telligence and material prosperity and power go together. We have in our own country many illustrations of this fact in the history of States and communities. I need not point them out. Perhaps Prussia affords one of the most notable illustrations of this fact.

The value of an education not to be estimated in dollars and cents.-From report of school committee of Kingston, N. H.: Knowledge cannot be weighed in a commercial scale. The primary question is not whether a man can make ten dollars per week, uneducated, or twenty dollars per week, educated; it is, how can he make the most of himself, how can he best develop his personality, how can he accomplish the greatest good for the greatest number? It is here that our so-called business colleges err in principle, their aim being to educate so that their graduates may get money, and make money-getting the mainspring of life. The dollar suspended before the mental vision by these institutions is so very large that it obscures the nobler motives, so that goodness, honor, and philanthropy are seen but dimly, if seen at all. A bright young fellow recently asked, What good will it ever do me to study algebra?" He was measuring the value of knowledge by this little tape-measure whose divisions are the symbol $. It was explained to him that the "good" consisted in the mental advancement accruing from disciplining the mind to systematic reasoning; that while he might never use what he learned in the exact form in which he learned it, and while he might apparently forget it, yet the effect of his study would remain through life in the ability to think better and to grapple more successfuly with difficult questions. An esteemed friend recently put this thought neatly when he said that while he could not now recollect what particular food he ate for dinner a month ago, yet that food went towards building up the wasted physical tissues; and so while he could not now remember the formulas and principles of the higher mathematics which he studied in college years ago, yet those formulas and principles helped to build up his mind and to make him intellectually the man he has become.

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A State's welfare demands education.—Superintendent Cooper, of Texas: The stake of the parent in the correct education of his children is deep, but that of the State is deeper. The parent may be dependent on his children, but the State must be. The parent educates his children from motives of pride and benevolence; the State educates by the first law of its existence, that of self-preservation. Patriotism and philanthropy unite in fostering universal education, and utilize for this purpose the strong right hand of the

law.

VI.-EVENING SCHOOLS.

Evening schools becoming more popular.-Marshall P. Hall, of Manchester, N. H.: We need a further development on the side of practical education, as represented in the evening schools and in certain departments of the high school. Increased interest in evening school work is reported from all our New England towns. These schools appear to be firmly established as an integrant part of the commen school system. As they are chiefly patronized by working people, and their attendance increases as the hours of labor lessen, their growth is a significant sign of the times. The ordinary evening school is capable of great development for good. Besides the usual instruction, advantage might be taken in its classes to teach the principles of our Government, and so counteract some of the political evils which exist in cities. Our own evening schools may be directly improved by the employment of better teachers, the introduction of other and more interesting studies, and by a more watchful supervision.

Evening schools for special instruction in subjects relating to the trades and industries are also increasing innumber in manufacturing towns. Our classes in mechanical drawing are a beginning in this direction. They should be made free to every apprentice and artisan in the city, and enlarged until all applicants can be accommodated. Every man who attends them is made a better workman; he more highly respects himself and his calling; he is stimulated to invention and animated to become a master in his business.

VII.-GRADED SCHOOLS.

Graded schools do better work.-Superintendent Smith, of Tennessee: Better supervision can be had by having three men to supervise the entire district, and graded schools can be established-that is, schools can be established-where two hundred or three hundred children can be assigned to one house, and several teachers employed in the same school building, which will insure better work in every respect.

When the district directors fully understand the importance of graded schools, and begin the establishment of the same, we will make a grand advancement in school work. One serious drawback to the efficiency of our schools is the establishing of too many schools in a district. We should have fewer schools, more children to a house, and longer school terms.

Grading of country schools.—Superintendent Lawhead, of Kansas: The sentiment that more and better work can be secured by a wise grading of our country schools pervades the best school men of all the States, and in States that have tried the plan it meets with much favor. * * *

in my opinion, the following are the objects that should be sought, with some of the advantages that would result from the adoption of a system of gradation for ungraded schools, namely: (1) An ultimate reduction in the number of classes; consequently more time could be given to each class. (2) More systematic work could be done, hence each papil taught by example the necessity and practical benefit of system in every thing-a very important element. (3) Each pupil would realize that his advancement would depend upon the thoroughness with which he performed his work, therefore he would be timulated to do everything in the best manner possible.

VIII-HIGH SCHOOLS.

