of reading Shakespeare, studying German, or pursuing the Chautauqua Course illustrates the same principle, that two or three congenial people may aid one another in the study of problems in which they have a common interest. These societies have often degenerated into circles for mutual admiration; but this fact will not deter sensible people from establishing others. It may even be assumed that societies for mutual admiration have often done much real good.

Teachers often do their best work during the first years of their professional service because of their fresh enthusiasm and the exhilaration that comes from a consciousness of daily growth. The latter feeds the former. The routine demands of an exacting profession and the dreary drudgery that is inevitable in their daily work too often rob them of their vitality. The only remedy is such study as shall keep alive their appetite for self-improvement and make them feel that they are growing. For often has the reckless charge been made that the teacher's work is dull and wearisome, and lacking in incident. The work should be as varied as are the actions and motives of the human mind. And what more shifting and multiform than the operations of this wondrously complex mechanism? Could any study be more fascinating, or present a more limitless field?

REPORTS OF DELEGATES FROM COUNTY
ASSOCIATIONS.

A committee from the delegates from county associations submitted the following report:

1. We are in favor of county supervision.

2. We think that some measure ought to be taken to secure a more general attendance

of the common school teachers at our State Teachers' Association.

3. There should be a more general attendance at our county institutes.

4. That our district schools ought to be better provided with maps, charts, globes, clocks, bells, and simple apparatus in general.

5. That our truant laws ought to be so changed as to make them effective.

6. That provisions should be made for the grading of district schools.

DISCUSSION.

Superintendent E. P. Church of Greenville thought the attendance at county institutes was not as large as it should be. The truant law needs to be amended.

Superintendent J. N. McCall, Gratiot county, asked for radical changes in the supervision and grading of district schools. A county system of supervision would tend to make better schools.

Mr. A. R. Hardy, Ingham county, believed that the examining board should have the power of supervision. He also thought that the State questions sent out were too easy for use in all counties.

Prof. A. E. Haynes of Hillsdale said:

MR. PRESIDENT,-While I have been called upon unexpectedly to take part in this discussion, and so feel quite unprepared, yet I am willing to do what I can. I am in favor of these resolutions, and wish the committee had seen fit to add another favoring a longer tenure of service in the districts on the part of the teachers employed in our ungraded schools. Some have said, on this floor, that to remedy the present defects of these schools we must have a uniformity of text books. Others have thought grading them is the thing required, and others still, that county or township supervision would cure the defects. My opinion is that the remedy for most of the defects in our school system with reference to these schools lies in: 1. A proper grading; 2. A well executed plan of county supervision; 3. A longer tenure of service on the part of the teacher in the school where he engages to teach, and 4. A method whereby those who ought to be found in the schools, but do not attend, may be brought into them so as to receive

their benefits. I believe in the county superintendency. I do not believe it ever had a fair trial in this State. I am glad to be related to one man, who on the floor of this house, defended the system from first to last, both by his words and vote, until it was overthrown.

I wish, Mr. President, that we knew what part of the crime committed in our State is committed by the 25 per cent. of our school population which have not attended the public school. I am inclined to believe that the percentage of criminals from this class is very large. I think the State should take steps to gather statistics on this question that we might know the facts.

Mr. J. A. Sinclair spoke as follows:

We read in Holy Writ of a place where there was lamentation, weeping and great mourning. The picture is that of a mother weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they were not. In Wayne county the circumstances have slightly changed. There it is children crying for competent teachers and will not be comforted because they are not. The causes of this abnormal condition are not hard to find. They are; a few at least, the lack of a competent examiner or board of examiners, responsible to a responsible head, the head not to be removed too far from the body. The lack of a man thoroughly equipped and furnished for the work of supervision, and county supervision far preferable to the township plan. In a letter from an ex-superintendent, under the old system, he says: "In our county, judging from the little observation I have made, the present system of licensing teachers falls far short of accomplishing the work. I can see no advancement. The question is often asked, 'Is it any better than the township system?' So far as I can see, I would as soon trust it. Neither the township nor the present county system places the school interest in the hands of men who make a specialty of school work. The applicant for the certificate passes through the routine of question-answering. The certificate is given and the work ends." .

The third great need is a sufficiency of qualified teachers. I am told by the township inspector of Van Buren that not more than one-quarter of the teachers under his supervision are qualified. I see no reason why the same state of affairs does not exist in other parts of the county. Although I think the statement is not a just one, it shows that the state of affairs must be bad. For this I can advise three remedies: 1st. The requirement by law of the completion of a certain course of study. 2d. A high standard in examination. 3d. The making the tenure of term, by law, to be coincident with the school year where the school is taught.

Supt. Geo. Barnes, the delegate from Livingston county, said:

The Livingston County Teachers' Association, one hundred strong, had instructed its delegate to ask for a county system of examination and supervision of schools. The present township system is a failure for two reasons:

1. The inspectors are, too often, incompetent for the work; 2. They have little or no authority.

We should have a county superintendent or secretary, with authority not merely to advise, but to direct the educational interests of his county, and to correct any errors that may come to his notice. If the work of supervision in a single county is too large for one person, the superintendent should have power to appoint a deputy. The deputy should be responsible to the superintendent, so that there shall be no division of responsibility.

