most labor. Come lightly, go lightly, the world over. Knowledge which comes into the mind without toil and effort, without protracted and laborious attention, is apt to go as easily as it came.

But, by far the most important quality of memory, for the practical purposes of life, is readiness. Like quickness and tenacity, it is to be greatly improved, if not acquired by practice. It is in the cultivation of this quality, that the power of a good teacher shines forth most conspicuously. Quickness and tenacity may be cultivated by solitary study. But readiness requires for its development a live teacher, and the stir of the school-room and the cla.s.s. Here it is that the art of questioning shows its wonderful resources. Repeated and continued interrogatories, judiciously worded, have a sort of talismanic power.

They oblige the scholar to bring out his knowledge from its hidden recesses, to turn it over and over, and inside out, and upside down, to look at it and to handle it, so that not only it becomes forever and indestructibly his own, but he can ever afterwards use it at will with the same readiness that he uses his hands or his eyes. This is what a skilful teacher may do for his scholars, by a knowledge and practice of the art of questioning. Unfortunately, teachers in general find it much easier pa.s.sively to hear a lesson, than to muster as much intellectual energy as is necessary to ask a question.

It was a remark of Bacon's, that, if we wish to commit anything to memory, we will accomplish more in ten readings, if at each perusal we make the attempt to repeat it from memory, referring to the book only when the memory fails, than we would by a hundred readings made in the ordinary way, and without any intervening trials. The explanation of this fact is, that each effort to recollect the pa.s.sage secures to the subsequent perusal a more intense degree of attention; and it seems to be a law of our nature, not only that there is no memory without attention, which I have labored at some length to establish, but that the degree of memory is in a great measure proportioned to the degree of the attention.

You will see at once the bearing of this fact upon that species of intellectual dissipation, called "general reading," in which the mental voluptuary reads merely for momentary excitement, in the gratification of an idle curiosity, and which is as enervating and debilitating to the intellectual faculties, as other kinds of dissipation are to the bodily functions. One book, well read and thoroughly digested, nay, one single train of thought, carefully elaborated and attentively considered, is worth more than any conceivable amount of that indolent, dreamy sort of reading in which many persons indulge. There is in fact no more unsafe criterion of knowledge than the number of books a man has read. A young man once told me he had read the entire list of publications of the American Sunday-School Union. He was about as wise as the man at the hotel, who began at the top of the bill of fare with the intention of eating straight through to the bottom! Depend upon it, this mental gorging is debilitating and debauching alike to the moral and the intellectual const.i.tution. There is too much reading even of good books.

No one should ever read a book, without subsequent meditation or conversation about it, and an attempt to make the thoughts his own, by a vigorous process of mental a.s.similation. Any continuous intellectual occupation, which does not leave us wiser and stronger, most a.s.suredly will leave us weaker, just as filling the body with food which it does not digest, only makes it feeble and sickly. We are the worse for reading any book, if we are not the better for it.

There is an obvious distinction on this subject, of some practical importance, first suggested, so far as I am aware, by the Scotch metaphysician, Dr. Reid, between attention as directed to external objects, and the same faculty directed to what pa.s.ses within us. When we attend to what is without us, to what we hear, or see, or smell, or taste, or touch, the process is called observation. When, on the other hand, dismissing for the time all notice of the external world, we turn our thoughts inward, and consider only what is pa.s.sing in the inner chambers of the mind,--when, for instance, we a.n.a.lyze our motives, or notice the workings of pa.s.sion, or scan the mysterious and subtle agency of the will, the process is called reflection. This latter species of attention is one much more difficult of development than the former.

It is developed ordinarily much later in life,--seldom, I believe, developed to any considerable extent before the age of manhood,--developed by some professions and pursuits much more than by others,--and in a very large cla.s.s of mankind, probably the majority, never developed at all.

This species of attention, which is thus directed inwards, subjective attention some would call it,--in other words, the reflective powers,--are, I doubt not, capable of being cultivated much earlier in life than the age which I have indicated as the normal period of their development. I am constrained, however, in opposition to many high authorities in education, to doubt the wisdom of a precocious cultivation of this part of our intellectual system. In all our plans of education, we should closely follow nature, who seems to have reserved the judgment and the reflective powers for the latest, as they certainly are the most perfect, of her endowments. We, who are teachers, have chiefly to do with those whose powers are as yet immature, and whose attention is to be cultivated primarily in its direction to external objects. Our business, in other words, is to train our pupils first of all to habits of observation.

