An example will illustrate the author's meaning. Some years ago an
experienced institute conductor in a western state found himself the
sole instructor when the teachers of the county convened. He sought
among the teachers for someone who could and would give him assistance.
One man of middle age, who had taught for many years, volunteered to
take the subject of arithmetic and to give four lessons of forty minutes
each in it during the week. This was good news to the conductor; he
congratulated himself on having found some efficient help. His
assistant, however, after talking on arithmetic for ten minutes of his
first period, reached the limit of his capacity, either of thought or of
expression, and had to stop. He could not say another word on that
subject during the week! Now if this is true of an experienced
middle-aged teacher of a subject so universally taught as arithmetic,
how much more true must it be of an instructor in a subject like
agriculture. It should not be expected that a young girl, eighteen or
twenty years of age, who has probably been brought up in the city and
who has had the subject of agriculture only one period a day for a year,
can give any adequate instruction in that branch. She would be the butt
for ridicule among the practical boys and girls in the country who
would probably know more about such things than she. She would,
therefore, lose the respect and confidence of pupils and parents, and it
would really be better for her and for all concerned not to attempt the
teaching of that subject at all. What is worth doing at all is worth
doing well. A little instruction well given and well applied is worth
any amount of "stuff" poorly done and unapplied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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