The Theory and Practice of Handwriting/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
HEADLINE OR BLANK COPY BOOKS—WHICH?
The subject of this Chapter is one of the first importance. What kind of Copy Books shall be employed? Are they to be Blank copying books or are they to have engraved headlines? There is almost a consensus of opinion in favour of the latter, an almost endless variety of Headline Copy-Books testifying to the superiority which in the judgment of the great mass of teachers is to be found in the books provided with these set copies, one or more on each page. Nevertheless during the past few years an agitation has been encouraged to establish the use of Blank Copying Books, and this agitation has been fanned and fostered by certain officials in the Educational Sphere who shall be nameless.
The Theory proposes that writing should be taught exclusively from the Blackboard and that children should use plain-ruled blank books instead of the Headline Copy Books hitherto in vogue. "Blank Copy Books and Blackboard Teaching" is the cry. Exception must at once be taken to this watchword phrase as it is ambiguous and delusive, because it insinuates that Blackboard teaching is as scarce an element in to-day's system and practice as the Blank Copy Books are, which is contrary to fact. Every teacher knows that Blackboard demonstration and illustration are an essential factor in existing methods of teaching writing with Headline Copy Books. Every Training College inculcates it. Every Educational Manual imperatively prescribes it, and every true teacher to the full extent of his ability and opportunity practises it. In this chapter we have not to consider the question of Blackboard instruction at all, that having been settled by universal consent long long ago, but we have to investigate the merits of Blank Copy Books as opposed to Headline Copy Books and to answer the query with which this chapter began viz. : "What kind of Copy Books shall be used?"
So far as can be gathered from external sources the chief if not the only reason urged for the adoption of Blank Books is that under existing conditions, where Headline Books are adopted, the temptation to neglect Blackboard instruction is too strong for the great body of overworked teachers, particularly assistant teachers, to resist. It is said that with Headline Books the teacher is too often satisfied with merely having the books distributed to the class and after starting the pupils to their work leaving them to their own devices and resources for the whole of the interval devoted to writing.
Assuming (for the purpose of argument) that these premises are true it is not certain that the conclusion is much to be deplored as thousands of teachers would not consider such a mode of teaching as an unmitigated or serious evil. It is asserted moreover that the only way to ensure faithful discharge of duty in teaching writing is to provide nothing but blank Copy Books for the scholars to write in. Assistants will then be compelled to utilize the Blackboard (at least so far as to set the copies) and thus children will have the immense advantage of seeing the writing actually produced, will observe the modes of junction and will also witness the tracing of the several complexities of formation which so painfully abound in our script alphabet (at any rate so far as they choose to attend to it). Other reasons for the proposed substitution of Blank Copying-Books are however to be found and will be fully discussed in the proper place. Meanwhile it will be advisable to look a little more closely into this proposed security against dereliction of duty on the part of the teacher, and into the incalculable (!) and otherwise unattainable benefit on the part of the scholar. It certainly would seem to the ordinary intelligence that if any given teacher were either too indifferent or too busy to use the Blackboard in class when enjoying the substantial aid of Headline Copy Books, it will be still more unlikely or still more impracticable for him when deprived of that aid and when burdened with the extra duty of compiling, arranging, and setting the copies himself. Surely it is difficult to conceive how when a teacher through overwork is obliged to omit certain items, we are to secure the performance of those items by increasing his work and multiplying its details. Is it not reasonable to conclude that the assistant who was previously content to allow his pupils to imitate or parody the Copy Book headlines without note, comment or reference to the Blackboard, as an effective adjunct to his teaching, will be more than satisfied that his duty is performed to the full when he has hastily or otherwise traced on that Blackboard the writing copy for the day? Obviously there is not the smallest inducement nor guarantee in the projected innovation that any teacher will be one whit more conscientious or even punctilious in his Blackboard demonstration, but there evidently are for many reasons positive and stronger temptations than before to entirely disregard the responsibility.