In doing this, it is of some practical importance to bear in mind the well-known difference, in respect to memory, between the objects of different senses. Whether it be attributed to the different degrees of perfection with which the qualities of bodies are perceived, or to some difference in the qualities themselves, or whatever may be the cause, the fact is established beyond a question, that the knowledge which comes to us through the medium of the eye is of all kinds of knowledge the most easily and the most perfectly remembered. We remember, indeed, the temperature of one day as distinguished from that of another; we remember the sound of a voice; we can conceive, in its absence, the odor or the taste of a particular object; but none of these ideas come to us with that definiteness and perfection which mark our recollections of what we have seen. It requires, for instance, but ordinary powers of attention and perception, for a person who has one good look at a house, to recall distinctly to his mind the ideas of its height, shape, color, material, the number of stories, the pitch of the roof, the kind of shutters to the windows, the position of the door, the fashion of panels, the bell-handle, the plate, even the little canary-bird with its cage in the windows above, and the roses, geraniums, and what else may be fairer still, in the window below. These are all objects of sight. In their absence, he can bring to mind and describe them, with almost the same accuracy that he could if they were actually present. Now, it is impossible to obtain a like precision and fulness in our conceptions of a quality which we have learned through any other sense. We form in the one case a mental image or picture of the object, which in the other case is impossible. We can by no possibility form a mental or any other image of the song of canary, of the perfume of a rose, or of any other quality, except those which address us through the eye. Our conceptions of taste, smell, touch, and even of hearing, in the absence of the objects of sense, have a certain dimness, vagueness, mistiness, uncertainty about them. The conceptions of visible objects, on the contrary, are definite, precise, and most easily recalled. Hence the knowledge derived through the sight, is, of all kinds of knowledge, the most accurate, the most easily acquired, and the most lasting.

The practical application of these views to the science of teaching, is too obvious to require more than a pa.s.sing notice. Every thing which the young are to make the subject of their attention, for the purpose of remembering it, should be represented as far as possible to the eye. If the object itself, on account of its bulk, or its expensiveness, or for any other reason, cannot be exhibited for inspection, let there be some visible delineation of it by brush or pencil. If the thing to be remembered be something abstract or unreal, having neither form nor substance, perhaps it may have, or the teacher may make for it, some concrete, visible symbol, as has been done with the formulas of logic and the abstractions of arithmetic and algebra. These visible symbols on the slate and the blackboard give to those sciences all the advantages in this respect which were supposed to be peculiar to some of the branches of physical science. A boy who has forgotten every mere verbal rule both of arithmetic and algebra, will remember the formula, x^2 + 2xy + y^2, just as perfectly and on the same principle, as he will remember the face of the man who taught it to him. It is something which he has seen. Why has geometry in all ages been found to be of such peculiar value as a means of intellectual training? Because of the visible delineation of its doctrines by diagrams addressed to the eye.

How much more readily and certainly chemical science can now be acquired, since the adoption of the present mode of symbolizing its doctrines by combinations of letters and figures. Arguments, conjectures, theories, respecting qualities addressed alike to every sense, respecting functions indeed not cognizable by any sense, are now presented on the board in visible symbolic formulas, which have the same advantage over the former mode of presenting the subject, that the sight of a chess-board during the progress of a game has over a mere verbal description of the movements.

The truth of this doctrine is strikingly ill.u.s.trated in the present mode of teaching geography, as compared with that once in use, when a child, instead of looking at the map of a country, with its boundaries and other physical characters painted to the eye, had to grope through a trackless wilderness of description. The study will be still more improved, when children shall be universally required to make as well as to look at maps,--when, to the definiteness of knowledge coming through the sight, there shall be added that inerasible impression upon the memory, which comes from fixedness and continuity of attention. It is impossible for a child to draw a map, without looking intently, and with continued attention, upon every part of that which is to be delineated.

