tam ro cine rho BT : ko or A Sate Sy . : Sess ats in ies a SUNS : el - 32, 59} Sa i Coes ove Rey Sa ine We iS ey Ss Mey se ele A al C Ne te i VANS) YS ! al ede. : , te’ af. \ NG mea Me ARG PE AWS e CE q ; / “ei oo. 4 ey Voss AN cee a a \ } a d yy ! ws ‘? tee ; aX ae } ee \ } : \ , ‘i a ~ F c 1 vt ¥ - ¥ \ A i as fp + awe hs D. ios m ie fect : al Fi j ih Q ry aes ak \ } ph # wn , | oe | Ditte> -> nie) men eee. See E i | iw | : q wy \ \ \ w : bl i [Wt ‘ ¥ cd t. i Hf Wd! } \ A ae ie ee Hs 22 a 9 yrs ? i ne = f bs J f J 1 \ « { Ai NA ie Leal Weal ia Ve SING is Aft AL BS J big rit ) MAAS Wad Wy | ABH eh S74 i hed Sah ae ih eA ee J \ Hi oH We Wal ad Ng ZS \ ee) yee S ar ; a5 Jo ais ‘ i | ) Fj ~ aS y ad let 3 . 5 tt ¢ N : / F h =f | it At | j 4s ‘ea 3 i ‘ AY we a. hae 4 sat "o2: 1 . oe Pony i q i : : ‘od Raed = C6 Sar ’ £ : aca r \ f al f \ \ aS aNd 8g : ai ss r { 4 | : A ; as } i if ; Z Sopliees, | Bay ee s z- (Peet y= | “fh : i. ey |i \ Ya fe 2 : : ie { 5 : 4 i P . Fedan “nlf PY, it he ; 1 Ned! v7! we: Titik 4 ayer akg 1 4 ee 1 \@ A. \ j ] et f: oa : i WN, it } Oi i4 bom has + by Pa = VX. ; Ss WS i a) Pl PEAS ) WW < SS. SS Seen Ruta «tcc a anal m_-_>— : KG Scee 3 Saat ~ ~ ( A ‘A A < CCC CC EL MCE CC & om. alg = Se at ee ae oo == = ES Kec i «c cal al aS Ke CC << «e | EL EC ES SE OE EO MOE Cra KO eC GC Ce rican Qc Ge KK G CECE, CG 4 cc <<< Ge Gl ae Ct QE C¢@ < rai ECKE « CC KC KC. ge ES C a eC KET EC OC’ OCC El. ; CC CE eT Co I a UE << OE CC BE EEE CO i Cake ee c ‘ << me ae a a << GE ae — te pe os ee or a << Be a a ce = ae CEE oE it was no surprise that Belgian lace shown at the Philadelphia Expo- sition was unrivalled. Some Industrial Schools are main- tained wholly by the central government, others partially, and still others are supported by endowments, and many are private institutions dependent mostly on tuition for support. A large number called apprentice schools are maintained by benevolent associations. These are designed to train boys and girls both in skilled manipulations in various trades, and in the practical studies and theories most helpful in such pursuits. Belgium, with about fifty industrial schools, and fifteen thou- sand apprentices graduated from them, Germany with over fifty-two thousand apprentices in fourteen hundred and fifty industrial schools, and France with twelve thousand industrial scholars, show the practical appreciation of these institutions in these countries, which distance the competition of surround- ing nations in the great markets of the world. Steam and the telegraph are bringing all nations into such near neighbor- hood that industrial ascendancy will belong to that. country which provides the best industrial education. The Artisan School established nine years ago in Rotterdam, Holland, has already two hundred pupils and commands the confidence of that community. Candidates for admission must pass an examination in the simpler rudiments, and are expected 13) to remain in the school three years. The institution is both a school and a shop, and the time of the pupils is daily divided between the two. Drawing, Physics and Hlementary Mechanics are prominent among the practical studies of the school room. In the shops a great variety of trades are taught, such as stone- cutting, including keystones, steps, thresholds, flooring tiles and placing plinths; masonry, including plain walls, founda- tions, chimneys, niches, sewers, arches, &c.; smithery, or mak- ing cramps, hooks, hinges, nuts, locks, girders, &. The braziers are taught forging, turning, stretching and soldering, and make water-cans, dust-pans, kettles, basins, springs and various kitchen utensils. The instrument-makers learn to cut screws and worms, forge steel and copper and cast copper objects. The carpenters make chests, desks, trestles, windows, doors and the like. The painters learn to make putty, grind paint, polish wood, set glass, paint letters and to grain in imitation of marble or the choicer woods. In the Philadelphia Exposition the admirable exhibit of the various articles made by these boys proved alike their skill and the practical value of this institution. In view of the great variety of the work and the need of individual instruction, twenty-one masters are employed in this school, Great prominence is given to drawing, as lying at the foundation of skilled industry. The Director is the teacher of construction and projective drawing. There are four other teachers of drawing—rectilinear, architectural, ornamental and model drawing, and one or more in each of the other depart- ments above named. ‘The boys draw simple constructions from wood, iron or brick work, such as window joints, doors, jambs, ravelins, stair-cases, roof-constructions, brace-works, springs, locks, cornices, architraves, &. The school studies occupy each morning and the practical instruction in the workshops the afternoon. As soon as the boys are made familiar with the tools, they are entrusted with practical and marketable work, not sham or play-work, but the making of saleable arti- cles for the trade, so that they at once feel that they are engaged in real business. This plan excites the ambition of the boys and adds interest and dignity to their work. The workshops are of the most approved kind and are supplied with the best tools and appliances. In the carpenter’s shop, there are benches 54. with their appliances for eighty boys; and in the smithies are all needed forges, anvils, vices, benches, &c., for seventy boys. The directors, on whose authority the above statements are given, say, that on successfully completing their three years course, these boys receive considerably higher pay than those who have not enjoyed the advantages of the school. Needle work forms a part of the course of instruction for girls in a large part of the elementary schools of Hurope. In Switzerland four thousand three hundred and seventy-three females are employed in schools teaching needle work. In some schools I saw these teachers training ae scholars 1 in the use of the American sewing machine. When one has inspected her technical schools and her twenty-nine industrial schools, he is no longer surprised that Switzerland is especially the home of industry, for her mechanics are educated and skillful. Though hemmed in by mountains, without a seaport, with few minerals and no coal, with costly transportation, all freight from the sea board coming over for- | eign territory, she threatens the ribbon trade of Coventry, rivals the English in muslin and delaine, and the world in watches and wood-carving. More than one million watches are made annually in Geneva and Neuchatel alone. The Swiss are an ingenious and industrious people. They believe in the dignity of labor and in the thorough mastery of some trade. In their industrial schools, prominence is’ given to drawing, designing and moulding, as well as to practice in the trades. Hence the world pays substantial tribute to Switzerland for the exquisite taste displayed in the decorative arts, their unequaled carvings, their beautiful chasings in gold and silver, their silk ribbons, their watches and music boxes. The Earl of Rosebury says that the cause of this rapid pro- gress of Swiss manufacture is plainly “the complete and special education which she gives in primary ‘schools and practical schools, and trade schools, and secondary schools, and cantonal schools, all topped up by the great Polytechnic Institute at Zurich. ‘'The Swiss manufacturer is master of his business, and his workmen with whom he is in perpetual contact, respect him for this. Master and servant have been at the same school learn- ing their craft, and they know it thoroughly.” 55 Public schools, industrial schools and the Polytechnic Insti- tute have in a remarkable manner unified and fraternized the people of these twenty-five cantons. Though separate in race, religion and language, they are one in national sympathy and interest, proud of their history, and prouder still of their recent progress and manufacturing prosperity. While beggars are found everywhere in Hurope, there is less pauperism in Switzer- land than in any other nation on the continent. With no communism, there is still a general diffusion of property, and almost every one is a land-owner. : In our country by reason of the restrictions imposed by our Trades Unions, apprenticeships are so much lessened that it is now difficult for boys to learn a trade. Hence increasing num- bers are growing up to manhood in idleness, without any regular calling, or seeking to earn a livelihood without manual labor. This limitation of apprenticeships is a short-sighted and suicidal plan, sure tocripple ourfuture mechanics. It seeksa temporary gain at the sacrifice of a permanent prosperity, and is depriving many boys of that thorough training in the several trades which is essential to their skill and success. The system of apprentice- ship ought to be encouraged as an indispensable part of the practical education of our future artizans. Otherwise our youth must surrender the most lucrative positions to skilled mechanics imported from abroad. ‘T'his waning of apprentice- ships, which cannot easily be remedied, creates the greater necessity for industrial education. In speaking of the substitution of steam power for hand labor, J. Scott Russell says: “Occupations which require no skill, but only brute force, will necessarily be vacated by human hands. Society, in the march of improvement, is as certain to do without the unskilled, unintelligent and uneducated as it is to do without wild plants and animals.” Certainly any system of public instruction which leaves industrial education out of the account is radically defective. Fortunately this was the theory and practice of the early settlers of Connecti- eut. The founders of this State valued and honored industry. The code of 1650 which stood in this respect unchanged for over one hundred and fifty years required, ‘That all parents and masters do breed and bring up their children and apprentices in 56 some honest lawful calling, labor or employment, either in hus- bandry or some other trade, profitable to themselves and the Commonwealth, if they will not or cannot train them up in learning to fit them for higher employments.” In 1683, Penn proposed the following resolution, which was adopted by the Provincial Council, “That all children within this province of the age of twelve years shall be taught some useful trade or skill, to the end that none may be idle, but that the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want.” How different would have been the history of Virginia and South Carolina, with their sunny climate and greater natural resources, had the founders of those States preached and prac- ticed these sentiments which have been the source of the thritt, growth and prosperity of the North. Hlizabeth Thompson well says: ‘Honest labor is the need of the hour, alike demanded by the physical, mental, moral and financial condi- tion of the nation. Industrial education alone can bring about this reformation by joining with labor skill, dignity and honor.” Industrial schools are now more needed than new colleges. ‘‘The danger is not of over education, with earnest aims and in the right channels, but of a genteel and lazy dilet- tanteism.” I have discussed this subject partly in order to invite the attention of wealthy men to its importance, and ultimately secure liberal endowments for industrial education. The extract from the will of David Watkinson, given below, and the liberal offer of one hundred thousand dollars by Hon. T. M. Allyn for the support of an industrial school in Hartford, show that this need has long been felt. If the Loomis Institute with its large endowment shall be devoted to the purpose of industrial educa- tion, it will meet a great and growing want, which no existing institution in the State attempts to supply. If the liberal offer of Mr. Allyn should be continued and accepted, it would be a nucleus around which other gifts would gather till the school should prove a great benefaction to the State. Such, at least, was the result of the donation of Mr. Boynton in Massachusetts. The Worcester Free Institute was started by the gift of $127,000 by John Boynton. This beginning led Ichabod Washburne to consider the pressing demand for industrial 57 training, and he gave $130,000 to enlarge the resources of the . Institute. Further endowments were made by Stephen Salis- bury of $250,000, and by the State of Massachusetts of $50,000 giving a total endowment of $557,000. If the surviv- ing members of the Loomis family carry out their present plan, the “Loomis Institute” will have double this endowment. Without even the semblance of dictation in the plans which they alone have the right to form, and with a grateful apprecia- tion of the beneficent spirit they evince, I most respectfully suggest to them, and to other wealthy men who desire to become benefactors of the State, this means of meeting a great public need and erecting a lasting monument to their memory. The following is the plan of the proposed gift of Mr. Allyn to the city of Hartford, some five years ago. To the Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of the City of Hartford: The undersigned hereby offers to give to the City of Hartford the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, to be expended in the establishment and erection of an industrial school (under such rules and regulations as the authorities of the city may from time to time make), for the free education of both boys and girls in the business avocations of life, agriculture and the mechanic arts. The school should be a model, fashioned after our best ideal. It should possess ample grounds for an agricultural department, botanical gardens, and workshops, where all the principal trades may be learned. LHvery boy, at the same time he is acquiring a knowledge of the arts, sciences and modern languages, should become a practical agriculturist, or master some useful trade. The girls should be instructed in all the practical duties of the household, be- come familiar with the chemistry of the kitchen, and made to master the art of making any article of a lady’s wardrobe, and also they may learn bookkeeping, banking, telegraphy, photography or any other occupation that is within the meas- ure of their strength and adapted to their tastes. In this manner the education of the student would become a health- ful exercise and a most fascinating amusement, instead of being (like the present system) destructive to vitality, exhaust- 58 ing the brain, and converting the school-room into an unat- tractive place little better than a prison. It is believed that the amount proposed to be given will be sufficient forthe purchase of the ground, erect suitable buildings and supply all the tools and apparatus required for — the carrying out of the enterprise. The annual expense in- curred of running the institution, after deducting the amount it would be entitled to receive from the school fund, should be cheerfully borne by the city. Should the proposition be entertained and the city accept the gift, it may be necessary to execute articles of agreement to secure the faithful perform- ance of the trust assumed by the city. To: Mi Aaiaane EXTRACT FROM THE WILL OF DAVID WATKINSON, WHO DIED AT HARTFORD, Conn., Dec. 138, 1857. Codicil No. 11. Article V. “ Desiring to render a public benefit to the com- — munity in which I live, and to the State of Connecticut gener- — ally, by aiding in the establishment in the town of Hartford of a Juvenile Asylum and Farm School, for the family and school and industrial training of a class of children not now adequately provided for in any educational or humane institution: I do give and bequeath to my Executors the lot of land of about ten acres, surrounded by four streets, known as the Pavilion property, with the buildings standing thereon, and by me esti- mated to be worth the sum of $40,000 and in addition to said lot the sum of $20,000, said lot to be conveyed in fee simple, and said money to be paid over to Henry Barnard 2d, Edmond G. Howe, William L. Collins, William N. Matson, Henry Clay Trumbull, Daniel C. Gilman, Roland Mather, Newton Case, Alfred Watkinson, John S. Butler, Henry A. Perkius, Albert W. Butler, Edward Goodwin, EH. A. Bulkeley, William D. Shipman and Austin Dunham, or such of them as may be living at the time of my decease, as Trustees for the purposes and uses herein set forth, viz:—to aid in the establishment and » support of an institution for the relief, protection, instruction, reformation and employment of children between the ages of 59 six and twenty-one years who may be voluntarily entrusted to it for any or all of these purposes by the parent or guardians, or committed to its charge by competent authority. Article VII. The institution designed to be established and aided by this bequest, is to be organized and conducted on the general principles and methods recognized in the Rauhen House near Hamburg in Germany, and the Agricultural Colony at Mettray in France, as described in Barnard’s National Hduca- tion in Hurope (Edition of 1854), and in the Boston Asylum and Farm School, incorporated in its present form in 1833, and the New York Juvenile Asylum, incorporated in 1851, with such modifications as may be by the Trustees deemed to be better adapted to the peculiar condition of the people of this State, or which may be suggested by their own experience or that of similar institutions.” The amount of the Watkinson Fund is now $207,000. Of this sum $162,000 is invested in productive funds and $45,000 in land. The last sentence of the will gives the Trustees authority to make such modifications as they may deem need- ful for the industrial training of the inmates of the School. If industrial education. becomes a prominent feature of the Institution, it will, in the words of the will, be ‘“ better adapted to the peculiar condition of the people of this State.” The principles and methods recognized in the Rauhen House and Mettray School may be inferred from the follow- ing statement: The ‘Colonie Agricole,” at Mettray, near Tours, in France, was founded in 1839 as an institution for the reformation and training of children hable to become vicious ‘ind criminal. Besides receiving instruction in the necessary school studies, they are taught various useful occupations, such as farming, and the trades of the wheelwright, blacksmith, joer, carpenter, mason, shoe-maker, wooden-shoe-maker, tailor, rope-maker, sail-maker, ete. The Reform School of the ‘‘ Rauhen House,” at Horn, near Hamburg, was founded in 1833. Here as at Mettray, the “family system” ismaintained. The labor performed includes house-keeping and home-work, field and garden culture, and such occupations as shoe-making, making and mending clothes and bedding, carpentry and wooden-shoe-making, woolen-thread 60 spinning, baking, masonry and painting, house-keeping and basket-making. ‘There are also workshops for printing, book- binding, lithographing, stereotyping and wood-engraving. The girls fill the places of servants, cooks, washerwomen, ironers, laundry-women and seamstresses. The younger girls help the older, make and mend coarse linen, knit and mend stockings, etc. The German Government has long sought to make industrial pursuits reputable and universal. To this end, members of the royal family have practiced as well as preached the gospel of honest work. . In Carlsruhe, I learned of an excellent girls’ school in the Schloss, in which the Grand Duchess of Baden, the only daughter of the Kmperor of Germany, had recently placed her young daughter, with instructions that she should be.excused from none of the household industries required of the other pupils, that she should be trained in sewing and knitting, and made as thorough a seamstress as if she were to earn her livelihood by her needle. During her school life she is not to be distinguished by any of the high titles which she may bear in after life. In all respects she is to be