ness combined
with unnatural and unceasing strain. Activity is good for the child,
and rest, which, is the complement of activity, is good for the
child; but the combination of inertness with strain is good for
neither his body nor his mind. Indeed, it may be doubted if there is
any state of mind and body which is so uneducational as this, or so
unfavourable to healthy growth.

But the main objection to the reading-aloud lesson is, I repeat, that
while it is going on the children are not reading at all, in the
proper sense of the word, not attacking the book, not enjoying it,
not extracting the honey from it. And the consequences of the
inability to read which is thus engendered are far-reaching and
disastrous. The power to read is a key which unlocks many doors. One
of the most important of these doors--perhaps, from the strictly
scholastic point of view, _the_ most important--is the door of study.
The child who cannot read to himself cannot study a book, cannot
master its contents. It is because the elementary school child cannot
be trusted to do any independent study, that the oral lesson, or
lecture, with its futile expenditure of "chalk and talk," is so
prominent a feature in the work of the elementary school. And it is
because the oral lesson necessarily counts for so much, that the
over-grouping of classes, with all its attendant evils, is so widely
practised. The grouping together of "Standards" V, VI, and VII, with
the result that the children who go through all those Standards are
compelled to waste the last two years of their school life, is a
practice which is almost universal in elementary schools of a certain
size. And there are few schools of that size in which those Standards
could not be broken up into two, if not three, independent classes,
if the children, whose ages range as a rule between eleven and
fourteen, could be trusted to work by themselves. In many cases this
over-grouping is wholly inexcusable, the headmaster having no class
of his own to teach, and being therefore free to do what obviously
ought to be done,--to separate the older and more advanced children
from the rest of the top class, and form them into a separate class
(a real top class) for independent study and self-education under his
direction and supervision. But so strong is the force of habit, and
so deeply rooted in the mind of the teacher is distrust of the child,
that it is rare to find the head teacher to whom the idea of