Moral instruction will therefore have to do with the following as the most important topics : a. Those that have reference to individual and social relations. 1. Unselfishness as the basis of good manners and of regard for the rights of others. 2. Respect for superiors and the aged. 3. Obedience to rightful individual authority. 4. Control of temper, appetites, and evil or vicious propensities. 5. Cultivation of the positive virtues, as kindness, honesty, truthfulness, purity, generosity, magnanimity. b. Those that refer to obligations to the State. 1. Respect for and observance of law. In elementary schools, moral instruction is best given by taking advantage of fortunate opportunities. A story read may furnish occasion for an important and impressive moral lesson, or some incident of the school room may present the golden opportunity. In more advanced schools, while fortunate occasions should not be disregarded, moral instruction can be most advantageously given by brief morning talks (not too frequent), in which faults that may have been observed may be criticised in a kindly spirit, and the better course pointed out. Courses of conduct and acts deserving it should also receive appro priate commendation. An appeal to the sense of honor, of right, of justice in advanced pupils can scarcely fail of good results. The wise teacher will give his scholars to understand that he expects their conduct to be prompted only by high and worthy motives, and the better class of pupils will not disappoint his expectations. The moral force of high ideals thus set in action will permeate the school and react in a most beautiful way upon individual characters and lives. In high schools, academies and colleges, systematic class instruction ought to be given, with the use of some suitable text-bock or course of lectures. In all grades of schools the teacher who would be a power for good must be and show himself to be in sympathy with his pupils, and must exemplify the virtues he would develop in them, and live a life which shall be to them a constant ap peal and inspiration. ENTHUSIASM. PROF. T. C. KARNS, KNOXVILLE, TENN. Teachers count too little on the importance of enthusiasm in their work. Enthusiasm may sometimes provoke a smile, but it wins in all departments of life. We see examples of this truth everywhere. The man who has a personal love for his work, who thinks about it day and night, who talks about it 10 everybody, is the man who succeeds. What great thing was ever effected without enthusiasm ? Columbus showed such earnestness that people pointed to their foreheads and whispered, "crazy." Robert Fulton was looked upon as a "crank." Your cold, proper-like, circumspect man never moves the world. Why do we often see great congregations brought to tears by the preaching of a rude and uncultured man? It is because of his earnestness, his enthusiasm. He believes every word he says, and the earnestness of his manner enforces conviction. The same principle applies to teaching. We must go into the school-room with a great love for our work and a burning desire to have others know what we know. Children catch inspiration from the earnest teacher. Their minds are stirred up to action. In the quick gesture, the animated. voice, the sparkling eye, there is magic that cannot be resisted. Teachers, don't go to sleep in the school-room, Don't drawl and dawdle. Cultivate life, energy, snap. Don't be afraid to have enthusiasm. THE STATE UNIVERSITY IN AMERICA. Professor George E. Howard has in the Atlantic Monthly for March an article on "The State University in America." Professor Howard believes that the work of higher education in this country will in the future be divided among three classes of institutions: the State University, a group of richly endowed private institutions, and a small body of denominational colleges. Of these he believes the State University to be, from a national point of view, the most important, thinking that eventually every new state and perhaps every state will have a University, which as a rule will outrank every other school within its borders. His sketch of the rise of the State University, and of the place which it holds as a peculiarly American institution, will be of interest to every one who is occupied with educational subjects. THE following cities of the world according to the latest evidence, have over one million inhabitants: Aitichi, Japan; Berlin, Prussia; Canton, China; Changehoofoo, China; London, England; New York, Paris, France; Siam, China; Tschautchau-fu, China. THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY. BY A. D. WILLIAMS, NASHIVLLE, TENN. There is nowhere a clear-cut, philosophical distinction between the college and the university. Brown University does not materially differ from Dartmouth College; Yale College is in no degree inferior to Wesleyan University; Columbia College is far in the advance of many Western universities; while the aims of one and all differ but slightly-certainly not fundamentally. There is a tendency to call that a university which includes within its scope professional schools. But they also retain the undergraduate course, that, nominally at least, is not professional, but is rather preparatory alike to all professions, and leave thus nothing distinctive to the college; while all the colleges are reaching out after professional schools, and adding one after another of them to their curricula as fast as their opportunities allow. But, it will commend itself to every one that, if there is no essential difference between the college and the university, let one of the terms be dropped, in the interest of perspicuity; if there is any fundamental distinction, let it be made clearly apparent, and let every community seeking to establish a school settle definitely at the outset whether it is to be a college or a university. Most people-most educators, even-have somehow imbibed the idea that a university is something greater, if not also higher, than a college, and every one assumes that professional schools are properly integral parts of a university. On these points, there is neither difference of opinion nor confusion of ideas, though there is a noticeable lack of definiteness and clearness. Many people who understand fully that a primary school is something fundamentally different from an intermediate one, occupying itself with a different class of studies, and operating on a different class of students, still have no such clearness as to any intrinsic difference between a college and a university, and only vaguely think of the university as somehow possessing an indefinite largeness that the college does not. There is, therefore, no indefiniteness nor difference as to the place of professional schools, or, to give the term its widest significance, vocational schools. They belong to the university. The difference concerns two other questions:-1. Do the professional schools belong also to the college? 