on a par with her young companions, receiving no favoritism in view of her rank, but to WORK and play, run and romp, give and take on perfectly equal terms with her companions, and receive exactly the same punishments if remiss in study or work. The present Crown Prince of Prussia early learned the cabinet makers’ trade, and at Babelsberg near Potsdam, the Summer Palace of the Emperor of Germany, are shown articles of fur- niture of superior workmanship made by him. His cousin, Prince Frederick Charles, learned the trade of glazier, and became quite artistic and enthusiastic in his craft. Fine speci- mens of his work may be seen in the Potsdam Palace, consisting chiefly of colored glass tastefully jomed together by means of lead and tin strips, like the fine colored memorial glass windows so often found in churches. Such examples of honoring indus- try have exerted a vast and beneficent influence throug the German Empire 61 EDUCATION AND LABOR. The great majority of our pupils must work for a living. By the ordinance of Heaven, the necessity of labor is well- nigh universal. Nature and history alike confirm the old decree, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” Teachers and school officers should carefully inquire whether our schools are accomplishing all they ought to do for the working classes. It is a grand result that all are trained to read and write and cipher, and learn something of the other common rudiments. In no part of the world, except Germany, are there so few native illiterates as in New England. The general intelligence of the people is one obvious cause of our exemption from the railway strikes of last summer. The sober second thought prevailed here, while madness ruled the hour elsewhere. But beneficent as has been the influence of the public school in New England, it has by no means done its whole duty to the laboring classes. More should be said and done to dignify labor and prepare our youth to become skilled workmen as well as industrious and upright citizens. It is a mistake to suppose that education need create any aversion to labor, or that those who do the roughest work need the least schooling. Under the system of slavery in the South, and until recently with the serfs of Russia and the equally illiterate farm hands of England, it was held as an axiom that schooling would make laborers discontented, restless and unprofitable ser- vants, and that universal education would render manual labor distasteful and disreputable. T’oo much of this mis- chievous legacy of slavery lingers among us still. The silly and wicked notion that labor is menial ought to be refuted in our schools, where our youth should be early taught the neces- sity and dignity of labor, as the primal source of all human excellence and progress. Girls as well as boys should be early taught both in the family and school that to learn to be useful 62 is alike their duty, privilege and interest. Education should. thus be made the auxihary of labor. Instead of treating it as a degrading drudgery, education should elevate labor and render it more skillful and productive. If the true bearing of education on industry was taught in our schools, our youth would grow up under the salutary conviction that education is economy, and so far from degrading labor makes it more inviting and profitable, because the skilled workman so fore- casts his plans that every blow tells, thus economizing his time and strength and stock, and even in the humblest work, accom- plishing more, in better style, and with less damage to tools or machinery, than the boor who can use only brute muscle. Pride in one’s work leads to higher excellence both in his eraft and character. The skilled artizan who delights to do his best to-day, will aspire to do better still to-morrow. On the other hand, the too common theory that labor is a degrading drudgery will consciously demean any workman and bar improvement in his trade. Connecticut is a busy hive of manufactories. The industrial interests of no State are more vital to its prosperity. We are a working people, and the cause of the workman is the cause of all. The problem of our State and of our day is to elevate work by educating and thus elevating the workmen. The masses are learning that mere muscle is weak, that brains help the hands in all work, that knowledge multiplies the value and productive power of muscular efforts. If knowledge is power, ignorance is waste and weakness. Whata man 7s, stamps an impress upon what he does, even in the humblest forms of industry. The character of the work depends upon the work- man. Whatever elevates the laborer improves his labor. In proportion as you degrade the operative even to the degree of serf or slave, you depreciate his work. You can dignify work therefore in no way so surely as by elevating the workman. The wealth and welfare of individuals and States, always dependent on labor, can be most fully secured only by edu- cated labor. If rightly conducted, our schools, so far from breeding discontent with the humblest pursuits, will prepare for success in the ordinary callings of life. Instead of this, I find in some cases the chief aim is promo- 63 tion to the next higher grade, and from that up to the highest or High School, and the programme is planned for those who complete the full curriculum, rather than for the majority who withdraw early for work or business. It is worthy of inquiry whether at each successive step the conditions of promotion may not wisely include the same studies and attainments which constitute the best preparation for the business of life, as well as for higher grades in school. , How to secure the best results with the least cost of time as well as money, isa problem not yet fully solved. Our text books, now too voluminous, should comprise less of minute details and more of practical methods and principles. Such topics in arithmetic as the least common multiple of common fractions, casting out of nines in multiplication and division, alligation medial and alternate, and commutation of radix, may well be omitted in a common school course, or briefly noticed in the appendix. Those and kindred topics, of no use in ordinary business, fill a large space in nearly all the arithmetics. They have atraditionary sanction. In continuing them the authors have consulted usage more than utility. Like the titled scions of rank in the old world, they have come down by so long a literary descent that no one disputes their right to their honored place. Worth more than all these complicated — processes is the thorough mastery of the ground rules. In all our schools rapid mental combinations should be daily prac- ticed till pupils can add, multiply and divide with the utmost facility and accuracy. This done, the rest of arithmetic will be comparatively easy and pleasant. Hix-President Thomas Hill justly complains that our ‘“ Arith- metics have been expanded until the unfortunate pupil is lost in a wilderness of words, and does not find his way through, in time to learn to cipher. The science of arithmetic receives so much attention that the art is neglected. Life is not long enough to spend so long a proportion of it on arithmetic as is spent in the modern system of teaching it, and arithmetic is too valuable an art to have our children neglect to acquire facility in it, instead of being stupefied and disgusted with premature attempts to understand it as ascience.” It is certainly a use- less repetition to require children to learn, for example, explana- 64 tions of the first principles of fractions, percentage and the like as they are scattered through four or five volumes, each suc- — cessive series setting forth the same subjects only with greater fullness and complication. In many schools arithmetic is thus. made a subject of study for eight or nine years, when three or four years ought to give the pupil the mastery of the essen- tials, including rapid mental combinations. He should learn the multiplication table early and thoroughly, and acquire great rapidity in all practical processes. By the condensation or omission of too extended serial Doeke ; in geography, grammar and arithmetic, and in the latter study mastering thoroughly only the practical portions and postpon- ing the intricacies,of compound proportion, permutation and the like, that not one in a thousand ever uses in the practical business of life, more time can be gained for reading, spelling, writing, the study and use of our own language, composition, at least in letter writing, and elementary lessons in the practical sciences, natural history, political economy, and the history of our Own country. 65 WHAT BOYS ARE READING. A timely appeal to the public has just been made, bearing the signatures of eminent citizens of New Haven who repre- sent both political parties and the Baptist, Roman Catholic, Congregational and Episcopal churches. I welcome this warn- ing, as I have had occasion to observe widely the pernicious influence of bad books and papers. Finding ten years ago that such papers as the Boston Jtlustrated Police News, the New York National Police Gazette, and Day's Doings were freely sold in the cars, I addressed a letter to the President or Superintend- ent of every railway in Connecticut asking if I might announce authoritatively in my next Report that “the sale of immoral papers is not permitted in the cars or stations of your railway.” Cordial replies came promptly from the officers of every rail- road of our State expressing their earnest purpose to do their part in the suppression of this great evil. One reply shows the spirit of all. ‘I fully appreciate your views and most heartily coneur in your wish, and will do my utmost to prevent the circulation of such papers.” Obscene books, papers and pictures are the worst of outlaws. The most indecent of this class are sold clandestinely. But there are others, sold openly, like those named in the following ‘“‘appeal,” which though less filthy, are more corrupting, if not more infamous than the most lecherous issues of the Parisian press. The poison which nauseates by an overdose, may be its own antidote. Professing to be illustrated - histories of the week, these papers are in fact chroniclers of, or contributors to, the bar-room and the brothel. The safety of our youth now demands the utmost effort for the exclusion of such contamination. In behalf of the children of the State, I earnestly invoke the aid and codperation of all parents, the officers of justice, the public press, and of all good citizens, in efficient measures for the suppression of the evil so well set _ forth in the following appeal and extracts from the paper of Professor Sumner. 66 ‘We desire to call attention to the cheap, trashy literature which is demoralizing the youth of our country. In this class we notice the paper named Zhe New York Boys’ Weekly, with a reputed circulation of 40,000, and The Boys of New York, with a reputed circulation of 50,000. These papers contain stories of the most sensational and slangy character, judging by the titles, of which we name the following: ‘Dashing Dick, King of the Highway,’ ‘Yankee Claude Duval, the Dashing Knight of the Road,’ ‘Corkey, of the Tricks and Travels of a Supe,’ ‘Shorty, jr., or the Son of his Dad,’ ‘Bang Up, or the Boy Ranchero,’ etc., etc. We see not one redeeming trait in these or other papers of this class. We are informed that many of the advertisements in their columns are of: the most villainous kind. Will you not do what you can to warn your readers against the peril that besets our youth? We inclose Professor Sumner’s article, reprinted from Scribner's Monthly, which we beg you to use according to your judgment in whole or in part. Our object is not to advertise any periodical in place of those we deprecate, but only to warn the public of a danger suspected by few and realized by fewer still. Noau PORTER, LEONARD BACON, THEODORE D. WOOLSEY, FRANCIS WAYLAND, Witu1amM M. Barsour, HucH CARMopy, JAMES H. ENGLISH, EDWIN HARwoop, FrRANcIS A. WALKER.” ‘Rew gentlemen, who have occasion to visit news-offices, can have failed to notice the periodical literature for boys, which has been growing up during the last few years. The increase in the number of these papers and magazines, and the appear- ance, from time to time, of new ones, which, to judge by the pictures, are always worse than the old, seem to indicate that they find a wide market. Moreover, they appear not only among the idle and vicious boys in great cities, but also among school-boys whose parents are careful about the influences brought to bear on their children. No student of social phe- nomena can pass with neglect facts of this kind,—so practical, and so important in their possible effects on society. These periodicals contain stories, songs, mock speeches, and 67 negro minstrel dialogues,—and nothing else. The literary material is either intensely stupid, or spiced to the highest de- gree with sensation. The stories are about hunting, Indian warfare, California desperado life, pirates, wild sea adventure, highwaymen, crimes and horrible accidents, horrors (tortures and snake stories), gamblers, practical jokes, the life of vaga- bond boys, and the wild behavior of dissipated boys in great cities. This catalogue is exhaustive. Thére are no other stories. The dialogue is short, sharp, and continuous. It is broken by the minimum of description and by no preaching. It is almost entirely in slang of the most exaggerated kind, and of every variety,—that of the sea, of California, and of the Bowery; of negroes, ‘Dutchmen,’ Yankees, Chinese, and In- dians, to say nothing of that of a score of the most irregular and questionable occupations ever followed by men. When the stories even nominally treat of school-life, they say nothing of school-life. There is simply a succession of practical jokes, mischief, outrages, heroic but impossible feats, fightmg, and horrors, but nothing about the business of school, any more than if the house in which the boys live were a summer board- ing-house. The sensational incidents in these stories are intro- duced by force, apparently for the mere purpose of producing a highly spiced mixture. One type of hero who figures largely in these stories is the vagabond boy, in the streets of a great city, in the Rocky Mountains, or at sea. Sometimes he has some cleverness in singing, or dancing, or ventriloquism, or negro acting, and he gains a precarious living while roving about. This ead life of adventure is represented as interesting and enticing, and, when the hero rises from vagabond life to flash life, that is represented as success. Respectable home life, on the other hand, is not depicted at all, and is only referred to as stupid and below the ambition of a clever youth. Industry and econ- omy in some regular pursuit, or in study, are never mentioned at all. Generosity does not consist in even luxurious expend- iture, but in wasting money. The type seems to be that of the gambler, one day ‘flush’ and wasteful, another day ruined and in misery. There is another type of boy who sometimes furnishes the er 68 hero of a story, but who also figures more or less in all of them. That is the imp of mischief,—the sort of boy who is an intoler- able nuisance to the neighborhood. The stories are told from the stand-point of the boy, so that he seems to be a fine fellow, and all the world, which is against him, is unjust and overbear- ing. His father, the immediate representative of society, exe- cutes its judgments with the rod, which again is an insult to the high-spirited youth, and produces on his side, either open war, or a dignified retreat to some distant region. These stories are not markedly profane, and they are not obscene. ‘They are indescribably vulgar. They represent boys as engaging all the time in the rowdy type of drinking. The heroes are either swaggering, vulgar swells, of the rowdy style, or they are in the vagabond mass below the rowdy swell. They are continually associating with criminals, gamblers, and low people who live by their wits. The theater of the stories is always disreputable. The proceedings and methods of persons of the criminal and disreputable classes, who appear in the sto- ries, are all described in detail. The boy reader obtains a theo- retical and literary acquaintance with methods of fraud and crime. Sometimes drunkenness is represented in its disgrace and misery, but generally drinking is represented as jolly and entertaining, and there is no suggestion that boys who act as the boys in these stories do ever have to pay any penalty for it in after life. The persons who are held up to admiration are the heroes and heroines of bar-rooms, concert saloons, variety thea- ters, and negro minstrel troupes. From the specimens which we have examined we may generalize the following in regard to the views of life which these stories inculcate, and the code of morals and manners which they teach: The first thing whieh a boy ought to acquire is physical strength for fighting purposes. The feats of strength performed by these youngsters in combat with men and animals are ridic- ulous in the extreme. In regard to details the supposed code of English brutality prevails, especially in the stories which have English local color, but it is always mixed with the code of the revolver, and, in many of the stories, the latter is taught in its fullness. These youngsters generally carry revolvers and 69 use them at their good discretion. [very youth who aspires to manliness ought to get and carry a revolver. A boy ought to cheat the penurious father who does not give him as much money as he finds necessary, and ought to compel him to pay. A good way to force him to pay liberally, and at the same time to stop criticising his son’s habits, is to find out his own vices (he always has some) and then to levy black-mail on him. Every boy, who does not want to be ‘green’ and ‘soft,’ ought to ‘see the elephant.’ All fine manly young fel- lows are familiar with the actors and singers at variety theaters, and the girl waiters at concert saloons. As to drinking, the bar-room code is taught. The boys stop in at bar-rooms all along the street, swallow drinks standing or leaning with rowdy grace on the bar. They treat and are treated, and consider it insulting to refuse or to be refused. The good fellows meet every one on a footing of equality—above all in a bar-room. Quiet home life is stupid and unmanly. Boys brought up in it never know the world or life. They have to work hard and to bow down to false doctrines which parsons and teachers in league with parents, have invented against boys. To become a true man, a boy must break with respectability and join the vagabonds and the swell mob. No fine young fellow, who knows life, need mind the law, still less the police. The latter are all stupid louts. Ifa boy’s father is rich and he has money, he can easily find smart lawyers (advertisement gratis) who can get the boy out of prison, and will dine with him at Delmonico’s afterward. 