INTRODUCTION.
This Manual has been prepared with one great object in view—to enable the children of the district schools to follow from term to term and year to year a plain, simple, progressive line of study that shall give them in the end a good, common school education. Its constant aim throughout is:
First—To introduce nothing that should not be taught in the schools.
Second—To make the classification as simple as possible — easy for the teacher to understand and follow, and such as shall lighten his labors.
Third—To regulate the steps from grade to grade so that pupils shall be interested and kept in school, encouraged and credited for work done, and the usual waste of time and aimless work resulting from frequent change of teachers be reduced to a minimum.
Fourth—To put all the school work of the State on one common plan, so that methods used in teaching the various branches, amount of work accomplished, the system of reports, records, etc., may be the same.
Fifth—To make the work of supervision stronger and more effective, and to enlist the interest and sympathy of parents and school officers by making them better acquainted with what the schools are endeavoring to accomplish for their children.
METHODS.
The term method is a much-abused word. The true teacher “sees the end from the beginning” and the pathway to it, then plans definite means to reach this end along the line of the least resistance. His every act has a purpose, clear and intelligent, directed toward this end. These acts, in the aggregate, constitute his method.
Disconnected devices, no matter how helpful, do not constitute a method. It is a systematic application of connected plans that succeeds, whether in school, business, or professional life.
While this Manual is not a book of methods, some effort has been made to give methods along a few lines. In general these are designed to be suggestive. The primary work in reading, numbers, language, and geography, however, is more than suggestive and well worth a trial.
