of Massachusetts content to have the government of the nation, or even of the State, exercise the functions which the sovereign power of France assumes, over the local interests and domestic police of every town, village and private household? The impression here is very general, that we are governed too much already; that administration interferes, in too many instances, to regulate or restrain what should be left to the intelligent and untrammelled action of the people. Many believe that the Maine Law has done anything but advance the cause of temperance, by committing to a few constables and police justices the care and oversight of what belongs to the people of the several communities in which vice seeks to perpetuate itself. In France the affairs of the people are entrusted to the surveillance of a single sovereign. In our own country the people exercise this power, either through their agents, who make and administer the laws, or by a power quite as effectual and far more general- the force and influence of public opinion. Would it be wise, if it were feasible, to entrust to the government the interests of our schools, and withdraw from them, or weaken, the direct and personal influence of the people?

Is it the moral influence of such a Bureau that is sought? That may have efficiency in a country where the masses look to their rulers for a standard in matters of thought and opinion. But how would it be here? The head of a bureau is the creature of a political party. It may be a Floyd or a Jacob Thompson. It may come from Georgia or Arkansas. It is, in the ordinary course of things, to be changed every four years. And what could be accomplished in that time in the way of progress or reform? Would it not become a sort of political hospital, in which politicians of various grades would be fed and housed, in return for truckling service and subserviency to a party? Let us see from the history of our own schools, what we might expect from such a burcau. It is more than twenty-five years since numbers of the leading minds of the State began to build up a better system of schools upon one already venerable by age and public favor. It had its Board of Education with its Secretary devoting his whole time and energies to the cause of

school education. It had its Normal Schools, its Teachers' Institutes and its Conventions. It had its means of access to individual minds throughout the Commonwealth, and was able to command the aid of the Government as well as of a school fund, now munificent in amount. And yet with all these agencies at work, was not the meeting of the Teachers' Association at which this resolution was adopted, the first, in a succession of similar ones, which was satisfactory as a success? Its success was

gratifying in itself, but more so as it was an index of the condition of the schools which its members represented. Now what would have been the condition of our schools, if no moral power had been exerted upon them beyond that of a Central Bureau at Washington, with its agents and dependents holding office at the beck of a head or the caprice of a party? We see how this is accomplished, by a comparison of the condition of the schools of the Commonwealth. Over all, there is one law; they are all parts of one system; they are all within the influence of one Board of Education, and under the watchful eye of the same Secretary and School Agent of the State. Yet how different are the results in the different towns !—a difference which shows that it is after all not so much the law as the system, not so much high sounding names or titles, as it is the personal, individual influence of men in these localities, who are willing to exert themselves to enlighten others and to guide the sentiment of the locality in which they live. Why, for instance, do we see in Belmont, $13.61 per scholar appropriated by the town in 1864, while in Pepperell it is only $2.69: or why does Worcester appropriate $7.90 for each scholar, and Hardwick $1.96? It is because there is an interest awakened in some of these towns in the welfare of their schools, which nothing has occurred to arouse in others. And this interest, moreover, fluctuates from time to time from causes which are perceptible in the action of the several towns. The returns at an earlier period (1859) showed but $7.27 per scholar in Worcester and $4.90 in Hardwick.

Schools undoubtedly need a constant moral influence in their favor, in order to their success. But it is chiefly a home influence. What is done in New York, or Philadelphia, or San Francisco, is

little felt in Massachusetts, compared with what is effected in Boston, or Salem, or Worcester, or New Bedford. And if the teachers of Massachusetts really wish to advance the cause of school education in the country, let them maintain the high stand which they now hold, and continue to exert the influence which now emanates from their example, and they will accomplish a far higher good than by putting in motion a new political piece of machinery. AN OLD SCHOOLMASTER.

LEARNING BY ROTE.

[From an article in the English Journal of Psychological Medicine, (vol. xii.) on "The Artificial Production of Stupidity in Schools."]

