The views contained in this volume are the result of a prolonged and
somewhat varied professional experience. This experience includes the
training of more than five thousand young men and of nearly one thousand
young women, a large portion of them for the office of teachers; and it
has been gained in College, in Boarding School, in a city High School,
and in a State Normal School. In all this prolonged and varied
experience, I have constantly put myself in the attitude of a learner,
and my aim in the present volume is to place before the younger members
of the profession, in the briefest and clearest terms possible, the
lessons I have myself learned. Beginning with the question, What is
Teaching? and ending with the wider question, What is Education? the
book will be found to take a pretty free range over the whole field of
practical inquiry among professional teachers. The thoughts presented
are such as have been suggested to the writer in the school-room itself,
while actively engaged either in teaching, or in superintending and
directing the instruction given by others. These thoughts are for the
most part purposely given in short, detached chapters, each complete in
itself. Such a method of presentation, though less imposing, seemed to
have practical advantages for the reader too great to be neglected for
the mere vanity of authorship. Often one can find leisure to read a
chapter of five or six pages on some point complete in itself, when he
might not feel like reaching it through an intervening network of
connected and dependent propositions. At the same time, it should be
observed, the topics though detached are not isolated. There is
everywhere an underlying thread of connection, the whole being based
upon, if not constituting, a philosophy of education.