2. Does the college, or undergraduate course, belong to the university? There probably would not be much question over the first; most people feel that in inaugurating professional schools a college assumes, so far forth as it does it, the functions of a university. The question is thus virtually narrowed to whether the undergraduate course is a legitimate part of a university. And here the difficulty begins. Since the first establishment of the four years' college course, there has been great advance in knowledge, and consequently a pressure to put more and more into the college course. To resist this has been virtually impossible. But there has been an inevitable two-fold result: First, there has been more put into the course than can be mastered in four years. Second, there is much in it that no man wants to master; it doesn't concern him as much as something else, and will not benefit him so much. To avoid these very seri As the ous difficulties resort has been had to "electives." student does not care for, or need, some of them, he may elect to study whatever he does care for and need. It is apparent that many of these electives, some desired or needed by particular students, and others by others, are essentially of the nature of professional studies. One man elects this because most conducive to his aims or impulses in life; another elects something else, for the same reason—– just as one elects a law school because most conducive to his aims as a lawyer, or another elects a medical school, or another a theologieal. Electives of this sort-and most electives are of this sort-therefore belong clearly with the professional schools—in the university, and not in the college. Put such electives over into the vocational schools, where they belong, and the question of the college course is very much simpli fied. At least one year of the present attempted course-and how often it is little more than attempted ?—goes out of it, to give place to something more appropriate and more con sonant with its aims. Then, when we come to learn in the higher education what all common school educators and bookmakers understand, that no subject is finished in a single grade, the matter wil be still farther simplified. We never finish arithmetic in the grade where we begin it. We have a primary book and course for the primary school, an intermediate book and course for the intermediate school, and another for the grammar or higher school. And so it may and will happen that the lower or intermediate grades of a study should be in the college, and another portion in the university. Every one ought to know something of philology, but to approach, even, the mastery of it, he needs an advanced university course. Every one needs something of astronomy; but, if he undertakes to masters it, a life study is before him. Every man, in any vocation, will be profited by some knowledge of the classics, but to master them-it cannot be done in any college, however honestly or earnestly it may be attempted. The college, therefore, has to do with the beginnings of some things, that if ever finished at all must be finished afterward and elsewhere. There is another thing that seriously affects the college course. It is what President Eliot calls "secondary" train ing-what is more commonly called "preparatory" to college. Prof. Canfield discussed it at Nashville, President Eliot considered it in the Arena, and every college teacher bewails the manifest gap between the common school and the college. Most of the "colleges and universities," as President Eliot classifies them, try to bridge it over by "Preparatory Departments," in which college professors perfunctorily and shirkingly do what they have no heart in, and which so is very poorly done, to find their attempt the failure that makeshifts always are. And, even if the work were properly done, it reaches but a small part of those who ought to accquire this "secondary" training, and be fitted for what is in the present college course, as very few now actually are. Many are looking for this secondary or preparatory training from the common schools. But, obviously, it does not come very fast. At the rate it is now coming, some generations will pass before it will arrive. In fact, it is asking of the common school what, as it now is, it has not power to give. It cannot do, and so it will not do it. Here and there a high school will fit students for the present college course. Now, instead of these nondescript "college and univer sities," both of which have no well-defined character or office, like a tadpole, neither fish nor frog, half one thing and half another; let us see if there cannot be found some distinctive character and place both for the college and the university, that will also, as all rightly adjusted things do, simplify things and make things easier of accomplishment. Suppose that we advance a little farther along the line matters are moving, and say that, above the common school, a college is for giving that common training, important and essential for the best humanity in every and all vocations-what all men need in common, and only that, and that a universeity is an aggregation of professional or vocational schools, on beyond, to supply in these several schools the specific training each one needs for his specific pursuit. In this college course, there are