MARGINAL NOTINGS. Time to method in about ten or twelve days a nearly globular nest. 31 'The shell or crust of the nest is a sort of rustic work full of little knobs on the outside: nor is the inside of those that I have examined smoothed with any exactness Descripat all. It is rendered soft and warm, and fit for the laying complete of eggs, by a lining of small straws, grasses, and feathers; nest. and sometimes by a bed of moss interwoven with wool. tion of patient. How the young are fed. 'As the young of small birds quickly arrive at their full growth, they soon become impatient of confinement, Young and sit all day with their heads out at the hole, where birds imthe dams, clinging to the nest, supply them with food from morning till night. For a time the young are fed on the wing by their parents; but this is done by so quick and almost imperceptible a movement, that a person must have attended very exactly to their motions before he would be able to perceive it. . . . As soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, the dams) Second immediately turn their thoughts to the business of a brood. second brood. The first flight, shaken off and rejected by their nurses, meet in great flocks, and these are the birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings and evenings round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of churches and houses. What becomes of first brood. Why they are slower swallow. 'Martins are by far the least active of the four species; their wings and tails are short, and therefore they are not capable of such surprising turns and quick and glan-than the cing movements as the swallow. Accordingly they make) use of a quiet easy motion in a middle region of the air, seldom mounting to any great height, and never sweeping long together over the surface of the ground or of the water. . . . They do not wander far for food, but ́ frequent sheltered districts, over some lake, or under some hanging wood, or in some hollow vale, especially they get in windy weather. Their flying. Where their food. Leaving 'As the summer declines, the congregating flocks, increase in numbers daily by the constant accession of the second broods, till at last they swarm in myriads upon myriads round the villages on the Thames, darken- the ing the face of the sky. They retire together in vast country. flocks about the beginning of October, in search of milder climates, to the south.' These marginal notes would show the teacher what he was to ask about, and knowing this he would have little difficulty in framing his questions. The very fact of referring to the margin and not to the text would assist him, for it is the rote knowledge of the text that too often confuses and leads to rote questioning. Rule 3. Expansion of the text necessary, but it must be legitimate. It is impossible that any author could adapt his language to the capacity of every child, or convey his information so that all will comprehend it. Neither could he compress into the limits of an ordinary lesson all the most important facts of many subjects; and hence explanation and expansion are necessary parts of a teacher's duty; but they should be kept within welldefined limits. The expansion of a lesson is legitimate only where the questions can be easily traced to their source in the subjectmatter itself. All other questions, in my estimation, come under the head of rambling teaching-a system deserving of special mention from the injury it does, and from its extensive use. Rambling teaching.-What it is. The reading books are used to teach spelling, meanings of words, derivations, grammar, geography, history, &c.; and the system I now speak of is that which blends all these subjects together in one common lesson. As an instance, take the following extract from 'The Martin,' just referred to : Example. As this bird often builds against a perpendicular wall without any projecting ledge under, it requires its utmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed.' The lesson goes on somewhat thus:— "A perpen Against what kind of a wall does the martin build? dicular wall. Spell perpendicular. What part of speech is it? Why? What other part of speech is it often? Give examples. What sort of a ledge is a projecting ledge? Root of projecting? Prefix? Affix? Meaning of these? Give other words from the same root? Their meaning? Give other words beginning with 'pro'? others ending with 'ing'? &c. Or, again: Spell foundation. How many letters are vowels? How many are, therefore, consonants? This answer is to be found by subtraction, so as to make it, as the advocates of this system say, an interesting question in arithmetic. But they forget that they have no right thus to jumble the elements of grammar and arithmetic together, in teaching a subject which has probably as little natural connection with either as either has with chemistry. Or, again: Spell firmly. What is the last letter in 'firmly'? why a vowel? Mention other words ending with this letter (in order to give, as the advocates of this system again say, a facility in using the English language). Why wrong. RAMBLING TEACHING. 33 Such teaching appears to me to be a violation of common sense, and of that excellent rule already mentioned— 'Teach one thing at a time, and only one.' It jumbles everything so thoroughly together, that it would be impossible for a child to tell what subject he had been learning, or for the master to say what he had been teaching. And how can teaching be called rational, where neither master nor child knows at what he aims? If we teach grammar, it is surely not too much to expect that we shall treat of language, and that the child will know that we do so; or if we teach geography, that we shall treat of the earth; or if we wish to treat of arithmetic, that we confine ourselves to number! And why should we not expect that in a reading-lesson the subject-matter will form the sole ground of our remarks, and that the child will feel that this is so? I cannot see anything in the lesson, for instance, from which the above extract is taken, to authorise my asking how many letters there are in foundation, or how many will remain when all the vowels are taken away. I might just as well in a grammar-lesson ask how many letters are in the words preposition, or conjunction, and follow it up by asking how many parts of speech would remain if the noun and adjective were gone. Nor can I at all understand why the time of a class should be taken up in enumerating