The work of examination and supervision cannot be separated with advantage.

The one weak point in onr present system of examining teachers is that the examiner knows little of the real work of the candidate.

The examiner looks into the face of a room full of candidates. He cannot form the acquaintance of each one. He has a few pages of written work, and from that he must grant the certificate. The examiner should see the teacher at work, and then he could grant certificates with more certainty.

Supt. H. M. Slauson, of Houghton, reported as follows:

Condition of schools, prosperous.

Needs.

1. A system of county supervision combined with the present system of granting certificates;

2. The township system of organization in place of the one now in vogue;

3. A compulsory or truant law not limited in its application to cities, but one applying to all children between the ages six and twenty-one who have not, by a fair test, shown themselves to be well grounded in the common school branches.

Supt. Wesley Sears, of Flint, said "amen" to all the good things that had been said by the others.

Mr. Stuart Mackibbin, of Pentwater, said:

MR. PRESIDENT,―There are employed in the schools of Oceana county about one hundred teachers, good, bad and indifferent. There are three graded schools in the county, the remainder ungraded, or so-called district schools. Of these teachers less than half are professionals, yet this moiety is of the best quality. It is comprised of ladies and gentlemen, some of them gray-headed in the service, who are an honor to their profession. Teachers who employ every means in their power to perfect themselves; teachers to whom examination has no terrors; teachers whose services are sought, and who generally continue term after term in the same district. The remaining teachers of the county are what might be termed irregulars, girls and boys, some of them unable to get the proper certificates, and who are teaching on "specials" granted on account of the necessities of particular districts, the good nature of the examining board, or the importunities of friends; some of them with no liking or fitting or adaptitude for the profession, hoping thereby to keep soul and body together till something else turns up; some of them earnest, conscientious young men and women who, having acquired the best education possible by the limited means at their disposal, turn to teaching, not because it is easier than other occupations open to them but because they hope to make themselves that rarest of all created beings, good country school teachers. I have nothing against this class of "irregulars." It is a necessary evil. It is from this class that the ranks of the professionals are recruited. The fittest survive, the wheat is separated from the chaff in short order. Our circumstances also render a class of cheap teachers necessary. Take, for instance, a new district. In many cases the inhabitants are pioneers, battling with hardships. They have built a school-house, of logs perhaps, but the best they could afford; to do this they have burdened themselves with a debt to be met by future taxation. Necessity compels them to the most economical management possible, and where is the expense greatest but in teacher's wages?

The blame for a poor school is not on the inhabitants of a district, who have in some cases cramped themselves financially to pay even the small wages allowed, but in the teacher, (with perhaps a special certificate) whose only aim is to get through with the

school as quickly and as easily as possible, with not sufficient pride to do present work well, knowing that he can the next term impose himself on some other district whom necessity compels to hire anybody with a certificate. The greatest injury comes from the fact that a succession of such teachers and such schools destroy the hope of anything better, so that the school does not keep pace with the advancement of the district and still continues to be knocked down to the lowest bidder long after the district is well able to make money a secondary matter in the hiring of a teacher.

And in this connection I will say I do not agree with the idea promulgated yesterday, that nothing but the most elementary studies should be taught in the ungraded schools, because of the few scholars who study higher studies. The same reason would close every school in Michigan above the primary. This plan may work all right where villages and money are plenty, but where the nearest graded school is twenty miles it would not. To at present limit the district schools of Oceana county to the work of a primary department, would be to drive every scholar from school at twelve or thirteen years of age, to shut out a large part of our youth from only the most elementary education.

The organization of our schools is to meet the demands nearest and most urgent. The three high schools of the county are organized to give, to such as may wish to devote the time, as thorough and complete an education as is possible, and not to fit them for higher institutions regardless of whether they go there or not.

The needs of the schools of Oceana county I should state to be:

1. Better education of teachers.

2. More intelligent and thorough supervision.

3. Uniformity of text books.

The institute is not losing its grip. There may be faults in its management but the institute itself is popular and appreciated among the teachers of the county. At least that was the sentiment expressed by the teachers at the last institute when it was intimated on the part of some that institutes are failures.

The first and second needs are apparent to every one. I do not say the teachers of Oceana county are worse, or the schools poorer superintended than others; they will average. The third need I would urge, not as has been argued, because it would be a convenience to the teacher, or an aid in systematizing the schools of the county, but on behalf of the man who has to buy the books. There are laboring men who are compelled to move frequently according to their employment. There are some persons in my acquaintance whose children attend the village school part of the year, and country school the remainder. As a consequence these persons must provide two sets of books, one for town, and one for country; and on returning to the country should they go into another district, a third set must be purchased. This occasions a heavy outlay, but one that cannot be helped under existing laws. As this is the greatest evil, here should be the first remedy.

Supt. J. G. Plowman, St. Joseph county, spoke for a better equipment in the line of school apparatus, and gave the following interesting statistics of a southern county of the State:

Exterior-81 good, 37 poor.

Interior-77 good, 41 poor.

Out buildings-79 good, 49 poor.

Desks-50 good, 60 poor.

Clocks-38 with, 80 without.