simple in its plan,--as simple as
its size and general circumstances will permit, and especially, that the
public schools in every town and village of our country should never
lose sight of what is, and must be, after all, their great
design--_teaching the whole population to read, write, and calculate_.

7. If it is a school-book, which you are wishing to introduce, consider
well before you waste your time in preparing it, and your spirits in the
vexatious work of getting it through the press, whether it is, _for
general use_, so superior to those already published, as to induce
teachers to make a change in favor of yours. I have italicised the words
_for general use_, for no delusion is more common than for a teacher to
suppose, that because a text-book which he has prepared and uses in
manuscript, is better for _him_ than any other work which he can obtain,
it will therefore be better for _general circulation_. Every man, if he
has any originality of mind, has of course some peculiar method of his
own, and he can of course prepare a text-book which will be better
adapted to this method, than those ordinarily in use. The history of a
vast multitude of textbooks, Arithmetics, Geographies, and Grammars, is
this. A man of a somewhat ingenious mind, adopts some peculiar mode of
instruction in one of these branches, and is quite successful, not
because the method has any very peculiar excellence, but simply because
he takes a greater interest in it, both on account of its novelty and
also from the fact that it is his own invention. He conceives the plan
of writing a text-book, to develope and illustrate this method. He
hurries through the work. By some means or other, he gets it printed. In
due time it is regularly advertised. The Annals of Education gives
notice of it; the author sends a few copies to his friends, and that is
the end of it. Perhaps a few schools may make a trial of it, and if, for
any reason, the teachers who try it are interested in the work, perhaps
in their hands, it succeeds. But it does not succeed so well as to
attract general attention, and consequently does not get into general
circulation. The author loses his time and his patience. The publisher,
unless unfortunately it was published on the author's account, loses his
paper. And in a few months, scarcely any body knows that such a book
ever saw the light.

It is in this way, that the great multitude of school-books which are
now constantly iss