A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education

A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education is by James Gall, inventor of the Triangular Alphabet for the Blind. The preface says the author is a plain man, who has endeavoured to write a plain book, for the purpose of being popularly useful. The text says that education is confessedly but in its infancy, and therefore must grow much, and change much, before it can arrive at maturity.

Chapter III, headed On the Improvement of Teaching as an Art, says that as Education takes precedence in the sciences on account of its importance, so Teaching should rank first among the arts. The writer of a Minute says that to his mind the conviction is irresistible that the universal application of the Lesson System to Prison Discipline, and to adults every where, would be followed by effects incalculably precious to the individuals themselves. The text calls a teacher's habit Catechetical Wandering: he takes up the word Jericho and follows a similar course, riding off from the original subject, and leaving the child bewildered and confused.