While the teacher is looking over papers he should carefully note flagrant defects common to many in the class. For a day or two these ought to be discussed instead of the regular recitations. Then let each individual take his paper and review the mistakes peculiar to himself. After this require him, with his text-book and the original set of TEACHERS Sometimes make mistakes in not forgetting questions in hand, to write the answers anew in as perfect a a fault where it has once been atoned for and forgiven. If way as possible. Finally have him compare, answer by an- a child has done a wrong thing, has really been made to see swer the new paper with the old. All this will take a day that it was wrong and ought not to have been done, and has or two longer; but the time will be more than regained in fairly acknowledged the fault and promised future good bethe economy of after work, inasmuch as there will come to havior, then the teacher should let that fault pass out of the pupils and teacher such revelations as cannot fail to rev-mind and memory. The pupil now needs, and should reolutionize their plans of study and presentation.

With young children, the concrete should precede
the abstract.

6. With young children, the particular should precede
the general.

7.

With young children, give always the idea before
the word, the thing before its symbol.

8. Care should be taken not to confound things with
their symbols: the danger of this is greatest with
young children, but it is not confined to them.
9. False forms should never be put before young
children for correction: Such false forms as they
make should be removed as quickly and as quietly
as possible.

10. Early youth is the best time to commit things to
memory, to "store the mind."

11. It is well for youth to commit to memory some things not yet fully comprehended.

12. Begin where the child is; all attempts to teach little children will be futile or worse, unless they are adapted to the present state of the children's minds, as regards both knowledge and strength. -From Hewett's Pedagogy.

The Situation.

What makes a teacher? What should? What makes a teacher's success? Why? We are teachers, and these are fair questions for us to ask ourselves—fair questions for others to ask us-questions we should be able to answer correctly, and willing to answer truthfully. Do we know how to do so? Do we dare?

them out from below. Is it credible that from twenty-five to fifty men should ask for a single position the salary of which for an entire year could be earned in a few days by a fair lecturer or singer, lawyer or surgeon? Can one believe that there were over three hundred applicants, this summer, for seven places in a single state institution?

Is it not high time for those who have been proved by time and experience to say in unmistakable terms: Only those who are educated can teach, nor can all who are teach well. But can we say this? Will it do any good for us to say it? We, who have borne the burden and the heat of the educational harvest field, ought to be the ones to say whether the high calling of a teacher is wisely chosen and worthily filled by this one or that.

Yet who does decide? What are the tests? What is the gauntlet which all must run-experience and success alongside of sham and pretense?

Party asks, not what a man can do, but: "What ticket does he vote?" The Church cries, not for light as to his education and culture, but: "Where does he worship?" Fashion asks who made his garments, and for the names of those who are on his wife's calling list. The People standing so that their shadows fall upon the little children, mutter eagerly, not, "Is his heart in his work?" but, "How little will he work for?"

And yet, Pestalozzi and Froebel loved children; Mann and Rousseau and countless others have died full of faith that the world was to be better and wiser because of the teachers' work; and the child who is born this day is to finish his education beyond the gateway of the twentieth century. The future growth and greatness of our people, the world's civilization, the entire hope of humanity, rests in the hands of these children, and their minds and souls are coming to us for help. What if we fail them?

If we could insist that all places in the teachers' work should be filled by those in whom education had placed a light, love kindled a purpose, and training and discipline forever buried the self-sufficient spirit of unpsychological experimentation; if we could set teachers in authority over teachers, to hire, to criticise, to judge them by their work and their worthiness; if we could say to this man, "You know law, and can break a will or save a criminal",-to that one, "You know medicine, and can cut keenly and deep and save life by so doing",-but to all, "We teach, and we must be allowed to do it in our true and right way", there would be greater hope for the coming years.

The lawyers have enough to do with their pleas—the doctors with their patients. Teachers will be allowed to fully control teaching when they shall become, as a whole, worthy of such a trust. Fellow teachers, earnest workers, what shall we do about it?

B.

NEVER forget thy own duty for the sake of another's, however just.

