with it, working in the same line, is the farm with its fine field for observation, reasoning, and responsibility—a school that has classes in foresight, pluck, courage, purpose, and grit.

The town school, on the other hand, is in an atmosphere of distraction. The city pupil hardly knows what it is to ponder; he is kept more than busy in receiving and giving out what he has received. There is but little in his home or street life that assists in making him long for trying responsibility. The tendency of the influence outside the school is to cause him to desire a "soft place" when he seeks to do a part of the world's work. It is held by some that manual education will remedy this defect, but no amount of shop work in the city can begin to do for our boys and girls what the farm has done and is doing.

True, a child will make far greater progress in a large graded school in certain things, as writing, spelling, so-called "industrial" drawing and vocal reading, studies that are mastered through the channel of telling and imitation; but the child of the farm-school has a chance to come out through the common-school course better fitted to think, to do, and to win

success.

The little investigation given to the subject shows that the leading men and women of our town and cities came up through the farm-school, and the teacher in the "plain school-house on the hill" should `magnify his calling, for he has grand helps and noble opportunities.-N. W. Journal of Education.

Maxims for the Teacher.

Good children make agreeable teaching, and, as we are fond of what is agreeable, it follows that we desire to have in our school-rooms only good children. Any means which will tend to increase the proportion of these is worthy of consideration. An excellent rule I find is "Always dismiss your pupils in a happy frame of mind." If there are any symptoms of discontent, tell or read an amusing story, or close with a lively exercise. Don't allow them to go from you with any bitter feelings. Remember you must meet them in the morning, and try to do another day's work better than to-day's, and to succeed, you and your pupils must be glad to come.

Send your children home with best feelings uppermost, and the bright "Good morning" will make your sunshine next day. "Those who school others oft should school themselves," speaks for itself and should be often in the teacher's reflections. "Know thyself" has much in common with those words of Shakespeare, but John Ruskin has written so well in connection with it that I cannot refrain from giving his words :

"See that no day passes in which you do not make yourself a somewhat better creature; and in order to do that, find out first what you are now. Do not think vaguely about it; . . . try to get strength of heart enough to look yourself fairly in the face, in mind as well as in body. I do not doubt but that the mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than the face, and for that very reason it needs more looking at; so always have two mirrors on your toilet table, and see that with proper care you dress the body and mind before them daily, . . . not dwelling upon those inevitable faults which are of little consequence, and which the action of a right life will shake or smooth away, but that you may determine to the best of your intelligence what you are good for and can be made into."

Manage yourself and you can manage any child. Do not fear to probe your own faults, but be rather careful in your treatment of those of the little folks, for theirs are not yet as "desperate grown," and "desperate remedies" do not contribute to the growth of child nature.

"Be cheerful." One need not be an optimist. Keep your difficulties to yourself. Mark you, I say, particularly your school difficulties. They may be interesting to many in your section, but it does not necessarily follow that they will be diminished in the telling. I do not regard it as in any way hypocritical to present to the public only the bright side-the dark side requires attention from within. Count your mercies," "Magnify your office." Finally, act on Beecher's advice: "A man's house should be on the hill-top of cheerfulness and serenity; so that no shadow rest upon it, and where the morning comes so early, and the evening tarries so late, that the day has twice as many golden hours as those of other men."

There is a wonderful joy in this work of ours-be sure you find it; gloom too; but there are lights and shades in all good pictures.-Educational Journal, Toronto.

Cultivating Attention.

1. Instinctive attention should be gradually developed into controlled attention.

2. Volatile children should be asked to take a single object, and write. down all they can discover concerning it in a specified time, say five or ten minutes, according to the age of the child.

3. Slow children should be asked to take a momentary look at a picture, or similar composite subject, and then describe as many persons or things as they have seen in it. It is a good plan to encourage them to walk past a shop window and then name all the articles they can remember.

4. There is no school work that develops power of concentrating attention so fully as time tests in arithmetic. These should be given for

a few minutes every day. Time tests should be confined to work in the simple rules, which the pupils know perfectly well how to do. The source of the attention-training power of time tests is the fact that a competitive effort develops all the concentration of energy of which children are capable. Time tests may be assigned in two ways. The amount of work to be done (added, multiplied, etc.) may be required in the shortest possible time; or the time may be fixed, and as much continuous multiplication as possible done in a specified time by taking the product in each case as a multiplicand. The latter plan is the better.

5. All competitive games, either in the school-room or yard, aid in training the attention, because they not only confine the mind to one. thing at a time, but arouse it to intense effort, and apply the results of attention immediately in some definite way for the accomplishment of a specific purpose.

6. Mental arithmetic, involving the work process only, is an excellent means of developing this power. Long examples, such as 8+7−3×4÷ 6X3+4÷7X9÷4+7X4+8, etc., dictated by the teacher, compel at once the most absolute, receptive and productive attention of the mind. If the rate of dictation be gradually increased by the teacher, a surprising rate of speed may be attained.

7. It is a good plan to read long sentences and ask the pupils to write them out after hearing them once read.

8. Spelling words letter by letter, each pupil naming one letter in turn as the word is being spelled, demands a complete concentration of the attention.

9. Reading a new story to a class which the members thereof are required to reproduce in their own words makes it necessary to give close attention.

