ABSTRACT
The teacher initiated a discussion on the best way to tackle such a subject, working out a preliminary plan on the board from ideas supplied by the pupils. A similarly effective teacher was Signor Mainardi of the Scuola Media Virgilio at Cremona. His relations with the class were easy, but he obviously stood for high standards and this integrity had rubbed off on his pupils, fluent and stylish. Compared with primary-school work, there was that falling-off in presentation one often finds in adolescents, mainly owing to the over-rapid production called for by the pressures of the secondary school. The actual arithmetic may have been a little elementary, but as a display of method the pupil's performance was admirable. The class did some examples by themselves; two of them came out to the blackboard and worked on the back of the hinged wings, and others finished they came out to compare their work with that of one of the blackboard demonstrators.