But what of the benefit to the pupil in seeing the master (or mistress) write the Copy on the Blackboard? If there is any real advantage in such a sight it is just as available and profitable in conjunction with Headline Copy Books, and can therefore be employed equally in both kinds of writing books. It is not difficult to show however that the total absence of this exaggerated boon is hardly a material loss to the scholars. The argument on these lines may therefore be summarily dismissed as being worthless in advocating the claims of Blank Copying books.
If the new Candidate for public support be more particularly examined the investigator is surprised at the number of objections and defects which immediately start into view, any one of which in itself is or ought to be sufficient to determine the issue.
Imperfect Models or Copies
Of course, and evidently, the first and one of the gravest defects in Blank Copying Books is the absence of Perfect or Accurate Copies and the presence of nothing save Imperfect and Inaccurate Models. Pupils are to have plain-ruled books in order to fill them up with approximate imitations of the defective Blackboard models. They are never to see anything outside these blank books but the very imperfect writing–often indeed little better than caricatures of their respective teachers. They are never to see anything inside their books but their own faulty and distorted outlines. Nothing from cover to cover but indifferent, crude, and, in most instances, wretchedly bad writing. Looking over the pages of his book, as the pupil is sure to do again and again, he sees no standard of perfection to counteract the demoralising influence of a continual familiarity with that which is essentially inferior–and inevitably the writer's own Scrawl becomes his ideal which the occasional glimpse of his teacher's flourishing on the Blackboard, when setting the Copy, entirely fails to remove or destroy. And when may we expect a child to rise above his ideal? A remarkable rejoinder is here met with. "The boys or girls will be forced to look at the Copy on the Blackboard when writing in blank books. Whereas in Headline Copy Books pupils simply copy the Headline once and then proceed to imitate their own handiwork, making mistakes, repeating them and growing worse and worse until they reach the last line in the page.[1] When they use blank books they cannot perpetrate this abomination. In blank books the writing will improve line by line down the page, and we thus get rid once and for ever of that annoyance to teachers which results in such disastrous Scribble."
Is not this the ne plus ultra of nonsense or obtuseness? How shall we, how can we reply to these statements? Is there any conceivable cause why a lazy or stupid child, who will not take the trouble to look at and try to imitate a headline under his very eyes and only two or three inches from his pen, will exert himself still more energetically to refer to and try to imitate a copy ten to twenty feet distant from him? Is there not rather every reason to conclude, that a page of blank book writing will, as it proceeds downwards, deteriorate in a much greater degree than a page of Headline writing, where the writer can hardly avoid looking at the perfect model times and again whilst the lines are being written? If it is proposed to supply a panacea for this disease of page degeneration by withdrawing the only sentinel that keeps guard over the page, by removing the only standard of comparison, contrast, and appeal from every leaf of the Copybook, by getting rid of the only check–ever present check–upon such deterioration the remedy is worse than the disease and is devoid of the most essential ingredient in such specific viz. a perfect Model to Copy from.
However let us enquire what is offered by way of substitute for this Perfect Model? What does the Blank Book System offer in lieu of a perfectly engraved Headline? Blackboard Copies, written, sketched, or scribbled by Principals, Assistants, Pupil Teachers, and Monitors! When it is an admitted fact that about three-fourths of all the teachers in the United States are really unable to write a creditable, much less a faultless, copy on the Blackboard where are the specimens of good caligraphy to come from?[2] Until the System of Upright Penmanship becomes general there will not be the remotest possibility of our teachers becoming qualified Writing Masters. Why then agitate for the impossible and expect from our teachers what they are utterly unable to supply? No rational mind can imagine that the faulty copy drawn in chalk on a Blackboard can or will be accepted as an adequate substitute for the carefully engraved copy in the Headline Book. Scores, yea hundreds of these Blackboard copies, written by every rank of teacher, have come under our observation, and we have no hesitation in saying that in the large proportion of them no Inspector would pass them as fair. One or two in every score might possibly approach to the regularity and accuracy required in a writing Copy, but this proportion is more fanciful than real. Is the principle underlying this innovation tolerated in other branches of a school curriculum? Do we adorn the walls of our School-rooms with base parodies of geographical, botanical, and zoological subjects limned by the veriest tyros in art?