The two conditions to perfect recollection are combined, and the knowledge, which is the result, is the very last to fade from the memory.

Every teacher of small children knows how much more certainly they learn to spell by seeing than by hearing. You may repeat to a child five times over the sounds which make up a word, and he will not recollect it with half the certainty that he would on seeing it once. The same principle which leads to this result, and which indicates the propriety, not only of looking at maps but of making them, in order to the more perfect knowledge of geography, will suggest to the thoughtful teacher the expediency of children's not only looking at words, but of writing them, in order to become perfect spellers.

Mental arithmetic has its fascinations. It has, too, I am ready to admit, solid advantages. Its advantages, however, I apprehend are not precisely those which are sometimes attributed to it. There can be no doubt, I think, that it helps to cultivate the reflective powers; that it requires, and by requiring gives, the ability to confine the attention to continued mental processes. But for making expert practical accountants, which is generally quoted as its distinguishing benefit, I confess I am partial to the slate and pencil, and to that venerable parallelogram, the old-fashioned Multiplication Table, in the shape it came down to us from Pythagoras.

The reader will not, of course, understand me as wishing to discard Mental arithmetic. All that I mean to suggest is the inquiry, whether its advantages are not looked for in the wrong direction, whether they are not sometimes over-estimated, and whether this mode of teaching arithmetic, especially when pursued as a hobby, is not sometimes pushed too far, and made the means of curious display, rather than of solid and lasting benefit. In teaching mental arithmetic, too, for I would certainly teach it to some extent, I would suggest the expediency of teaching children, in performing these mental operations, to think in figures, in other words, to form conceptions of the arithmetical figures and signs, which are visible objects, rather than of quant.i.ties and relations, which are mere abstractions. Multiplication is a mere metaphysical ent.i.ty. The sign of multiplication is a simple, visible symbol, addressed to the eye, and capable of being conceived by the mind with unmistakable clearness and precision. A child counting its fingers in the first steps of learning to add and to take away, is a pretty sight, doubtless. But it is painful to see a person grown to man's estate, and in other respects well educated, as I have very often seen, still dependent upon the same infantile contrivance,--still counting fingers when required to add long columns of figures. Count the fingers, if necessary, in order to get the child under way. But the sooner the leading-string can be dropped, and the child can be made to picture in his mind the pure figures and signs, their combinations and results, without reference to fingers, or apples, or cakes, or tops, the better for his arithmetic, and the better for his mental cultivation.

The subject has a painful interest for the Sabbath-School Teacher. The teacher of the infant school, indeed, has some opportunity for employing this principle of pictorial representation, in teaching the little ones of his charge. The infant school-room usually has conveniences for maps and picture cards and diagrams, and even blackboards; and most infant school teachers wisely avail themselves of the opportunity afforded. But go into the main school-room--what can the teacher do? Twenty, thirty, forty cla.s.ses huddled together into one room, compact as sheep in a pen, how can the individual teacher, if disposed, use adequate visible ill.u.s.trations for the instruction of his cla.s.s? Where shall he place his blackboard? where shall he hang up his maps? where shall he suspend his models? where shall he exhibit his specimens? The utmost that can be done in most of our schools, as at present provided for, is to have a few maps on the distant walls of the room which the superintendent may refer to, whenever he chooses, and which all the children may see who can! The time must come, however, when the teaching of religious truth will be considered of as much importance as the teaching of arithmetic or of chemistry, and the Sabbath-School will have the same facilities for imparting instruction as the week-day school. But that time has not yet come. In the meanwhile, let the teacher carefully avail himself of whatever subsidiary aids are within his reach. No teacher should ever present himself before his cla.s.s without a Bible Atlas and a Bible Dictionary in his hand. Many of those things with which his cla.s.s ought to be made acquainted, are here not only described, but delineated, with equal accuracy and beauty. Thanks to the booksellers and the religious publication societies, the scenes of sacred history, and indeed religious topics generally, have been ill.u.s.trated in cheap pictorial cards, both large and small, and with admirable fidelity and skill.