We love to call teaching a profession. We count up the number of teachers in a county or state, and speak proudly of the number of those who have made choice of teaching as "a profession." We gather them together in institutes; we help them answer the questions of mechanical routine; we urge upon the them necessity of reading and study--often of that for which they are but poorly prepared; we tell them the same simple, old-fashioned truths which generations of teachers have doubtingly listened to, and carelessly accepted or doggedly denied." We teach them why we invert the terms of the divisor in division of fractions; we beg them to give their pupils language lessons; assure them that the alphabetic method of teaching ENGLAND, within the last few years, has devoted much reading went out of use among good teachers long ago; attention to manual, artistic, and technical education. In we insist that the student of geography shall know some-fact, all through Europe, industrial education is no longer thing of the real world in which he lives, the student of his- a doubtful experiment, but an established, practical reality. tory something of the men and women of today, and every- Technical schools, which at first were private ventures, are one enough of the forms of the government under which he now to a large extent the care of the state. These great lives to make him gratefully proud of it, and then-in about industrial schools promise at no distant date to revolutionize three years they are gone. Matrimony-money-or both the life of Europe.-Independent, N. Y. has swept them away, and another generation of teachers has taken their places, ready to work anywhere, work for little, underbid education, and set aside experience.

we

What is the result? There is no more honorable field for the teachers' work than the common school. There are no greater triumphs of devotion and patience and love than those which may be won in the lower grades of village and city schools. But devotion is not content to forget that "the laborer is worthy of his hire"-or ought to be--and it thus happens that the higher positions of honor and trust in the work are sought for by an army of hungry applicants only less numerous than the hungrier army who have driven

WHAT is needed besides compulsory education is an annex to each public school, in which annex those must learn some manual art who fail in the intellectual branches. It would thus be found that many boys who cannot do anything with books can soon do much with tools, and can even be made toappreciate and enjoy the results of the bench, the engraver's tools, the tile making industry, and the many shapes of mechanical pursuit. At Elmira, N. Y., an eminent teacher reports great success in his effort to get an industrial education into heads and hearts that did not make any effort to appreciate the education contained in books.-The Current.

How to Study History.

It has always seemed to me very creditable to the brains of children, that they are apt to rebel against the study of history, as it is usually presented to them. Why should any boy or girl sincerely wish to know in which Olympiad the victory of Corbus took place, or whether Ottoman was, or was not, the son of Ortogrul?. When the witty Madame du Chatelet owned to Voltaire her profound indifference as to this last point, he did not reprove her, but rather praised her. He told her that she was quite right in her indifference, but that if history could only be taught as it should be, -with the really unimportant names and dates left out, and those only retained which really throw light on manners or great events,-history would then become for her the most interesting of all studies. Then, when Voltaire himself wrote history, he carried out his own theories, and laid the foundation of the modern school.

There still remain among us many educational institutions where historic teaching means only a list of names, or a complex chart or "River of Time." A graduate of a Boston grammar school once told me that she was required, in her school days, to put on paper every date that occurred in the portion of "Worcester's History" studied by the class. On a large sheet she made five columns of these dates; she then learned them by heart so thoroughly that she could repeat them backwards; and at the age of twenty-two she had forgotten every one.

"Hobomok," Longfellow's "Miles Standish," Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," and Motley's "Merry Mount." When you have ended, the whole period has become a picture in your mind; and the most thoughtful and serious discussion of it by Bancroft or Palfrey, finds you with a prepared and intelligent mind, if you have the time to give to it. And, if period after period could be followed up in the same spirit, history would become for you a study of absorbing interest, and inexhaustible in its themes.

It may be said that some of these books are "light reading.” They are light reading in the very best sense, if they throw light on what else would be dark. I do not believe in the theory that only what is disagreeable is healthy, but hold that labor itself is most useful when it is applied with a will, and not against one's will. "What interests is remembered,” was one of the favorite moxims of Horace Mann. There is no danger of anyone's acquiring any great range of historic knowledge without corresponding toil; but it is possible so to lay the foundations of knowledge, that later toil shall be a delight, and the habit of study its own exceeding great reward.-Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

A Schoolboy's Chapter.

