Teacher's manual [&c.].

EXTRACT FROM PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

In this work I have carefully detailed the most serious of the errors committed by teachers in the management of their schools, and which my long experience as an inspector gave me an opportunity of noticing. Why they are faults is also shown, together with the remedies which have been found best calculated to remove them. The value of these remedies is established by such arguments as appeared to me to be the most suitable, and the principles upon which they depend are explained with sufficient fullness to enable teachers to carry them out intellectually, instead of mechanically, and to vary them judiciously when the special circumstances of their schools require such a course.

My aim has been to mingle theory with practice, but always to keep the former subordinate to the latter, and to produce such a work as would, I hoped, be of benefit even to the most intelligent teachers, and would certainly be practicable by all.

I cannot expect that all advanced by me in the present work will be approved of; but I offer the work to the public as my quota to the general stock of experience out of which more perfect systems will be elaborated at some future time. If it prove the means of enabling any manager to place his school on a more satisfactory footing; if it enable any teacher to produce higher and more intelligent results; or if it draw the attention of those in power to the advancement of that useful body of men in whose hands the primary education of the country is at present placed, I shall feel that the labour devoted to it has not been spent quite in vain.

viii

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

It is now my pleasing duty to tender my grateful acknowledgments to J. E. Sheridan, Esq., Head Inspector of National Schools, Ireland, for the valuable assistance which he afforded to me in the preparation of this work. Many of the methods described in it, which have been found the most successful in practice, were suggested by him, and it was by his kind encouragement and approval that the work was originally persevered in.

I am also very glad of the opportunity now presented of stating, that I have profited very much by a careful perusal of the Reports of the Inspection staff of Great Britain and Ireland; and I hope that the extracts which I have largely made from these documents may prove equally serviceable to those for whom my book is intended.

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