Do we furnish art classes with drawing copies, or physiological diagrams, roughly and hurriedly outlined by mere beginners or untalented novices? Never! Do we not the rather take infinite pains to secure the brightest, the truest, and the best maps, diagrams, and illustrations which shall have been produced by our finest experts or specialists in their respective departments?
Why then, in a subject that pertains to every man's daily life, is it suggested to offer nothing but second- or third-rate models, the creations in great part of ignorant, inexperienced, or unqualified individuals for our children to imitate? A system of this kind will inevitably lower the standard of penmanship and begin a decline in the art of caligraphy; for the removal of an established and high standard, and the substitution of an imperfect and inferior standard, can only be followed by one result, and that a fatally disastrous one.
Further, the advantage of seeing a Master (even a good writer) write a copy on the blackboard is almost purely chimerical, for unless the line is a small hand copy the chalk will not and does not make the strokes thin and thick to meet the exigencies of the writing, and the strokes have to be painted or thickened by repeated applications of the crayon, which utterly destroys the analogy between the two acts. Then the teacher does not hold the chalk as the pupil holds the pen, nor does he write the Copy through in the same way that they are instructed to do. He is standing, they are sitting; He writes or draws, erases, reproduces, repeats, repairs, thickens, and revises the whole after being once traced, they are forbidden to do any of these things: where is the similarity or the help? After the most elementary stages there exists no necessity whatever for this particular kind of Blackboard instruction. It is not the setting of a Copy nor the seeing of a Copy written that is needed, but explanation and illustration of the Copy after it has been written. The Conclusion is irresistible looking at the question from every standpoint; that the absence of a Perfect Model and the substitution of a Hybrid having all possible degrees of disparity to an artistic and scientific original, must be fraught with consequences fatal to any satisfactory development of the science and art of handwriting. Contrast the projected state of things with that which obtains under the Headline Copy Book System, where the highest possible standard of engraved Models is aimed at by Publishers and Teachers alike, and where a praiseworthy rivalry is perpetually evolving new sets and series of fresh beauty or increased excellence, and there can be but one opinion on the question. Quench this spirit of emulation, withdraw from circulation every Headline Copy Book, throw Teachers and scholars alike on the resources of Individual variation and Blackboard Standard, and the final decline of Penmanship, all true Handwriting, will have been inaugurated.
Irregular and Varying Models.–Again it is not only that these proposed Blackboard Copies are imperfect and defective, they are also Irregular and Varying. The perpetual changes that must occur in the style of the models set on the Blackboard–changes that in thousands of cases will not be yearly, or even monthly but weekly and almost daily–are objectionable and most mischievous in their tendency. As an illustration let us glance at the career of a Public School pupil under the regime of Blank Copy Books, and in the hands of Blank Book advocates. The lad enters Standard One, where he is taught the principles of formation, and where his practical education consists in tracing or imitating copies written on the Blackboard by his teacher. Certain elements of outline, slope, spacing, and junction are learned, but the lad never sees a perfect model of writing through the whole year, and the models that he does see of necessity vary repeatedly; sometimes carefully written, sometimes the contrary; sometimes one size, frequently a different size; occasionally one slope, generally some other slope; possibly–for accidents will happen in the best regulated institutions–on rare occasions no copy at all, and the class will be told to repeat the previous headline, which they do, and to improve upon it which they as surely do not. On entering Standard Two where the teacher affects a less sloping style of writing, the pupil is introduced into a new world–a world of round, steep characters which require fresh effort to appreciate and acquire; and an entirely different posture of body and arm in its production. Surmounting the obstacles thus thrown in his path by the System under examination, Standard Three is entered where a continuous and very oblique style of writing obtains. The pupil commences de novo so to speak his instruction in Caligraphy, and by the end of the School-year has attained to considerable proficiency in his new mode only to find that when he reaches the Fourth Standard it is almost worse than useless.
