from the daily humiliation of failure before the class, and by
tactfully encouraging him to greater effort, the teacher may
shortly discover that the poor pupil is far from hopeless.

7. Do not allow your questions to consume a disproportionate amount
of time with details. Until very recently in all our history
teaching, battles have been exalted to a place immeasurably
greater than their importance. We are coming to see that the
fighting is one of the least important things in the war. The
causes and results, the financial, political, and social effects
now absorb our attention. One or two battles in a course may
profitably be studied in detail, particularly in the history of
our own country, but in the press of considerations far more
interesting and vital, it is a waste of time to give more than a
moment's notice to the remainder. Student descriptions of
battles are bound to be stereotyped. The ordinary textbook
describes each of the thousand battles of the world in about the
same fifty words.

8. Let some of the questions be directed towards cultivating the
student's powers of oral description. History is not altogether
a matter of analysis or generalization. There can scarcely be
assigned a lesson in history that does not contain events which
lend themselves to dramatic description. Their recital should be
made the occasion of the student's best efforts in this
direction. Let the pupils be taught to use adjectives and
adverbs. Break down the barrier of listlessness or fear or
self-consciousness which keeps the student from rendering a
graphic and thrilling account of great events.

9. Let the questions from day to day develop the continuity of
history. Avoid questioning that fails to unite the events of
previous lessons with the one being studied. Bring out the
connection of the past and the present. Slavery existed in
America for two hundred years before the Civil War was fought.
Your teaching of those two centuries of history should be so
conducted that when the Civil War is finally reached, the class
can tell the process by which anti-slavery sentiment was finally
crystallized. The hiatus between the mobbing of Garrison in
Bos