'The sympathies of a manly young fellow are with criminals against the law, and he conceals crime when he can. Whatever good or ill happens to a young man he should always be gay. The only ills in question are physical pain or lack of money. These should be borne with gayety and indifference, but should not alter the philosophy of life. As to the rod, it is not so easy to generalize. Teachers and parents, in these stories, act faithfully up to Solomon’s precept. When a father flogs his son, the true doctrine seems to be that _ the son should run away and seek a life of adventure. When he does this he has no difficulty in finding friends, or in living by his wits, so that he makes money, and comes back rich and glorious, to find his father in the poor-house, 70 These periodicals seem to be intended for boys from twelve to sixteen years of age, although they often treat of older per- sons. Probably many boys outgrow them and come to see the folly and falsehood of them. It is impossible, however, that so much corruption should be afloat and not exert some influence. We say nothing of the great harm which is done to boys of that age, by the nervous excitement of reading harrowing and sensational stories, because the literature before us only partici- pates in that harm with other literature of far higher preten- sions. But what we have said suffices to show that these papers poison boys’ minds with views of life which are so base and false as to destroy all manliness and all chances of true success. How far they are read by boys of good home influences we are, of course, unable to say. They certainly are within the reach of all. They can be easily obtained, and easily concealed, and it is a question for parents and teachers how far this is done. Persons under those responsibilities ought certainly to know what the character of this literature is.” WHAT SHOULD OUR BOYS READ? Teachers can largely determine the reading of ‘their scholars’ out of school. It is important not only to awaken a love of books, but to guide in their selection and form a taste for profitable reading. Scholars should be encouraged to have some good book always at home, in which they read a little every day. In school they should be invited to tell what they have read. To give an epitome of one’s reading is an admirable school exercise. ‘T'he pupil will peruse a book with ten-fold greater interest, when expecting to epitomize his author before the school. Asa drill of memory and in language it is a most useful exercise, and is one that is sure to interest as well as profit the school. Having experienced these advan- tages in my own teaching, and witnessed them in many schools, I strongly recommend this practice, already adopted by some, to all the teachers of Connecticut. Instead of giving here a list of books for all the youth of the State, I advise teachers to recommend well known works in adaptation to the age, taste and advancement of individual pupils, usually those which they themselves have read, that they may the better appreciate and criticise the epitomes of the same by the pupils. An eminent teacher recently asked a class of fifty-seven boys, What is the last book you have read? One answered “I haven't read any lately,” another, “I don’t remember,” “can’t tell” said a third. But the great majority were able to give an account of their reading, which was most creditable to their teacher, evincing his wholesome influence over his pupils out- side of the school room. ‘'wenty-seven had been reading works of history and biography, including Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, Life of Prescott, Higginson’s History of the United States, Irving’s Washington, Lives of Cicero, Han- nibal, Czsar, Xerxes, Alexander, Ferdinand and _ Isabella. Three boys were reading Dickens’ History of England and one was enjoying Bancroft’s ten volume History of the United 12 ‘States, another had just read three volumes of Maeaulay’s Es- says. Shakespeare, Bunyan, Bulwer, DeFoe, Jules Verne and Oliver Optic had one reader each. What Career?, Avis, Mar- ble Fawn, History of Propellers, Management of Howes Seven Oaks, Miss Miihlbach’s Empress J Meo ns Ways of the World, Half-Hour Natural Science Series, American Explorers, Little Men, Speke’s Sources of the Nile, Wide Wide World, Wav- erly, Fortunes of Nigel and Quentin Durward were also named. I invite our teachers to test their scholars in the same way during the present year, and to send me lists of the books read by their pupils. With the codperation of teachers and school officers we may learn what the youth of Connecticut are reading. ‘This effort will enlist the attention of parents and secure their aid in the selection of better books and periodicals for their ‘children, and thus check a growing evil and accomplish great ‘good, Teachers should foster a taste for such choice literature, ‘that travels, histories and biographies, books of science, genu- ine poetry, essays and choice romances shall take the place ‘of the “blood and thunder” stories and other emphatically weekly novelettes of the day. Social reading should also be encouraged. The industry in many a sewing circle has been enlivened by well selected reading by one of their number. The same genial influ- ence should often cheer the circle around the family hearth. ‘Reading circles” ought to be maintained in every town, where selections in prose or poetry, often a play of Shakespeare, the several parts having been previously assigned, and made the subject of careful private study and drill, are rehearsed together. These Reading Clubs, where each thoroughly studies his part or selection till he becomes so possessed of its thought and spirit as to render it in the best style he can command, not only cultivate the art of elocution, but improve the taste and develop a higher appreciation of the best authors. Aside from the edu- cational value of this class of evening schools, their social influ- ence is happy. Divided as the residents of our rural districts too often are, by party or sect, by prejudice or neighborhood difficulties, every influence tending to fraternize the people should be welcomed; every association where they meet on common ground for mutual improvement, and where kindly x. 73 feeling and social amenities are cultivated, should be en- couraged. The teacher cannot awaken love of books unless he himself continues to bea student. Any one who thinks he knows enough to teach even the humblest class, should never profane the school room by his presence. One who has ceased to be a learner cannot be a good teacher. The more one has discovered, the more he wants to know. The truly learned man feels the ereatness of his ignorance and the littleness of his knowledge as but a drop out of the boundless ocean of truth. It has been well said, ‘‘the greater the circle of our knowledge, the greater the horizon of ignorance that bounds it. The pride of wisdom therefore is the proof of folly.” Arrogance and as- surance are not the fruits of true learning. Yet from the days of Johnson to Dickens “ the school master” has been character- ized in our literature as magisterial, opinionated and dogmatical. Associated as teachers are with beginners, or at least inferiors in attainments, seldom called to the grapple of mind with mind as in forensic contests with equals or superiors, there is great danger of imbibing the spirit of conceit and dogmatism, even when only getting deeper in the old ruts) Whatis dryer than an old, opinionated, self-satisfied, unprogressive school master ? He despises “all your new-fangled notions.” He glories in the “good old ways.” His fluent routine feeds his complacency, though it really enervates his own mind and stupefies his pupils. Whoever either in the college or primary school has ceased to learn, should by all means stop teaching, for children need impulse even more than instruction. Any one who no longer thirsts for higher knowledge, cannot fitly lead even the youngest to its fountain. Asa teacher, one must be progressive, or cease to be at all, The mind that stagnates must soon retro- erade, and such a teacher would stultify rather than stimulate his class. Happily there are now many teachers worthy of their work, whose ideal is high, and who are enthusiastic in the life-long work of personal culture. The efficient codperation of such teachers I confidently anticipate in the efforts now making to stimulate a taste for books, and aiding our youth in the selection of the best books. One who early acquires a taste for reading and a love of books, will realize that his education — Comey fe AROUAULS P ari an age oe etn MAO DD a web rar Ud aimee a be ee C2 ore ea . OS oe SI Oe | bo Ns ; wert of 74 is only begun when his school days are ended. To complete it will be the aim and ambition of his life. Let his calling be what it may, with an insatiable desire for knowledge, he will find leisure for selfimprovement. The many instances of self- educated men whose eminence and success are due to an early taste for reading, should be given to the boys who are just entering the active pursuits of life, and who are so apt to think that they can no longer find time for self-culture. But is the little leisure they have well improved? Should the evenings be idled away, because the days must be occupied with business or labor? The youth whose teachers have trained them to always have a good book at hand for odd moments, will enter the practical callings of life with a habit of inestimable import- ance. vfs) COMPULSORY EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. My observations during the last year, both at home and abroad, refute the old objection to obligatory education, that “the laboring classes won’t stand it.” In the County and State Conventions of the Labor Unions recently held in Connecticut, resolutions have been adopted in favor of the rigid enforcement of the law for the prevention of illiteracy. Mixing much with the laboring classes for the purpose of promoting school attend- ance, I have been greatly encouraged by their growing appre- ciation of education, whether Americans, Germans, Swedes or Trish. In England the various labor organizations earnestly advocate compulsory education. The opposition comes from the comparatively few land-holders, the politicians and large farmers. In Glasgow, where the coercive regime is in full vigor, but fifty-one penalties have been inflicted in three years. In Birmingham, where the proportion of illiteracy was far larger than in Glasgow, greater exertions have been requisite to vanquish the apathy of parents. In Scotland, education has long been well nigh universal, while the poorer classes in Hng- land and Wales were sunk in ignorance. Under the existing law, the regulation of attendance is left to the local School Boards. Recent interviews with prominent friends of educa- _ tion in England and Scotland, satisfied me that public senti- ment is rapidly growing in favor of making compulsion univer- sal in its application. I could learn of no signs of reaction in any town where it had been adopted, but was assured that in the School Boards of London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birming- ham, Sheffield, Leeds, and many other large towns, there is not now left a single opponent to this plan. Throughout Britain experience has converted many objectors to friends. Sir Charles Reed, President of the London School Board, gave me last summer some statements which happily illustrate the good influence of compulsory education in that great me- tropolis. The new system went into operation in 1871. The 76 school census then taken enumerated 574,698 children of school age, and needing elementary education. For these children only 262,259 school places were at that time provided, and there were 312,434 more children than places. Over two hun- dred new school houses have been provided since that date, and now the Board Schools and Voluntary Schools have ac- commodations for 505,323. The compulsory law has worked ~ with little friction and marked success. As a result, there has already been a very considerable reduction in the cost of juve- nile crime and pauperism. The magistrates of London and the Commissioners of Police have all borne cordial testimony to the fact that there has been a great diminution of juvenile offenses, and that every gang of young thieves known to the police has been broken up. The Superintendent of the Hollo- . way Prison says the juvenile criminals have yearly decreased, so that instead of 186 males and 21 females admitted in 1869, the numbers for the last year were only 28 males and no — females. In 1871, Hon. W. E. Forster, the father of the new educational bill, said to me, “In America you can have little idea of our difficulty in dealing with these myriads of street Arabs in London, who are so degraded and ignorant that they and their parents alike can appreciate neither the evils of igno- rance nor the advantages of education.” One of the inspect- ors now says, “These street Arabs sit side by side with the sons of industrious citizens, and so healthful is the tone of the school that complaints are seldom heard. These schools are of the deepest interest and first importance, receiving children from indigent and neglected homes, and supplying all that per- haps they will ever obtain of moral training and cultivation in head and heart. No one can continue to visit these schools and notice the sad state of these children at the outset without observing the gradual ameliorating effects of the care bestowed upon them.” ! , By invitation of Sir Charles Reed, I witnessed in July last, the gathering of 5,000 of these children in Crystal Palace. The spectacle of so many children seated in ascending tiers in a semi-amphitheater near the great organ, was itself inspiring, and the grand choral singing, especially considering the brief period of their school attendance, was excellent. Besides the 7 5,000 singers, there was an enormous crowd of other children and their parents, the total number, said the President of the Board, was over 80,000. The Crystal Palace Company gave free admission to the children. Tom. Hughes, the President of the Company, made a speech of cordial welcome to all, and congratulated and commended the School Board that had already accomplished so noble a work. The main speech was given by Lord Sanden, a single sentence of which indicates the moral influence already exerted by the London schools. “When we think of the future of the children before us and of the various lots in life which will become theirs, it is im- possible not to be deeply affected, or to look at these children without being grateful to Sir Charles Reed and his colleagues, for bringing these children into school, who might otherwise have been left in the streets, a plague to their parents and a danger hereafter to the State.” Similar facts might be given as to the good influence of compulsory education in many other cities of England, and especially in Birmingham, the head-quarters of the National Educational League,—an associa- tion embracing such men as George Dixon, M. P., and Dr. R. W. Dale,—which has been active and influential in the advocacy of educational reforms. Visiting most of the schools of that city last summer, I gained ample proofs of the good effects of obligatory instruction, as there rigidly applied. A striking conversion occurred in the case of the late Canon Kingsley. ‘Though he long took a lively interest in the im- provement of the working classes, an interest deepened by his service aS government inspector of schools, he at first opposed obligatory education as un-Hnglish and offensive to the inde- pendent spirit of hiscountrymen. On finding that the working people favored compulsory attendance, his objections vanished. A still more remarkable change has occurred in the views of Mr. Forster, the father of the Educational Act of 1870. He then opposed all efforts to make compulsion universal. Per- mission only was given to local Boards to adopt coércion. Though convinced of the jtstness of this measure, he argued that the people are not prepared for it, and that outcries of “un-English,” “arbitrary,” ‘tyrannical,’ ‘invasion of one’s home,” “usurpation of parental rights,” and all the easy clap- 18 trap of demagogues, would create a reaction, and therefore he did not ask for a general compulsory law. It was said, no matter what can be done in Prussia, or even in Switzerland, the people of England have too much independence, too much ~ aversion to any semblance of tyranny, ever to submit to com- pulsory education. Mr. Forster now admits that he had no expectation that the town population would, to so great an extent, adopt the principle of compulsory education. Every town in England with 20,000 inhabitants, which has a School Board, has adopted it. The permissive provision for local compulsion was ingrafted in this bill with little faith that it would be ratified and applied in any of the large towns. But the people have surprised Parliament. In March last Mr. Forster said in the House of Commons: “ Almost the entire town population of England is now under compulsory educa- tion. And there is no sign of reaction. If compulsion had worked with hardship on the people, nothing was so easy as to revert to the former state of things. If a motion were now made antagonistic to this principle of compulsion, 2 would not have a single supporter in the School Boards of London, Manches- ter, Birmingham, or any other large town. ‘The school attend- ance in those towns where it has been made compulsory, has been improved 30 per cent. Leeds, for example, had almost solved the problem of getting hold of all the children. The attendance there has doubled by compulsion. The same has been done at Sheffield. At Stockport they had increased the average attendance until there were less than 24 per cent. of the children between 5 and 15 who were not at school, and some of them were excusable on account of mental or physical inability. The right to compel a father to feed and clothe his child is admitted, and we have now arrived at a point of civili- zation at which we can declare that it is his duty to see that he is educated. ‘T'he sole meaning of compulsion is that this is the duty of every parent, and that it is the business of the State to secure the performance of that duty, and if the parent is disabled by poverty, then to help him from local rates or imperial funds. It has been said, we must wait for public opinion. Well, public opinion has declared itself, for every town that by law was able to do so, has put the compulsory (i) system in force. The fact is, that the arguments in favor of compulsion are overwhelming, and Parliament should now make compulsion universal. It is admitted, you cannot extend compulsion without producing some hardship, and bringing a bitter pinch to some poor widow who depended on her chil- dren’s labor. No great reform can be effected without cases of individual hardship, but in the long run these alterations would be productive of magnificent results for the whole population.” In Connecticut, the State Board of Education invite the cooperation of all parents and school officers in their efforts to promote the observance of the law for obligatory educa- tion. The gain in school attendance since the adoption of our compulsory law shows the wisdom and value of the enactment. This law has met the sanction of the people, irrespective of party or sect. The Labor Unions, convinced that it is spe- cially fitted to promote the interests of the working classes, have repeatedly passed resolutions in favor of its rigid enforcement. Many poor parents have learned that their ignorance is one cause of their poverty and that, as education is essential to thrift and prosperity, ignorance should not be allowed to per- petuate indigence. We use the right to enforce mainly as an argument to persuade—an authoritative appeal to parental pride and foresight. We so press the advantages of education that attendance may be held a privilege rather than a legal ne- cessity. But when reason and persuasion fail, coercion stands in their stead. The law protects helpless childhood whose rights are sacred. It recognizes the claims of the humblest child to an education, as that which the State cannot neglect without det- riment to itself and harm to a human soul. Not even by omission may the State doom a single child to ignorance and its manifold evils. The temporary hardships to families by loss of children’s wages, occasionally incident to the observance of this law, will be counterbalanced a thousand fold by the permanent benefit of both parents and children, while its neg- lect would inflict lasting evil upon them and the whole com- munity. Attendance upon an evening school merely, or irregular in- - struction at home does not meet the demands of the law, which 80 requires that such instruction be regularly and thoroughly given. ; Our law in regard to non-attendance applies not to manu- facturers only, but