bath-schools, seem to be ambitious to do
a great deal of talking. The measure of their success, in their own
eyes, is their ability to keep up a continued stream of talk for the
greater part of the hour. This is of course better than the embarrassing
silence sometimes seen, where neither teacher nor scholar has anything
to say. But at the best, it is only the pouring into the exhausted
receiver enacted over again. We can never be reminded too often, that
there is no teaching except so far as there is active cooperation on the
part of the learner. The mind receiving must reproduce and give back
what it gets. This is the indispensable condition of making any
knowledge really our own. The very best teaching I have ever seen, has
been where the teacher said comparatively little. The teacher was of
course brimful of the subject. He could give the needed information at
exactly the right point, and in the right quantity. But for every word
given by the teacher, there were many words of answering reproduction
on the part of the scholars. Youthful minds under such tutelage grow
apace.

It is indeed a high and difficult achievement in the educational art, to
get young persons thus to bring forth their thoughts freely for
examination and correction. A pleasant countenance and a gentle manner,
inviting and inspiring confidence, have something to do with the matter.
But, whatever the means for accomplishing this end, the end itself is
indispensable. The scholar's tongue must be unloosed, as well as the
teacher's. The scholar's thoughts must be broached, as well as the
teacher's. Indeed, the statement needs very little qualification or
abatement, that a scholar has learned nothing from us except what he has
expressed to us again in words. The teacher who is accustomed to
harangue his scholars with a continuous stream of words, no matter how
full of weighty meaning his words may be, is yet deceiving himself, if
he thinks that his scholars are materially benefited by his intellectual
activity, unless it is so guided as to awaken and exercise theirs. If,
after a suitable period, he will honestly examine his scholars on the
subjects, on which he has himself been so productive, he will find that
he has been only pouring water into a sieve. Teaching can never be this
one-sided process. Of all the things we attempt, it is the one most
essentially and necessarily a cooperative process. There must be the
joint action of the teacher's mind and