These form a part of the indispensable furniture of the Sunday-School teacher. They are to him as necessary as are experiments, or a cabinet of specimens, to the lecturer on the physical sciences. The Sabbath-School teacher should be continually on the look-out for publications of this kind, not only for instructing and furnishing his own mind with definite ideas, but for exhibition to his cla.s.s. A wise teacher will not only have something to say to his cla.s.s, but also something to show. The ideas which the child gets from looking at really instructive pictures and maps, never leave him. How much also our intelligent apprehension of the scriptures is increased, by a knowledge of topography, and by a.s.sociating each event in the sacred narration with the place in which it occurred?

It may be proper to say, too, in this connection, that it is with a view to the principle now under consideration, that in preparing books and papers for the young, authors and publishers feel justified in giving so much labor and s.p.a.ce to pictorial ill.u.s.tration. When, indeed, such ill.u.s.trations are merely for display, they deserve the contempt which they often receive. But when these pictorial ill.u.s.trations have a definite meaning and design, when they teach something, when they connect in the child's mind sound religious truth with distinct and easily remembered visible forms, they are a really valuable aid in the inculcation of doctrine.

The power of attention, like all the mental powers, is by nature greater in some than in others. Still, there is no power more susceptible of improvement. The importance of its cultivation cannot well be over-stated. It affects not one study only, but all studies; not one mode of study only, but every mode of study, by text-book or by lecture; lessons to be recited by memory, or those by question and answer; not even study only, but conduct and manners, the regulation of the heart and the formation of the character. The precise measure of a child's success, in every thing that pertains to his character and standing as a scholar, will in nine cases out of ten be his power and habit of attention. There are indeed lamentable cases of wilful and intentional disorder. Yet every teacher knows that by far the greater portion of the things which interrupt and disturb a school arise from thoughtlessness and inattention. There are also equally undoubted cases of ignorance that is no crime. Yet the great majority of those who fail in their studies, fail simply because they do not attend. To attend, however, means something more than merely to be bodily present, more even than to have the ears open and the eyes fixed in the direction of the speaker, when a thing is said, or done. An old lady used to sit in the same aisle with me in church, and unfortunately lived opposite me in the street, who was neither deaf nor blind, and who was never absent from church, and yet she sent over invariably on Sunday evenings to know what it was the minister said about that meeting on Wednesday night, or that meeting on Friday night,--she did not rightly understand!

But it is not necessary to go to church, to find those who "having eyes see not, and having ears hear not, neither do they understand," who look without seeing, and hear without comprehending. Publish a notice in your school, making some change of hours or lessons, or giving any specific direction. No matter how simple, or how plainly expressed, the notice may be, or how particularly attention may be called beforehand to the announcement about to be made, where is the happy teacher who has been able on such an occasion to make himself understood by all? Teachers and preachers and speakers of every name have generally very little idea how much they are misunderstood. Let me give some instances.

In my own Sunday-School, I had neglected one morning to bring with me the teacher's cla.s.s-books. After opening the school, I rang the bell as a signal for attention. There was a general hush throughout the room.

All eyes were turned to the desk. I said: "Your cla.s.s-books unfortunately have been left behind this morning. They have been sent for, however, and they will soon be here. As soon as they come, I will bring them round to the several cla.s.ses. In the meantime, you may go on with your regular lessons." The bell was then tapped again, and the routine of the school resumed. In about a minute, a girl came up to the desk, with, "Sir, teacher says, will you please to send her cla.s.s-book; it was not brought round, as usual, this morning, before school opened!"

Here was a cla.s.s of ten girls, averaging twelve years of age, and not one of them, nor their teacher, had heard or understood the notice which I thought I had made so plain!

Here is another instance. At the examination for admission to the Philadelphia High School, as a means of testing among other things how far this very faculty of hearing and of attention has been cultivated, the candidates are required to copy a pa.s.sage from dictation. These exercises are always preserved for reference, and in order to show the fairness of the examination. On one occasion, when I was Princ.i.p.al of the School, I took the pains to copy out a few of the exercises, in order to show the singular freaks into which an uncultivated ear may be led. One or two specimens will serve to ill.u.s.trate the point. The first clause with its variations, was as follows:--

Every breach of veracity indicates some latent vice.

" bridge " rascality " " latest vice.

" breech " feracity " " latinet vice.

