did not so mean it. Only let your teaching be in
accordance with the wants of his young nature, and the school-room will
be to him the most attractive spot of all the earth. Time and again have
I seen the teacher of a primary school obliged at recess to compel her
children to go out of doors, so much more pleasant did they find the
school-room than the play-ground.

Quite the opposite extreme from the concert method, is that which, for
convenience, may be called the individual method. In this method, the
teacher examines one scholar alone upon the whole lesson, and then
another, and so on, until the class is completed.

The only advantage claimed for this method is, that the individual
laggard cannot screen his deficiencies, as he can when reciting in
concert. He cannot make believe to know the lesson by lazily joining in
with the general current of voice when the answers are given. His own
individual knowledge, or ignorance, stands out. This is clear, and so
far it is an advantage. But ascertaining what a pupil knows of a lesson,
is only one end, and that by no means the most important end of a
recitation. This interview between the pupil and teacher, called a
recitation, has many ends besides that of merely detecting how much of a
subject the pupil knows. A far higher end is to make him know more,--to
make perfect that knowledge which the most faithful preparation on the
part of the pupil always leaves incomplete.

The disadvantages of the individual method are obvious. It is a great
waste of time. If a teacher has a class of twenty, and an hour to hear
them in, it gives him but three minutes for each pupil, supposing there
are no interruptions. But there always are interruptions. In public
schools the class oftener numbers forty than twenty, and the time for
recitation is oftener half an hour than an hour. The teacher who pursues
the individual method to its extreme, will rarely find himself in
possession of more than one minute to each scholar. In so brief a time,
very little can be ascertained as to what the scholar knows of the
lesson, and still less can anything be done to increase that knowledge.
Moreover, while the teacher is bestowing his small modicum of time upon
one scholar, all the other members of the class are idle, or worse.

Teaching, of all kinds of labor, is that in which labor-saving and
time-saving methods are of the greatest moment. The teacher who is wise,
will aim so to conduct a recitation