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?[1] 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
- ↑ See note, p. 72.