" preach " eracity " " late device.

" branch " vivacity " " great advice.

" " " veracity " " late advice.

" " " " " " ladovice.

" " " " " " ladened vice.

Every branch of veracity in the next some latent vice.

Every reach of their ascidity indicates some advice.

In another part of the pa.s.sage occurred the following:

Petty operations.

Petty alterations.

Petty observations.

Patriarchal occupations.

Petty oblations.

Now of what use is it to a boy who mistakes "petty" for "patriarchal,"

"latent vice" for "great advice," "breach of veracity" for "reach of their ascidity," who is so untrained that he really cannot hear what is said, or see what is done,--of what use is it to such a boy, merely because he has gone through a prescribed routine of books and cla.s.ses, or perchance because he has attained a certain amount of years and of pounds avoirdupois, to be pushed forward into a higher department to attend lectures on chemistry, or anatomy, or morals, or history, or literature? It is preposterous. It is an insult to the Professor, and an injury to the boy.

This, then, is the burden of my song. We cannot take too much pains in early life in rousing this power of attention. Depend upon it, no matter how much learning, so called, is crammed into a youth, his intellectual development has not begun until this power is roused. He may have a vague, dreamy sort of knowledge; he may do sums by rule, and he may pa.r.s.e by rote, and do many other wondrous things; but his powers are not invigorated, he does not grow, until he begins really to see and hear, and feel _terra firma_ under his feet.

The principle which I am ill.u.s.trating applies with special force to that part of a child's education which consists in learning the meaning of words. I have serious doubts whether children ordinarily learn much of the real meaning of words by committing definitions to memory. What is a definition? It is only expressing the meaning of one word by the use of another word as nearly as possible synonymous. Now, in the case of a child, it is at least an even chance that that other word is just as unknown as the one it is intended to explain. It is like, in algebra, solving an equation with two unknown quant.i.ties, by giving the value of one unknown quant.i.ty in terms of the other. A child, for instance, is told that "potent" means "efficacious," that "power" means "ability,"

that "potion" means a "physical draught," that "potential" means "existing in possibility, not in act." These are definitions taken at random from a book in common use in our public schools. The definitions possibly are good enough for the purpose for which they were designed. I am not quarrelling with the definitions. But, surely, it is not by these that a child is to learn the meaning of the words. Whether he is told that "power" means "ability," or "ability" means "power," that "potent"

means "efficacious," or "efficacious" means "potent," in neither case, nine times out of ten, is any addition made to his stock of knowledge.

It is not until much later in life,--until in fact our knowledge of words is already very much extended, that we profit much by learning formal definitions. But in childhood, we must learn the meaning and power of words, just as the mechanic becomes acquainted with his tools, by observing their use. A boy, for instance, reads this sentence. "The drug was very _efficacious_." If the word is quite new to him, and there is nothing in the clause preceding or following to indicate its meaning, it is not at all unlikely that he may suppose it to mean "poisonous."

If, however, from the context, he finds that a person who had been sick, was made suddenly well, and this statement followed by the remark, that "the drug was very _efficacious_," he will probably get the idea that the word means "healing," or "curative." He reads again, in another place, that a certain mode of teaching penmanship was found to be very "efficacious." Here is a new use of the word, quite different from the other, and he is obliged to exclude from his idea of its meaning every thing like "healing." So he goes on, every fresh example cutting off some extraneous idea which the previous examples had led him to attach to the word, and every step onward coming nearer to the general idea, though he may never express it in words, of something which accomplished its object, whatever that object may be. It is, I believe, chiefly by observing in this way the manner in which words are used, that children do and must learn their meaning. It is, in other words, by quickening and cultivating the habit of attention to the meaning,--by training a child, when he is reading, to imagine, not that he is reading the words, but that he is reading the sense, by accustoming him to look through the word, to the sense, just as he would look at objects out of doors through the window, and to consider the words, as he would consider the gla.s.s, merely as a medium, through which, and unmindful of it, he looks at something beyond,--_which something is the meaning_.

