Methods of Teaching
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their time to higher mathematics when they are incapable of keeping
simple accounts. Many study elocution with a view to acquiring the
graces of oratory when they are unable to read in an intelligible and
impressive manner. Many who have finished the study of rhetoric fail
in the composition and spelling of an ordinary letter.
A thorough knowledge of the essentials of education should be not
only the condition of admission to a higher course, but the constant
test for continuance and advancement.
And in every branch of education there are objects to be gained
more important than those secured by mere technical knowledge. Take
language, for example. More important than the acquirement of for-
eign languages, living or dead, is the ability to write and speak one’s
mother tongue with ease and accuracy; but no training gained through
a knowledge of grammatical rules can compare in importance with the
study of language from a higher point of view. With this study, to a
great degree, is bound up life’s weal or woe.
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The chief requisite of language is that it be pure and kind and true—
“the outward expression of an inward grace.” God says: “Whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatso-
ever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be
any praise, think on these things.”
Philippians 4:8
. And if such are the
thoughts, such will be the expression.
The best school for this language study is the home; but since the
work of the home is so often neglected, it devolves on the teacher to
aid his pupils in forming right habits of speech.
The teacher can do much to discourage that evil habit, the curse
of the community, the neighborhood, and the home—the habit of
backbiting, gossip, ungenerous criticism. In this no pains should be
spared. Impress upon the students the fact that this habit reveals a lack
of culture and refinement and of true goodness of heart; it unfits one
both for the society of the truly cultured and refined in this world and
for association with the holy ones of heaven.
We think with horror of the cannibal who feasts on the still warm
and trembling flesh of his victim; but are the results of even this
practice more terrible than are the agony and ruin caused by misrep-
resenting motive, blackening reputation, dissecting character? Let