We are convinced that a very large proportion of the stupidity now existing in the world is the direct result of a variety of influences, educational and social, which operate to the prejudice of the growing brain, cither by checking its development altogether, or by unduly stimulating the sensorium at the expense of the intelligence. In the former case general obtuseness is the result; and in the latter, subjugation of the reasoning powers to the sensations and emotions. We are entitled to think these conditions strictly artificial, and to look upon them as distortions, analogous, in some respects, to the physical distortions of Hindoo fakirism. Upon testing the educational customs of the present day by even the most elementary principles of psychology, it becomes apparent that a very large number of children receive precisely the kind of training which has been bestowed upon a learned pig. There are scarcely any schoolmasters who have in the least degree studied the operations of the development of mind (indeed, it is only within a very few years that this study has borne any fruit of great practical utility); and those who have not done so cannot realize the existence of a kind of learning which is sensational alone. . . . . The first impressions made upon the consciousness of a child have a strong natural tendency to expand themselves through the sensorium, and usually do so unless

directed higher by the manner in which they are produced and maintained. For the purpose of such direction, time is an element of the first importance; and the idea which would be grasped by the intelligence after a certain period of undisturbed attention, will excite the sensational faculties alone if that attention be diverted by the premature intrusion of something else that solicits notice. . . . . In schools, however, under the stern pressure of the popular demand for knowledge, it is an extremely common practice to accumulate new impressions with greater rapidity than they can be received. The work laid down can often only be accomplished by means of the promptitude that is a chief characteristic of instinctive action. The child who uses his sensorium to master the sounds of his task uses an instrument perfected for him by the Great Artificer. The child who uses his intelligence must perfect the instrument for himself, must grope in the dark, must puzzle, must catch at stray gleams of light, before his mind can embrace the whole of any but the simplest question. The former brings out his result, such as it is, immediately; the latter by slow degrees, often first giving utterance to the steps by which he is reaching it. The former is commonly thought quick and clever; the latter slow and stupid; and the educational treatment of each is based upon this assumption widely as it often is at variance with the facts. The child whose tendency is to sensational activity should be held back, and be made to master the meaning of everything he is allowed to learn. He is usually encouraged to remember sounds, is pushed forward, is crammed with words to the exclusion of knowledge, is taught to consider himself a prodigy of youthful talent. The child who tries to understand his lessons should be encouraged, praised, supplied with food for thought of a kind suited to his capacity and aided by a helping hand over the chief difficulties in his path. He is usually snubbed as a dunce, punished for his slowness, forced into sensational learning, as his only escape from disgrace. The master, in many cases, has little option in the matter. Children are expected to know more than they have time to learn; parents and examiners must have show and surface, things only to be purchased at the expense of solidity and strength. A discreet

teacher may often feel sympathy with the difficulties of a pupil; but the half hour allotted to the class is passing away, the next subject is treading upon the heels of the present, and the child must complete his task like the rest; and so a budding intellect may be sacrificed to the demands of custom.

Among the children of the educated classes the circumstances of domestic life usually afford to the intelligence an amount of stimulus, which, if not of the best possible kind, is at least sufficient to compensate in some degree for the sensational work of the school. . . . . But, for the most part, the children of the poor have grown up like wild animals, excepting for the advantage of an occasional beating; and their nervous centres have received few impressions unconnected with the simplest wants of existence. Coincidentally with an entire absence of intellectual cultivation, they usually display a degree of sensational acuteness not often found in the nurseries of the wealthy, and arising from that habitual shifting for themselves in small matters which is forced upon them by the absence of the tender and refined affection that loves to anticipate the wants of infancy. They go to school for a brief period, and the master strives to cram them with as much knowledge as possible. They learn easily, but they learn only sounds, and seldom know that it is possible to learn anything more. In many cottages there are children who, as they phrase it, "repeat a piece" at the half-yearly examination. We say, from frequent experiments, that they will learn for this purpose a passage in any foreign language as easily as in English; or that they will learn an English paragraph backwards if told to do so; and that in neither case will any curiosity be excited about the meaning of the composition. . . . . They do not usually understand what "meaning" is. An urchin may be able to say correctly that a word pointed out to him is an adverb or a pronoun, may proceed to give a definition of either, and examples of instances of its occurrence, and may produce an impression that he understands all this, when the truth is that he has only learned to make certain noises in a particular order, and when he is unable to say anything intelligible about the matter in language of his own. Or he may repeat the multiplication table, and even work