cholars
should be taught these arts thoroughly first of all, and in the other
studies the main design should be to show them how to use, and interest
them in using, the arts they have thus acquired.

A great many teachers feel a much stronger interest in the one or two
scholars they may have in Surveying or in Latin than they do in the
large classes in the elementary branches which fill the school. But a
moment's reflection will show that such a preference is founded on a
very mistaken view. Leading forward one or two minds from step to step
in an advanced study is certainly far inferior in real dignity and
importance to opening all the stores of written knowledge to fifty or a
hundred. The man who neglects the interests of his school in these great
branches to devote his time to two or three, or half a dozen older
scholars, is unjust both to his employers and to himself.

It is the duty, therefore, of every teacher who commences a common
district school for a single season to make, when he commences, an
estimate of the state of his pupils in reference to these three
branches. How do they all write? How do they all read? How do they
calculate? It would be well if he would make a careful examination of
the school in this respect. Let them all write a specimen. Let all read,
and let him make a memorandum of the manner, noticing how many read
fluently, how many with difficulty, how many know only their letters,
and how many are to be taught these. Let him ascertain, also, what
progress they have made in arithmetic--how many can readily perform the
elementary processes, and what number need instruction in these. After
thus surveying the ground, let him form his plan, and lay out his whole
strength in carrying forward as rapidly as possible the _whole school_
in these studies. By this means he is acting most directly and
powerfully on the intelligence of the whole future community in that
place. He is opening to fifty or a hundred minds stores of knowledge
which they will go on exploring for years to come. What a descent now
from such a work as this to the mere hearing of the recitation of two or
three boys in Trigonometry!

I repeat it, that a thorough and enlightened survey of the whole school
should be taken, and plans formed for elevating the whole mass in those
great branches of knowledge which are to be of immediate practical use
to them in future life.

If the school is one more advanced in respect to the age and