the words which begin or end with y. I know that it is argued that by such an exercise a valuable facility of expression and a command over our language are acquired. But, in my opinion, this is quite a mistake. There is certainly a facility acquired of selecting words beginning or ending with this letter, but I have yet to learn how such a facility is to be made valuable. Its display is the chief cause of its popularity. The chief cause which makes it popular is the display which is naturally attached to it; and on this account it is the vice of many of our most promising teachers at the outset of their career, or after a short course of training in some model school.1 It is a change 1 It is probably from finding this system practised by such men, that it is called intellectual; but, in addition to other reasons, to show that it is anything but intellectual, we have only to consider the amount of mere routine into which it almost always degenerates. For when teachers are at liberty to depart on every occasion from the subject before them, they D naturally become at last to wear fixed channels, into which they always diverge their questions become stereotyped in a certain fixed order, and when they ask the first of the series, they continue asking them until the end. And this happens so frequently that, as Mr. McCreedy says, 'any experienced inspector, in the case of many schools, could name from the old system sufficiently showy to please themselves, and sufficiently like good teaching to deceive most others. They are attracted by the quickness with which questions can be put, and with the appearance of vivacity and skilfulness with a lesson presents when so conducted. But the trick will soon be discovered, and must bring discredit upon all who have recourse to it. No system of teaching can ever succeed that thus fritters away, among several subjects, the time designed for one, which allows the facts to enter the mind distorted and disjointed, and which does not admit of the employment of the best methods of teaching the subjects it treats of.1 The Example of legitimate expansion. Expansion to be legitimate must, as I have said, naturally spring from the text, and be easily traceable to it. To illustrate this, take the lesson on Ant,' already given. It is clear that the author wished to tell: (1) where ants live; (2) in what they live; (3) of what their hills are formed; (4) of their foresight in laying up food: (5) of their size in warm climates; (6) of the injury they do; (7) of the good they do. And it is clear, also, that the following questions would elicit all this information from the children with as much brevity and accuracy as are desirable. (1) In what localities are ants found? 'In fields and waste grounds.' (2) What are their little houses called? (3) Of what are these hills made? gum, earth, &c.' 'Ant-hills.' Of leaves, bits of trees, (4) What do they do with the food they collect? The part they do not eat, they lay by for use in winter.' (5) What size are the ant-hills in other countries? 'From ten to twelve feet.' (6) How do they injure us? (7) Of what use are they? vermin.' They destroy our food.' They kill rats, mice, and other In this there is no expansion of the text whatever. The questions test merely the children's knowledge of the author's statements, and the lesson is valuable in proportion as these statements are satisfactory, important, and complete. It is good, in fact, as far as it goes, but it ought to be expanded somewhat in the following manner, and in the places selected :(1) The different places in which insects take up their abode beforehand thirty per cent. of the questions he is destined afterwards to hear in his presence.' 1 See Reports of the Commis : sioners of National Education, Ireland, for Mr. McCreedy's remarks on this subject; and Min. of Council, 1845, vol. ii. p. 338, for Mr. Gordon's. may be stated. EXPANSION OF TEXT. 35 Some dwell in the air, some in water, some in marshes, some in old walls, &c., but ants live in mounds of earth, which they build in, commons and the waste portions of fields. (Why the cultivated portions would not answer might also be stated.) (2) The method by which ants carry their food, and the materials for their hills, should be explained; because children cannot understand without explanation, how such very small insects can perform these tasks. (3) The fact that ants live together in societies should be illustrated by the parallel case of the bee. The proof of the foresight given in the lesson should also be shown to be an error, and from what it sprang. (4) Some tangible illustration of the size of the ant, in this and other climates, is necessary (that is, when the insects themselves cannot be produced). Their hills, also, should be compared in height with the height of what the children know, as the height of the ceiling, or of the desk, &c. (5) Again, it should be shown that the injury done by these insects is very little in comparison with the good they do; and, moreover, as we can prevent the injury, we can reap all the benefits of these useful creatures without any of their disadvantages. (6) And finally, it should be explained how much better it is that they should eat and drag off their prey in warm climates, than that they should simply kill and leave it as a dog does a rat. In expanding a lesson the quality of the teacher is known. It is in this that the difference between teachers is most perceptible. The man of experience and intelligence easily selects from the information which he has acquired by reading, facts illustrative of the lesson. His judgment enables him to reject what is inapplicable, and by his superiority of skill he dovetails what he does select so cleverly into the text, that the whole appears as one completed piece. Whereas, one of the other class of teachers either confines himself exclusively to the text-from having no stock of information from which to cull, or taste to guide him in his choice -or else he wanders into a set of stereotyped questions upon every subject in the school course, distracting and bewildering his pupils. Explanations.-Style of. The explanations should be brief, so as not to weary the children, or burden their memories. They should be definite and complete, so as to suggest no doubt, and require nothing supplementary, and, above all, they should be couched in plain and intelligible language. The children should, immediately after each explanation, be questioned upon it, as upon |