Is the erection of a public building going forward in the neighborhood of your school?
You can make it a very fruitful source of subjects and questions to give interest and impulse to the studies of the school-room.

Your classes in geometry may measure, your arithmeticians may calculate and make estimates, your writers may describe its progress from week to week, and anticipate the scenes which it will in future years exhibit.
By such means the practical bearings and relations of the studies of the school-room may be constantly kept in view; but I ought to guard the teacher, while on this subject, most distinctly against the danger of making the school-room a scene of literary amusement instead of study.
These means of awakening interest and relieving the tedium of the uninterrupted and monotonous study of text-books must not encroach on the regular duties of the school.

They must be brought forward with judgment and moderation, and made subordinate and subservient to these regular duties.

Their design is to give spirit and interest, and a feeling of practical utility to what the pupils are doing; and if resorted to with these restrictions and within these limits, they will produce powerful, but safe results.
Another way to excite interest, and that of the right kind, in school, is not to _remove_ difficulties, but to teach the pupils how to _surmount_ them.

A text-book so contrived as to make study mere play, and to dispense with thought and effort, is the worst text-book that can be made, and the surest to be, in the end, a dull one.