A class should go on slowly, and dwell on details so long as to fix firmly and make perfectly familiar whatever they undertake to learn.  In this manner the knowledge they acquire will become their own.  It will be incorporated, as it were, into their very minds, and they can not afterward be deprived of it.

The exercises which have for their object this rendering familiar what has been learned may be so varied as to interest the pupil very much, instead of being tiresome, as it might at first be supposed.

Suppose, for instance, a teacher has explained to a large class in grammar the difference between an adjective and an adverb; if he leave it here, in a fortnight one half of the pupils would have forgotten the distinction, but by dwelling upon it a few lessons he may fix it forever.  The first lesson might be to require the pupils to write twenty short sentences containing only adjectives.  The second to write twenty containing only adverbs.  The third to write sentences in two forms, one containing the adjective, and the other expressing the same idea by means of the adverb, arranging them in two columns, thus: 

  He writes well. | His writing is good.

Again, they may make out a list of adjectives, with the adverbs derived from each in another column.  Then they may classify adverbs on the principle of their meaning, or according to their termination.  The exercise may be infinitely varied, and yet the object of the whole may be to make perfectly familiar, and to fix forever in the mind the distinction explained.

These two points seem to me to be fundamental, so far as assisting pupils through the difficulties which lie in their way is concerned.  Diminish the difficulties as far as is necessary by shortening and simplifying the steps, and make thorough work as you go on.  These principles, carried steadily into practice, will be effectual in leading any mind through any difficulties which may occur.  And though they can not, perhaps, be fully applied to every mind in a large school, yet they can be so far acted upon in reference to the whole mass as to accomplish the object for a very large majority.

3. General cautions.  A few miscellaneous suggestions, which we shall include under this head, will conclude this chapter.

(1.) Never do any thing for a scholar, but teach him to do it for himself.  How many cases occur in the schools of our country where the boy brings his slate to the teacher, saying he can not do a certain sum.  The teacher takes the slate and pencil, performs the work in silence, brings the result, and returns the slate to the hands of his pupil, who walks off to his seat, and goes to work on the next example, perfectly satisfied with the manner in which he is passing on.  A man who has not done this a hundred times himself will hardly believe it possible that such a practice can prevail, it is so evidently a mere waste of time both for master and scholar.