together in the business of education, and one that is often
overlooked, is that children do not know how to learn lessons when the
books are before them, and that there is a great waste of good power,
and a great deal of unnecessary weariness from this cause. If the cause
of imperfectly learned lessons is examined it will usually be found
there, and also the cause of so much dislike to the work of preparation.
Children do not know by instinct how to set about learning a lesson from
a book, nor do they spontaneously recognize that there are different
ways of learning, adapted to different lessons. It is a help to them to
know that there is one way for the multiplication table and another for
history and another for poetry, as the end of the lesson is different.
They can understand this if it is put before them that one is learnt
most quickly by mere repetition, until it becomes a sing-song in the
memory that cannot go wrong, and that afterwards in practice it will
allow itself to be taken to pieces; they will see that they can grasp a
chapter of history more intelligently if they prepare for themselves
questions upon it which might be asked of another, than in trying by
mechanical devices of memory to associate facts with something to hold
them by; that poetry is different from both, having a body and a soul,
each of which has to be taken account of in learning it, one of them
being the song and the other the singer. Obviously there is not one only
way for each of these or for other matters which have to be learnt, but
one of the greatest difficulties is removed when it is understood that
there is something intelligible to be done in the learning of lessons
beyond reading them over and over with the hope that they will go in.

The hearing of lessons is a subject that deserves a great deal of
consideration. It is an old formal name for what has been often an
antiquated mechanical exercise. A great deal more trouble is expended
now on the manner of questioning and "hearing" the lessons; but even yet
it may be done too formally, as a mere function, or in a way that kills
the interest, or in a manner that alarms--with a mysterious face as if
setting traps, or with questions that are easy and obvious to ask, but
for children almost impossible to answer. Children do not usually give
direct answers to simple questions. Experience seems to have taught them
that appearances are deceptive in this matter, and they look about for
th