Writing here assumes quite a novel character, a kind of composite or blend of several styles. The teacher has peculiar ideas as to junction, length of loops, construction shape, &c., all of which the bewildered pupil is expected to rapidly absorb, assimilate and practise. Finally in the stages of the 5th, 6th, and 7th standards the hapless youth is treated to a series of contradictory lessons, and conflicting directions, unaccompanied all through by any perfect copies or examples which would serve as a standard for reference, or a model for imitation. During all these years the victim has never seen a specimen of perfect writing, and the models that he has seen have varied repeatedly, sometimes carefully written, sometimes otherwise;–different teachers, varying and conflicting methods, diverse styles, unequal lengths of loops, contradictory principles of construction and junction! the unhappy pupil is bewildered and overwhelmed in a sea of such inconsistencies, his writing is cramped and weak, and most probably ruined for all future time. Where, it may be asked, in the whole domain of Education is there another such Comedy of Errors as this of Blank Books, with their capricious and protean Blackboard models? Good writing is impossible under such conditions. Irregular and varying models are an unmixed evil altogether inadmissible as a medium or agent for the teaching of writing.
On the contrary with Headline Copy Books the pupil is supplied with a progressive course of carefully engraved headlines in a comprehensive series of Copy books, more than enough to carry him through his entire writing career. All the Copies are to one pattern; one idea, one principle, one style permeating and governing the whole set. No variation or contradiction in size. construction slope or quality, but a system of Penmanship that at least is consistent with itself throughout.
Thus the child leaving standard, class, or form one, finds nothing confusing in standard two, meets with everything agreeable and helpful in class three, and to the highest form or division in his school, is aided in his efforts to shine in caligraphy by a series of perfect and unvarying models, uniform in their excellence as they are scientific in their arrangement.
Ungraded Models.–It will occur to the thoughtful reader that Blackboard models will as a rule exhibit a sad lack in gradation. Who is to see that the copies prescribed to the several writing classes in our large Schools are properly graded, and adapted to the powers and ability of the writers. It may be safely presumed, that in an overwhelming proportion the copies will be unsuitable from defective progressive arrangement, and the advancement of the scholars will be retarded in a like ratio, as every teacher will recognise. All true gradation will of necessity be neglected, to the serious endamagement of the pupils, if that gradation be left to the hap-hazard writing of Teachers on the Blackboard.
Again the grading of copies as to size–text, round or small–and the judicious blending of these sizes (a matter of no small importance) can receive but scant recognition under the Blank Book regulations. The rulings in the books, and the sizes on the Blackboard will seldom harmonize; in short when it is remembered that size, character, words and sentences have all to be separately and independently graded in an appropriate and scientific order, it would be worse than foolish to suppose this could be achieved by indiscriminate and improvised copysetting on the Blackboard by teachers, who generally speaking, would not have devoted two minutes thought or preparation to their task. Efficient grading of writing models demands a concentration of attention, and an expenditure of time, that are simply beyond the resources of any teacher during the busy hours of a day's routine.
Moreover, what can be done with personal or individual grading in Blank book Classes? It is an unheard-of phenomenon to have sixty or eighty pupils in a class all precisely at the same stage, all gifted with the same receptive capacity, the same mechanical skill, the same imitative ability. What can be done when there is only one Copy for the whole form? Necessarily all must write it whether they are able or not. For some the Copy will be much too easy, for others about right, for the residue much too difficult. As a rule teachers insist upon the value of individual instruction; here the principle is grossly violated, and hence the class becomes completely disorganised and the writing hour proves the most disagreeable and vexatious in the day. Such a grievance cannot exist where headline books are employed. Each pupil gets a book exactly suited to his own need, and when finished the next is equally adapted to his peculiar requirements, or, if dictated by expediency, the same book can be repeated. Ungraded models may fairly be considered as an insuperable obstacle to the reception of the Blank Book system, as propounded by its advocates.
