s, and proved, on actual trial, to be of real and permanent value.

These are, or rather they were, when first conceived by the original
projectors, new schemes; and the result has proved that they were good
ones. Every teacher too must hope that such improvements will continue
to be made. Let nothing therefore which shall be said on the subject of
scheming in this chapter, be interpreted as intended to condemn real
improvements of this kind, or to check those which may now be in
progress, by men of age or experience, or of sound judgment, who are
capable of distinguishing between a real improvement and a whimsical
innovation, which can never live any longer than it is sustained by the
enthusiasm of the original inventor.

2. There are a great many teachers in our country, who make their
business a mere dull and formal routine, through which they plod on,
month after month, and year after year, without variety or change, and
who are inclined to stigmatize with the appellation of idle scheming,
all plans, of whatever kind, to give variety or interest to the
exercises of the school. Now whatever may be said in this chapter
against unnecessary innovation and change, does not apply to efforts to
secure variety in the details of daily study, while the great leading
objects are steadily pursued. This subject has already been discussed in
the chapter on Instruction, where it has been shown that every wise
teacher, while he pursues the same great object, and adopts in substance
the same leading measures at all times, will exercise all the ingenuity
he possesses, and bring all his inventive powers into requisition to
give variety and interest to the minute details.

* * * * *

To explain now what is meant by such scheming as is to be condemned, let
us suppose a case, which is not very uncommon. A young man, while
preparing for college, takes a school. When he first enters upon the
duties of his office, he is diffident and timid, and walks cautiously in
the steps which precedent has marked out for him. Distrusting himself,
he seeks guidance in the example which others have set for him, and very
probably he imitates precisely, though it may be insensibly and
involuntarily, the manners and the plans of his own last teacher. This
servitude soon however, if he is a man of natural abilities, passes
away: he learns to try one experiment after another, until he insensibly
finds that a plan may succeed,