PART V

LESSONS AS INSTRUMENTS OF EDUCATION

I. THE MATTER AND METHOD OF LESSONS

1. Discuss the statement, This is ‘an age of pedagogy.’

2. Why must parents reflect on the subject-matter of instruction?

3. Show that home is the best growing ground for young children.

4. Why must a mother have definite views?

5. What are the three questions for the mother?

6. Show that children learn, to grow.

7. Show that any doctoring of the material of knowledge is unnecessary for a healthy child.

8. What is an idea?

9. Show that an idea feeds, grows, and produces.

10. What did Sir Walter Scott and George Stephenson each do with an idea?

11. Show the value of dominant ideas.

12. Why must lessons furnish ideas?

13. What quality of knowledge should children get?

14. What is the evil of ‘diluted knowledge’?

15. Illustrate a child’s power of getting knowledge (Dr Arnold).

16. What is the harm of lesson-books with pretty pictures and easy talk?

17. What are the four tests which should be applied to children’s lessons?

18. Give a _résumé_ of six points already considered.

II. THE KINDERGARTEN AS A PLACE OF EDUCATION

1. Show that the mother is the best _Kindergärtnerin_.

2. How may the child get education out of his daily nursery life?

3. Show that the children’s pursuit of real knowledge may be hindered by the kindergarten.

4. Show that a just eye and a faithful hand may be trained at home.

5. In what respects does the kindergarten give a hint of the discipline proper for the nursery.

6. What temper should be cultivated in the nursery?

7. What general conclusion may we come to as to the principles and practices of the kindergarten?

III. FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF THE KINDERGARTEN

1. What anecdote of a child is quoted from Tolstoi’s _Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth_?

2. Why are such tales as Miss Deland’s _The Story of a Child_ valuable?

3. What do we owe to Froebel?

4. What may we learn from the true _Kindergärtnerin_?

5. Comment upon, ‘Persons do not grow in a garden.’

6. Show that we must leave opportunity for the work of nature in education.

7. Give instances showing the intelligence of children.

8. Account for the pleasure children take in kindergarten games.

9. In what ways do teachers mediate too much?

10. Show the danger of personal magnetism in the teacher.

11. Show fully that the name ‘kindergarten’ implies a false analogy.

12. What might be said concerning the Froebel ‘mother-games’?

13. Is the society of a large number of his equals in age the best for a young child?

14. Show the dangers of supplanting nature.

15. What would you say regarding the importance of personal initiative?

16. In what ways must parents and teachers sow opportunities?

17. Do ‘only’ children profit by the kindergarten?

18. In what ways should children be allowed some ordering of their lives?

19. Give a few of the lessons we may learn from the autobiography of Helen Keller.

20. What conclusions does Miss Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher, arrive at with regard to systems of education?

21. Account for the success of the kindergarten in the United States.

22. What changes does Mr Thistleton Mark observe?

23. Give some of the comments of Dr Stanley Hall.

IV. READING

1. Discuss the question of the age at which children should learn to read.

2. How did Mrs Wesley teach her children to read?

3. Give a few hints for teaching the alphabet.

4. How would you introduce a child to word-making?

5. Describe a lesson in word-making with long vowels, etc.

6. How should the child’s first reading lessons help him to spell?

7. Give the steps of a reading lesson on ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star.’

8. Why is prose better in some ways than verse for early lessons?

9. Describe a second reading lesson on ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star.’

10. Show that slow and steady progress tends to careful enunciation.

11. Show how much a child might gain in a year’s work on these lines.

12. Contrast this steady progress with the casual way in which children generally learn to read.

V. FIRST READING LESSON

(_Two Mothers Confer_)

VI. READING BY SIGHT AND BY SOUND

1. Why is learning to read hard work?

2. What are the symbols children must learn?

3. What do we definitely propose in teaching a child to read?

4. Can the symbols he learns be interesting?

5. Describe the stages of a lesson on ‘I like little Pussy.’

6. How does Tommy learn to read sentences?

7. Describe Tommy’s first spelling lesson.

8. How would you deal with the fact that like combinations have different sounds?

9. Show that his reading lesson should afford moral training to a child.

VII. RECITATION

‘THE CHILDREN’S ART’