Temporary or Transient Models.–In addition to the foregoing still another obstruction perplexes the enquirer, when the Temporary or Transient nature of Blackboard Models is considered. They are here one hour and gone the next, evanescent as a dream they are gone in the twinkling of an eye. They have no permanence; consequently all opportunity of reference and comparison has vanished with them.
Reasoning again by analogy, our maps, diagrams and illustrations preach to our children "All the year round," teaching, educating, and speaking their history every hour and every day to their juvenile beholders: they are not relegated to the shelves or oblivion of a locked-up store room, but they are on exhibition always and ever.
Similarly ought the Headlines and Perfect Copies to be perpetually speaking from the pages of the books and from the walls of the schoolroom to the pupils:–from the engraved copies in the former and from the enlarged Alphabet Diagrams on the latter.
It is by the daily and oft repeated sight of these Headlines that children derive their only mental perception and conception of the true outlines and proportions of the letters they have to reproduce so frequently; and thus their appreciation grows until an accurate knowledge is attained, that imparts cunning to the hand, that guides the fingers in their caligraphic evolutions, and dictates the grace and elegance that find expression in a style of handwriting, that is as beautiful as it is legible.
For other cogent reasons it is expedient that the copies or models should be permanent. It will be found that the members of a class write at different rates, and some will have finished the page (or the line) long before their fellows.
Certainly the quick writers can proceed to a second copy, but this would create another evil very widely condemned but alas too often practised, viz., writing one and the same copy for too long a time. Then with large classes how impossible to efficiently correct each book in the one lesson. Consequently, the Master in making his rounds is unable to correct any back work even by comparison with his own imperfect Blackboard copy, thus his correction is robbed of half its value.
But further these corrections even in the best conditions, are wonderfully depreciated by the consideration, that in all subsequent time they will be comparatively meaningless.
A pupil looking over his book sees certain marks on various letters in the back pages. They are almost absolutely useless to him as he forgets the signification of the marks, and has no permanent model to refresh his memory, or to give him the clue.
A reply to this may be that the Master can re-write the Copy on the Blackboard. Precisely so. That is possible, but such an act requires time and labour, and multiplies details to an extent simply intolerable. One is inclined to predict that as the subject receives more careful attention, teachers will conclude, that the absence of permanent models constitutes an objection to the System of Blank Copy Books which is fatal to its success or survival.
Amongst the minor objections to this scheme may be noticed the promiscuous character of the subject matter in Blackboard Copies. They change with every variation in the Teacher's mood: trivial, insipid, dull, dry, appropriate, or the reverse. This is not an inseparable or necessarily an inherent defect of the system, but under the existing state of things we fear it is an inevitable one. For it is impossible to conceive that Head, Assistant, and Pupil Teachers shall be able to compile or write off hand series of Educative and Consecutive headlines. We would not unduly press this point of heterogeneous headlines, but no set of copy books in these days would secure any approval were this principle ignored, as must generally be the case with Blackboard Copies; so that the importance and principle of such sequential and assorted headlines are satisfactorily established by universal consent and practice.
A second minor difficulty is the position of the Blackboard in relation to the several pupils in the class. It is a fact that in many schools the light is bad, and where it is good, myopia or shortsight, that obtains so generally amongst schoolchildren, will involve us in the same embarrassment. What shall be done with these shortsighted pupils that are always to be found in every standard of an elementary School? They are at a grave disadvantage unless special provision be made for them.
