PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS RESPECTING THE PREPARATION OF MATERIAL FOR THE EXHIBITION OF AMERICAN EDUCATION AT THE INTERNATIONAL CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION AT PHILADELPHIA IN 1876.

The National Bureau of Education at Washington has been designated by the Centennial Commission as the central agency for carrying out the plans for the educational department, and as the organ of communication on the subject with State and municipal authorities, institutions, and individuals.

It is recommended that the State educational authorities act as agents of their respective States in the preparation of the representation of the systems, institutions, and instrumentalities within the sphere and range of their official connection or authority. Where this recommenda tion is not carried into effect, and in respect to those educational interests not within the range of State authorities, all persons, organizations, or institutions desiring to participate are invited to communicate directly with the Bureau of Education.

As the time now allowed for preparation is very brief, all will see the desirableness of giving early attention to what they propose to represent, and are requested, as above indicated, to communicate their plans, stating what they propose to exhibit, at their earliest convenience.

In the representation of education, while unity and harmony must control the organization of the scheme, it is desired to consult and preserve the individuality of systems and institutions.

To our education, in its various forms, we are accustomed as a people to trace the desirable elements of our civilization. To our education we attribute the security and perpetuity of our liberties.

It is hoped that educators will embrace this opportunity to illustrate the connection between educational efforts and their results in the public welfare; and that there may be brought to this representation all exhibits showing the effect of education upon individual health; the sanitary condition of communities; showing education as a preventive of pauperism, vice, crime, and insanity; and as a means of increasing the products of industry and the sources of personal and social comfort and confirming individual and civil virtue.

For the purpose of utilizing and extending the benefits of the Exhibition, one of the most important instrumentalities is that of reports thereon of competent experts, and it is therefore suggested as desirable that, in all cases where it is practicable, educational authorities, organizations,

and institutions should designate suitably-qualified persons to examine and report on classes, groups, or individual objects.

In view of the importance of education in its relation to individual and social progress and well-being; in view of its necessity under our form of government, which gives to all the rights and imposes upon all the duties of citizenship; in view of the probable fact that more foreigners will visit the Centennial Exposition to see our school material and study our school system than for any other purpose, it is urged that all persons connected with the work of education and all educational institutions shall unite in the effort to make the exhibition of our school interests at Philadelphia a credit to the nation.

In order that persons desiring to co-operate may not waste time in trying to learn what the material of the proposed Exhibition should consist of, the following more particularized suggestions have been prepared at the request of the commission:

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY INSTRUCTION.

BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS.

There should be full-sized specimen buildings for infant-schools and Kindergarten-schools, the "national school," or the ungraded country school, the graded village school with from three to six rooms, with the whole of their belongings and equipments, from different States of our country and from foreign countries. There should also be exhibited a full-sized American pioneer log school-house, with its appropriate fittings and furniture, as an interesting and significant illustration of an important agency in our civilization, as well as adobe and sod school-houses from the Southwest and Northwest; also a structure comprising a model school-room, with all its belongings, adapted to a large village or city elementary-school-building, with many school- or class-rooms, this structure not pretending to be a model school-house. Views; elevations, perspectives, and plans in drawings; photographs and engravings; historical, representative, and ideal educational buildings; and samples of the best public-school-edifices-rural, village, and city-with working plans, ought also to be presented. There should be graphic representations of heating and ventilating-apparatus and appliances, photographs and drawings of interiors, photographs of interiors with pupils in various situations, for the stereoscope, (of which interesting specimens were sent from New York to the Vienna Exposition.)

Views and plans should be marked with the dimensions of buildings and date of erection. Representations of buildings unique in character and excellence should be prepared for wall-exhibition. Others should be put up in portfolios, lettered with the desigration of the State and city or town, and name of school or institution, and accompanied with printed or manuscript description of the peculiar features, with the cost, material of construction, date of erection, name of architect, &c. Special

representations and descriptions of improved arrangements and apartments, such as drawing-rooms, lecture-rooms, chemical laboratories, apparatus-cabinets, assembly-halls, rooms for gymnastic exercises, playrooms, clothes-rooms, teachers' rooms, teachers' conference-rooms, recitation-school-rooms, vestibules, water-closets, &c., are desirable.

Plans of grounds, with dimensions, points of compass, and location of building indicated; examples of architectural skill in adapting buildings with symmetrical rooms to irregular city lots; maps of grounds, showing the designs for ornamentation; representations of school-gardens, and designs for the same, are also appropriate.

FURNITURE AND FITTINGS.

Teachers' desks, tables, and chairs; scholars' desks, tables, benches, chairs, and settees; approved specimens of such as are in actual use, from State and municipal authorities and institutions; historical specimens illustrating progress; contributions from inventors and manufacturers-only one specimen of a type, and not all the sizes; accompany. ing statements of peculiar features and supposed excellences and advantages of dimensions, respective heights of seat and desk of each size, and relative position of seat and desk as to distance, (prices in detail;) cabinets for specimens of natural history and apparatus; cases for reference-and library-books, for portfolios of drawings, &c.; contrivances for the preservation and suspension of maps, window-shades, inside blinds, &c., should be exhibited.

All articles of this class should be samples in the true sense of the word; that is, such in quality, as respects material and finish, as those in use or made for sale.

APPARATUS AND APPLIANCES.