Attention should be made a habit. It at first develops slowly, and perhaps with conscious effort, but at length it becomes automatic and intuitive in its action. The great aim of the teacher should be to form the habit of concentrating the attention.-Hughes: How to Secure and Retain Attention.

DEAR SIR:

CORRESPONDENCE.

SCOTTSVILLE, VA., January 28, 1891.

I find in the January number of the EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL, in the Editorial Department, the following: "In preparing teachers' examination questions, how many superintendents confine themselves to the text-books used in their respective counties? A teacher complains that a superintendent included in his questions a problem that could not be found in the arithmetic used in his county!"

Having spent several years of my life in the free schools as a teacher, and having done in school exactly what seems to be offensive to the applicant in a superintendent's examination room, I ask for information.

Am I to infer that I have committed the "unpardonable sin" by having selected, time and again, for daily recitations, and always for examinations, problems the classes had never seen? Problems which applied to the several rules under which they were working and in which they had been drilled, but simply taken from some other book or from the fertile (?) mind of their teacher ! My aim was always to do thus, believing it to be a test of their knowledge of the rules.

But, if a superintendent is not allowed this privilege, of course a teacher is not to exercise it.

The whys and wherefores are requested.

W. P. ELLIS.

[NOTE.-Mr. Ellis errs in attributing the paragraph which he quotes to the editor of the General Department of the JOURNAL. It appeared in the Official Department; but it is perfectly clear that the paragraph is entirely in accord with Mr. Ellis's views. Perhaps he did not read it with sufficient care, and so failed to catch its spirit and purpose. -ED.]

Educational Notes from Abroad.

Germany. At the close of the "Special Conference" for the discussion of questions concerning higher education, the Emperor presented the Minister of Education, Dr. von Gossler, with his picture, which bore the Emperor's own signature and this motto: “Sic volo, sic jubeo”: “Thus I want it; thus I command." This word is taken from Juvenal, Sat. 6222. The entire hexameter is : "Sic volo, sic jubeo: sit pro ratione voluntas ": " Thus I want it, thus I command; in place of reasons my will may stand." This characterizes the entire proceedings of the Emperor's efforts in educational matters. (Col. Gaz.)

Germany. The last official school statistics of Prussia published, state that the Kingdom had in 1887 5,082,252 pupils in schools between the Kindergarten and the university; that of these five million children only 4,426,679 came from families in which German is the "mother tongue." Not less than 655,573 pupils, or 12.9% of the sum total, came from families in which a foreign language is spoken. Here are the details:

This statement fails to give the French elements of Alsace and Lorraine. (Pr. Lhrztg.)

Germany.-Berlin. On the 1st of April next the city authorities will take charge of the last private elementary school and make it public. What a change between 1860 and now! Thirty years ago elementary public schools were the pauper schools of the city; now they are the common schools in the American acceptation of the word.

Germany. The committee appointed to mold into a fixed form the material prepared by the Special Commission for the "Reform of Secondary Instruction consists of: (1) Dr. Hinzpeter (the Emperor's former tutor), of Bielefeld, chairman; (2) Dr. Schrader, curator of the University of Halle; (3) Dr. Fiedler, principal of a Real school in Breslau; (4) Dr. Graf, member of the Diet and President of the Physicians' Union, of Elberfeld; (5) Dr. Kropatscheck, of Berlin, member of the Diet; (6) Dr. Schlee, of Altona, Principal of Real Gymnasium; (7) the Abbot at Loccum, Dr. Uhlhorn, in Hannover. This committee began its sessions January 6th.

The Provincial Government of Hannover has prohibited children's dances in connection with school festivals, saying that pleasures which are justly reserved for a riper age should not be introduced into school, where they might be doing great harm.

The school authorities in Breslau have been asked by the “German Swimming Union" to arrange a swim bath in connection with the schools, as is done with tub and shower baths, but the authorities refused for "want of space."

England.-A correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, writing on Free Education in London," says: In that northern clime (the entire population of which, by the way, is less than that of London) it is compulsory on all parents to send their children to school (“people's school"), but then, as education is free, the need of compulsion seldom impinges. It does not cost the nation $150,000 a year to enforce compulsion, as it does in London. Having gone through the routine of these "people's schools," the compulsatory attendance ceases, but free education does not. It is forthwith open to the scholar to proceed to the secondary or advanced school and plod his way higher in grades of information; and by the time the youth has arrived at the age of eighteen or twenty he may direct his steps to Upsala or Lund and enter the college set aside for his province, for students do not choose their college—as in England, Germany, or other countries-but are required to go with other students from the same province into the college for that district. A special preparatory school for such peasants who may desire to pass through the university is provided, in close contiguity to the university itself.

Italy.-A decrease in the number of universities is aimed at here, since it is found that the number of graduates is altogether disproportionate to the number of positions under the Government and the number of inhabitants. Nineteen universities, it is thought, are too many; ten would be sufficient, especially since some have but two faculties instead of four (law, medicine, theology, and philosophy).-N. Fr. Presse.

France. An exciting toy. The Parisian toy industry has furnished a toy which opens a new branch of object lessons. It is a derailed railroad train. The train is placed on a track, and at a given point the locomotive "jumps the track" and the entire train rushes headlong into the abyss. Everything is correctly imitated-the ruins, the dead and wounded, and the men with stretchers carrying the wounded to the physicians. This is called a "suggestive toy,"