Besides the addresses and reports published in the Transactions, Rev. W. H. McGuffey,' then of Miami University, made an address that was not prepared for publication, and so did not appear, on "The influence of the regular study of the Bible on intellectual and moral improvement." Following this address the subject of Bible teaching in the schools was discussed, the discussion closing with the unanimous resolution: "That the Bible be recommended as a regular textbook in every institution of education in the West."

The convention was marked by one feature that now would be thought novel enough. The president of the trustees and visitors of common schools of Cincinnati submitted to the college a list of eighteen questions asking, in the name of the board, the opinion of the college, or its committees, upon such questions as they had been led to investigate. They were questions that were occupying the minds of the board, which had come into being only five years before, and were causing its members much perplexity of mind. A similar appeal by the present Cincinnati Board of Education, or any similar one, to the National Council of Education, would today be thought a strange proceeding. The mere fact that it was made suggests the character of the times; in respect to popular education school boards and others interested in the subject saw men as trees walking, and they were seeking to purge their sight. In particular the board invited the judg ment of members of the college upon the model schoolhouse that had been built on Race street. The letter was referred to a special committee, from which we shall hear at the next meeting.

The fifth annual convention of the college, so the introduction to the Transactions for the year asserts, was one of unusual interest. The names of 147 members are found in the printed list, and officers were elected for eight States, viz: Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. At the second session the local executive committee submitted its annual report, which contains many items of interest. The history of the publication of the volume of Transactions for the previous year suggests the financial difficulties under which the college labored. Copies of the volume had been sent to the twenty-four literary colleges of the West, besides seminaries. A circular had been sent to these colleges and seminaries, with a view to secure their cooperation in the college. The rapid growth of the Mississippi Valley in population, 150,000 or 200,000 a year, calls attention to its educational conditions, and imposes heavy burdens upon teachers and friends of education. The influence of the college has been extending, like leaven, since its organization in 1831. Important educational associations have been formed in Kentucky and Ohio in the course of the year, which have held interesting meetings. The influence of the general convention and of local conventions has caused schools, academies, and colleges to arise within two or three years in the forests, and multiply in a manner unprecedented.

The committee urged that associations for the advancement of education be formed in New England, in the Middle States, in the South, and in the Great Valley; and, furthermore, when all these have met and deliberated and published

1 William H. McGuffey was born in Pennsylvania in 1800; lived in childhood in Trumbull County, Ohio; was educated at Washington College, Pennsylvania; in 1826 became professor of ancient languages at Miami University; in 1829 was licensed a minister in the Presbyterian Church; in 1832 became professor of philosophy in Miami University; in 1836 became president of Cincinnati College; in 1839 president of Ohio University; in 1843 was a professor in Woodward College, and in 1845 went to the University of Virginia as professor of moral philosophy. He died in Virginia in 1873. He was one of the most valuable members of the College of Teachers, but is best known as the compiler of the series of Eclectic School Readers, which, as Mr. Venable says, have favorably influenced millions of children in morals and intellect by their happy literary selections. (Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, pp. 178-79.)

2 Transactions of the fifth annual meeting of the Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers, held in Cincinnati, October, 1835. Cincinnati. Published by the executive committee. 1836.

to the world their labors, "let a national institute of teachers be formed by delegations from these four great branches; let sectional jealousies-too contemptible in so hallowed a cause-be laid aside; let untrammeled and mature deliberations ripen into sage decision, and in a period not very remote a revolution will be effected in almost every department of instruction at which the most experienced teachers will be astonished. The march of science will be rapid, and a sound and substantial moral education will be born and bless society.

Some of the more significant resolutions that were adopted may well be quoted: That J. L. Van Doren be a committee to report on the propriety of employing a general superintendent for the city district schools; that a committee of three be appointed to adopt a petition to each legislative body in the Western and Southwestern States early in the coming winter, praying them to pass legislat ve enactments in behalf of universal education in their respective territories, and report the same to this college before its final adjournment; that this committee be instructed to petition for the universal establishment and support of common schools and seminaries for the education of teachers; that this college request the council of Cincinnati, or any other body, to furnish the College of Professional Teachers with a central and convenient room for the accommodation of a library of education, to be established by the college for the promotion of the cause of education in the West; that a committee of five be appointed to devise and report forthwith as to the method of reaching and animating the community on the subject of education; that, in the opinion of the college, it would greatly advance the interests of education in the West for teachers and the governors of schools and the friends of education generally to hold periodical conventions at the seats of government in the different States during the session of the legislature. Steps were taken to establish at once the educational library. Members of the college, booksellers, publishers, and the friends of education generally were respectfully entreated to contribute to its promotion. Still it does not appear that a library was actually established.

The committee on the expediency of petitioning the legislatures in the interest of universal education reported a plan embracing these features: The appointment of a committee of three in each State to serve as an organ of operations; the preparation of a form of petitia to the legislature to be used by these State committees; the preparation of an address of fifteen or twenty pages in length, to be printed in pamphlet, containing outlines of the best and most improved systems of public education, with suggestions of possible improvements. The committee also submitted a form of petition. Such committees were accordingly appointed for the eight States that were represented. The committee to devise a plan for reaching and animating the community on the subject of education was accorded a full year in which to make its report. Vice-presidents and of directors were elected for the eight States above mentioned. When finally presented and adopted the list of subjects to be investigated in the course of the year and reported upon embraced twenty-four different subjects.

