6. If the branch which you are desiring to introduce appears to you to
be an important part of education, and if it seems to you that it can be
most successfully attended to in schools, then consider whether the
introduction of it, _and of all the other branches having equal claims_,
will or will not give to the common schools too great a complexity.
Consider whether it will succeed in the hands of ordinary teachers.
Consider whether it will require so much time and effort as will draw
off in any considerable degree, the attention of the teacher from the
more essential parts of his duty. All will admit that it is highly
important that every school should be simple in its plan--as simple as
its size and general circumstances will permit, and especially that the
public schools in every town and village of our country should never
lose sight of what is and must be, after all, their great
design--_teaching the whole population to ready write, and calculate._
7. If it is a school-book which you are wishing to introduce, consider
well before you waste your time in preparing it, and your spirits in the
vexatious work of getting it through the press; whether it is, _for
general use_, so superior to those already published as to induce
teachers to make a change in favor of yours. I have italicized the words
_for general use_, for no delusion is more common than for a teacher to
suppose that because a text-book which he has prepared and uses in
manuscript is better for _him_ than any other work which he can obtain,
it will therefore be better for _general circulation_.
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