Let me not be misunderstood in regard to this matter of definitions. I believe it to be of the utmost importance that children should be constantly required to give definitions or explanations of the words whose meaning they have acquired. All I mean to call in question is, whether that meaning to any considerable extent is acquired by committing to memory formal definitions prepared by others. When they have once learned the meaning of a word, which is to be done mainly, if not only, by observing its use, then by all means let them be required to express that meaning by other words which they know. Such an exercise cannot be too much insisted on. It is one of the best means of securing that attention to the signification of words, which is so much wanted.

It requires the child, moreover, to bring his knowledge continually to the test. It cultivates at once accuracy of thought, and accuracy of language, which is the vehicle of thought. Train a child, therefore, to the habit of attention, first to the meaning of words as gathered from observation of their use, and secondly to the expression of that meaning in language appropriate and intelligible to others.

I have dwelt a little on this subject, because, as in the matter of hearing, I doubt whether people generally are aware how little children understand what they read. Nor is this ignorance confined to children.

In our acts of devotion, we are all in the habit of using certain stereotyped phrases, without attaching to them any definite meaning, without perhaps so much as having even thought whether they had a meaning. This same pernicious habit is seen also in our reading of the Scriptures. We have read the phrases over from childhood, until we have become so familiar with them, that we are obliged often to stop, and by a sort of compulsory process to challenge each word as it pa.s.ses, and see whether it really conveys any meaning to our mind.

If I were to say to a cla.s.s, "The Bible tells us of a man who was older than his father," or some such apparent contradiction in terms, the sharp ant.i.thesis would doubtless arrest their attention, and I would at least be asked to explain myself. Yet, ten to one, they have read, hundreds of times, of him who is "the _root_ and the _offspring_ of David, the bright and morning star," without noticing anything at all remarkable in the expression. It is to them merely something good and pious, couched in a very pleasant and sonorous flow of words, and meaning doubtless something very comforting and edifying.

I was once teaching temporarily a young ladies' Bible Cla.s.s. The average age of the members was at least seventeen. They were the pick from a large city school, and had been selected for their superior educational advantages and attainments. Most of them were attending expensive private schools during the week. Wishing to satisfy myself as to the general knowledge and the intellectual habits of the members, I took the plan of simply reading verse about, stopping from time to time to talk familiarly about anything which might happen to suggest itself. This verse among others was read: it is from the account of the miracle on the day of Pentecost: "And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them." I found, upon inquiring, that _not one_ in that large cla.s.s had the remotest idea of what was meant by the word "cloven." One young lady thought it meant "fiery,"

another "flaming," another "winged," and so on. Most of them, however, said that they really had never thought of the matter before. Probably every one of them had read the pa.s.sage hundreds of times; and when we began talking about it, no one of them seemed to have an idea that there was anything in the verse which she did not understand. It was not until I took it up, word by word, and challenged a peremptory and sharp scrutiny into the meaning attached to each word, that the remarkable fact came out which I have stated.

One or two more leaves from my professional experience will be given.

During the greater part of my professional life, it has been a part of my duty to examine candidates for the office of teacher in the public schools. Out of ninety-eight candidates for the office of a.s.sistant teacher, whom I examined on one occasion, only one knew the meaning of the word "sumptuary," although in the public discussion then going on about the license law, the word was in daily use in the public papers; in fact, I took it out of the newspaper of that morning. On another occasion, out of fourteen candidates for the office of Princ.i.p.al teacher of a boys' Grammar school, four defined "friable" as that which can be fried; several did not know at all the meaning of "hibernating," and one, the successful candidate, said it meant "relating to Ireland." By "successful" candidate, I mean the one who got the vote of the Directors!

This sober scrutiny into any one's knowledge of the meaning of words in common use, is one of the most reliable tests of his general intellectual progress and cultivation. It is one of the means by which in many city schools it is customary to test a candidate's fitness for promotion. To show how little people generally, and even teachers, are aware of the extent to which children misconceive the meaning of words in common use, I have transcribed a few examples from an examination of the kind which I once held. The definitions which I am about to quote were not the work of oral confusion and haste, but were given in writing, in circ.u.mstances of entire quietude and ample deliberation. The average age of the candidates, on the occasion referred to, was fourteen years and ten months, and no one of them was by law under thirteen years.

_Stature_--A picture; "I saw a stature of Washington."