Then if they are placed in the front desks, and the Blackboard is brought nearer in order to accommodate them, those in the wings will have imperfect and one-sided views of the Copy that will render it practically worthless.
Short-sighted pupils render Blank Books with exclusive Blackboard teaching very unsatisfactory if not prohibitory.
A different class of objections to this Theory may now be examined, and in order to discuss them we will assume that the classes are always supplied with Perfect Models, Uniform Models, Graded Models, and Suitable Models, so arranged that every writer in the Class commands a perfect view of the same (all of which essentials as we have seen the System utterly fails to provide). However taking these points as settled it is asked, How will the change now proposed by these Blank- Book-Theorists affect our Teachers? For good or evil? We think the latter and for substantial reasons. On the ground first that it involves too great a loss of time, or it necessitates too great a sacrifice of time. The setting of appropriate and faultless copies on the Blackboard every day is an additional burden too hard to be borne. If such an infliction were imperative it would end in setting most hurried and inferior copies, and in frequent undesirable repetitions of the same copy, the writing thus degenerating to an alarming degree.
Not only will it thus hamper our already restricted action and further weaken our already impaired teaching power, but its effect in large schools will be both unequal and oppressive, for usually there are some of the teachers who cannot write a copy sufficiently excellent to serve as a model, hence the strain upon the best writers will prove not only burdensome but conducive to no small amount of irritation, or at least to anything but good feeling and harmonious co-operation. On the other hand the pupils themselves are seriously endamaged by this plan of Blank Book writing. Can juveniles imitate a copy on the Black Board at a distance of from twelve to thirty feet as readily, easily, and as perfectly, as they can a copy not three inches from their penpoint? No one will deny that it is very much easier to facsimile a writing or drawing copy from the book, size for size, than to imitate by reducing the large sized copies on a blackboard at a considerable distance from the pupil. Consequently the Minimum of Imitation is a feature peculiar to the Blank Book System and it is no answer to say that this Black Board work will help the pupil in Drawing. Writing is of too great importance to take the Subordinate position of handmaid to Drawing. Quite the reverse. Drawing is admittedly the handmaid to writing and will take care of itself.
The difficulties thus thrown in the way of young beginners undoubtedly protract the final issue by retarding the pupils' progress. Possibly the opponents of Headline Copy Books have overlooked the great loss of time to the children that ensues from the adoption of Blank Books. With conscientious pupils this loss is serious indeed and with careless children the loss, though in a different way, is greater still. An honest child will repeatedly and continually stop to look at his Blackboard Copy, his rate of progress is therefore relatively abnormally slow. A heedless child by contrast will hardly ever look at the Copy at all, and its progress will necessarily be a minimum.
A very irritating accompaniment to the scheme is the perpetual movement of the heads (too often of the bodies also) of the writers as they look up at their distant copy. The temptation to look at one another is alas often too strong to be always successfully resisted, and instead of a quiet and uniform attention to their Copy Books, as is the case with engraved Headlines, there is a continual motion of heads going on all over the Class causing shakings of the desk and grumblings from the writers, who are disturbed thereby. Disorder is both produced and encouraged by the practice of Blank Book writing.
Lastly the influence of blank Copy Books upon a class is very disheartening. Nothing to relieve the monotony of the outlook, or inlook either for that matter. No fresh or higher number of Headline Copy Book to anticipate, with its interesting collection of instructive sentences, its elegant capitals, and its modified style to stimulate the pupils! What a valuable element of emulative Education is thus lost entirely.