1. What should we aim at in teaching children to recite?

2. How should we proceed?

3. What should we avoid?

4. Why may we expect success?

5. Distinguish between reciting and memorising.

6. Show that children have a natural capacity for memorising.

7. How would you teach them to memorise a poem?

VIII. READING FOR OLDER CHILDREN

1. To what two points must the teacher attend?

2. What is the most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day?

3. How may we correct this defect?

4. What points require attention when the child is reading aloud?

5. What must the teacher be careful to avoid?

6. What is to be said for and against reading to children?

7. Should children be questioned about the meaning of what they read?

8. Why not?

9. Suggest a better test of their intelligence.

10. Why is the selection of a child’s early lesson-books a matter of great importance?

11. What general rule should help in the choice of these?

12. How may the attention of children be secured during a reading lesson?

13. Give two or three hints with regard to careful enunciation.

IX. THE ART OF NARRATION

1. Prove from your own observation that children narrate by nature.

2. How should this power be used in their education?

3. What points must be borne in mind with regard to a child’s narrations?

4. Describe the method of a lesson.

X. WRITING

1. How would you avoid the habit of careless work?

2. What printing should a child do before he comes to write?

3. What stages should be followed in teaching writing?

4. What is to be said about copperplate headlines?

5. Why should children practise in text-hand?

6. What arguments are advanced in favour of a beautiful handwriting?

7. What is to be said for a beautiful basis for characteristic handwriting?

8. Suggest a way of using _A New Handwriting_.

XI. TRANSCRIPTION

1. Show the use of transcription before children write dictation.

2. What should children transcribe?

3. How should transcription help children to spell?

4. Why should text-hand and double-ruled lines be used?

5. Describe the proper position in writing.

6. How should children hold their pens?

7. What are the points of a good desk?

8. Describe a school-table for little children.

XII. SPELLING AND DICTATION

1. Show how dictation may be made a cause of bad spelling.

2. What is the _rationale_ of spelling?

3. What are the steps of a dictation lesson as it should be?

4. Show clearly what principle is involved.

5. What are the two causes of illiterate spelling?

XIII. COMPOSITION

1. Show that the exaction of original composition from school-boys and school-girls is a futility.

2. And a moral injury to the children.

3. Illustrate the sort of teaching that should be regarded as a public danger.

4. Upon what condition does composition ‘come by nature’?

XIV. BIBLE LESSONS

1. Illustrate the religious receptivity of children.

2. What Bible knowledge should children of nine have?

3. What would you say with regard to Bible narratives done into modern English?

4. Show fully why children should be made familiar with the text.

5. What conception should gradually unfold itself to them?

6. Distinguish between essential and accidental truth.

7. In what event may it be said that ‘the truths themselves will assuredly slip from our grasp’?

8. Why should care be taken lest Bible teaching stale upon the minds of children?

9. Describe the method of a Bible lesson.

10. What use would you make of illustrations?

11. What is to be said as to the learning by heart of Bible passages?

XV. ARITHMETIC

1. Why is arithmetic important as a means of education?

2. How would you test a child’s knowledge of principles?

3. Why are long sums mischievous?

4. What mental exercise should a problem offer?

5. What caution must be observed?

6. How may arithmetic become an elementary training in mathematics?

7. How should a child demonstrate 4 × 7 = 28?

8. How would you use buttons, beans, etc.?

9. Show how you would teach a child to work out an addition and subtraction table with each of the digits.

10. When would you introduce multiplication and division tables?

11. How would you teach division?

12. What is the step between working with things and with abstract numbers?

13. How would you introduce our system of notation?

14. Why?

15. Show fully how you would deal with ‘tens.’

16. How long should a child work with ‘tens’ and units only?

17. What should follow?

18. What rule must be observed throughout?

19. How would you apply the same principle to weights and measures?

20. What part should _parcels_ play at this stage, and why?

21. Show how the child should use a foot-rule.

22. How would you exercise his judgment as to measures and weights.

23. How does the idea of a fraction occur in this work with concrete quantities?

24. What should be the moral value of the study of arithmetic?

25. How does the inferior teacher instil a disregard of truth and common honesty in this study?

26. How would you deal with a ‘wrong’ sum?

27. What should the daily arithmetic lesson be to the children?

28. Discuss the _A B C Arithmetic_.

29. What is to be said against accustoming young children to the sight of geometrical forms and figures?

XVI. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

1. Show that childhood is the time for gathering materials for classification.

2. What does Mr Herbert Spencer say as to the value of scientific pursuits?

3. Show that children are able to comprehend principles.

4. Mention some of the phenomena they might readily understand.

5. From the subjects taught successfully in a village school, write a list of questions which intelligent children should be able to answer.

