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The new Resident Editor of the Teacher has but little to say to its readers by way of introduction. In place of making promises, he prefers to be judged hereafter by his work. He does not propose to signalize his accession to office by any startling changes or violent revolution in editorial management: he has no brandnew theories or patent royal roads to bring to his readers' notice. He proposes, with the help of his colleagues, to conduct the magazine on substantially the same plan that has brought it to its present prosperous condition, with only those changes of arrangement as regards the responsibilities of editing which were mentioned in the last number, and which, it is hoped, without depriving the Teacher of any good feature it already possesses, will tend to bring more system and unity into its management. Such changes as shall be made in its character will all be made in one direction, and will have for their sole object the promotion of its practical efficiency. On many educational topics the editor has his own very decided opinions, which, on all proper occasions, he will hold himself ready to express; but, mindful that the Teacher is not his organ, but that of the Association, he does not propose to make it the vehicle for the dissemination of any peculiar set of views, but always to couduct it with a single eye to the interests of the great

body of teachers, by providing as great a variety as possible of good reading, and by keeping its pages open to the full and free discussion of all interesting educational topics.

But he must, at the same time, remind his readers that he cannot, in any true sense, make the Teacher their organ without their own hearty co-operation. The best service The best service it can perform is to be

a medium of communication between all the many workers in the same great field. It cannot perform that function so long as teachers and other friends of education either have nothing to communicate, or are unwilling to take the trouble required. Writing on such a subject as education, to be of any value, must be the result of practical experience, must be based on careful observation of realities. We do not want mere closet theorizing, nor do we need mere vague gencralities as to the utility of education, or any other point about which all are sufficiently agreed. What we do want, and what we must have, if the art of education is ever to make progress, is the careful record of observation and experiment, and the disseminating of their results. A thousand questions of detail stand waiting for such observations. In the editor's view, a thousand errors of theory or practice remain to be corrected by such experiments; and the making and recording of them, the comparing of opinions, and the judging of results, is a work in which every teacher can engage, and a service which he or she owes to fellow-laborers in the same work.

The editor hopes, therefore, that neither indolence nor any false modesty will prevent his fellow-teachers from communicating to him everything they may consider valuable or useful. If they have made a successful experiment in teaching, let them give the result; if they have made a failure, let us have that likewise, for failure is often more instructive than success. If they see an error that needs correction, or an abuse that calls for reformation, let them make the case heard through the pages of the Teacher. If they have devised a good method of teaching, or constructed a good lesson not in the books, let them communicate it for the benefit of others. Above all, let us have the result of observations on the minds of children, for nothing is more instructive. The art of teaching depends, more than upon anything else, upon

the teacher's power of understanding the mental condition of his pupils; and in the present defective state of psychology, nothing is more needed than a body of observed facts on which to base a true theory of mental development. For want of this the most unsuitable studies are often given to children, and faculties are addressed, in some of our ordinary methods of teaching, almost before they have come into existence in the child's mind.

The true order of studies-the relative educational value of different studies, the proportion in which they should enter into

the school course,

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the right course of study for each kind of school, and the relations of different grades of schools to each other, the many questions relating to methods of discipline, to the length of school hours, to physical exercise, to methods of teaching; - a crowd of such subjects will occur to every mind, on which information needs to be gathered and opinions need to be harmonized; while in the details of every separate study there is always help to be given by the best informed and ablest instructors. But it is not only from professional teachers that the editor hopes to receive assistance. Every parent is or should be, ex officio, a teacher, and the subject is one that commends itself to all. The editor will be glad to hope that he may receive assistance such as will make the magazine valuable and useful to parents and to the general reader as well as to the professional teacher.

It is with unfeigned diffidence that he undertakes the task. It is one that might well employ all the time and talents of a far abler conductor, while he can only give such labor as his other avocations will allow. Whatever a deep interest in the cause, not a little experience in teaching, and a good deal of study of the subject, can contribute, he will cheerfully give; but he would not have undertaken the task unless he had relied on the coöperation, not only of the friends who have pledged themselves to aid him, but of all his friends and readers.

CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 15, 1865.

THE HALF-TIME SYSTEM OF SCHOOL INSTRUCTION.

[Some of our readers will recognize in the following article a portion of a paper read at the meeting of the State Teachers' Association recently held in Boston. It is an account of a very interesting educational experiment, made in another country, and under conditions in many respects quite different from those under which such questions present themselves to us. We offer it to our readers in the hope that it will elicit discussion upon the question how far the same evils exist in this country, and how far, and in what ways, the principles enunciated are capable of a practical application among us.]

If I were to say to you that I think that teachers as a body are overworked, that they are too much confined within-doors, that there is too great a strain upon their nervous system, too much of that wear and tear of mind which is of all things the most exhausting, I suppose I should find but few practical teachers here present to gainsay me. If I were then to express the opinion that a portion of this confinement, of this nervous exhaustion, this wear and tear from routine work is useless, and leads to very small results, I think I should find many here to agree with me. And if I should still further venture the assertion as to the cause of the uselessness of much of our labor, that, if it exhausts the adult teacher, it is still more exhausting and injurious to the immature pupil, at an age when his strongest craving is for change and activity, his most pressing want is physical, not mental development, I think I should again meet a general assent to my proposition from practical teachers, and it would be agreed that the youthful pupils' power to receive was very far below the teachers' power to impart intellectual instruction within given limits of time.

If, then, I were, as a logical consequence of these positions, to proceed to advocate, first, a material shortening of school hours, so far as regards intellectual labor; and secondly, and to make up for it, a material increase in the liveliness, directness, and vigor of our teaching; I should find, I think, many who would sympathize with such a view. If next I should propose to fill up the time so

gained with vigorous physical exercises, or, wherever practicable, with active industrial occupations; if, for instance, I should suggest that the future farmer or the future mechanic should begin even in childhood to alternate between school instruction and an appren ticeship to the craft to which he intended to devote himself,-so many hours per day to study and so many to actual work, or one day to study and the other to work, alternately, some might think that a good plan. If I were to say that the girls of the poorer classes, especially in our cities, by devoting themselves entirely in our schools to intellectual pursuits, some of them of not the most useful kind, very often get their heads filled with false notions, get discontented with their position without learning the only true and right way to better it, and that the path is thus opened to temptation to go terribly wrong through the very influence which of all others should keep them right, I should make a statement which I know could be sustained by evidence, and which would doubtless be corroborated by the experience of some here present. If, now, I were to propose for these girls an alternation between study and the learning of such common household duties as they will have to perform in after life, if such a scheme were possible, it would appear, I think, to many, to offer a promise of rendering them happier, safer, more contented with their lot, and would perhaps do something to solve this domestic help question, which is wearing the lives out of all our housekeepers, do something to enable the future wives of mechanics and laboring men to keep their husbands from the grog shop, and be withal an education which many of their sisters, more fortunate in a worldly point of view, might well find occasion to envy.

But it would immediately be objected by some adherent of good old ways, that all these propositions on my part are mere theory. Children, they will say, after all you can do, don't learn enough; and here comes a proposal to diminish the little they do learn. The teacher, to be sure, is worn out, but then we are all born to labor and trouble; and if they don't like the business, they can leave it. It's all of a piece, they will probably say, with that pestilent radicalism that's for abolishing the good old Puritan custom of three Sunday services; that pretends that one good sermon

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