to merchants, mechanics, farmers and all employers of children. The manufacturers, as a rule, cheer- fully comply with the law. There is need of watchfulness in reference to the larger number who each employ one or more children in shops, or stores, on the farm or in the family. All persons who know of any instance of the employment of chil- dren under fourteen years of age, who have not attended school the time required by law, are requested to send information of such fact to the office of the State Board of Education, giving the names and. location of the employers of the children and of the parents. A journey to the remotest part of the State will be amply compensated, if, thereby, a single child can be pronats to school. The needs of neglected children still occupy much time in public addresses and personal labors. The good results already accomplished furnish ample encouragement for the vig- orous prosecution of this work. During the last year the agent of the Board has visited a larger number of families than in any former year. As the result of these visits to the homes of neglected children, nearly three hundred such children have been led to attend school. Nearly ninety-five per cent. of our children are now reported as in schools of all kinds—a larger percentage than in any other State in America, when the basis of enumeration is taken into account. In Connecticut, the enumeration includes all children between four and sixteen years of age. The gift from the State Treasury and School Fund of about two dollars and a half per scholar, ensures the fullest returns. In Massachusetts the enumeration is from five to fifteen. We discourage attendance under five, and the law authorizes towns to exclude all under five. There is, therefore, reason for congratulation on the efficient working of our com- pulsory law. SCHOOLS AND COMMUNISM. In 1868 a prominent plea against Free Schools was the argu- ment that ‘the system 1s communistic in its principle and ten- dency. Hstablish free schools and you encourage a demand for free food, free clothes, free shoes, and free homes.” Professor Faucett, liberal, fair and progressive as he is, urged the same objection in Parhament, saying, during the discussion of the new ‘“Hlementary Education Act,” which was passed in 1870, “Tf the demand for free schools were not resisted, encourage- ment would be given to Socialism in its most baneful form.” Time tests all theories better than arguments. In Connecti- cut a decade of free schools has witnessed no new tendencies to Communism. The general intelligence of New England was one obvious cause of its exemption from the communistic rail- way conflicts in the summer of 1877. The sober second thought prevailed here, while madness ruled the hour else- where. The last election in Connecticut showed plainly the popular dread of the socialistic tendencies and dogmas, which were repudiated by both the leading political parties. In Mas- sachusetts, where free schools have been maintained for more than two hundred years, there is as little Socialism as in any land in the world. Indeed, throughout New England, there is no tendency to Communism among the descendants of the gen- uine New England stock. The minimum that exists is limited to asmall portion of the foreign element. Though curiosity attracted crowds to hear Dennis Kearney last autumn, it is due to free schools and the consequent intelligence of the people, that his communistic tirades disgusted all classes and’ prompted the candidate who first sought his alliance to dis- own his dogmas and disfellowship him. I find among all classes, employers and employés, in the fac- tories and on the farms, a growing distrust, not to say detesta- tion, of Communism. The mad outcry of the Internationals, “quality of conditions,” ‘Capital is the enemy of labor,” finds no response from the intelligent laborers of Connecticut. Thanks to our schools, they know that the condition of the A 82 operative improves with the increase of industrial capital, which always befriends labor, when it multiplies the opportunities of education and profitable employment. Nothing helps the laborer more than that education which gives him both the desire and the power to better his condition, to improve first himself and then his home and household. As a precaution against the communistic tendencies which now agitate and alarm Germany and other portions of Kurope, and find here their fiercest advocates among the refugees thence escaped to our shores, the general principles underlying this subject should be studied by our teachers and presented in oral lessons in our schools. A few simple school talks on this theme might forestall much mischief in coming years. The intelligent workmen who by industry and economy are enabled to own their homes, however humble, or indeed to own any- thing, cannot be fooled by that insane crusade against capital, — which reaily means wages without work, or which lets the lazy and profligate share equally with the industrious and frugal. The equality of conditions of which they dream, would be the low level of a common barbarism. Hven enforced equality of wages lessens the motives to industry, skill and fidelity, and restrains the freedom of competition. Once applied, these notions would destroy not only capital but the motives and means of its future increase and protection. Destroy capital, and labor would suffer first and most. Capital and labor, there- fore, are not enemies. It is only ignorance and prejudice that find any necessary opposition between the two. ‘There should | be kindness and sympathy between the employer and the employed. There need be no alienation between the rich and the poor. There should be no tyranny of capital over labor, nor hostility of labor to capital. The capitalist should fully understand the trials of the laborer’s lot, and strive to amelio- rate his condition, and the operative should know the risks, anxieties and conditions of success on the part of the manufac- turer. There should be hberal pay on the one side, and fair profits on the other. The interests of both classes are bound together. If either one is harmed, the other must ultimately suffer. Certainly the laborer cannot long suffer in health, edu- cation or pay, without harm to the employer, and large losses 88 to employers inevitably extend to the operatives. They are copartners, and cannot afford to be antagonists. Capital is as dependent on labor as labor is on capital, and only as both work in harmony, can the highest good of each be secured. Indeed, labor is both superior and prior to capital, and alone originally produces capital. Many a penniless laborer, because well educated, frugal and industrious, has become an independ- ent capitalist. Our most successful manufacturers have toiled up from penury to affluence. This aspiration may stimulate every one who is educated enough to combine skill with labor. Communism is an exotic in this land. It does not easily take root in our soil, and the climate is uncongenial. Its chief advocates are homeless foreigners, even the immigrants long resident here have become so schooled by public sentiment and by our free institutions, as to be well nigh assimilated and Americanized. Schools and the diffusion of property are our safeguards against Socialistic extremes. John Adams well said, “The ownership of land is essential to industrial thrift and to national security and strength and prosperity.” Switzerland, with insti- tutions as free as ours, is safe from Communism, for two rea- sons—the maintenance of free schools, and the general owner- ship of land. The Internationals may meet in free Switzer- land, and nobody is frightened or disturbed by their vagaries. Germany has education, but not an equal distribution of land. Her vast standing army, consuming without producing, with its enormous expenses and exactions, has created a great revul- sion of feeling among the people. The glory of conquest and the untold milliards of the French indemnity mainly expended on new fortifications and military equipments, do not atone for the mourning and bereavement brought to so many now deso- late homes, the heavy burden of taxation, the dread of con- scription, the fear of new complications and wars, and the inex- orable demand that every boy shall spend three weary years of service in the camp. Myriads of families with boys approach- ing the military age, have emigrated to other lands to escape this dreaded conscription. In France the home of Communism has always been in Paris. The horrors of the Commune in 1871 proved suicidal to the sys- 84 tem. Even Paris learned then a lesson not likely to be forgotten. But the great body of the French people, even then, had little sympathy with communistic doctrines, and to-day the French nation, with her 5,000,000 of land-owners, is strongly the other way. Here lie her strength and security. To illustrate the happy influence of this wide diffusion of landed: property, Michelet describes a French peasant walking out of a Sunday, in his clean linen and unsoiled blouse, surveying fondly his little farm. His face isillumined as he thinks these acres are his own, from the surface of the globe to its center, and that the air is his own from the surface up to the seventh heaven. He is there alone—not at work, not to keep off interlopers, but solely to enjoy the feeling of ownership, and to look upon him- self as a member of responsible society. Thus in all lands and among all peoples, ‘‘the magic of property turns sand into gold.” In the United States there are nearly 3,000,000 farmers with farms, averaging 158 acres each, besides a large number who own their dwellings and house-lots. These form the grand army of the Republic—each a volunteer, equipped and ready to strike down Communism, wherever its hydra head may appear. Let even the Socialistic leaders, whom Bismarck has banished, once learn here to till their own acres, and they will be con- verted to the true faith—of the sacred rights of property. SCHOOLS AND PAUPERISM. | Ten years ago strenuous objections were made to free schools, as being a charity tending to pauperize the people, a kind of alms that no man could accept without impairing his manli- ness and self-respect. But they are now recognized as the peo- ple’s schools by right, not favor, and prized as never before. Instead of being a charity, tending to demean and pauperize its recipients, all find themselves recognized as equal partners in the concern, having an equal voice in selecting the mana- gers, in raising the funds, or in criticising the methods adopted. Thus the school is no more a charity than is the free public road or bridge. Help in schooling is really help towards doing without help—towards self-reliance. ° In Hurope, those who express the greatest apprehension that the independence of the working classes would be destroyed by free schools, evince little desire to develop that genuine independence which true education fosters. In lands where the insolence of office is proverbial, they make it a prominent lesson to every child to ‘order himself reverently and lowly to all his betters, and to submit to the humors of my Lords.” The people whose “ inde- pendence” is so carefully guarded, are kept under various petty and vexatious restraints. Says Francis Adams, one of the most earnest advocates of free schools in Great Britain, ‘“ There is a large class in England, from whom we hear most about preserving the independence of the poor, who have always been opposed to measures intended to enlarge popular freedom. They find a personal gratification in the exercise of petty char- ity and the power to deal out to the working-classes little doles such as are provided for the remission and payment of school fees. Notwithstanding their homilies about parental independ- ence and responsibility, they possess the spirit of patronage so long fostered by the social conditions of the country, which has done much to keep so many of our people in a state of miserable dependence and ‘subjection. When their system of alms-giving can be carried on at the public expense, their zest is no doubt greater and they will not willingly surrender any 86 power which still has force to pluck ‘the slavish hat from the villager’s head.’ ‘i'his class now stands in the way of the com- plete realization of the free school system in England.” The vast pauperism of England, especially among the farm laborers, is largely due to the want of. free schools. The facts and figures, both in regard to illiteracy and pauperism-are appalling. The saddest sight to me in Hngland strangely con- trasted with her glories and beauties many and great, of which every Englishman is justly proud, was the low and wretched condition of her illiterate masses. Lest any just statement from an alien may seem exaggerated, I will quote from those to the manor born, for these facts from the lips of Englishmen, prove the evils of ignorance, if. not the value of universal edu- cation. Rev. Dr. J. H. Riggs of London, who, in his zeal to prove our free schools a failure, quotes my description* of a few of our worst school-houses and poorest district schools, as if they were of general significance, and proclaims that ten weeks serves for the training of teachers in the Normal School of Connecticut, and that some of the schools of Maine are kept open but three or four weeks in the year, with kindred exag- gerations and. caricatures, unworthy of reply, and who finds almost everything English superior to anything American, is compelled to say, ‘‘ Huglish pauperism is a problem and a por- tent which seldom makes a due impression on an Englishman. Its monstrous character and dimensions are so familiar to us that they seldom strike us as monstrous. This vast and com- plex evil, this ulcer in the body politic, in its character and extent in this country, is absolutely a unique fact, because there is nothing comparable with it in the world besides. The number of persons annually in receipt of pauper relief is upwards of a million. The annual cost of poor relief is £7,886,724 (nearly $40,000,000). Abjectness and reckless- ness form the main element of the pauper’s home. His cot- tage may consist of three rooms—the common room filled with litter and discomfort, and two bed rooms for all the inmates, parents and children, lads and lasses and often a male lodger, so that neatness and decency are precluded. ‘T'oo often the cottage is even worse, a wretched double cell, where penury * As found in several Reports of the Board of Education. 87 cowers, chastity can hardly survive, and female delicacy must be unknown, the house only a shelter, full of cumber and litter. Such are the homes of. the majority of our English peasantry in the southern, western and south middle districts, and, of many in most parts of Hngland and in wide districts of Scot- land and Wales. Such is the condition of the pauperized peas- ants, not as poets have painted, England’s glory, but her reproach.” Rev. James Martineau says: ‘The social discrep- ancies which disfigure and affect society have here assumed a monstrous and fearful character. Our country is a vast conge- ries of exaggerations. Hnormous wealth and saddest poverty, sumptuous idleness and unrewarded toil, princely provision for learning and the most degrading ignorance, a large amount of laborious philanthropy but a larger of unconquered misery and sin terrify us with their dreadful contrasts of light and shade. It is appalling to think of the moral cost by which England has become materially great. Where is the laborer by whose hand the soil has been tilled? In a cabin, with his children, where the domestic decencies cannot be. I know not which is the most heathenish, the guilty negligence of our lofty men, or the fearful degradation of the low.” John Bright says: “Fearful suffering exists among the rural laborers in almost every part of this kingdom. What wretched, uneared for, untaught brutes, in helpless stolid ignorance, are the people who raise the crops on which we live, and what dirt, vice and misery in the houses where seven or eight persons of both sexes are penned up together in one rickety, foul, vermin- haunted bed-room—their wages reduced to the very lowest point at which their lives can be kept in them! They are heart-broken,.spirit-broken, despairing men—reduced to such brutality, recklessness, audacity of vice and extreme helpless- ness that they have no aspirations to better their condition. Accustomed to this from their youth, they can see nothing in the future which can afford them a single ray of hope. As the rural laborer looks longingly up the social ladder of ranks, the first six or eight steps are broken out, and there seems to him no chance to span the chasm.” J. Scott Russell said ten years ago, “Something must be done, or our working classes will be grievously wronged and the 88 whole nation suffer. Poor England, standing by idle, is too late. Her workingmen, grown up uneducated, cannot now be educated, are too old to learn. They have lost a generation. Where was the fault? where the blame? Why did not our statesmen and aristocracy, already provided with special uni- versities and schools for their own training, foresee that our trade was going away to more skilled nations, and warn us in time? ‘The contrast between England and Switzerland is this; England spends more than five times as much on pauperism and crime as she does on education, and Switzerland spends seven times as much on education as she does on pauperism and crime.” , It was in view of startling facts and statements like these from her own countrymen that England organized in 1870 an efficient system of public education. It is a striking fact that the latest statistics show a great diminution of both pauperism and crime. Instead of a million of paupers in 1870, the num- ber returned January, 1878, was 726,000.* The cost of juvenile crime and pauperism has been remarkably reduced. The London Police Commissioners testify to a great diminution of juvenile offences and affirm that every gang of juvenile thieves known to them has been broken up. Hven the adult popula- tion has been reached and elevated in some degree through their children. New hope and ambition have come to many an illiterate farm laborer, himself born to despair, by reason of ignorance born to helplessness and hopelessness, as he finds, though a thing unknown and undreamed of before, has children at school, and hence sees dawning upon them better prospects and possibilities than ever fell to his hard lot. The hopes cher- ished for children have thus cheered many a humble cottage. In striking contrast to the depressed condition of the farm laborer in his own land it is interesting to see the picture of the New Hngland farmer drawn by Rev. Dr. R. W. Dale, of Birmingham, in an address at Canonbury, Hngland, January 17, 1879. When traveling in this country, he frequently ex- pressed his surprise and admiration in view of the intelligence and independence of the farmers of New England. * The unprecedented financial embarrassments now experienced in England will no doubt swell the next returns. 89 After remarking that for a century and a half the Puritan colonists had been left practically undisturbed by any foreign element, Mr. Dale proceeded to speak of the type of character which had been developed in New England and of the present social condition of the people. ‘‘ From the 21,000 persons who, after five generations, were found in those States, descendants numbering at least four millions might be reckoned. At the present moment no population on the face of the earth enjoyed equal prosperity. Wealth was more equally distributed than in any other conmunity; and the real and personal estate, liable to assessment, now averaged nearly £240 per head for the imhab- itants, or £1,150 for each family, reckoning the family at five persons. The New England farmer had from the first adopted the belief that the way to fight the devil was by the school and the church, and that behef had been thoroughly and consistently acted upon. ‘he influence of this vigorous race upon the United States, as a whole, had been immense. It was they who had been the great pioneers in the development of the resources of the country. It was they, chiefly, who had built Chicago, and who rebuilt it, after it had been destroyed by fire, with a quickness and splendor which rivalled the achievements described in the pages of romance. From the farm houses of New England had sprung many of America’s noblest orators, most learned theologians, and greatest statesmen and philan- thropists, and in the future the same people would contribute largely to the stability and greatness of their country. The history of these colonies, as contrasted with the history of other colonies, was an illustration of the true path of national great- ness.’ This remarkable contrast between the farm laborers of En- gland and New England as described by English writers furnishes a demonstration of the economy and value of the school system so long neglected there and maintained here. The earnest appeals of Joseph Arch, John Bright, Dr. Dale and others in behalf of the farm laborers of England, have awakened general sympathy, advanced their wages, and amel- iorated their condition. NATIONAL SCHOOLS. ‘“ Americans have no National System of Education,” is the slur one often hears in EKurope. To this criticism, my ready answer was, we need none and are fully determined to have none. ‘The maintenance and control of schools has never been the aim of our National Government. Our local independence and repugnance to federal interfer- ence and our complete State sovereignty in educational mat- ters, is an enigma to Huropeans, being in marked contrast to their traditions and usages. In England, for example, the School Board of any town or city may not select a site, build a school house, or prescribe the amount of a school fee without the sanction of the National Hducational Department. But the complete decentralization of the American school system, though a point of weakness in Huropean eyes, is, in fact, a prime source of its strength. The fact that our Schools are wholly in the hands of the people, supported by the funds they raise, controlled by officers chosen by them and responsi- ble to them, is a leading element of their prosperity. Though certain bills lately introduced into Congress indicate that a few would welcome European centralization and control, the general public sentiment of the country has so long been erowing in favor of the unfettered working of State systems, that this has now become our settled policy, which no lobby in Washington can change if it would, and should not if it could. If a strong central government be essential for an ignorant nation, an intelligent people can govern themselves. In Amer- ica, the success of schools in each State will depend upon the intelligence and consequent appreciation of its people. One of the worst legacies left by slavery is that of ignorance, and con- sequent indifference to schools, or rather of insensibility to the evils of illiteracy or to the advantages of education. Shall the admitted school destitution of the South, or of some new Western States, be promptly removed by federal agency, or more gradually supplanted by developing a proper local public sentiment. In the past, states and nations have been slow in 91 learning the lesson that alike to individuals and peoples, igno- rance means waste and weakness, if not pauperism and crime, and that education tends to economy, thrift and virtue. But there is a great acceleration in the working of moral and intellectual forces so that now in a decade, sometimes in a single year, are accomplished broader results than formerly in a century. The day for coércion and dictation is passing. The growing assimilation and power of public sentiment is felt the world over. It has broken down the walls of China, the isola- tion of Japan, the serfdom of Russia, the slavery of America, and is now rapidly relaxing the grasp of tyranny even in that eenter of oriental despotism, Turkey. But nowhere else is public sentiment so supreme in its influence as in America, and never before has that sentiment been so strong in favor of the support of free public schools as to-day. A striking illustration, both of the difference and power of public sentiment, was furnished more than a century ago by the replies sent by two American colonies to questions put by the English Commissioners for Foreign Plantations. The Goy- ernor of Virginia replied, ‘‘l thank God we have no free schools or printing presses, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years.” The Governor of Connecticut answered, ‘“One-fourth the annual revenues of the Colony is laid out in maintaining free schools for the education of our children.” Accordingly, till after the late civil war, Virginia had no gen- eral public school system. Thomas Jefferson prepared with his own hand a bill for a free school system, of which he said, ‘‘ By this bill, the people will be qualified to understand their rights and to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government. Provided for all children alike, rich and poor, the expenses of these schools will be borne by the inhabitants of each county, in proportion to their general tax-rates, and all this will be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any individual citizen.” Jefferson caused the words, ‘“ Founder of the University” to be inscribed on his tombstone, but he placed a far higher esti- mate on free schools than on ‘superior education.” Though defeated in this cherished plan, he defended it to the last, and said shortly before his death, ‘‘ Were it necessary to give up 92 either the Primaries, or the University, I would rather abandon. the last, because it is safer to have a whole people respectably enlightened, than a few in a high state of science, and the many in ignorance. The advantages of popular education are above all estimate. The objects should be to give every citi- zen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business, enabling him to calculate for himself and express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing; to improve by reading, his morals and his faculties; to under- stand his duties to his neighbor and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; to know his rights and exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates, and to notice their conduct with diligence, candor and judgment, and, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all his social relations. All the States but our own are sensible that knowledge is power. Weare sinking into the barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect, like them, to oppose by ignorance the overwhelming mass of hght and science by which we shall be surrounded. Surely Governor Clinton’s display of the gigantic efforts of New York in education, will stimulate the pride as well as the patriotism of our Legislature to look to the reputation and safety of their own State, to res- cue it from the degradation of becoming the Barbary of the Union and of falling into the ranks of our own negroes. ‘To that condition it is fast sinking.” How different would have been the history of Virginia had she heeded the wise counsel of this, her most eminent and far-seeing statesman? ‘'o the lasting harm of that State a different sentiment prevailed, so that as late as 1860, a leading Virginia paper said, ‘“ We have got to hating everything with the prefix /ree, from free negroes down and up through the whole catalogue, free farms, free labor, free society, free will, free thinking, free children and FREE SCHOOLS—all belonging to the same brood of damnable sins. But the worst of all these abominations is the modern system of free schools. The New England system of free schools has been the prolific source of the infidelities and trea- sons that have turned her cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs, and her land into the common nestling place of howling Bed- 93 lamites. We abominate the system, because the schools are free.” The long neglect of public schools so manifestly checked the growth and prosperity of the Old Dominion, notwith- standing her vast natural resources, and created so marked a contrast between her and other States far less favored in all the elements of material prosperity, that the logic of events has at last swept away these objections and converted old opponents to friends and supporters of free schools. At length Virginia rejoices in a free public school system. The progress of her public schools since the war is remarkable, accomplished in the face of prejudice, ignorance, and great financial embarrass- ments, for Virginia had her full share in the loss of over “three thousand millions of dollars sunk by the Southern States by the war,” an amount larger than all the property of New England. ‘To the question, How can schools be organized for the Southern States, without Federal aid or interference? the answer is, Look at Virginia, especially the schools of Richmond, Petersburg, Lynchburg, Staunton and Norfolk. Public sentiment there has been revolutionized. The common schools are growing in favor. Prejudice, opposition and penu- riousness of course still exist, but are evidently waning. I in- spected most of the schools of Richmond with as much delight as surprise, alike in view of the interest of the pupils, the cul- ture of the teachers and the excellence of the schools. Private schools have greatly diminished and the children of the rich generally attend the public schools. Considered as the growth of eight years, the Virginia system is a most gratifying work. In the light of such facts, and in view of the rapid working of intellectual forces in this age and country, and the growing power of public sentiment, shall the most illiterate portions of our land be reached by Natzonal Schools supported by National aid and in any way controlled by a National De- partment? Shall the National Bureau of Education become a Federal Department, enlarged and authorized to organize and maintain a National University—or, with still greater expan- sion, empowered to establish schools and distribute the income from the sale of public lands, whether in proportion to existing illiteracy, school attendance, or the length and grade of the schools maintained ? 94 Hitherto the National Bureau of Education has been simply advisory. It has, and it was intended to have, no authority. As an agency for collecting and disseminating needful inforiaa- tion, it has already done great good, and promises to be still more useful in the future. But the attempt to organize a National University, support And direct local schools, or in any way interfere with State systems, would end its useful- ness, if not end itself. Hvery true friend of this Bureau should protest against any such “enlargement of the field of its operations.” ‘The principle of State independence is too firmly fixed in the faith of all classes to brook any federal interference in school matters, even in the States or Terri- tories most destitute and backward in education. In an ill- conditioned community lke that in New Mexico for example, still Mexican in their traditions, sentiments and peoples, juxta- posed, but not’ blended with the heterogeneous elements of a swarming immigration from all parts of the country, not to say of the world, American ideas and institutions are yet in their rudimentary forms and earlier stages of development. Shall a Federal Bureau, at once in European style, enforce there its best plans of public schools, or leave them by a slower, surer, and more healthful process, to work out their own salvation? As the: schools of every community answer to local public opin- ion, their success must depend on the sympathy and apprecia- tion of the people. Public sentiment is a growth, not the creature of power made to order of any sort or size, as some have talked of “ fiat money.” DECENNARY OF FREE SCHOOLS. The free school system of Connecticut has now had a trial of ten years and is no longer an experiment. This “new law” was so radical in its character as to meet general opposi- tion when first proposed in 1867. During the next year there was so great a change in public sentiment that it was enacted with great unanimity by the General Assembly of 1868. The struggle which this system had to wage for its existence is over, for it has been amply ratified by the people. The gauge of public interest is the increased burden of taxation which the people of Connecticut have chosen to bear, for school taxes are self-imposed. The amount raised by taxa- tion for schools ten years ago was $628,152.12. The amount raised by State, town and district taxation last year was $1,252,248.63, or about double the amount reported in 1868. The enemies of free schools have either been converted or learned the futility of open opposition. Dissentients are still found whose sympathy is needed to give the highest efficiency to the system. As the condition of the schocls in each dis- trict answers largely to local public sentiment, the codperation of every parent and citizen is essential to the fullest success. A brief review of the history and results of the free school system furnishes encouragement to its friends, and presents facts fitted to satisfy the minds of all honest doubters. Con- vinced that the rate-bill was wrong in principle and harmful in practice I directed my earliest efforts, on entering the service of the State, to secure its repeal. During the session of the Legislature for 1867, the Joint Standing Committee on Hdu- eation finally consented to recommend a bill for free schools, though with little faith in the measure and no expectation of carrying it. As the bill met no favor in either House, out of courtesy to its author, it was referred to the next General Assembly. During the next year the subject was fully dis- cussed in numerous meetings in all parts of the State, the Secretary giving two hundred and six lectures on this and kindred topics. : 96 Many sincere friends of education, deprecating these efforts, gave faithful warning as to their certain failure. The subject was freely discussed also in the press, and brought very promi- nently before the people. ‘The sentiment was widely pro- claimed that it is the duty and interest of the State to furnish substantially equal common school privileges to the children of all classes. Self-protection was claimed to be the right of the government. For this purpose it maintains armies and navies. But safer and better every way than forts and fleets, indispensable as they may be, better for its peace and security, its prosperity and protection, is universal education. Comparatively few now press the objection which was widely urged ten years ago, viz: “It is unjust to tax me for the education of other people’s children. I have none. Let those who have, pay the cost of their schooling.” This objec- tion is founded on a false theory of government. The State justly claims a right to its citizens for its defense, a right to lay its equal and needful claim on their property, time and service. For the achievement of our independence, and more recently for the preservation of our institutions, how many were called to endure toil, hardship and death. This claim of the State involves the correlative truth that the State has duties as | well as rights, and foremost among them is the duty of secur- ing a good common school education to the children of all classes. The right of a State to support free schools is little else than its right to defend itself by a humanizing and civilizing edu- eation against what otherwise would become a degraded and dangerous class in society. The right of a free State to self- existence implies the right to maintain free schools, essential as they are to its preservation and prosperity. Education is the cheapest police agency a State can employ. Ina wisely admin- istered government, educational taxes are the fares which we pay on railroad cars, the price for being safely carried and well provided for, through the journey of life. These taxes are founded primarily not on the idea of benefiting parents and children, but the broader view, that the State has a proprietary interest in all persons and property within its bounds and espe- cially has a stake in her youth that they may be well qualified 97 for her service, whether that shall be on the farm, in the fac- tory, in the counting room or in the field of arms. It was really the better education of the North that saved the Union during the late civil war, as it was the ignorance of the “ poor white trash” making them the dupes of demagogues that rendered the rebellion possible in the South. In 1868 Governor English exerted his influence strongly in favor of free schools. In his annual message to the Legisla- lature he said: “The rate-bill should be abolished and the schools sustained at the common expense.” In his parting address to the General Assembly of that year he said: “The measures which you have adopted to promote the interests of the people will meet with a generous approval at their hands. Hspecially will they thank you for the interest you have taken in the common schools. In adopting the free school system recommended in my annual message, I am confident you have taken an important step forward in the cause of edu- cation, and that your action in this regard will prove as bene- ficial in results as the motives which prompted it were ee from political influence or bias.” As Governor English intimates, this new Jaw was not in any wise a party measure. ‘That a measure so radical should pass unanimously in the Senate and with only four nays in the House was more than its most sanguine friends expected. The press of the State was a unit in its favor. The leading men of both parties were its advocates. Itis fortunate that on educa- tional questions, men of all parties and all religious denomina- tions meet on common ground and cordially codperate for the common good. The platforms and creeds, which divide men outside, should never enter the common school—common be- cause open to all, free to all; where no class distinctions are recognized and no favoritism is shown. The law has received an emphatic ratification from the peo- ple. ‘Two years later, when its influence in increasing taxa- tion had been fully felt, an earnest effort was made in the Legislature for its repeal, which signally failed. Opposition and discussion helped this measure, as they always do any other which can bear close scrutiny and stand the test of ex- perience. When the proof was placed before the people that th | 98 thousands of children had been barred from school by the rate- bill, it was generally admitted that the results already attained proved the wisdom and necessity of the free system. The Democratic State Convention, held in Hartford, January 17, 1871, unanimously adopted the following comprehensive resolution : “« Resolved, That the ‘source of power being in the people, Free Schools and general education are essential to good government and the perpetuation of free Institutions.” The Republican State ‘Cotivention, beld in New Haven one week later, adopted a resolution Serial strong in favor of free schools. Since that date, no opposition to the measure has been made or intimated in the Legislature. The subject of free schools was ably discussed by School Visitors in their Reports to their several towns. To give a single illustration of the strong and practical way this subject was brought home to the people in local reports in 1873, the able Report for Litch- field, written by Governor Andrews, then Secretary of the Board of School Visitors, said: ‘‘The argument in favor of free schools is short and decisive. Hvery person recognizes the duty of society to protect the lives of children. Our law protects the lives even of children unborn, for the reason that it is for the benefit of society that children should