826 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION 1. 



advantage over one who sees in every schoolboy offence 

 nothing but malicious personal aggressiveness, and in every 

 schoolboy difficulty a wilful refusal to acquire knowledge. It 

 is not so much in disciphne as in the matter of teaching that 

 the present system is so defective. For in the art of managing- 

 boys and girls, while theory counts for much, it is patient and 

 intelligent practice that is indispensable. But in imparting 

 knowledge and in training faculty, the want of previous 

 knowledge of method is of far more disastrous consequence. 

 It is a mere commonplace among schoolmasters that the first 

 year — some would say two years — is almost wasted in learning- 

 how to teach. Each assistant is set to find out methods of 

 instruction for himself, while the head occasionally examines 

 the work, making many cutting but few suggestive comments. 

 The principle of solvitur amhulando finds here its highest 

 and most melancholy application. The class-room is like a 

 chemical laboratory in which a tyro experiments with reagents 

 whose properties he does not know. The explosions, the 

 extraordinary precipitates, the destruction of apparatus and 

 of clothes, all find parallels in the work of a raw schoolmaster. 

 At the end of a year when his work comes under review, he 

 knows the materials at his command and has acquired 

 methods for future use, but he has httle or no successful 

 teaching to look back upon. He recognises how much he 

 might have achieved if the knowledge he has thus painfully 

 acquired had been his at first. If there is this need of a 

 preliminary study of method, a knowledge of educational 

 theory is equally important. The first few months of most 

 new teachers — and years in the case of some — are inefficient 

 not only for want of good methods, but also through ignorance 

 of the laws of mind and body. Intelligent and enthusiastic 

 men and women usually acquire their own mental science 

 through close observation of pupils under their charge, but 

 all is empirical and lacks scientific value. Secondary teaching 

 will never be at its zenith until a knowledge of the science 

 and art of education is the sine qua non of admission into the 

 profession. 



(2.) The consequence of this blemish is that of all profes- 

 sions, teaching is the " tainted whether of the flock." It is not 

 in itself a learned profession, for even the modern attainments 

 of Goldsmith's Village Schoolmaster suffice, at the present 

 day, to open its portals. The increased consideration and 

 respect which have been shown to it of recent years are 

 largely due to the number of university men who have 