Secondary schools necessary to a complete system of public education.-President E. M. Turner, of West Virginia University: The great outery is against inefficient teachers. They are called smatterers, empirics, mechanical in their methods, superficial in their Ettainments. Much of this criticism is well-founded; yet the teachers are not entirely to blame. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. With no opportunities for education higher than those furnished by the primary schools themselves, how can it be expected that they should be thoroughly qualified? Nine-tenths of the teachers of West Virginia have never had any advantages beyond those of the primary schools of their neighborhood, and they are simply perpetuating the evils of the system as they have learned them in the school-room. Institutes do something, but they can not be expected to do much toward raising the standard of qualification. The mechanical mebods and superficial knowledge of teachers can not be got rid of until the teachers have better facilities for education. The primary schools must be lifted up by giving the tea hers better instruction, and we can not give our teachers better instruction until we establish a system of higher schools, where, in common with all others who choose to attend, they may be better taught, and taught far beyond the subjects they are required to teach. It is a well-recognized educational maxim, that no teacher is properly quali Led to teach a school of given grade until he has been thoroughly instructed in the next higher grade. The primary teacher in the vast majority of our schools must be also a Tamar-school teacher, because he has pupils of all grades. Hence a system of high schools or secondary schools is necessary to the highest efficiency of the primary schools. These secondary schools should be taught by the best instructors to be obtained. The teachers should all be liberally educated men and women. By "liberally educated" I mean educated in the true sense-not mere book teachers, mechanical in method and bound down by a superficial notion of the object and process of their work, but thorugh masters of their profession, widely knowledged, thoroughly developed and cultured, ister of their own persons and tastes, able to apply the most intelligent methods and develop the highest power and efficiency in the pupil.

Ent such teachers can come only from the highest educational institutions, the college ad the university, where they have had the benefit of such instructions themselves. on these they may go down to the secondary or high schools and lift them up, and ith them elevate the primary system. Then, a complete system of public education plies, of a necessity, a primary system, a secondary system, and a university or col

ege at the head.

IX.-HYGIENE.

School-rooms should not be crowded.-Superintendent Chapman, of New Jersey: It bald be quite unnecessary to point out the folly of placing a hundred or more pupils single room. These large classes are all of primary pupils, usually beginners. No eacher can do justice to so many pupils, and a dozen teachers can not take proper care of them. crowded as they are in small rooms. They not only fail to receive the instrucon which is their due, but they contract habits of listlessness and inattention, which adly interfere with their progress in after years. These results are serious enough, but when it is added that, as our school-houses are constructed, no child can remain in a room with so many others for any considerable time without seriously impairing its health, it bond be sufficient to deter any school officer or any parent from consenting to such con

X.-IRREGULAR ATTENDANCE.

Eril effects of irregular attendance.—Superintendent Patterson, of New Hampshire: In every town there are parents who, either too ignorant to appreciate or too selfish to re

gard the interests of society or the welfare of their children, will, for the paltry value of a child's labor, or to gratify its love of play, become the conscious or unconscious agents in disturbing the discipline, breaking down the classification, and destroying the usefulness of schools by causing or allowing their children to be continually irregular in their attendance. The waste of school funds and the loss of intellectual and moral power to the community from this source are incalculable, for the good and the bad suffer alike from this unconscious criminality. As things are, it is impossible for teachers or school boards to remove the evil.

Value of high percentages of attendance.-Superintendent Powell, of the District of Columbia: Figures," it is said, "never lie." Yet, in school statistics, if it is not known how they are obtained, figures may be the most deceiving rascals that ever told a tale. High percentages of attendance and punctuality on the face of them indicate advanced educational processes at school and high educational sentiment in the community, whereas they may have been obtained at the expense of the better and nobler impulses of the child, of the better and broader view of learning and growth, of other and equally valuable privileges afforded outside the school.

The teacher should know the value of sequence, continuity, and determined effort, and should seek to impress their importance upon the mind of every pupil, and should be estimated by his knowledge of causes of absence or tardiness rather than by the percontages made in either of these by his pupils.

The educating forces of the cultivated home and of society are so numerous and so valuable as auxiliaries for broadening and making practical the work of the schools that absence or tardiness occasioned by desire or opportunity may sometimes be excused in the pupil secking these advantages. I would not encourage irregular attendance. Such is not the purpose of my writing. I wish only to emphasize the advisability and fairness of distinguishing between absence occasioned by carelessness of pupil or parent and that occasioned by opportunity and desire to profit by other valuable means of cultivation. Furthermore, I wish to emphasize the importance of recognizing the possibilities of the less fortunate of those who send to our schools, and to avoid, if possible, debarring from school privileges, even for a part of a week or a part of a day, any who may be detained from school occasionally to aid an indigent parent in the support of his family, or to assist a poor, hard-working, self-sacrificing mother in caring for an infant brother or sister for a part of the forenoon.

