in order that outward and visible results, results which will win
approval from those who judge according to the appearance of things,
may be duly produced.

The case of oral composition in the unemancipated elementary school
is even more hopeless than that of written composition. The latter
has a time set apart for it on the time-table, and is at any rate
supposed to be taught. The former is wholly ignored. Many teachers
seem to have entirely forgotten that the desire and the ability to
talk are part of the normal equipment of every healthy child. There
was, indeed, a time when children were taught to answer questions
in complete sentences even when one-word answers would have amply
sufficed. For example, when a child was asked how many pence there
were in a shilling, he was expected to answer, "There are twelve
pence in a shilling"; when he was asked what was the colour of snow,
he was expected to answer, "The colour of snow is white "; and so on.
And both he and his teacher flattered themselves that this waste of
words was oral composition! In point of fact the sentence in each of
these cases was worth no more, as an effort of self-expression, than
its one important word--_twelve_, _white_, or whatever it might be;
and the child, who was allowed to think that he had produced a real
sentence, had in effect done no more than envelop one real word in a
hollow formula. There are still many schools in which this ridiculous
practice lingers, and in which it constitutes the only attempt at
oral composition that the child is allowed to make. Where it has died
out the idea of teaching oral composition has too often died with it.
Young children are, as a rule, voluble talkers, with a considerable
command of language. But it not infrequently happens that at the
close of his school life the once talkative child has lapsed into a
state of sullen taciturnity. In common with other vital faculties,
his power of expressing himself in speech has withered in the
repressive atmosphere to which he has so long been exposed.

It is in the oral lesson that one would expect oral composition to
be taught or at any rate practised. In such subjects as _History_,
_Geography_, _English_, _Elementary Science_, the teaching in most
elementary schools is mainly, if not wholly, oral. In the days of
payment by results separate and variable grants were given for these
subjects; and which, if either, of two grants should be recommended
depended in eac