9. It causes irreparable loss of time to the pupils.
10. It possesses the "Minimum of Imitation."
11. It yields the minimum of Interest, Attraction, or Stimulative power to the pupils.
Surveying this formidable array of faults and defects it must be granted that Blank Books can boast of little that is good, and of nothing at all that can by any stretch of the imagination be considered superior to Headline Copy Books, more particularly when it is found impossible to flank it with any similar list of compensating advantages.
Since writing this chapter a somewhat profuse correspondence with the advocates of Blank books has eliminated all that can be said in favour of the system. Most of the arguments have already been fully met and confuted in the preceding pages, but the following four points seem to call for special remark.
1. "All the children are at the same copy at the same time."
2. "No blank leaves to fill from absence."
3. "Absentees do not fall out of the running and thus have not to work at different copies, scattering energy of the teacher who is compelled to resort to individual correction."
4. "Blank books allow of Class teaching from Blackboard."
Of these points No. 1 has already been discussed and shown to be undesirable and detrimental to true progress. Number 2 is beautifully simple and innocent, indeed mysteriously so. The writer of such a statement must see that the argument is more, much more, favourable to Headline than to Blank Copy Books. One illustration will suffice for points 2 and 3. Two children are absent from School say for a month, and return to their respective writing classes, one of which is taught on the Blank System the other on the Headline System. A, enters the first to find that his schoolfellows have written from eight to a dozen copies in his absence, that they have received 8 to 12 lessons in the same period, and that therefore both in theory and practice they are far ahead of him. He is left hopelessly in the rear, despairingly in the lurch. We are told he has no blank pages to fill up–aside we might suggest he never has anything else to do–but it must be