To know the cause of absence, to detect, encourage, and reform the careless and the wayward, to know and strive to reform the criminally careless and indifferent by all legitimate means should be encouraged in and made possible to our schools.

"Children kept away on any sort of flimsy pretext.-Superintendent Buchanan, of Virginia: It is noticeable in the reports of many of the States that there is great irregu larity of attendance upon the public schools. This is a great evil, and one for which it is difficult to provide an efectual remedy. Its causes are various. The fact that the public schools are free schools-charge no tuition fees-is doubtless one cause. When pupils enter a pay-school they must attend regularly or not get their money's worth. Irregular attendance on a free school entails no pecuniary loss. Hence, if parents are indifferent about their children's education, as unfortunately too many are, and know but little or nothing of the damage and annoyance of irregular attendance, their children are kept away on any sort of flimsy pretext.

In our cities stringent regulations in regard to tardiness and absence prevail, and the percentage of attendance compared with enrolment is very high. In the country greater irregularity is unavoidable, but it is believed that if boards of district trustees would adopt, with the advice and counsel of the school superintendents, regulations on the subject wisely adapted to the different conditions of country schools, they would be productive of good results.

XI.-LANGUAGE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Schools should be taught in the English language only. -Superintendent Cooper, of Texas: We have a large foreign element among our population. In some localities it is so strong in influence that it is able to enforce the use of a foreign language in the public schools. While we welcome thrifty and law-abiding citizens from every quarter of the globe, we should require that the children of our foreign-born citizens be taught in the public schools in the language of our laws and of our people. When natives of Germany, Sweden, Bohemia, or Mexico become citizens of Texas, they cease to be foreigners and become Texans, and their children should be trained to be in sympathy with our institutions. This will never be fully done so long as they retain as their vernacular the language of foreign and alien peoples.

Our common stine's mast de Amorista.—Superintendent Kiehle, of Minnesota: The time has come when the State must give additional emphasis to the importance of the

common school as an ally of the State in training an intelligent and loyal American citizenship. *** The first requisite, then, is that they teach thoroughly the English language as the language of the country. This is the language of our business and social life. It is the language of our history, our laws, and the only vehicle of American ideas. Other languages are necessarily un-American (not anti-American), carrying with them the traditions, associations, customs, and national spirit of other governments and eivilizations; hence, if the youth of this country are to be Americans they must think and speak in the language of America.

They should be familiar with the great events of our history and the names of our patriots and statesmen whose courage and wisdom laid the foundation upon which we build.

All this should be the basis of an intelligent loyalty to government, a culture of political morality, and a sacred discharge of political duties as citizens at the ballot, as

jurors, and in official positions.

It is necessary that public attention be called to this important service of the common schools, in view of the exceedingly large addition to our citizenship from foreign countries. The parents of foreign birth, with all their attachments to their fatherland, bring their children to America to share its liberties and the beneficence of its institutions. Their social and religious associations are among friends of their own language, and the common school is the only American institution within the reach of their chil

dren.

I am of the opinion that greater care should be exercised in protecting our common schools from foreign influences. Localities have come to my notice in which the schools have taken on a style of speech and instruction that is, to say the least, not American. The English language is not intelligently spoken by teacher or pupils; American history is never taught, and American literature is carefully excluded. country are never sung, and the flag of the nation is unnoticed.

XII.-LIBRARIES FOR SCHOOLS.

The songs of our

Importance of public school libraries.—Superintendent Morgan, of West Virginia: The establishment of libraries in public schools or under the control of public school authorities, to be used in connection with the work of public schools, is an educational question of increasing importance. There are two facts which seem sufficient grounds for the establishment of these libraries. The first is the evil influence of pernicious literature, everywhere so abundant and made so seductive and attractive to childhood, and which the public library, accessible to the children of the public schools, must become the most effective means in combating. The second reason is the educational value of public libraries, not in the general sense meant when speaking of libraries, but as a great supplementary factor to the public school itself. The reading habit and the taste for good literature are matters of cultivation, and the formation of both should be commenced in childhood. An inquiring spirit and love of good books must form the best part of every lar education, should therefore work together. child's education, and the public school and the public library, the great factors in popuWhen the child in the public schools shall have the privilege and encouragement of the school library, popular education will have taken

a long step forward.

Teachers should be required to attend to the libraries.-Superintendent Hoitt, of Cali

fornia: In my opinion

no better use can be made of a part of the school money furnished

by the State to each district, than in expending a small portion of it in the purchase of citable reference and library books, provided always that teachers are employed who will encourage and direct the proper use of them.