be born and reared. If, then, society may for its own benefit preserve the mere animal existence of a child, the obligation irresistibly follows that society must see to it that the life so preserved shall develop into a useful, intelligent and moral citizen, and not into a ruffian and a curse. The logic is impregnable; — society should either destroy all children, or guide, protect and train them up to careful citizenship. Hstablish infanticide, or some system of free instruction. But the time for argument on the abstract question of free schools in our State is passed. As good citizens, we ought to’ use every effort that the system so inaugurated shall be successful.” In 1868, a leading objection to the ‘system was its sapalleees | tendency to lessen the interest and responsibility of parents. — The natural argument was that men. never value what: costs them nothing. But the fact is, parents do pay, and all pay their fair and equal portion for the support of this- central, 99 public interest. The poor man who only pays a poll tax gives his share as truly as does the millionaire. The system has manifestly dignified the school in the esteem of both pa- rents and pupils, and quickened the educational spirit of the whole people. Every tax-payer, having contributed his part to the support of the schools, feels that he has a right to look after his investment. The details of our public schools are better known to parents than are the plans of private schools to their patrons. Asa result of free schools, the great majority of the town reports concur in saying: “There has been a de- cided advance in the number at school, in regularity of attend- ance, and in the manifest interest of the people.” More than ever it is felt that the schools belong to the people. In patron- ‘izing them the poorest parent is: proudly conscious he has no- leave to ask, no patron to conciliate, and no alms to beg. Hvery body pays something and feels that it is a good investment, and one which justly entitles him to its advantages. In the past ten years the increase in enumeration has been 14,757, while the increase in the number registered in public schools has been 20,438. T’he number in private schools was first reported nine years ago, and the increase in that time has been 1,526. Ifit be assumed that the number ten years since was the same as nine years ago,— which is very nearly correct,— then the increase in attendance in both public and private schools in the last ten years is 21,964, which exceeds the Increase in enumeration by 7,207. NEGLECTED CHILDREN. This subject continues to claim attention. As the trend of the tide is here against us, to stem it requires constant watch- fulness. Without effort, a backset would cover ground well nigh reclaimed. For, however well done, this is a work like that of a physician, that never stays done. Old cures will not stop the breaking out of new cases. In dealing with negligent parents our main reliance has still been kindness and persua- sion, appeals to their parental love and pride, their sense of duty and their personal interest in view of the great importance of education to their children, and the rich privileges freely proffered them in the public schools. The same arguments have often reached the children, and thus they have gained a higher appreciation of the influence of the school upon their happiness, thrift and prosperity through life. Teachers as well as school officers may greatly help in this good work. Itis the teacher's duty, or rather his privilege, to visit the parents of truant or neglected children, learn the causes of delinquency and secure parental codperation. As I have urged this duty, a few teachers have asked substantially—‘ Is that in the bond,” “what does the law demand?” as if the one ruling thought was— what is the minimum work I must do; but fortunately there are but few teachers whose theory and practice limit their duties and sympathies to the school house and school hours. On the other hand, a large proportion of our teachers, bent on doing the utmost good to their pupils, inquire into causes of absence from school, visit pupils in sickness, and thus often win the confidence and codperation of parents otherwise captious or indifferent. Among the causes of absenteeism is the want of proper clothing. In these hard times, while many willing hands are unable to find employment, this plea is by no means limited to the huts or haunts of indolence, intemperence and profligacy. Where parents are really too poor to provide comfortable clothing, the pressing needs of their children should enlist the sympathies of the benevolent. Here true charity may do as 101 truly Christian work as by any gifts for missions in pagan lands. That charity which really begins at home is at once most comprehensive and diffusive. Poor children have often been thus provided that they might attend the Sabbath school, and this effort is worthy of all praise, but even for morality and: piety, thirty hours a week in the public school is worth far more than one hour in the Sabbath school. In some towns the Selectmen have met this exigency. While great caution should be used not to encourage indolence and improvidence, there are cases of destitution where town aid may be used as wisely to prevent starving the mind as famishing the body. The fact that nearly ninety-five per cent. of our children are reported as in schools of all kinds, shows that the law for the prevention of illiteracy has worked beneficently and opened to hundreds the door of the school house otherwise closed to them forever. The influx of the foreign element suggests the lead- ing cause of absenteeism. Those who need the most watching are of alien parentage, as yet novices in the English language, speaking chiefly a foreign tongue. ‘There is also a large class _—of native children, whose parents, being illiterate immigrants, do not yet appreciate the advantages of education. But four parents have been prosecuted and fined during the year. Instead of brandishing the penalties of the law, we have kept them in the background, and urged mainly the. great advantages of education. These persuasions are, however, sometimes enforced by the delicate hint that we desire to avoid the painful duty of prosecution which must follow any and every case of willful and open defiance of the law. As will be seen by the following report, the prosecution of the employer and three parents in one town, resulted in promptly bringing seventy children to school. | It was a very gratifying fact that the superintendent of one of the largest factories in the State, after being prosecuted for the employment of children who had not received the required schooling, and being bound over to the Superior Court, should have the manliness to write to the Agent of the Board: “ The Jegal measures you took were right and proper, as you used every other means in your power, and the law as the last resort. From this time, you may be assured, I shall use my 102 best efforts to comply with the law—and without the law, I think the parents would have defeated me in getting their children ‘to school, but they now find that they are liable as well as myself, and I shall have their codperation in bringing about the desired result. I shall be pleased to see you at any time, and have your advice and suggestions in regard to educating the children.” The sincerity of this declaration ‘was evinced by the order promptly given to the overseers, “ enforce the law for the schooling of children, even if its observance should stop the mill.” If this stimerinientlens was the greatest sinner, he now bids fair to be the best saint in our “canon” of employers of children. Whatever may be true in monarchical governments, in our country there is every motive to kindness and conciliation in the execution of this law. Our plan is truly democratic, for its entire management is by the people and for the people, through school officers chosen by the people and responsible to the people, and hence commands popular sympathy. It is not pressed upon the people by some higher power, but is their own work, embodying their judgment and preferences. The old form of compulsory education which existed in Connecticut for more than a hundred and fifty years was not forced upon the people as “subjects.” It was rather a living organism, of which they as “sovereigns” proudly claimed the paternity, growing up with their growth and recognized as the source of their strength and prosperity. After the utmost use of kind- ness, tact, and: persuasion, and every effort to awaken a dor- mant parental pride, and showing that education will promote their children’s thrift and happiness through life, we find that such persuasions are the more effective when it is understood that the sanctions of the law might be employed. We have used the right to enforce mainly as an argument to persuade. As thus used, we know in Connecticut that our law has been a moral force. It is itself an effective advocate of education to the very class who need it most. It has already accomplished great good and brought into the schools many children wa would otherwise ie been absentees. FRENCH VIEWS OF AMERICAN SCHOOLS. In 1876, the French Government appointed F. Buisson with SIX assistants, to examine and report upon the American school system. ‘The Commissioners were all educational experts, con- nected with the Department of Public Instruction. They made a careful inspection of the school exhibits at our Cen- tennial Exposition, and visited schools in various states from Massachusetts to Missouri. Repeated interviews with Monsieur Buisson led me to expect a most valuable Report from an observer of such culture, breadth and judgment, aided as he was by such eminent associates. This expectation has been amply met. Professor Swinton, who has translated a sum- mary of this Report, fitly says: ‘““We owe to a Frenchman the best statement of the philosophy of American politics. And now. we shall have to credit to another Frenchman the best statement of the philosophy of American education. If this Report has not the monumental character of De Tocque- ville’s Democracy, it is by far the most comprehensive and the most valuable analysis thus far made of public instruction in the United States. It is our whole free school system, its organization, working, methods and _ results, set forth in its glories and in its faults, in its strength and in its weakness, by a critic as sympathetic as he is acute. By those who personally met the Commissioners, the Report of what they saw and what they thought of what they saw, has been awaited with lively interest. Well, we have at last after two years the Compie rendu of their mission embodied in a great octavo of some 700 pages, published in Paris under the auspices of the French Ministry of Public Instruction. The mere outlay that must have attended the mission and the publication of so costly a volume, enriched with plates, plans, etc., is a marked compli- ment to American education.” z In condensing the following statements so as to read freely, I have modified the language of the writer for the sake of brev- ity. Ifthe rhetoric has suffered, the thought is retained. A republican government needs the whole power of educa- tion, said Montesquieu. This sentiment never found a fitter 104 illustration than in the United States. If any people ever used this “ power of education,” or united its destinies to the develop- ment of its schools, or made public instruction the supreme guarantee of its liberties, the condition of its prosperity, the safeguard of its institutions, that is most assuredly the people of the United States. This role assigned to the school in social life has long been the most characteristic feature which foreign- ers have observed in American customs. This solicitude for the education of youth grows with the growth of the country, enters more and more into public opinion, and is incorporated in more decisive acts. What in the beginning might seem a burst of enthusiasm has gradually assumed the force of a pro- found conviction. No longer the work of philanthropists, or of religious societies, it has become a public service for which states, cities and towns include in their ordinary taxes sums which no country in the world had hitherto thought of conse- crating to education. So far from restricting itself to ele- mentary education, this generosity extends so as to provide free institutions of superior secondary instruction. Public opinion approves, nay, enacts these sacrifices, so clear has it become to all eyes that the future of the American people will be what its schools make it. Many causes conspire to give the American school this unique importance. At first it was the influence of the Pro- testant element. The early settlers of New England knew of no grander duty, or more precious privilege than reading the Bible. Holding ignorance to be barbarism, they early enacted that each town shall have a school and that each family shall instruct its children. In proportion as their government be- - came democratic, that. which at first was only a religious duty became also a political necessity. Where everything depends © on the will of the people, that will must be enlightened, at the risk of utter ruin. Education, useful elsewhere, is here essential. Universal suffrage means universal education or demagogy. This country is peopled by the constant immigration of men of every race, class, and religion, who have little in common but the desire to better their condition. The mixed and ignor- ant crowds who form the bulk of this immigration tend to 105 group themselves according to their nationality. Hence they need to be Americanized as soon as possible. The Irish, Ger- man, French, Scandinavians and Spaniards must not desire to constitute themselves a nation in the nation, but these immi- erants must themselves be the American nation and make their boast of it. What is the instrument of this marvellous trans- formation? What institution has so infused the American blood into these thousands of colonists, who have hardly had time to forget Kurope? It is the public school, and its useful- ness in this direction alone justifies its cost. Suppose that instead of these public institutions, the new immigrants could find only private schools, all would be changed. Hach would _ follow his own ideas and customs, each group would constitute itself apart, perpetuating its language, traditions, creed, its ancient national spirit and also its own prejudices. Instead of accustoming the child to a healthful contact with conflicting opinions, the school would be a confessional, the distinction of rich and poor, of the child that pays and the charity pupil would perpetuate and pronounce itself. It is a capital fact for America, thanks to daily contact in the public schools, that the antipathy of the white to the colored child has begun to yield. And the United States without this fusion of races, without unity of language, without the equality of social classes, without the mutual tolerance of all the sects, above all, without the ardent love of their new country and its institu- tions, would that be the United States at all? All that this country has become and is now, is literally due to the public school. In proportion as a nation advances, the dangers which the school is to avert go on increasing. For this reason they redouble their efforts and liberality for schools. As the native population does not increase as fast as the foreign or mixed population, the time may come when the American element, the native Yankee, will be in the minority. Hence the United States omit no measure fitted to imbue the new population with the American spirit and so assimilate them that they shall seize and make the national traditions their own. The Profession of Teaching in the United States.—In France a person enters the career of teaching with the view of creating 106 for himself a stable and permanent position. Those who abandon it before obtaining their retiring pension form the exception. The young beginner expects to live and die a teacher, and as each year adds to his previous experience, the time comes when, possessed of adequate theoretical and prac- tical knowledge, he is able to discipline his class nee and successfully. Not at all thus is it in the United States. The profession of teacher seems to be a sort of intermediate stage in one’s career —a stage at which the young woman awaits an establishment suited to her tastes, and the young man a more lucrative posi- tion. For many young people, this transitory profession simply furnishes the means of continuing their studies Few male teachers remain more than five years in the service; and, if the lady teachers show a longer term, it is not to be forgotten that marriage is usually the end of their desires, and that, once married, they. almost always resign their positions. It has thus come to pass, by the mere force of circumstances, that the school authorities have been led not only to establish various regulations for the application of school laws, but also to lay down detailed courses of study containing the subjects to be taught in each kind of school, in each class, often in each division, and this for each term, if not for each month in the year. The time-tables in schools that are at all regularly attended are fixed in advance, the text-books are chosen by the school board; and finally, school manuals, often of great value, are furnished as a vade mecum, from which teachers may derive information as to methods and the various details of daily work. Time-Tables.—A. class in an American public school, even in the cities, comprises at least three divisions or sections, and in some classes with not more than forty-five pupils, five sections are found. But while in France it is a principle not to go beyond three divisions, and to bring these together as frequently as possible in collective lessons, such as reading, writing, history, geography, object lessons, and dictation—whereby these exer- cises receive the amount of time required for some degree of fullness in the development of the subject,—the American system rarely admits a combination of this kind. Hach div1- 107 sion has its own separate lessons in the different branches, with an occasional exception in the case of oral spelling and object lessons. ‘Thus in a session of two and one-half hours of actual work, we have counted in the primary schools and in the country schools as many as fourteen distinct exercises—a number reduced to seven in the grammar schools; but there is always one-half at least of the pupils that remain unem- ployed, while the others receive their lessons or go through their “recitation,” as it is called in the United States. This everlasting coming and going of study and of recitation gives rise to a perpetual movement in the class-room. Moreover, as monitors are never employed, it comes to pass that a very limited period of time can be given to the lessons, and even this time is diminished by the frequent changes of place, for generally, in recitation, the pupils leave their seats and arrange themselves standing, along the class-room wall, and then return to their seats during the fifteen minutes or half hour of ‘‘study,” their place in the meantime being taken by others. In many a time-table we have seen lessons in reading, arithmetic and history reduced to ten and even to five minutes, and, in lke manner, general lessons in botany and physiology cut down to five minutes in the first grade of a grammar school. What is to be expected from such a procedure? It is in vain that the best arranged programmes are put into the hands of teachers, or that the most valuable pedagogic directions are laid down for their guidance—their intelligence and their devo- tion must both be foiled by the vices of such a system. The time-tables—rarer, by the way, than any other docu- ments—appear to.us the weak part in the organization of American schools. There is nothing to indicate that most important matter, to wit, the work of those divisions which the teacher has not immediately in hand. The pupils are “studying,” they told us, but what are they studying? Undi- rected and unwatched, we have our fears as to this “studying.” ‘Of course, there must be a great abuse of copying work, that mechanical task so justly proscribed in France; and worse still, it cannot be possible, owing to the lack of time, to develop the reasoning and observing powers of the children. Instruc- 108 tion, reduced as it is, per force, to dry recitations or mechanical exercises, is barren in tae lower grades, where this evil is the worst, while in the higher grades it cannot but be fettered, and must produce results below what might be expected from so choice a body of teachers, and so excellent an organization. School Manuals.