=The Method Difficult.=--To expect of young children a ready ability in thus interpreting words would, however, be an evident mistake. To translate such sound symbols into ideas, and immediately adjust them to the problem, demands a power of language interpretation and of reflection not usually found in school children. The purely lecture method, therefore, has very small place with young children, whatever may be its value with advanced students. Pupils in the primary grades have not sufficient power of attention to listen to a long lecture on any subject, and no teacher should think of conducting a lesson by that method alone. The purpose of the lecture is merely to give information, and that is seldom the sole purpose of a lesson in elementary classes. There the more important purposes are to train pupils to acquire knowledge by thinking for themselves, and to express themselves, both of which are well-nigh impossible if the purely lecture method is followed. =Does not Insure Selection.=--The weakness of such a method is well illustrated in the case of the young teacher who, in giving her class a conception of the equator, followed the above method, and carefully explained to the pupils that the equator is an imaginary line running around the earth equally distant from the two poles. When the teacher came later to review the work with the class, one bright lad described the equator as a menagerie lion running around the earth. Here evidently the child, true to the law of apperception, had interpreted, or rather misinterpreted, the words of the teacher, by means of the only ideas in his possession which seemed to fit the uttered sounds. It is evident, therefore, that too often in this method the pupils will either thus misinterpret the meaning of the teacher's words, or else fail to interpret them at all, because they are not able to call up any definite images from what the teacher may be telling them.