The accounts of the State convention of teachers held in Lexington, Ky., the previous November, and of the educational convention held in Columbus, Ohio, in the January following, contained in the appendix, give us valuable information of what the friends of education were doing and proposing in those States. The Kentucky teachers were careful to limit the phrase "universal education," found in one of the resolutions sent out from Cincinnati, by the phrase “of the white population." The reporter of the Columbus meeting states that the population of Ohio, nearly 1,500,000 in number, contains but few enlightened and efficient teachers. "A willingness pervades all ranks to aid and support a system of thorough and scientific instruction; but a great apathy prevails in action for ED 99- -46

want of knowledge as to how and by what means such a system can be brought into existence."

Part II is rendered the more valuable by the abstracts of speeches made in the course of discussion on many of the addresses and reports. Omitting the names of the authors of such speeches, the following is the programme:

(1) Opening address. The president, Albert Picket, sr.

(2) Lecture on domestic education. Rev. T. J. Biggs.

(3) Report on the education of immigrants. Rev. C. E. Stowe, Lane Seminary, Cincinnati.

(4) Discourse on the importance of a more practical education. Rev. J. W. Scott, A. M., Miami University.

(5) Report on anatomy and physiology as a branch of study in schools. Alexander Kinmont, A. M., Cincinnati.

(6) Lecture on the relative duties of teachers and parents. Rev. W. H. McGuffey, A. M., Miami University.

(7) Report on the best method of establishing and forming common schools in the West. Samuel Lewis, esq., Cincinnati,

(8) Report on the system of education proposed by the late T. S. Grimké. Nathaniel Holley, sr., A. M.

(9) Report of the committee on a manual of instruction.

(10) Report of a committee on the expediency of an improved book of definitions. William Hopwood, A. M.

(11) Report on the best method of teaching English. D. L. Talbott.

(12) Report on the Carstairian system of penmanship. D. W. Woolley.

(13) Abstract of the report of the committee on the questions submitted by the trustees of common schools, Cincinnati.

(14) Remarks in reply to Mr. McGuffey on the establishment of auxiliary societies.

Appendix,-Proceedings of the educational convention held in Lexington, Ky., November, 1835; Proceedings of the educational convention held in Columbus, Ohio, January, 1836.

Four or five of these addresses and papers will be selected for comment. First, however, it should be remarked that this volume as a whole shows that the convention is drawing nearer to the overshadowing question of the times, namely, that of popular common-school education. The addresses are less academical and more practical and earnest than the year before. The college seems pervaded by the conviction that a vast work needs to be done, and done speedily, or that the most serious evils may be expected to follow in every sphere of life.

Mention will first be made of Prof. C. E. Stowe's Address on the Education of Emigrants, made at the request of the Emigrant's Friends Society of Cincinnati, He begins with some statistics showing the number and the nationality of the foreign population of the city where the college sat and of the immediate vicinity, their religion, means of instruction, etc. He reports that the Germans comprise a vast majority of such population, 10,000 in number, 2,000 or 3,000 Protestants, 8,000 or 7,000 Catholics. There are 1,200 or 1,500 children of school age, of whom only 400 are in the schools. He describes the organization and work of the society in whose name he speaks, and gives an interesting account of the efforts in behalf of the foreign population made by the students of Lane Theological Seminary. He says the children of the Germans are commonly apt at learning, and much more attentive than American children. He concludes that there are some 900 emigrant children destitute of means of education, and that the number is constantly increasing. He then makes a stirring argument in favor of vigorous efforts to reach this population. Their intellectual and moral training is essential to the common safety, to the generation of a true national spirit. The only effective agency that can be employed to transform these people into good American citizens is the school. A few sentences will show the drift of his appeal. The children of immigrants must be taught English and prepared for the common English schools; and the safety of the Republic requires that destitute children should be sought out and made to attend the public schools. The public schools

should be our best schools and possess a character sufficiently elevated to secure the patronage of the influential and wealthy, that all the children of our Republic may be educated together. * * * Private schools for special purposes would not be discontinued, but their encouragement and patronage increased; and the descendants of different nations need not forget, but still know and love, the language and literature of their fatherland. So many languages as a man learns, so many times is he a man, said the sagacious Charles V of Germany; a child can learn two languages as quick and as easily as one, etc. * * * Education should be universal. # *The limiting of elementary education to suit the peculiar circumstances of a particular country can serve only to confirm prejudices, to confine and narrow the mind, and prevent its onward progress. Chinese are carefully educated; but they have stood aloof from all improvement that was not of native growth, and now are very much as they were two thousand years ago. Modern European education has, on the other hand, been universal rather than national. * * The Bible without dogmatic comment, just as it is in its own simplicity and majesty, should be the text-book of religion and morals in our institutions of education, from the primary school to the university and professional seminary. Cincinnati possesses peculiar advantages for the commencement of such a work as this, and the designs of Providence are shown in the fact that the work has been in reality begun.

