Excerpt from Modern Methods for Teachers: A Twentieth Century Hand-Book for American Teachers, Normal Schools, and Teachers' Reading Circles Modern methods of teaching are an evolution, a develop ment whose roots reach back into the distant past of Greece and Rome and farther, too. Until the art of printing by movable type was invented by Gutenberg in 1456, teaching was mainly oral. Authoritative statement on the part of the teacher and mechanical repetition on the part of the pupil were the most convenient steps of the teaching process. When this process was reinforced by interrogation, it was more to test the memory than to exercise the understanding; for, in those despotic centuries, self-assertion, individuality, originality in thinking, were crimes against established institutions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.