6. ‘The principles of natural philosophy are the principles of common sense.’ Show how this statement should be a key to our educational practice.

XVII. GEOGRAPHY

1. Wherein lies the peculiar educational value of geography?

2. How is geography commonly taught?

3. What sort of information about places do children and grown-up people enjoy?

4. Why is the geography learnt at school of little use in after life?

5. What should a child learn in geography?

6. How should he get his rudimentary notions?

7. How should children be introduced to maps?

8. Why should a child be made ‘at home’ in some one region?

9. Why is it well to follow the steps of a traveller?

10. Mention a few books useful in this connection.

11. How should maps be used in this kind of work?

12. How should a child get his first notion of a glacier, a cañon, etc.?

13. What course of reading might parents aim at between a child’s fifth and his tenth year?

14. How should young children get their lessons on place?

15. How should they arrive at definitions?

16. What fundamental ideas should a child receive?

17. How should he be introduced to the meaning of a map?

XVIII. HISTORY

1. What is the intellectual and what the moral worth of history as an educational subject?

2. What is to be said of the usual ways of teaching English history?

3. What, if the little text-book be moral or religious in tone?

4. What is the fatal mistake as regards the early teaching of history?

5. What is the better way?

6. What should a child know of the period in which any person, about whom he is reading, lived?

7. What moral gain may he get from such intimate knowledge?

8. What manner of books must be eschewed?

9. What is the least that should be done to introduce children to the history of England?

10. Why is the early history of a nation better fitted for children than its later records?

11. Why are the old Chronicles profitable reading for them?

12. Name and comment upon a few of the Chronicles upon which children’s knowledge of history should rest.

13. What effect on a child should the reading of such old Chronicles have?

14. Show that children should know something of the heroic age of their own nation.

15. What use may be made of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _History of the British Kings_?

16. From what authority should a child get the story of the French wars?

17. Why do Plutarch’s _Lives_ afford the best preparation for the study of Grecian and Roman history?

18. Give two counsels which should regulate the teaching of history.

19. Upon what principles should history books for children be selected?

20. Mention one or two books that lend themselves to narrating.

21. Comment upon Mr Arnold Forster’s _History of England_.

22. How would you help children to clearness with regard to dates?

23. Mention two or three ways in which children’s minds work if their history books are of the proper quality.

XIX. GRAMMAR

1. Why is grammar uninteresting to a child?

2. Why is English grammar peculiarly hard?

3. Show that the Latin grammar is easier.

4. Show that the Latin affords some help in the learning of English grammar.

5. Why should a child begin with a _sentence_ and not with the parts of speech?

6. Write notes of one or two introductory lessons.

XX. FRENCH

1. How should French be acquired?

2. Show that the learning of French is an education of the senses.

3. What are our two difficulties in speaking French?

4. Show that these hindrances should be removed in childhood.

5. How?

6. How might the difficulty of accent be dealt with?

7. What half-dozen principles has M. Gouin made plain to us?

8. Show that the _Series_ method enables a child to think in the new language.

9. Trace fully the steps by which the author worked out his theory.

10. How does he treat the difficulty of spelling?

11. Illustrate the facility with which a child learns a new language.

XXI. PICTORIAL ART, ETC.

1. Upon what two lines should the art training of children proceed?

2. How should picture-talks be regulated?

3. What gains may we hope for from this kind of teaching?

4. Discuss the use of blobs in early drawing lessons.

5. What should be our aim in these lessons?

6. Children have ‘art’ in them. How should this fact affect our teaching?

7. What should we bear in mind in teaching clay-modelling to children?

8. Name methods of teaching singing and the piano which are to be commended.

9. What physical exercises would you recommend?

10. Name some handicrafts suitable for young children.

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