Mind and life are the work you are engaged on. Lives, not lessons, your own lives, are the work, and the prize of work.

1. Throw away all idea of memory being your instrument, or knowledge your object.

in.

Memory-knowledge, as such, is absolutely useless.
Memory-knowledge as training is worse than useless.
Memory-knowledge is often a disguise for mental incapacity.
Dead lumps of memory-work are dead.

A parrot is a parrot whether dressed in feathers or a coat.

2. Mind is known by what it puts out, Memory by what it casts

Mind is life. Live in your work. See the people, see the ground, see the scenes. If Scipio is named, see him. Make in your mind a picture of Scipio, a person to represent the name: no matter

Warned by experience, when she herself became a high-school teacher, she adopted a wholly different plan. Taking the successive periods, she gave her pupils in each case a few outlines and a few dates from the manual. Then she gave a few questions, of which they were to learn the answers for themselves, in such books as they could find in the school library, or elsewhere. They were to bring to her all the light they could obtain; she was to add whatever she had. From time to time, wider examinations summed up the whole. This method often led to prolonged study of particular points. Thus the Reformation occupied one paragraph in the manual they used; but to that one paragraph her class devoted six lessons. The pupils eagerly discussed every point of the Reformation, talking it over-Prot-how unlike the reality. The Dutch translator, who made "der estants and Catholics together- with perfect freedom; and, at the end of the time, they passed a written examination that amazed her. Nor did the benefit end here. Her pupils found their love of books rapidly develop when the charm of a special investigation was offered to them; and one young girl told her, several years later, that her whole intellectual activity dated from this course of lessons: and that whereas she had before been content with an exclusive diet of Mrs. Southworth's novels, she had ever since demanded better food.

I am aware that I am suggesting nothing new to teachers of experience. I am aware also of the obstacles to any course that demands original research on the part of pupils. But, after all, it is only this flavor of original research, on however small a scale, that makes history take any real root in the mind; and a single period or event explored in this way, fixes the very facts more vividly on the mind than if they had been learned by heart from a neat little compendium, all conveniently arranged beforehand by somebody else.

Of course, history can no more be learned without names and dates than a body can exist without a skeleton. But the dryest anatomist does not seriously maintain that the skeleton is the body, and that flesh and blood have no business to exist. Yet the anatomical teacher of history does believe this, and grows indignant when you ask that his department should consist of anything but bones. For myself, I believe in the bones--in their place. No pupil should be permitted to take the picturesque and romantic peat of any period, without a perfectly connected framework of dates for its vertebral skeleton. But a few dates will answer for this; and the fewer they are, the more likely they will be to remain in the mind. It is better to learn only twenty of these, and carry them through life, than to be able to repeat five columns backwards when you are sixteen, and to have forgotten them all when you are twenty-two.

If the principle applies to young people at school, it applies still more to those, who, having left school, are reading by themselves, or with a teacher. There is no young person, I believe, who could advantageously read through Gibbon's "Rome," as a whole, or even through Bancroft's "United States." But let the student take some very simple outline of facts, and proceed to throw light on it for himself, and it will soon prove interesting. How dry is Worcester's brief narrative of the settlement of Massachusetts, for instance! But read with it the journals of the colonists, as given in Young's! "Chronicles of the Pilgrims" and "Chronicles of Massachusetts," and throw upon these the side-lights obtained through poetry and fiction, though Whittier's "Margaret Smith's Journal," Mrs. Child's

Burgermeister Hannibal" drag cannon over the Alps, had a strong idea of what Hannibal was, and what he was about. The great painter, who painted Abraham leading his men against Chedorlaomer in the armour of an Italian soldier, had a strong idea of what Abraham was about. Trollope says in his wonderful Chapter on Novels and the art of writing them, in his Autobiography, "on the last day of each month recorded every person in the novel should be a month older than on the first." Here the whole science of how to work is summed up in a single sentence. Alas, there is no person at all in the Schoolboy's Novel, in the work of his life. It is all hearing, no doing, no seeing, no picturing, no reality. If the best acting on the stage cannot ram reality into the mind how can a lesson you kick at? But as far as it is unreal it is nothing to you. You never forget a thing you do, cricket, for instance; or even the sitting in school. It is a part of your life. But your book-work is not part of your life. Make it so. You cannot drop what hand, foot, eye, or brain, have really done, it is part of yourselves belonging to hand, foot, eye, or brain, but your book-work is shadow-work, a parrot-like struggle with words. Mere sound, that goes with the sound. Alter this.

