only as reference books, are too general to be used as text books. If Teaching is a science, it can be taught as a science; and text books can be used with as much advantage as in other sciences. As the work has progressed, the different PARTS have been brought to the test in Classes of Teachers, and have been found greatly to facilitate the peculiar duties and labors of the Normal School. The different PARTS, as they have appeared from time to time, have been used by many hundreds of teachers as Guide-books in their school-room duties, being consulted, more or less, daily, for hints and aids in the management of the several classes. From many such teachers, in the different grades of schools, both public and private, the author has received encouraging assurances of the utility, the necessity of the work. In numerous instances teachers, aided by its directions and suggestions, have remodeled their entire operations, and from very indifferent materials, as they had supposed, have been able to reconstruct and build up an efficient and successful system. The PARTS on Geography, Grammar, and Arithmetic, are used by pupils as well as teachers, for reference books in the preparation of their lessons; the classifications and demonstrations affording aid in the thorough investigation of each of these branches. The Second and Sixth Parts are designed to be used as text books in Reading and Speaking; though prepared for Teachers' Classes in the Normal School, they will be found none the less suitable for classes in Reading and Speaking in any school. Though the special methods of only the branches mentioned on the title page are given in this volume, the General Method described in connection with teaching advanced classes in Grammar in Part III, is equally applicable to the Higher Branches. Fellow Teachers, should any one of you make a panorama of the school under your special charge, or the system of schools under your general supervision, painted on successive pages in word pictures, as I have endeavored to do, please let me know; I shall wish to obtain a sight of it. I have already been amply compensated for the labor and expense bestowed in the preparation and publication of the Normal; and should the bound volume meet with the same cordial reception from my brethren, which has greeted the several Parts as they have successively appeared, I shall surely have abundant reason to feel that "my labor has not been in vain." SOUTH-WESTERN NORMAL SCHOOL, Lebanon, O., Jan. 1859. A. H. |