—EKvery one of the various courses of study that we examined has joined to it, by way of complement, pedagogic directions for the use of teachers. Prepared, as these are, by competent persons, they bring the attention of teachers to the carrying out of the courses of study, the mode of conducting recitations and the nature and aim of practical exercises; in a word, they give the school system a unity that secures the regular progress of instruction, while it renders inspection more effective. Country Schools—Owing to the representations of certain enthusiastic travelers, a most lovely idea of the American rural school-house is common in France: it 1s pictured as a nest among flowers. Thither resort, each morning, on prancing ponies, red-cheeked lassies and lads, grave and proud and respectful to their young mates as our cavaliers of the good old times. ‘The mistress—herself young—smilingly receives them at the entrance, o’ershadowed by great trees. How remote is the reality from this picture, this charming exception to a state of things still in its rude beginnings! We traversed the vast plains where the husbandman struggles against an unconquerable vegetation, and the still halfwild valleys in the regions of iron, coal and oil,—and it was not our lot to find any such school idyl. In the country, stone or brick school-houses form the excep- tion; frame buildings, so cold in winter and so scorching in summer, are much more numerous, and the log-house has not yet disappeared. In the most flourishing States, what com- plaints are made against defective school accommodations! Let it not be said that, in describing the rural schools of the United States, we have sought out exceptional cases; we have tried our best to do justice to that great country, but we cannot conceal the fact that in the rural districts the school-houses are poor affairs and poorly equipped. Thus in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, out of twenty-two teachers’ reports, fourteen 109 stated that the class-rooms were absolutely destitute of every- thing in the way of means for visual instruction, that is, there were neither maps nor blackboards; two schools had one map each; one school possessed an old globe; other schools no blackboards and no reading books; a single school was fur- nished with suitable apparatus. The Courses of Study in Ungraded Schools are still in the tenta- tive period, not to say in a state of chaos. Some are too suc- cinct and barely outlined ; others reflect the personal predilec- tions of the teacher and show that ingenuous pedantry so often found associated with total inexperience. Sometimes a good deal less than the required course is done; sometimes it is greatly exceeded ; such studies as history, music, composition, drawing and book-keeping being taken up, and in some cases algebra, physiology, geology, natural philosophy, and rhetoric even. The worst evil from which rural schools suffer is irregularity of attendance. Teachers and superintendents bitterly complain of this. As a partial remedy, and as a means of allowing chil- dren to attend school without wholly depriving parents of their help, some States have lately established a number of “ half- time” classes, in which attendance is reduced to a single session per day. This measure has everywhere been followed by good results, and it would perhaps be advantageous to introduce it into our French system, for the summer term at least, and in the case of the older pupils. The Country School-houses are still in many instances built of wood, as are many of the finest dwellings, but they are frame buildings well put together, painted, and conveniently lighted. More frequently the constructions are of pressed brick with stone trimmings and slate roofs. You have only to see these coquettish school-houses, in the midst of vast lawns, shaded with fine trees and surrounded by palings, to judge of the place which the school holds in public opinion. It is indeed a national institution, devoted to the education of ‘ boys whose votes will decide the fate of the Republic, and of girls, one of whom may be the mother of the president of the United States.” W hat specially distinguishes the country school-house of the United States from that of Europe is the absence of lodgings 110 for master or mistress) Nowhere in the United States is this arrangement found. It is an evidence of a state of things not without its unfortunate side: the teacher is engaged for a year simply; he is paid by the month, and most frequently his certificate has but a limited duration. Under these circum- stances he but comes and goes; when he is not a resident of the locality, he takes board for the school term and has nothing but a study or office in the school-house. School-houses of New York City. —In the school idildingee in _ New York City everything is sacrificed to the reception hall with its vast platform, fitted to hold a desk, several arm-chairs and a piano. In the hall it is that the stranger visiting the school is received. ‘The movement of five or six hundred chil- dren entering in good order, to the sound of the piano, from six or eight adjoining rooms, while the folding doors opening below, show the smallest scholars ranked on steps—all this makes a fine show; but it is purchased too dearly, if the studies and the health of the children are to suffer thereby, as we can-— not but think that they must. The Kindergarten.—Infant Schools, which in France precede the primary school, form no part of the public school system of the United States. The few infant schools which exist are private establishments, or else free institutions, without legal recognition. Nevertheless, since 1871, Kindergartens on the Froebel plan have been attached to some of the public schools of Boston and St. Louis, and these establishments are every year gaining ground in a quite marked manner in all the States. The obstacles still encountered by the Kindergarten arise partly from American domestic manners, and partly from the prejudice which this German importation arouses in the minds of certain superintendents. Woman in America is much less employed than she is in France, Belgium, and England, in industrial employments that take her from her household. ‘‘Home, Sweet Home” is for the Anglo-Saxon a species of worship, and in this sphere the wife is to maintain order, peace and happiness, by attending to her husband and children. It is not to be thought of that she should go to a place of employment in the morning and stay there till evening. The hearth must not be cold nor the 111 house forsaken. And this is the motive that withdraws married women from public school-teaching. For what would become of her ‘‘ home,” and who would take care of her husband and children, when she was at school—generally considerably removed from her abode? In America the mother is the first instructor of her children, and generally she teaches them to read before sending them to public school. In the Kindergarten exhibits at Philadelphia we noticed everywhere the application of Froebel’s ideas, designed to interest children while amusing them, to excite and direct their attention, to accustom them to represent or put together objects of their own devising. ~ But with Americans the practical spirit is too strong for them readily to accept what does not offer an immediate result. One of the objections they urge against the Kindergarten is that it does not teach reading, writing and arithmetic (the three R’s). Indeed, these institutions are not likely to meet full acceptance in the United States until it shall be shown that the general traiing they give to very young children will induce rapid school-progress, until it shall be shown that chil- dren bring from the Kindergarten a certain stock of practical notions. Besides, there is the question of expense, and how can $16 be gotten for the education of a child of from 3 to 7 years of age, when this costs only $10 or $12 for a pupil of from 7 to 10 years of age? If the Kindergarten has made its way at but a few points in the United States, it is the object of an active advocacy and has the sympathy of eminent educators. The application it has already received tends to free the Froebel system of any too exclusive form, and to adapt it to the wants and the genius of the country. This same result we should seek to attain in France, with the view of infusing life into our infant schools, and awakening the faculties of the child, instead of putting them to sleep by merely mechanical modes of pro- cedure. fteading.—The reading of the French language certainly presents sufficient difficulty; but the extreme complication and the numerous anomalies of English pronunciation render the teaching of reading in that tongue a still more delicate 112 problem. Hence, in the United States, great ingenuity has been expended in the discovery of practical and speedy meth- ods. Germany has furnished many plans which have been ingeniously modified and applied. The ancient alphabetic method is now scarcely used at all in good schools. It is the longest and most monotonous method —and it is the method best known in France. This method was not represented at the Exposition. Even in the country schools in the United States, there are not on the average twenty in a hundred that use the old spelling plan, and in many States it is not employed at all. Manifestly public opinion has pronounced for the new methods. In the phonic method, imported from Germany, the teacher drills the child first in the pronunciation of the sounds of the language, then in distinguishing the signs by which these are represented. He thus proceeds from the sound to the symbol, from the letter uttered to the letter figured, in place of passing from the name of the letter to its phonic value, which is often very difficult. However, this method, applied strictly and in its whole scope, assumes that, as is the case of German, a given letter always corresponds with a given sound, and this is not the case with the English language. Hence many objections have been raised to the purely phonic method, which indeed had to be modified into the word method or the phonetic method. The phonic method, even when aided by all the American improvements of the word method, will always meet with grave objections. Excellent for German and Spanish, in which a letter has rarely more than a single power, it encounters in French, and still more so in English, anomalies resulting from the constant use of the same sign for different sounds, or of two different signs for the same sound, not to speak of useless double consonants, silent letters, ete. This consideration has led to the invention, by Dr. Edwin Leigh, of a method based on the same principle, but which in its application has recourse to typographical innovations. In many schools the teachers make use of the Leigh method in connection with the word method, and this is called the eclectte method, for in America every new device assumes a pretentious name. 118 In most of the schools visited by us, special importance is attached to class exercises in pronunciation. The lady teachers throw a certain ardor into the work of articulation, and, if need be, they show the play of the vocal organs in the production of a given sound or element, as for instance th hard, or guttural r, etc. It is to be desired that this were done in France, and that our teachers appreciated the utility of this vocal gym- nastic, as bearing on reading or even on spelling. No pains are spared to give the pupils a correct pronunciation, not only in the primary but also in the most advanced classes. The master reads in a loud intelligible voice a passage from the Reader suited to the grade. The pupils repeat it in the same tone and with the same inflections. This is one of the liveliest and most curious exercises in an American school, and one which we have often witnessed with the keenest interest. The preceding account proves what importance is attached to read- ing in the United States. The method employed, very gener- ally a rational one, secures the speedy acquisition of reading, and inspires pupils with the love of reading; this is, doubtless, one of the reasons why there is no other country where people read better or read more. (The two following recommendations to French teachers, drawn from the Commissioners’ observations of American meth- ods of teaching reading, merit the special attention of school officers and teachers of Connecticut). 1. Zo render primary mstruction in reading not only more attractive, but more profitable, by enlivening 1t by means of object lessons, and carrying ut forward an connection with writing and rudimentary drawing. 2. To give more attention lo pronunciation, delivery, emphasis, and expressive reading. | The Mother Tongue.—The courses of study and the directions for teaching the English language reveal everywhere a truly practical spirit, and are full of judicious considerations. It is with entire justice that distinction is made between language training and grammatical study. It is readily understood that the English language, in which the laws of concord amount to scarcely anything, may content itself with this practical study. French, which deals more in rules and orthographic details, requires more attention to grammar. c 114 ee Two abuses strike us in the numerous papers on grammar and analysis that came under our eye. 1. The complication of parsing and analysis. In France also we carry written parsing too far, for everywhere routine acts in the same way and trans- forms into a mechanical exercise what, within proper limits, ought to be a valuable intellectual discipline. 2. Subtlety of distinction and complicated terminology. In grammatical in- struction it seems to the Americans that the simplicity of Kng- lish syntax ought to be made up for by a lavish use of scholastic distinctions, which, unfortunately, correspond to nothing in the construction of language. Dictation exercises which occupy so prominent a place in our French schools, are rare in the United States. A feature that deserves unreserved praise, and which we found in the better schools in the United States, is the develop- ment of the inventive faculty of the pupil by means of compo- sition-exercises outlined in the most general manner. Hven in the primary schools the teachers are beginning to require the pupils to write out an account of what is represented in a picture in the text-book or in a chromo placed before them. This is a capital exercise, and one that we cannot too strongly recommend for adoption in our French schools. The task con- sists simply in practicing the scholar in observing attentively, in telling what he sees, and in telling this in an orderly manner. Geography has long been a favorite study in American schools. It could not be otherwise in a country that has so many reasons for devoting itself to this science,—the immense extent of its territory, the great diversity in its phyiscal con- ditions, resources and population, the importance of its com- mercial relations with the whole world, not to mention the circumstances of its origin, whence it results that no land is absolutely foreign to it. In response to a well understood want, geographical instrue- tion early assumed a methodical form: this form, without being original, has still an American character, something national and sud generis. The old mode of instruction, bristling with repulsive nomenclatures which in nowise spoke to the mind or the imagination, and which merely loaded the memory, is still doubtless found in a multitude of rural schools; for in speak- 115 ing of the United States in general, it must never be forgotten that there is a distance of nearly half a century between the country school, properly so-called, and the town or city school. One of the happiest symptoms that strike the attention at the shghtest examination is that geographical study now almost always begins where it ought to begin—by making the child acquainted with the neighborhood, by a plan of the class room, the school-house, the street, the village ; in a word, a knowledge of the points of the compass, not merely on the map and as a matter of definition, but in nature, in a given locality. This very fact is an indication justifying the belief that geographical reform has penetrated deeply into educational practice, for it is gener- ally by such beginnings that this reform ends. It is more difficult to bring about a rectification in the manner of teaching these rudiments than it is to perfect subsequent instruction. And that this progress has been made in the United States is manifest in every way,—by the text-books, the courses of study, and the numberless specimens of work done by the scholars. The strong point in all this new geographical training is that it is really a series of object lessons, that it begins with the child’s own stock of knowledge instead of overwhelming him with abstractions and definitions. “ : Without overlooking the progress already made, we received the general impression that the new methods have not yet pen- etrated into the heart of primary teaching; they are known and applied sometimes in an admirable manner in the larger cities and in élz/e schools, but they are still unknown in most country schools, and between these two extremes are thou- sands of schools which as yet have hardly begun to feel the influence of the new ideas, and thousands that have the letter without the spirit thereof. The following features of Ameri- can geographical teaching are recommended as worthy of imi- tation :— I. To begin with the synthetic method, which, starting with local geography, progressively enlarges the horizon of study, but not to dwell too long on local geography ; to gwe pupils notions of general geography and cosmography as soon as they are able to receive them. Il. Zo practice pupils early in map drawing from memory and wn reproducing on the blackboards the proximate forms of countries, 116 III. Yo wnsist on the descriptive part, without going out of the way to seek the picturesque, and paying particular attention to emparting correct ideas on the relief of countries, their general fea- tures, the nature of the soul, climate, production, etc., above all, great attention to what the English call “ physiography.” Arithmetic.