Summarising these defects of the Blank Book System we observe that
1. It presents Imperfect Models for imitation.
2. It possesses nothing but Irregular and Varying Models which preclude any consistent system of Penmanship.
3. It can only produce Ungraded Models so that the essential element of General Gradation is both ignored and neglected.
4. It also offers Transient Models, thus rendering all true Correction uncertain or impossible–often the latter.
5. It can only give Promiscuous Models which in the majority of instances are both inappropriate and non-educative.
6. It entirely lacks all Individual Grading so essential to real and rapid progress.
7. It fails to provide for short-sighted pupils.
8. It involves much loss of time to and imposes much unnecessary work upon the Teacher.
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 asked what about the pages and lessons he has missed? Is it not obvious that this Blank Book victim is quite out of the running, that he will perforce have to work at the same copy as the rest of the class when he is admittedly unfit for and unable to do it? What about the individual attention rendered necessary if this returned absentee is to get any justice at all in his writing class?
His schoolfellow B, on the other hand enters the "Headline" class at the same time and under the same conditions. But what a contrast! Here also the pupils have written the same number of copies and received the same number of lessons, but that does not affect our friend. His book is opened and he commences just where he left off. Every individual member of his class is an independent member, each pupil working at that exact stage most and best adapted to his personal ability, and therefore he resumes his labours under the very minimum of disadvantage, conscious that he can proceed with his copy as satisfactorily as before his absence, and with no despondent reference to his class-mates. He feels he is not out of the running, and the teacher knows it, for there are no lapsed copies and lessons which he can never overtake.
Blank books are certainly inferior to Headline Copy Books in this comparison.
Lastly as to No. 4 it is somewhat difficult to understand its drift. "Blank Books allow of class teaching"! Of course they do, but are we to understand by implication that Headline Books do not allow of Class Teaching? It has been shown that they not only permit, but that they require and demand it equally with Blank or any other kind of Writing Copy Books. If the objector does not see "how the Black Board can be used" with advantage to illustrate and demonstrate principles to writers in Headline Copy Books just as well as to writers in Blank Books–or for the matter of that to writers on slates also–anything that has been said or could be said in that direction would be powerless to convince him.
It is a palpable delusion to imagine that Black Board demonstration is only useful when every member of the class is engaged in writing exactly the same copy, word, or letter. One may take twenty different headlines, say of small hand, and there will hardly be a single copy amongst them that is not composed of elements common to all.
Finally the practical use to be made of the Black Board as a medium for instruction in writing when Headline Books are used, is identically and precisely the same that a Blank Book advocate would make of it after he had written the copy, viz. to illustrate or explain any point of difficulty principle or mistake, that might arise in the day's teaching.
Indeed such is the preponderating weight of evidence in support of Headline Copy Books, and so slender, flimsy, and untenable all the arguments for Blank Copy Books, as to render the use of the latter a matter of personal pressure, accidental impulse, inclination to novelty, or of vested interests.
Isolated cases may occur and particular individuals may possibly secure good Blank Book results by means of that devotion and abnormal expenditure of labour and zeal which hobby-riders so generously and so generally indulge in, but it is vain to expect that the tens of thousands of our teachers will accept a system which literally bristles with anomalies, difficulties and defects.
It may be that, in the words of a zealous defender of Blank Books, "The day of Headline Books is past"! "Headline Copy Books are obsolete"!! "Headline Copy Books are virtually a thing of the Past"!!! It may be so, but appearances are against it, facts disprove it, and logic derides it, and it must be asserted with the calmest deliberation that on all counts, in all aspects and respects the verdict is unanimously and unreservedly against and opposed to the introduction of any System of Blank Copy Books for the teaching of writing in our Elementary and Secondary Schools.
Note: Lest the assertion on page 60 reflecting on the quality of the writing of our teachers be considered exaggerated or unfounded I here reproduce some extracts just taken from the Blue Books of current and recent years, in reference to handwriting in England.
"The assistants are too frequently unable to set a proper copy on the blackboard" (p. 16).
"Teachers cannot always write well themselves" (p. 18), and as to the caligraphy of our Students in Training for teachers we read:–
"Handwriting is becoming worse every year" (Report on Training Colleges, p. 450).
These statements surely justify every word in the paragraph referred to, coming as they do from those who are best able to form a judgement on the question.