ess than the
teacher of the primary school, or of the Sabbath-school, all need this
supplementary knowledge and skill, in which consists the very essence of
teaching. This knowledge of how to teach is not acquired by merely
studying the subject to be taught. It is a study by itself. A man may
read familiarly the _Mechanique Celeste_, and yet not know how to teach
the multiplication table. He may read Arabic or Sanskrit, and not know
how to teach a child the alphabet of his mother tongue. The
Sabbath-school teacher may dip deep into biblical lore, he may ransack
the commentaries, and may become, as many Sabbath-school teachers are,
truly learned in Bible knowledge, and yet be utterly incompetent to
teach a class of children. He can no more hit the wandering attention,
or make a lodgment of his knowledge in the minds of his youthful
auditory, than the mere unskilled possessor of a fowling-piece can hit a
bird upon the wing.

The art of teaching is the one indispensable qualification of the
teacher. Without this, whatever else he may be, he is no teacher. How
may this art be acquired? In the first place, many persons pick it up,
just as they pick up a great many other arts and trades,--in a
hap-hazard sort of way. They have some natural aptitude for it, and they
grope their way along, by guess and by instinct, and through many
failures, until they become good teachers, they hardly know how. To
rescue the art from this condition of uncertainty and chance, is the
object of the Normal School. In such a school, the main object of the
pupil is to learn how to make others know what he himself knows. The
whole current of his thoughts and studies is turned into this channel.
Studying how to teach, with an experimental class to practise on, forms
the constant topic of his meditations. It is surprising how rapidly,
under such conditions, the faculty of teaching is developed; how fertile
the mind becomes in devising practical expedients, when once the
attention is roused and fixed upon the precise object to be attained,
and the idea of what teaching really is, fairly has possession of the
mind. For this purpose every well-ordered Normal School has, in
connection with it, as a part of its organization, a Model School, to
serve the double purpose of a school of observation and practice.

Thus, after these pupil-teachers are once familiar with the branches to
be taught, and after they have become acquainted with the theory of
teaching