no electives--they go over into the university. Throwing them out, there is only a single course of the fundamentals of training. This will greatly reduce the necessary teaching force, because there will be but one class in each year to instruct. Throwing out these, there is room also for something else. Suppose that something else be a year or more of the now almost impossible preparatory or secondary training. That would get back to where the "primary" training of the common school can carry the students. The now almost impossible gulf would cease to exist. The gulf would be closed. No bridge over it would be needed. The hated preparatory school would be abolished. What is more, by very much, college graduates would possess that knowledge of common but important things that now they so universally and conspicuously lack. They probably could then write a letter fit. for the types, could compose an English sentence without a glaring violation of grammar-would know where to put their capitals and their pauses, could write a creditable card of thanks, or letter of invitation, or a plain business document that would answer the purposes of ordinary pursuits. Then, too, we would classify our knowledge and our culture, as Primary—found in our common schools; secondary found in our colleges; and higher-found in our universities. And, as this would drop the Preparatory Department out of the college, so it would drop the undergraduate course out of the university; and anybody would understand what a college is for, and have no difficulty in perceiving how a university differs from it. This would also practically push our present larger colleges over into the universities they are straining to become-provided there should be colleges enough to supply them with a sufficient number of students-and so deliver them from the jealousy they now have of the so-called "small" colleges. And then, suppose the people be allowed and encouraged to establish, under the law, a college, such as has been described, in every county or center of population, to be feeders to the universities in fact, into which our now larger colleges and our embryonic universities shall grow. Would not this, in its reflex educating influence upon the people, be a consummation most devoutly to be wished and sought? More than 200 towns in Iowa have contracted with publishers for free text-books under the new law. STATE PUBLICATION OF TEXT BOOKS. The views expressed below are taken from the report of the supervisor of public printing of Ohio, made to Governor Campbell. It is an interesting contribution on the subject and the advocates of the California idea, as it is called, will find in this report no comfort. "While I do not think the question of having the State engage in the actual publication of school books has ever been seriously considered in this State, the agitation of the question in certain quarters, and my duties as a member of the Ohio School Book Board during the past year, has led me to investigate the matter to a considerable extent; and I take this opportunity, in this my last report, to record the results of my observations and views on the subject. The publishing of school books is a distinct branch of the printing and publishing business, and requires a long apprenticeship and experience in its different departments. After the work of the author, and its editorial review and criticism-which of course requires able and pains taking scholarship-the preparation of the plates requires new and special type on account of the technical marks and characters used in school books; maps and diagrams must be drawn by expert cartographers, and these must be engraved; illustrations must first be drawn by capable artists and then reduced to photographic processes and engraved, and it is noteworthy that the illus. trations in our modern school books are of the best and finest which can be produced. The plates must be made in duplicate and frequently renewed, as the printed page in a school book should be clear, perfect and beautiful. Poor printing and broken type is not acceptable now even in newspapers, much less would it be allowed in school books for our children The estimates asked and commonly made for publishing school books, is for the mere printing from the plates aiready prepared; for the paper used and for binding the sheets. usually in some common form, with cheap material. I have found from my investigation that this is comparatively a small part of the cost of producing school books; and that and larger items of expense are necessarily incurred in publishing first-class school books equal to those now in use in our schools. Other difficulties in the way of the State undertaking or embarking in this business have become apparent from my experience in this office. The State can only procure paper and other materials by contract lettings to the lowest bidder, and under the requirements of the Constitution the State must have all its printing done by contract. Any one acquainted with the practical workings and results of this system, knows that under its operations it would be almost impossible to secure paper of the uniform quality and high grade required in school book work. Again, it is found in practice almost impossible to get State printing done with that promptness and dispatch which is necessary and required in the business world. Self-interest prompts the private publisher not only to publish the best books he can, but always to meet promptly the demands of his customers whenever made. Without this he could not make or hold a market for his books. But with the State publishing school books, it would be as it is now with other State printing, and the schools, with their S thousands of pupils, would have to wait the slow operation" of some State contractor. Another difficulty in the way of the State publishing school books would be the irregularity of the supply and demand. It would require an immense establishment, equipped with expensive presses and machinery, to turn out enough school books to supply all the children in this State with their full outfit of books within a reasonable time. To do this