cial attention
should be given to teaching them modesty, gentleness, piety, household
economy, the duties of their station in life, and those of motherhood.

7. Morality should be taught early and by means of fables, stories, and
concrete examples.

8. Proceed from the near at hand to the remote, from the known to the
unknown. Thus in language, after the mother tongue, teach other living
languages, and then the classics. The latter are to be learned by
conversation about common objects, and by application of the rules of
grammar in connection therewith. In geography and history one's own
environment and country should be learned first, then other countries.

9. Example is of great importance to all periods of life, but especially
to childhood. This Fenelon practically illustrated by his own life and
by the concrete cases which he used. Voltaire says of Fenelon, "His wit
was overflowing with beauty, his heart with goodness."

LA SALLE AND THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS[113]

In 1681, La Salle, a devoted priest of the Catholic Church, organized
the _Brothers of the Christian Schools_.

The idea primarily was to awaken interest in elementary education. He
perfected the work already done by Peter Faurier, Charles Demia, and
others. The method of instruction, up to this time, had been largely
individual. The pupils were called up to the teacher, one by one, or at
most two by two, and, after the lesson had been heard, they were sent
back to their seats to study. La Salle conceived the idea of grading
together pupils of the same advancement, and teaching them
simultaneously,--a practice now employed in primary schools everywhere.
It is known as the _Simultaneous Method_. Brother Azarias says of this
method, "Because we all of us have been trained according to this
method, and see it practiced in nearly all of our public and many of our
private schools throughout the land, and have ceased to find it a
subject of wonder, we may be inclined to undervalue its importance. Not
so was it regarded in the days of La Salle. Then a Brothers' School was
looked upon with admiration. Strangers were shown it as a curiosity
worth visiting."

La Salle laid down many explicit rules concerning punishment, methods of
teaching, and school organization in a book called "The Conduct of
Schools." While modern criticism would condemn many of these rules, we
think, with Compayre, that "whatever the distance which separates these
gloomy