—In American schools nothing is equal to the care with which the child is trained in the intelligent application of the four ground rules. No sooner does the pupil know the simplest numbers, 1, 2, 3, that is the a 6 ¢ of calculation, than means are found for setting him to work in combining them by addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, in such a way as to bring into play all the faculties of attention, reflec- tion and judgment. Beyond this first stage, the teaching of arithmetic generally quits the good way we have indicated, and ceases to be the supreme agency of intellectual culture. It seems as though the sole aim now were to impart hastily the practical means of resolving this or that kind of operation. The principles that might light up the progress of the pupil and exercise his wits are almost voluntarily left aside. He commits to memory how, in a given case, he should state a proposition, what rule he should follow—whether or not he has learnt the why—and he applies the rule, with confidence and in a routine manner to exercises similar to that which served as an example. Practice before theory—such is the idea that generally prevails. And the method of proceeding is gener- ally as follows: The teacher, or one of the most advanced pupils, sets forth on the blackboard each point in an operation to be learned, while the pupils follow, verifying in their book the course indicated ; then the latter reproduce on their slates ~ the same work, retain the rule by heart and apply it, point by point, to new examples. The rationale of the procedure is given only in case the curiosity or good sense of the scholar calls it out. Great efforts are now making to bring back arithmetical teaching to a more rational way, to ally in just measure theory and practice, by a recurrence to the principles of analysis as well as of synthesis. By the solution of a good many prob- lems of the same kind, dealing with quite small numbers the pupil is led to fermulate for himself the method to be pursued iba ly: in the exercises assigned to him. His memory is then not the only faculty brought into play; he reasons and draws conclus- ions; his good sense develops, he acquires correct language, acquires a taste for what he does, and gains strength for greater difficulties. Arithmetic has its principles and its axioms, just as geometry has, and it is by setting them forth, by develop- ing them logically that the pupil’s intellect is sharpened and his judgment exercised and himself fitted for the intelligent practice of calculation. [The following American methods recommended to French educators, need to be more genaely applied by our teachers. I. To prepare children for the study of arithmetic by the use of the abacus, without prolonging this exercise too much. Il. To extend the use of mental calculation, as well in the form of operations carried on in the head as in that of the rapid solution of such problems. Il. Not to be afraid of practicing children from an early age in mental calculation, fractions, complex numbers, the metric system— the whole presented not in the rigorous and definitive order of ulterior instruction, but under the common, elementary, analogical, and, so io speak, provisional form suited to a first survey of the subject. Drawing in the Public Schools.—Six years ago drawing was taught only in certain special schools, and that in a very imper- fect manner: there were no models, no methods, no materials, no masters. A committee was formed, and in afew years a whole system of instruction was devised. In some states, Draw- ing has been made obligatory; four methods, strictly graded and completing one another, bring the arts of designing within the reach of pupils of all ages; public expositions are increas- ing; all regular teachers are put in the way of teaching this branch of education; a normal school of art, to which flock pupils from all parts, has been founded and a fruitful emulation has arisen among various cities. If we take into account that these are the fruits of a few years of trial, it must be acknowl- edged that such remarkable results were never before obtained in so short a time. The following are the recommendations made on the subject of drawing: I. To commence drawing as soon as the child enters school, by slate or blackboard exercises, using the aid of squares or better style 118 of points regularly placed in such a way as to leave to the pupil the drawing of the lines. Il. To advance gradually from the straight line to elementary geometrical figures, then to more complex combinations, and so to endustrial and ornamental drawing. IIT. Especially to practice the eye by elementary studies in per- spective, by the recognition of distances by sight, and by the observa- tzion and comparison ef forms. IV. To proscribe drawing by mere fancy or chance, which falsi- jies the taste. V. To orgamze for pupil-teachers methodical courses a drawing sutted to their future wants. High Schools, — Kverywhere High Sehools are the special object of attention on the part of School Boards and towns having over 500 families—say from 2,000 to 2,500 inhabitants, do not shrink from taxing themselves for their suitable accom- modation. In most cases, these schools are for both sexes. No part of the American school system is more essentially national than are the High Schools, no part of the system pre- sents features that are more original, or, in some respects, further removed from Huropean ideas, no part of the system is worthy of more profound study. Peruse the course of study in these High Schools; think of those children of workmen and -work-women passing four or five years in adorning, strength- ening and cultivating their minds by studies that everywhere else are reserved for the well-to-do classes, and tell us if these institutions do not bear the very seal and impress of American civilization. Need one be astonished, then, at the frank pride with which the American citizen speaks of these schools? Has he not a right to be proud when, by sure documentary evi- dence, he shows us the son and the daughter of the humblest artisan so mentally elevated that between them and the privi- leged of fortune no difference of culture, no trace of intellect- ual inferiority, is to be discovered? If it is glorious to see society freely giving to the poor the benefit of a public school education, is it not a still more extraordinary spectacle to behold a nation that deems it would wrong its humblest citi- zens were their children denied any opportunity for the full and free expansion of their minds? Here is a country where 119 there are hundreds of free High Schools, on the same footing as the most primary establishments. They are of one body with the common schools, are administered by the same authorities, supported by the same funds, and intended for the same popu- lation ; and yet, instead of being limited to the strictly essential studies, to the minimum of knowledge required to take children out of the official category of the illiterate, these upper schools are established on the basis of what may be called the higher instruction. They are not professional schools, nor are they bastard imitations of the classical college, nor yet low erade universities—they are in the fullest sense popular schools, intended to give the people the best, purest and loftiest results of liberal education. They open up no special pursuit—they lead to all pursuits, without exception and with- out distinction. They do not make an engineer, an architect, or a physician, any more than they make an artisan or a mer- chant, but they form bright, intelligent youths trained to stud- ies of every kind, qualified to select for themselves among the _ various professions, and skilled to succeed therein. One grad- uate will enter the university, another will go into business; there will be differences of occupation among them, but there will be no inequality of education. So far as social equality can possibly be reached on this earth, at is attained by the American High School. In other countries it is to be feared that the children of different classes of society, though brought together for a while in the public school, must soon find themselves separated by the whole distance between their respective families; indeed, it must be so, since one child enters on his apprenticeship and thus stops short in his intel- lectual development at the very time when the other is just beginning his. In the United States every effort is made to delay and to diminish this separation, to carry as far as possi- ble, and as high as possible, that common instruction which effaces the distinction of rich and poor. If it be true that the prosperity of a republic is in the direct ratio of the replenishment of its middle classes, of the abun- dance and facility in the indefinite recruiting of these classes, then the High School of the United States, whatever it may cost, 1s the best investment of capital that can possibly be made. 120 [Of the conclusions reached by the Commissioners, the fol- lowing are the most practical and suggestive to Americans. ] Summary of Conclusions.—l1. The common schools of the United States are essentially a national institution; they are dear to the people, respected by all, created, sustained and enriched by a unanimous spirit of patriotism which for a cen- tury has shown no falling off; in a word, they are deemed the very source of public prosperity, as, par excellence, the conseryv- ative and protective institution in their democratic govern- ment and republican manners. 2. The school organization is rigorously municipal. The law simply establishes as a principle the necessity of public instruction, leaving to each community to provide for its own needs in its own way. 3. The higher direction and the inspection of the public schools are confided to elective boards. From this peculiarity arise various results, as, for instance, the frequent renewing of the Boards and Superintendents, the unfortunate influence of political prejudices and local interests, the liability to sudden changes in the school organization, and, finally, the necessity emposed on the people to keep themselves informed on school ques- tions, as matters on which they have constantly to vote. 4, The public schools are in all grades absolutely FREE: the abolition of fees was in every State the signal of the new birth of the public schools; it brought into these establishments the children of all classes of the population, and constantly tends to bring them nearer and nearer together. 5. The public schools are absolutely unsectarian. 6. Compulsory education, made matter of law in some States, has doubtless aided the development of common school instrue- tion. The results thus far ascertained are not very striking; and besides it is impossible either to pass or to carry out the measure in the very region where its urgency is most pressing, that is, in the South. In general, the most practical form that compulsion has assumed is the hunting up of vagabond chil- dren or the adoption of various measures to Fe them into school, to begin with, and then, if need be, to transfer them to reform schools or other special establishments. 7. Public school instruction in the United States does not 121 form a course of study apart, strictly limited to a minimum or completely distinct from classical instruction; it comprises three degrees—the primary, the grammar school, and the high school course—sometimes combined in a single school, and again subdivided among three different schools, but in all cases connecting with the higher education, whether literary or profes- sional, so that a child of the working class has the opportunity _of gratuitously continuing his education as far as his tastes and aptitudes permit. 8. The training of teachers is now almost universally regarded as the essential condition of sound, popular education, and the number of State Normal Schools is rapidly increasing. 9. As the career of teaching is often taken up merely pro- visionally by young men or women who do not intend to con- tinue in the field, there results a very grievous instability in the teaching force—though it should be observed that there is some compensation for this evil in the fact that it draws into the work a large number of young schoolmasters full of ardor, equipped beyond the needs of the common school course, and untrammelled by the spirit of routine. 10. The coéducation of the sexes is the rule in the American public school system, and except in some of the great cities is becoming more and more the rule. The results of this usage are generally represented as excellent in both the moral and the intellectual aspect. The only or at least the chief objec- tions heard, are based on the excess of labor which the system imposes On young girls. 11. From these causes and from the marked taste of Amer- icans for innovation and new departures, it has come to pass that the schools of the United States show a diversity of organ- ization, and a multiplicity of forms, courses of study, text- books, and methods, which result in much experimentation and a lamentable loss of time; but which, by leaving a great deal to the free choice and responsibility of teachers and local authorities, interests them directly and persovally in the suc- cess of the school. 12. Thence result, also, extraordinary efforts and boundless liberality directed to giving the schools, both in the construc- _ tion of the buildings and in the establishment and maintenance D- 122 of the institutions, an air of comfort, of amplitude, and almost luxury, which is not merely a satisfaction to municipal pride, but is mainly the means of giving the public schools the prestige necessary to bring within their fold all classes of the population without distinction. 13. The great publicity given to the Reports of Committees and Superintendents, the interest taken by the people in school statistics, and the beautiful and simple organization of the National Bureau of Education do more for the growth and improvement of educational institutions than could possibly be accomplished by the orders of any administrative authority, even though clothed with the most extensive power. 14. If, with all these educational facilities, the United States still show a considerable proportion of illiterate population, the explanation is found, first, in the fact that the whole South ~ is yet a region to be conquered for public school instruction, and secondly, because immigration is incessantly bringing in a fresh contingent of illiterate adults. 15. The educational methods of the United States are in general distinguished from our own by two characteristics, which may by turns be either advantages or defects. On the one hand they tend to become essentially objective, synthetic, analogical, active. On the other hand, they are eminently practical, being planned and practiced with reference to the wants of life and to direct utility. 16. And so in the choice of subjects to be taught, the American system is marked by the selection of the most indis- . pensable matters, of the most rapid methods, of the most positive successes, of those advantages which if not the most important for mental improvement, have the most direct bear- ing on the present or future interest of the pupil,—an aim | which is very well in principle, but which, when too exclusively sought, stamps study with an empirical and utilitarian impress, gives a narrowness to education, and to a certain extent aac ae mind itself. 17. As regards methods of teaching, the American system rec- ommends itself by a frequent appeal to the pupil’s own powers, to his intellectual and moral spontaneity. It cares less for the logical order of ideas than it does for the natural order of 123 impressions; it leaves a large independence to the teacher and a still larger to the scholar,—whence an extreme diversity in the modes of procedure and a not less striking inequality in the results. Many and many a time one is struck with the hasty, rapid, almost improvised character of a plan of educa- tion which trusts implicitly to good instincts, good sense, and good will, which aims ever to address the eye, the memory, the imagination, which would thus gain time over the old strictly didactic methods, but which by so doing, runs the risk of becoming somewhat superficial, and is in danger sometimes of dispensing too much with the severe but fruitful labors of abstraction and reasoning. Weare not of those who, ignorant of the marvellous proofs of moral and material vitality which the United States have shown, think that we have discovered in this grand body the germ of decomposition and prophesy its near ruin. This is perhaps the people, of all the earth, which has in its immense domains the grandest deposits of natural riches; in its temper- ament and character the most powerful motive to action; in its historical traditions the noblest example of energy, efficiency, eourage and civic honor, and in its institutions the system best fitted to favor the rise of hberty, and these are some of the forees which ought to resist the toughest trials. But while we do not overlook these most promising signs, we do not conceal the formidable problems which the country has still to solve. The antagonism of races, traditions and interests which brought on the bloody conflict between the North and the South, the irruption of the blacks into public life, a just but terrible pun- ishment of a civic wrong, the difficulty of long maintaining the bonds which unite peoples so diverse, spread over a territory so immense; all these are grave questions. ‘These however are thrown in the shade by a danger more immediate, and that is the alteration, say rather the corruption of political morals, the question of elections, and especially the election of President, whether this shall be made by the intelligence and virtue of the people, or whether it will veer about and become the prey of intrigue and corruption. CLINTON RURAL IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION. As calls are often made for a plan for Village Improvement Societies, I insert that adopted in Clinton. 1. This Association shall be called “‘The Rural Improvement Association of Clinton.” 2. The object of this Association shall be to cultivate public spirit, quicken the social and intellectual life of the people, promote good fellowship, and secure public health by better hygienic conditions in our homes and surroundings, improve our streets, roads, public grounds, side-walks, and in general to build up and beautify the whole town, and thus enhance the value of its real estate and render Clinton a still more inviting place of residence. : 3. The officers of this Association shall consist of a President, a Vice-President, a Treasurer, a Secretary, and an Executive Committee of fifteen, six of whom shall be ladies. 4, It shall be the duty of the Executive Committee to make all contracts, employ all laborers, expend all moneys, and superintend all improvements made by the Association. They shall hold meetings monthly from April to October in each year, and as much oftener as they may deem expedient. 5. Every person, who shall plant three trees by the road side, under the direction of the Executive Committee, or pay three doliars in one year or one dollar annually, and obligate himself or herself to pay the same annually for three years. shall be a member of this Association. 6. The payment of ten dollars annually for three years, or of twenty-five dollars in one sum, shall constitute one a life member of this Association. 7. Five members of the Executive Committee present at any meeting shall constitute a quorum. 8. No debt shall be contracted by the Executive Committee beyond the amount of available means within their control, and no member of the Association shall be hable for any debt of the Association, beyond the amount of his or her subscription. 9. The Executive Committee shall call an annual meeting, giving due notice of the same, for the election of officers of this Association, and at said meeting, shall make a detailed report of all moneys received and expended during the year, the number of trees planted under their direction, and the number planted by individuals, length of side-walks made or repaired, and the doings of the Committee in general. 10. This constitution may be amended at any annual meet ing by a two-thirds vote of the members present and voting. fe mee PLAN IENG, FORESTRY IN EUROPE, AINE) OPH PAPERS. B. G. NORTHROP, SECRETARY OF CONNECTICUT BOARD OF EDUCATION. NEW HAVEN: TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR. 1880. Pay 4 > Se > > SSS SSS >>> > = » >>>: aoe > SS Sp 25> SI) a) ay 2 fee Ze SS > >>. DS . YS 3s. 2 pS S ss >>> > sop > a> > DP SDS <= —= > D> 25D De Se: 22 Rey D > >> =o => 33 a D> PD DD PD DPD? 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