The main rules of how to learn are simple. 1.-See. Then examine what you see; lastly, answer, or write. 2.-Make no attempt to remember anything you can put before example:- What is an apple? The answer to this question ought your eye, or picture to your mind's eye. Memory is not sight. For to distinguish an apple from all other fruit. The question is one, the answer is manifold.]

1.-Picture an apple. Put one before your eye; really, if possible: if not, picture it in your mind; see it there. 2.-Note its size.

mind. For example:-Describe a field as a study of color. Select, Kirk taking the topics of School Economy and Mental Science. and picture.

1.-Time of year-autumn.

2.-Time of day-afternoon.

3.-Kind of day-Great clouds, with sun.

4.-Stubble.

5.-Ground broken and uneven.

6.-Bounded by hills on one side.

7.-Trees and hedges.

8.-Water.

9.-Cattle.

10.-Aspect-south-west.

When the mental eye has got this picture put together, the mere sight of the familiar objects will supply words and thoughts. Better still if the writer can go and see his field, and notice the variety of color.

The subject of Manual Training was most effectively introduced by Prof. Wm. F. Phelps of Winona, with illustrations of results attained in the schools of that city under his management. He brought with him selections from the great exhibit made at the close of the last school year, by the pupils of all grades in the Winona schools, and showed the teachers in a practical way that the problem of useful manual training as a means of dicipline, as a powerful factor in education and as a direct means of preparation for practical life was at their command in any country school. It need only be necessary to go to work and lead-the pupils follow with enthusiasm and with benefit in all directions.

The subject of geography had special treatment by Prof. Sanford Niles, who presented in three lessons a broad outline of the geographical method he has so completely worked out in his text book on this subject. If anything can dispose of the old memoriter way

Pictures in this way by sight give the reason first, and supply of destroying all possible interest in this most facinating study, the the rule afterwards, and fix both in the mind.

N. B.-Never comment on nothing. He who speaks before he has got a certainty before his eye, comments on nothing. Frame, or get an example. This is the law of all true work.

When out walking shut your eyes, and then picture to your mind the landscape before you. You will discover how little you have really seen.

When reading shut your eyes, and then picture to your mind the facts you are reading. You will discover how little you have really seen in what you read.

eloquent exposition of the better way given in these three lessons should be effectual. And yet we may safely conclude that the work will have to be done ovor and over again, until the last text book on the old plan is dead, buried and forgotten.

Another special topic was Free-hand Object Drawing presented by Mrs. Mason of the Kasson high-school. The end in view was to give teachers an idea of how they can of themselves acquire the power to draw on the board ordinary objects, at least, from the objects themselves. The work was done with "a maximum of practice and a minimum of rules." The outline was, briefly: 1. Straight lines and their combinations. 2. Curved lines and their combinations. 3 and 4. Outlines of single objects bounded by straight lines. 5 and 6. Outlines of single objects bounded by The unknown cannot teach the unknown. Unless your own curved lines. 7 and 8. Studies in light and shade on objects boundlanguage is known you can know nothing more well.

It is impossible to translate nothing into something. Unless the English to be translated is thoroughly understood Aristotle himself would write nonsense.

New words mean new powers of thought.

It is computed that an uneducated man uses 500 words. Shakespeare, it is said, has used 15,000. The Schoolboy who will not study words had better follow the plough, for he will never be a thinker of thoughts.

ed by straight lines. 9 and 10. Same for bodies bounded by curved lines. 11. Simple figure study. 12. Simple landscape study. This scheme, to cover a twelve weeks course, was gone over in seven hours work with the class, few of whom had ever attempted drawing before. Enough was accomplished to convince the most skeptical that drawing may be successfully taught in its elementary uses by any teacher who will bestow upon it as much pains as she has

If you don't do small things you'll never do great things. Trifles are trifles to know, but not trifles to leave undone, or not given to the matter of writing; and results convinced many present to know.