Better care, in many cases, should be taken of the school libraries and school apparatus. When a teacher enters upon his work, at the beginning of the school term, the clerk of the district should take his receipt for all library books and apparatus on hand, and no requisition should be drawn by the county superintendent for the salary of the tendent the receipt of the clerk of the district for all library books and apparatus which sach articles and books have been returned to the library in good condition, allowance were placed in the care of the teacher at the beginning of the term, showing that all School libraries Americanize the children of foreigners.-Superintendent Kiehle, of Minnesota: The test of one year fully sustains the claims urged for the passage of the law. Where the people have been interested and have ordered books for their children the effect has been wonderful. I am informed of counties, largely Scandinavian, in

being made for wear and tear.

which the districts are

these children are rapidly becoming interested and informed in American history and iterature. That means they are becoming Americans.

generally supplied with libraries. The effect of all this is that

XIII.-MANUAL TRAINING.

Manual training does not retard the progress of the pupil.--Superintendent Chapman, of New Jersey: It is the united testimony of the teachers that the pupils who attend the industrial school retain their places or standing in their respective classes. No falling off in any particular has been noted. On the other hand, the change of work and the stimulus to excel in this particular kind of knowledge has rather added to the work the pupils are doing on their regular lessons. The fact that a dull boy has shown his class that he can do something has tended to elevate the standing of that particular boy, not only in his own estimation but in that of his comrades.

It enables the pupil to secure the larger number of, and at the same time clearer impressions from, the multitude of objects with which he comes in contact, and which are the basis of his thoughts. It increases the expressing power of the pupil. It develops habits of method and exactness; trains the eye to appreciate form, and trains the hand to represent and create form in accordance with established principles, and in training the eye and the hand, the system cultivates the brain.

New methods not always improvements.—Superintendent Brumbaugh, of Huntingdon County, Pa.: The intelligent school friend will remember that change is not always improvement; that retrogression is quite as possible as progression. Every new device, therefore, that comes pressing for attention must be carefully considered before it is accepted. There is a growing tendency to demand from our schools that which they were never designed to give, that which, under existing circumstances, they cannot give. It is not true that time spent in studying that which has no direct bearing upon the probable future business pursuits of the child is wasted time. It is not true that those branches which are apparently and generally regarded most practical, are the ones the child may study with most profit. Let it not be forgotten that cultured minds, filled with knowledge and skilled to application, will adapt themselves to any ordinary business pursuit more readily than those minds to which only utilitarian instruction has been given. Rather than demand manual instruction at present in our schools, let us demand more thorough mental training. What is needed is intensity, not utility; mental concentration, not physical application. His whole future touches the manual and quickens it into all needed activities; the mental is given in the school if at all. Let school be an all-sided preparation for complete living, not an apprenticeship for shop or factory. So far as manual training has pedagogic value embrace it. When it has mercenary motives it is fatal to incorporate it. "No man liveth by bread alone."

Highly endorsed by the supervising principals of Washington City.-Superintendent Powell, of the District of Columbia: The estimate given to these manual training exercises by those whose schools were affected is found in the various reports of the supervising principals. The consensus of opinions there found, given as they were after a year's observation and practical experience, with all the disadvantages that such training can possibly offer to a school system, is to my mind the strongest argument in favor of manual training that I have ever heard or read, and my investigation of this subject has been wide and thorough.

Manual training in the public schools advocated.-Z. H. Brown, superintendent of city schools, Nashville, Tenn.: The educational forces are at present being directed towards manual training, or industrial education. As is always the case, any new departure from that which has been so long established is met by strong opposition, and only by slow degrees does this opposition lose effectiveness. Anything so deeply rooted in the affections of the people as are the public schools will, when in seeming danger, awaken alarm. There are those who are unwilling to believe it possible for manual training to be carried along pari passu with the ordinary school curriculum; others claim they go hand in hand, each strengthening the other. There is still a third party who think it best to have the boys attend the training school in the evening after regular school hours. There is a total misapprehension ou the part of the general public as to what is expected of the manual training school, and how it is to be attained. I can not better give my own views than to quote from another:

66* * * The demand to-day is not to lessen the intellectual culture which the schools are giving, but simply to add to it the culture of the eye and hand; not to fit children for any particular trade, but to qualify them to be intelligent workmen in any vocation. The idea which prevails that industrial schools are trade schools is as ridiculous as it is absurd. What advantage would there be in teaching a boy to be a shoemaker? Would he peg and stitch in competition with the steam power that is employed in the manufacture of shoes? Why teach a boy to be a blacksmith? Could he shape and weld in competition with the steam hammer? The teaching of trades is outside of the question of industrial education. The proposition is to amend the curriculum so that the graduate of our public schools shall not only have a fair literary education, but that he shall also be able to draw, design, work to plans, and handle tools.”