THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 



7i 



usually because the persou is inclined to become a machine, and a 

 well-constructed machine is better than a poor one. The few so 

 specially gifted as not to need so much detail and drill suffer no 

 permanent injury by the temporary restraint of their powers of 

 independent action. The habits formed in the thorough training 

 school will but aid their steps into new paths in the wide field be- 

 yond its walls. To the careful, unremitting drill of her method 

 and practice school work is largely due the fact that the Oswego 

 Normal School has turned out so large a product of successful 



Hermann Krusj. 



teachers as compared with her production of mere talkers and 

 essay writers. No one else deserves so much credit for this as 

 Miss Cooper. The maxims, The idea before the word, The con- 

 crete before the abstract, One step at a time, Never tell a child 

 what he can find out for himself, were constantly applied by her 

 as the plumb-line and try-square to test all work. Her method of 

 inculcating principles and teaching the art of questioning was 

 philosophical. The student was required to write out a series of 

 logical questions and answers for drawing out the ideas to be 

 taught; not once, but daily for twenty weeks, in a series of 

 graduated lessons in each of the subjects to be taught in primary 





