umbers, for example, each
figure may be called for by itself, or they may be given one after
another, the pupils keeping exact time. When it is desirable to ask a
question to which the answer is necessarily long, it may be addressed to
an individual, or the whole class may write their replies, which may
then be read in succession.

In a great many cases where simultaneous answering is practised, after a
short time, the evils above specified are allowed to grow, until at last
some half dozen bright members of a class answer for all, the rest
dragging after them, echoing their replies, or ceasing to take any
interest in an exercise, which brings no personal and individual
responsibility upon them. To prevent this the teacher should exercise
double vigilance, at such a time. He should often address questions to
individuals alone, especially to those most likely to be inattentive and
careless, and guard against the ingress of every abuse, which might,
without close vigilance, appear.

With these cautions, the method here alluded to will be found to be of
very great advantage in many studies; for example, all the arithmetical
tables may be recited in this way; words may be spelled, answers to sums
given; columns of figures added, or numbers multiplied; and many
questions in History, Geography, and other miscellaneous studies,
answered, especially the general questions asked for the purpose of a
review.

But besides being useful as a mode of examination, this plan of
answering questions simultaneously, is a very important means of fixing
in the mind, any facts, which the teacher may communicate to his pupils.
If, for instance, he says some day to a class, that Vasco de Gama was
the discoverer of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, and leaves it
here, in a few days, not one in twenty, will recollect the name. But let
him call upon them all to spell it, simultaneously, and then to
pronounce it distinctly, three or four times in concert, and the word
will be very strongly impressed upon the mind. The reflecting teacher
will find a thousand cases, in the instruction of his classes, and in
his general exercises, in the school, in which this principle will be of
great utility. It is universal in its application. What we _say_, we fix
by the very act of saying it, in the mind. Hence reading aloud, though a
slower, is a far more thorough method, than reading silently; and it is
better, in almost all cases, whether in the fami