would require, I understand, over 3,000,000 copies of books. These would have to be printed, bound and shipped under pressure, and even then several years would be necessary to do the work. But after this first or full supply was manufactured and distributed, the regular demand or annual supply would be comparatively small, and it would be, in practice, irregular and changeable. There would be in this irregular and changeable demand for books to properly supply the schools at different times and years, great waste and loss to the State directly, and to the people indirectly. I might easily add to the list of these mechanical or technical obstacles which would always make it difficult for the State to engage in such an extensive and hazardous undertaking as publishing school books, with any reasonable expectation of success, either from an educational or economical standpoint. To my mind there are greater objections to this proposed undertaking by the State than mere material or mechanical difficulties. It would be an innovation or departure in the workings of our simple form of government which would be dangerous in many ways. It would open new and devious avenues to reach the public treasury. It would create a new State board, a bureau of officers and a long line of contracting agents. It would subject our public schools and our school books to partisan influences and control. It would engage the State in a form of business, difficult, delicate and hazardous, and in competition with private citizens and private enterprise. And it would embark the State in an enterprise or undertaking which would be a never ending source of perplexing difficulties, political spoils, partisan investigations, annual appropriations and perennial deficiencies. EDUCATIONAL SUGGESTIONS.* BY DR. FRANCIS L. PATTON, PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON COL LEGE. The question is often raised as to whether or not this great amount of reading of books on pedagogy is not overdoing the matter, and whether better results would not follow from practical demonstration. Do not teachers often waste their forces in this manner? The first qualification of a teacher is to bring to his work. a large personality. Bring that qualificatlon and enter on the work of teaching in earnest, and a moderate amount of other qualifications will often suffice, and bring successful re In discussing education, the larger problems must be looked at before the smaller ones. Society or civilization is a growth-an organizing of increasing forces. The society of to-day is very different from that of five hundred years ago. There has been a decided upward movement in the *Abstract of a recent address at Trenton, N. J. growth of man, notwithstanding that at first it was downward. I believe in the primeval purity of the race, but that did not make Adam understand the powers and forces which have been discovered since his day, or make Eve understand the running of a sewing machine. We may accept the facts of the development of society from Adam without conflicting with our religious belief. It is now the custom to take a child, and in the period of eighteen years, from the age of 6 to 24, to reproduce in him and appropriate for his use the entire civilization of the age in which he lives, which has required the labors and developments of four or five thousand years to produce. Thls is requiring a great deal of the teacher, but far more of the child. Regarding the question of how the child is to be brought into relation with the civilization in which he is born, a great deal is due to heredity. People may ridicule the idea of aristocracy of birth, but it would be curious if a law holds good in the lower orders of animals and then fails in regard to the human race. The voice, the language, the thought, is often strikingly reproduced in the offspring. The best way to teach a child grammar is to provide him wtth a good father and mother. It is a difficult matter to teach the proper use of language to a child who has first learned incorrectly. Take a cultivated man, one who by application has acquired a correct use of language. He may write his thoughts absolutely correctly, but let him but talk, and as his thoughts come fast he will almost invariably, at times, make the mistakes which he acquired in his first expression of thought. His mistakes are the effects of his struggle over early conditions and rules. The environments have much to do with the production of broad-minded, broad browed and unconventional men. Such men acquire more by rubbing against men than the narrow minded in going through college. They appropriate for themselves the best attributes of society. Men get more from their relations with civilization than by education, in adapting means to the end. It is wrong to compel children to write compositions as soon as they can write. Form is of but little moment, and beautiful express ions fall flat if the ideas are lacking. In education the main feature is to teach ideas. It is an effort to apply means to to ends. Education comes behind the developments of civilization and picks up the efforts of genius which appear on every side. As education increases, the curriculum of the school enlarges, but the purpose and end at which we aim should not be lost. There are now apparently two views regarding education: one, that it is theoretical, disciplinary; the other, utilitarian. Education shouldt each the child to take the place or station in the world to which he shall be called. The teacher's duty is to bring the child into sympathy with the existing civilization. This brings up the big question of the various degrees of education. It is an easy matter to criticise our colleges, but they have been built up as the result of the civilization and education of our country, and therefore we must accept them. There are two systems by which education may be attained, by the public schools and colleges, and the private institutions. Their work is parallel, but there shoutd be a closer relation between them. If a boy is ever to be a student, or ever to be accurate in life, it must be developed in the first and second stages