*

* *

Professor Stowe's views were heartily seconded by several speakers who followed him.

Samuel Lewis's report on the best method of establishing and of forming common schools in the West looked to providing the means for such work as Professor Stowe described. He discussed the system that empowered school officers to appoint teachers in the schools and to pay for the tuition of the poor, leaving all those who were able to do so to pay for the tuition of their children as taxed in a rate bill. This plan, which was much in vogue early in the century, and sometimes produced what were called "charity" or "pauper "schools, Mr. Lewis condemned. He then considered the plan which was followed to some extent in Ohio, of levying taxes amounting to a small sum per pupil to carry on a public school as long as the money lasted, and pointed out the obvious objections, as that the school year was too short and the school overcrowded with pupils. He showed, also, the total inadequacy of the school revenues that came, or could be expected to come from the school lands voted to the Western States by Congress. In Cincinnati, he remarks, children aged from 4 years to 16 years are eligible to the public schools; such children are 7,000 in number; the school tax collected is $10,146, or $1.45 per scholar. Though this tax be annually increased, the increase will fall short of the growth of population. A competent teacher must have at least $400 a year, and can not do justice to more than 35 scholars; at which rate the school fund would maintain the schools for all the scholars less than six weeks in the year. He strengthens his argument to show that $1.45 is wholly inadequate to the purpose by citing the cost of tuition in private schools. He contends that the people were not hostile to common schools, but were ready to pay for them, and that they wished to have better schools. Public opinion was ahead of the schools. He laid down the following as indispensable requisites to establishing common schools in the West on the best plan: (1) The funds raised for the support of common schools must be adequate; (2) the very best teachers must be employed, and (3) the important duties of school visitors and examiners must be properly performed. This report and the speeches that followed abound in statisties and other facts in relation to the deplorable condition of the common schools, especially in the State of Ohio, which make them valuable contributions to the materials of history.

The committee of four appointed the previous year to consider and report on Mr. Grimké's proposed course of study left that duty to one of their number, Mr. Nathaniel Holley. The report was, therefore, simply an expression of individual opinion. Mr. Holley approved in the strongest terms of some features of Mr. Grimké's plan, as the demand for a thorough knowledge of our own country, its dis

covery and settlement, its geography, customs, manners, and government, its first settlers and eminent men, its theologians, statesmen, and scholars; full acquaintance with the best English writers, and an accurate and extensive knowledge of the English language, together with its ready use in composition and conversation, and especially the strong emphasis placed on morality, piety, and a religious life, founded on the practice of Christian virtue and a close adherence to the doctrines of the Sacred Scripture. Mr. Holley then criticised Mr. Grimké's arguments against the study of the classics and mathematics, and presented arguments of his own in favor of those studies. Such was the state of society generally, he said, and such the state of families and schools, that children and young persons, with the exception of here and there one, did not and would not pay that attention to study that was requisite in order to acquire even a tolerable education. Teachers were so overwhelmed with scholars that they could not pay proper attention to them, and the result was that idle habits had formed in schools. When adequate provision for universal education shall have been made, there will be time for the classics and mathematics, as well as for Mr. Grimké's American education.

The manual of instruction comprised little more than a code of rules relating to school management and discipline, and a general course of study which was recommended as the lowest that should ultimately be adopted in primary schools. This course of study embraced reading, writing, and arithmetic, geography, grammar, composition, and the history and Constitution of the United States, geometry, surveying, natural history, including a general knowledge of the human organization, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and the Bible.

Only an abstract of the report of the committee submitted in answer to the questions by the trustees of the common schools of Cincinnati is published. This abstract shows the report to have been a careful, painstaking document, taking up and answering one by one the questions that had been propounded. Both questions and answers are of the most practical character, revealing the state of the common educational mind at that period. The committee does not believe that the rod, which is the ordinance and appointment of Divine wisdom, should be laid aside; reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, the history of the United States and its Constitution, English grammar, composition, bookkeeping, with instruction in plain sewing for the females whose parents may desire it, are the appropriate and essential studies of the public schools; but on the question of the best school books the committee declines to commit itself. Furthermore, the committee holds that the sexes ought to be separated whenever circumstances will admit; that it would be advantageous to establish infant schools for the instruction of children under 6 years of age, and that a high school should be established as soon as circumstances might warrant, containing a department especially adapted to qualifying young men and women for teaching. In answer to a question relative to the monitorial system, the committee answers in a guarded manner approving that system. The committee recommends the board to establish immediately a public library for the common schools, however small the beginning may be, and warmly recommends monthly meetings in which the teachers and the school trustees shall participate. These are a few of the topics considered in this report.

The attendants upon the convention of 1836 were not only much more numerous than upon any previous convention, but they represented a much wider territory. The names of 222 members stand in the printed list, and vice-presidents and directors were elected for fifteen States, namely: Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana,

Transactions of the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers, held in Cincinnati, October, 1836. Edited by D. L. Talbott, Cincinnati; published by the executive committee.