among good teachers. Yet there is certainly nothing in modern
educational theory that advises the neglect of books. Some teachers
may have imagined that development instruction, to which reference has
just been made, leans that way. But development instruction is of
importance rather in the first presentation of some topics. After a
topic has been thus developed, it can well be reviewed and further
studied in connection with books. Many teachers are neglecting to use
texts both to their own detriment and to the serious disadvantage of
their pupils.

_2. Kind of text to be preferred_

Teachers who have liberty in choosing their text-books should select
those that contain abundant detail. That means a thick book, to be
sure; and many teachers are afraid of such books on the ground that
they mean long lessons. A thick book may be a poor text; but a thin
one is almost bound to be. The reason is that books are usually made
thin at the expense of detail; and detail is necessary in order to
establish the relations between facts, by which the story form can be
secured and a subject be made interesting. Without plenty of detail
the facts have to be run together, or listed, merely as so many things
that are true; they then form only a skeleton, with all the
repulsiveness of a skeleton. Such a barren text is barren of
suggestions to children for supplementing, because the ideas are too
far apart to indicate what ought to fit in between.

The understanding ought to be more common that long lessons are by no
means synonymous with hard lessons. The hardest lessons to master are
those brief, colorless presentations that fail to stimulate one to see
vividly and to think. Many a child who carries a geography text about