of his education, and the teacher who has charge when he learns to bonus boni bona bonae bonum boni, etc., This soon revealed abund spell and read and cipher is the one who is making the boy's the single adjective "good" when I began to recite the Latin future. For when he possesses the knowledge of these subjects, he possesses knowledge of accuracy of form and processes of the mind which, if not learned here, never will be. There is a tendency to introduce new subjects which might be left out, and allow the more important branches to be neg. lected. No matter how brilliant a man may be, a misspelled word takes away from our estimate of him. Children go to school too late. There is no reason why a boy should be 8 years old before he can read, or 18 years old before he is ready to enter oollege. This is due to the fault or carelessness of parents. The child should be taught facts early in life, while the reason is sleeping. A boy has no business to think, but by the time he is 12 years old the reason gets ahead of memory, and up to that time his memory should be given all it can do, and the facts that are learned will not be forgotten, but will lay the foundation for accurate scholarship. Don't teach a child to think, but give him something to work on. Give him something to memorize; not useless material, but salient truths. In teaching the His tory of the United States, it is useless for the child to memorize the details of every battle, but it is essential that he should have an understanding of the events of Europe which have a bearing upon our history. Let the child, from 7 to 17, learn the great facts of history from the founding of Rome to the Declaration of Independence, and in after years the eras will stand distinct, upon which he shall build up the fuller knowledge.-Journal of Education. GEN. O. O. HOWARD ON CLASSICAL TRAINING. Our fathers discovered long ago that there was a common basis of education; that there were certain studies whicn lay at the foudaotion of acquired knowledge. This being the case, in selecting subjects to be taught and learned it has become an important question what they shall be. Every study is important, even if not directly applicable to a given. business, which broadens the mind and renders it fit for any and every encounter it is likely to meet with. The classics are often objected to because not practical, not directly useful in furthering the immediate interests of life. Account for it as we may, this theory is certainly erroneous. The classically trained orator is a better orator for being so trained. The lawyer and the judge, other things being equal, are better lawyers and judges from the habits of examination, analysis and expression which they acquired through classical education. Let us now look back to our youth and see if we can illustrate this. Can we not make clear to ourselves some reasons, for example, why the study of Greek and Latin, better than most other studies, prepares, disciplines and develops the mind more especially for what have been called the learned professions? Several of my schoolmates when I was thirteen and at school at Hallowell, Maine, entered upon the study of Latin. Noticing them as they commenced to decline the Latin nouns and adjectives, it occurred to me that they were going into a field which I would like to enter and examine; so, obtaining the sanction of my good mother, I joined the next Latin class that began the study. It is not possible to estimate the value of my new acquirement. For example, I knew in English t in thirty-six different inflections. ant relationships with our own language that hitherto I had failed to take in, As soon as we commenced translating the shortest sentences we found in our dictionaries many definitions corresponding to words which we were obliged to compare, word by word, and to exercise judgment in the selection, and so frame the thought of the Latin in our own tongue. This process, which every Greek and Latin scholar pursues, enriches the mind. The study of words and phrases soon becomes a pleasure, and then results in a habit of mind. No faithful student ever goes through a classical course without getting at the original and derived meanings of the different English words of Latin and Greek origin. Probably no student ever begins to realize the nice shades of difference in the meaning of terms till he has subjected himself to this steady, faithful, persistent training; or to something akin to it in the acquire ment of modern tongues. Think of a lawyer who tries to read the old English authors without a knowledge of the Greek or Latin. Think of the physician who has no acquaintance with the thousand important technical phrases which he must use. Think of the scientist who cannot even name the figures and letters which he must employ in convertion and correspondence with other scholars. I have often sought to compare lawyer with lawyer, of equal ability, the one with the other-the one having classical acquirement and the other not. The classically educated appeared to have the decided advantage in force of state ment. The same analysis of authors, orators, clergymen and teachers has brought me to the same conclusion. Our difficulty of course lies in the expression "equal ability." Horace Greeley had a vigorous mind and a peculiar sagacity, and he was not classically educated. People opposed to Latin and Greek say, show us an editor who could surpass him. This example proves nothing against classical education. Horace Greeley always missed that attainment. It would have improved his English. To state it otherwise, Greeley without that knowledge and the skill that goes with it, was weaker as a scholarly man than Greeley would have been had Providence permitted it to him. The Chautauqua course is excellent for any young man or woman. But it does not carry the same abundance of knowledge and discipline with it as the corresponding course of study at Yale, Harvard, or any of those thorough classical colleges of which my alma mater, Bowdoin College, is a type. It comprises a beautful review of the study-world: but it is by no means an adequate substitute.-Eaucation. |