ten papers are read at once. Usually time does not
permit this. Many children do not like to write, and hence find the
lesson tiresome, especially if continued for a whole class period.

The amount of writing required of children may be too great. Few
pupils can write long at a time without eye-strain, muscle cramp, and
bad bodily positions. Where this is the case, over-fatigue results if
the amount of written work required is large. It is not unusual to
find schools in which children are required to spend almost half of
their school hours in some form of written work. This is a serious
mistake both educationally and from the standpoint of health.

There is also still another side of the matter to consider. One of the
great advantages of written work is that the pupil may have his errors
shown him, so that he may reflect upon them and correct them. But not
infrequently, where the amount of written work is too large, the
errors are not carefully corrected by the teacher, and not corrected
at all by the pupil. This is why many pupils will keep on making the
same error time after time on their papers. The correction has not
sufficiently impressed them.

All written work, with perhaps rare exceptions, should be carefully
gone over by the teacher, and all serious or oft-repeated errors
corrected by the pupils who make them. Not infrequently may children
be seen to glance over a paper upon which the teacher has put precious
time and some red ink in making corrections, and then crumple the
paper and throw it into the waste basket. Sometimes this is done in
sheer carelessness, and sometimes in petulance because of the many
corrections. This is all a loss of time and opportunity. The teacher
should have tact enough to show the pupils that corrections are made
on their papers for their benefit, and not as a punishment. And then
the pupils should take the trouble to correct the errors, that they
may not occur again. Better a thousand times correct carefully an old
paper than write a new one containing the same errors.

III

THE ART OF QUESTIONING

1. _The importance of good questioning_

Skill in the art of questioning lies at the basis of all good
teaching. When we were children it looked so easy for the teacher to
sit and ask the questions which we were expected to answer. When we
become teachers we find that it is much harder to ask the questions
than to answer them. For to question well, one must not only know