These should consist of Kindergarten "gifts" and all the materials for illustrative instruction and object-teaching, and for scholars' work in infant-schools and Kindergärten; also model samples of every kind of apparatus requisite for teaching, in the ungraded country school and in the graded village- or city-school, the rudiments of natural history, physics, chemistry, and geometry; specimens of apparatus for the more advanced teaching of the same branches in high schools and academies; globes and maps, the same in relief; maps with special regard to orographical, hydrographical, topographical, climatographical, ethnographical, historical, and statistical particulars; collections and pictures for geographical and historical instruction of different grades; charts and tablets of every kind used in elementary and secondary instruction; atlases, slates, writing-books, drawing-books and cards, copies, examples, and models for drawing, wire and plastic models for teaching projections and perspective, and all other materials and apparatus for teaching industrial drawing; crayons, pencils and pens, blackboards, erasers and pointers; grading, reckoning, and writing machines; ink

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wells and inkstands; clocks, bells, and gongs; merit-cards, merit-rolls, registers and record-books, blank forms of statistical reports, diplomas and medals; uniforms and military equipments; book-sacks, book-knapsacks, book-carriers, and lunch-boxes.

Offers of contributions of all sorts of educational apparatus and appliances are solicited from educational authorities, the managers and proprietors of institutions, inventors, manufacturers and dealers.

TEXT-BOOKS AND BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

There will necessarily be considerable duplication in this division. In the first place, it is desirable to have several complete sets of textbooks actually prescribed and used in the unclassified country school and the different grades of classified public schools, from different foreign nations and from different parts of our own country, as well as in representative institutions for secondary, collegiate, professional, and special schools, in their ordinary binding; then from publishers, collective sets of their text-book-publications, of whatever description or grade; and, finally, sets from authors of their respective productions; samples of the most complete sets of books of reference provided for elementary schools and in actual use; also the same in respect to secondary schools, and accompanying statements of the prices of text-books; catalogues of books of reference in higher and professional schools. With collections of books, cases should be sent of suitable size, and shelving to contain them. The cases should be neat, but without ornament, with glazed doors; they should be of uniform height for convenience and comeliness of installation, the requisite diversity of capacity being secured by varying the width according to the bulk of the books to be contained or by multiplying the number of cases. The cases should be exactly four feet high or exactly two feet high, with no bot.tom or top ornament except simple moldings, and these must not extend beyond the above designated dimensions. The depth of the cases may conform to the sizes of the books to be contained. They should be of dark colored wood, or stained to resemble such

SCHOLARS' WORK.

This is an extremely important division of the educational exhibition, though, with the exception of drawing, it is not showy in its character. It is not an easy task to arrange a satisfactory scheme, nor will it be easy to carry out the best-arranged plan. Much must be left to the taste, judgment, invention, and fidelity of teachers. Although the results of instruction belong to the mind, yet they are to a great degree capable of ocular representation, and all written examinations are based upon this presumption, and upon a little reflection it will be perceived that the scope of this division is very large. It comprises every exercise and performance that is susceptible of a graphic representation; all the work of the pen and pencil, and, in addition, mechanical con

structions and productions, modelings and carvings, whether imitations or original designs.

It is essential that each exhibit should be just what it purports to be, and each collection of papers bound up together, or in any way arranged in a set, and each separate individual paper or production should carry on its face a distinct indication of the facts as to its execution necessary to judge of its merits: such as the grade or kind of institution or school; the class in the institution or school; whether a first draught or a copy; time allowed; age and sex of pupils doing the work; whether selected specimens or work of entire class; whether a general examination, an exercise in review, or a regular lesson, with usual time of preparation ; date of the performance; whether a copy or an original design; in draw ing, whether from flat or round; whether done with reference to the exhibition or taken from ordinary routine work; the county and State, with the town or city. It is obvious that productions, without the indication of the essential facts as to their execution, have little or no value for purposes of comparison, and therefore for the purposes of an instructive exhibition.

It is hardly necessary to attempt an exhaustive enumeration in detail of all descriptions of scholars' work which might be useful for exhibition. The limits of this programme will permit only the most essential suggestions and directions.

The following should be exhibited:

Kindergarten-work, and the work of pupils in Kindergarten-training

schools.

Primary-school-slates, with printing, writing, Arabic and Roman fig. ures, drawing, and musical notes, done by classes of pupils, put up like drawers in a rack made for the purpose, twelve in a rack.

Writing-books completed, attached together in volumes, of all grades. Specimens of writing should be written on paper of the size and shape of an ordinary writing-book-leaf, unruled, ruled by hand, or machineruled for the purpose, and neatly bound, the work of a school or class in a volume; individual specimens, on larger paper, of ornamental penmanship, for portfolios or framed for wall-exhibition.

Drawing-books completed, attached in volumes; drawings bound in volumes and in portfolios, also specimens for wall-exhibition; portfolio of two or three specimens of different kinds, free-hand, geometrical, &c., of each grade of a public-school-course, from the lowest primary class to the highest in the secondary or high school.

The drawings from industrial classes, schools of design, technological schools of different kinds, and schools of fine arts will doubtless constitute one of the most attractive and useful features of the exhibition. Contributions illustrating the courses in drawing and the results attained in each institution of the above classes are desired. They should be loose in portfolios, from which selections may be made for wall-display on an extensive scale.