the guidance of a teacher as a blue print is for a mechanic. If such course is provided, it will promote good teaching in many ways, among which may be mentioned the following: By giving as explicit direction as possible regarding the aim and purposes of teaching the several subjects; by organizing the subject matter around topics selected by specialists in the several subjects as of greatest importance. in order that teachers may not waste time in nonessentials, and in order that time may be saved by correlation whenever possible; by including suggestive lessons illustrating the fundamental principles in the methods suggested; by indicating materials available for supplementing and illustrating the text; by including suggestive outlines for teaching such subjects as geography and history. In a small school system such course can be planned with the assistance of all the teachers. No better seminar topic could be suggested for a year's work in teachers' meetings than that of "working out a course of study," or syllabus. Nothing else would tend more to give the teachers a broader. vision of their work. Much reading would be necessary. This would afford a motive for reading educational literature. The principal should, of course, direct the lines of study in preparing a course of study in which all the teachers take part, and at its completion his would be the last word. A caution is necessary. After a course of study has been prepared, it should not be considered final or good for all time. No sooner has a course of study been formulated than it must be revised. In other words, the course of study should be changing as our knowledge of the child becomes more nearly perfect and as the economic and social conditions of the community and of the country change. Another means of improving instruction is for the principal to prepare a few questions for an occasional examination of the pupils. The term examination is no longer popular, from the fact that examinations have too often been the sole mode of judging whether a pupil should be promoted. The chief function of an examination question list is to help give direction to the teaching. If the teacher makes the teaching of geography and history a mere mechanical process by asking the pupils to commit to memory numerous facts without bringing out their relation, a properly prepared set of questions will awaken the teacher to the fact that her pupils know nothing about the subject. As soon as a teacher discovers the type of question that the principal asks she will begin to use the same type in her teaching. Many teachers who are teaching unrelated facts are doing so because their principal asks for such in all the examination questions. If he would frame his questions so as to call for an organization of the facts or to call for some application it would not be long until the teachers would give up the habit of asking for detached facts. In this connection it must be empha |