omatic as speech, or as walking, eating, or
any other of the many acts which "do themselves." If this degree of
skill is not reached, it means halting and inefficient work in all
these lines farther on. Many are the children who are crippled in
their work in history, geography, and other studies because they
cannot read well enough to understand the text. Many are struggling
along in the more advanced parts of the arithmetic, unable to master
it because they are deficient in the fundamentals, because they lack
skill. And many are wasting time trying to analyze sentences when they
cannot recognize the different parts of speech.

Skill is efficiency in doing. It is always a growth, and never comes
to us ready-made. To be sure, some pupils can develop skill much
faster than others, but the point is, that _skill has to be
developed_. Skill is the result of repetition, or practice, that is,
of _drill_.

The following principles should guide in the use of drill in the
recitation:

_a. Drill should be employed wherever a high degree of skill is
required._--This applies to what have been called the "tools of
knowledge," or those things which are necessary in order to secure all
other knowledge. Such are the "three R's," reading, (w)riting, and
(a)rithmetic, to which we may add spelling. Without a good foundation
in these, all other knowledge will be up-hill work, if not wholly
impossible.

_b. Drill must be upon correct models, and with alert interest and
attention._--Mere repetition is not enough to secure skill. What
teacher has not been driven to her wits' ends to prevent the
successive lines in the copy book from growing steadily worse as they
increase in number from the copy on down the page! Surely drill with
such a result would be long in arriving at skill. Such practice is not
only wholly wasted, but actually results in establishing false models
and careless habits in the pupil's mind. Each line must be written
with correct models in mind, and with the effort to make it better
than any preceding one, if skill is to be the outcome.

Much of the value of drill is often lost through lack of interest and
attention. The child lazily sing-songing the multiplication table may
learn to say it as he would a verse of poetry, and yet not know the
separate combinations when he needs them in problems. What he needs is
drill upon the different combinations hit-and-miss, and in simple
problems, rapidly and many times over, with