Sitting over a book, and using your mind are not the same. Breeches-wear and brain-wear are not the same though the same time may be spent.

that their own training would have been more satisfactory had they received the dicipline of such work in their school course.

The visit of the State Supt. gave an interest to one afternoon at the close of which he presented in a very practical way, methods in

The humble fool does nothing he is told, calls himself stupid, school management, in answer to many questions of dicipline and and idles because of it.

The cross-grained fool abuses the masters as well.

tactics.

Prof. Richardson of the Dodge Centre high-school, gave illustraThe bumptious fool is an oracle on Education; and wishes to tion of the possibility of science teaching with only the most ordinachange everything he does not know; an extensive programme.- | ry apparatus, such as any bright teacher or pupil might make. Thrings, Theory and Practice of Teaching.

Attendance at this summer session was not good. A total enrollment of eighty was attained, but only by counting those who entered for a day or two. Not more than one-third of this number were in constant attendance. This was partly due to the fact that many schools were still in session. Some did not close at all, despite the call of the Supt. Some closed for a day or two. Some for the one week only that is specified in the statute. The season was not

In this way the attempt to make the work suggestive of broader culture in the country schools was carried out. For those who were present the session could but be valuable. Whether or not another is certain: The demand of the rural schools for better trained teachtwo weeks session will be attempted remains to be seen. One thing ers must be met in some such way. These teachers cannot, as a class, go to the normal schools. The normal schools must come to them, not for a week only but in some more effective way. An appropriation of five thousand dollars for the work of this great state for this preparation is so utterly inadequate, that if there could possibly be an amusing side to so serious a matter, one could afford to smile at it and wait for a better knowledge. As it is, it were better honestly to say that the state that endows so heavily its normal schools and contributes so largely to the high schools, must in some more just and comprehensive way, provide for the people's seminary -the common rural schools.

A. M. SPERRY, Co. Supt.

favorable. July his become a busy month in Dodge Co. It is the do we expect perfection whereas we can reasonably look only for atTeachers are apt to forget that the child is a learner. How often time of the hay harvest and hay has become the second crop in im-tempts at it. It is a mistake often made to chide pupils for a poor portance. This kept the young men away.

There remains the further fact that many persons who want to teach simply as a make shift, do not care to incur the inconvenience and the expense of attending such a school. These expect to pass in some way the examinations and get for their temporary use all the certificate they will ever need. The attendance then may be set down as not satisfactory.

The plan of instruction was based on the syllabus and was kept principally to the discussion of methods of primary work and to mental science, with opportunity for the introduction of special topics. Miss Sprague presented with her accustomed clearness and precision, methods in arithmetic, in reading and in language. Prof.

recitation without first ascertaining the amount of effort they have expended in attempting to master it. Oftentimes have we heard sharp, illnatured comments made by the teacher upon recitations that, while far from good, yet obviously, had some merit. Before

the harsh criticism, before the reproof, judge first whether the child has tried to do his work. We would not try to shield the lazy, careless or indifferent pupil, far from it; but we would insist upon the teacher's using discrimination in reproving.-Central School Jour

nal.

Better be silent than speak ill; better give up life than love harsh words; better a beggars fare than luxury at another's board.

The best psychologists distinguish between forming such general notions as that of a mountain, of superstition, etc., and the formation of general principles. The former dealing with single ideas is called generalization. The latter dealing with judgments is called induction. method of education is concerned the treatment is similar. If the pupil is to grasp the general principle of the work in cube root, he must take particular examples first and from many individual cases, gain his general notion of the proof cess. This is the method of elementary arithmetic. From the comparison of particular examples work out the rule or principle. Then and not till then, is the pupil capable of the deductive work of applying the rule or principle to new examples. This principle lies at the basis of the method of Natural History Sciences. The aim of teaching the classification sciences. Botany, Zoology, etc., is to teach the pupil how to generalize, how to reason by induction. The facts learned are comparatively of little importance.