RECORDS. 185 



problem ; but it has scciiied to luc that tlic phase whicli I shall 

 now ask you to look at for a tew uiiiuites may assume some new 

 relations of perspective and be worth a glance. It is barely 

 possible that it may provoke fresh discussion. 



Let me disavow, at the beginning of my remarks, any claim to 

 originality in the propositions which are to be sulimitted. My 

 manner of regarding the problem has been forced upon me by 

 conversations and discussions with my colleagues, and with a 

 great many other teachers. Hence the case is decidedly one 

 of limited liability. 



It will be well for us to be sure at the outset that we all occupy 

 nearly the same point of view in looking at the main points of the 

 problem. Hence I may ask, — 



I St. Are we not agreed in believing that although the courses 

 of studies in our primary and grammar schools are, in popular 

 phrase, crowded to repletion, the results in discipline and acquisi- 

 tion are by no means commensurate with the enormous expendi- 

 ture of money, strength, and time.^ Do we not find that many 

 of our young people come to the high and preparatory schools 

 with a distinct disrelish for hard and telling study.-* Is there not 

 a great amount of listlessness or dawdling.'* And yet we know 

 that the teachers are working well up to the full measure of their 

 strength ; alas, in too many cases, far beyond their strength. 



One can perhaps take it for granted that you have asked your- 

 selves whence comes this tendency to dawdle. It cannot spring 

 wholly from mere idleness, for youths of both sexes are naturally 

 inquisitive, and are prone to ask even awkward questions until 

 they are subdued by timely or untimely snubbing. Now, at some 

 point in the current discipline of a few, at least, of our schools 

 this alertness of mintl is replaced liy dulness anil inattention. 

 Often enough this unfortunate change tlatcs from the period of 

 discouragement when the pupil, compelled to try too many 

 things at once, gives up in despair — or it is coincident with 

 the time when the teacher makes the fatal mistake of doing the 

 pupil's work. There is no class of pupils more apathetic than the 

 personally-conducted. They camiot tell for their lives whether 

 they are in one strange city or another at any given moment. In the 

 case first mentioned, the living structure has been weighted above 

 its limits of elasticity, and becomes deformed beyond hope of 



