e
teachers of this school to acquaint themselves diligently with the most
approved methods of teaching. No teachers will be retained who do not
keep themselves well posted in the literature of their profession, and
who are not found continually aiming at self-improvement. In whatever
school of whatever country, any branch is taught by better methods than
those practised here, it should be the duty of a teacher in this school
to search it out, and to profit by the discovery. Improvement comes by
comparison. The man, or the institution, that fails to profit by the
experience of others, is not wise. I hold it to be the duty of every
teacher of this school to be habitually conversant with the educational
journals of the day, and with the standard works on the theory of
teaching, and to lose no opportunity for personal observation of the
methods of others. I have often noticed, with equal pain and
commiseration, that young teachers, after having once finished their
preliminary studies and obtained a situation, are thereupon apparently
quite content, making no further effort at improvement, but settling
down for life in an inglorious mediocrity. The best teachers in this
school are expected to be better teachers next year than they are
now,--with ampler stores of knowledge, and a happier faculty for
communicating it. This, then, is our second aim in this school. We aim
to have teachers thoroughly posted in regard to the theory and the
methods of teaching, prepared to ride upon the advance wave of every
real improvement in the art.

3. I should, however, fail entirely to convey my meaning, were I to lead
you to suppose that we expect to accomplish our ends mainly by fine-spun
theories. I have no faith in any theory of education, which does not
include, as one of its leading elements, _hard work_. The teachers of
this school expect to work hard, and we expect the scholars to work
hard. We have no royal road to learning. Any knowledge, the acquisition
of which costs nothing, is usually worth nothing. The mind, equally with
the body, grows by labor. If some stuffing process could be invented, by
which knowledge could be forced into a mind perfectly passive, the
knowledge so acquired would be worthless to its possessor, and would
soon pass away, leaving the mind as blank as it was before. Knowledge,
to be of any value, must be assimilated, as bodily food is. Teaching is
essentially a co-operative act. The mind of the teacher and t