ously as the pupil advances, so far as this can be done. Generally arithmetic is taught with a sufficiency of practical illustrations, though sometimes there is a failure even here. For example, a young lady, reputed to be thoroughly skilled in mathematics, showed that her education in this branch was not sufficiently practical, by being unable to answer the following simple question, -If a square bed quilt has 400 square pieces in it, how many pieces are there on each side? In the teaching of algebra there has commonly been a great failure, in not giving the pupil a truly practical understanding of it. Bailey's Elements is quite an improvement in this respect upon the common run of text-books on algebra. It is in geometry that we have the greatest failure in practical application, and I would suggest that if some one would make an elementary book in which there shall be arranged the simplest points in geometry, with abundant practical illustrations, he would be a great benefactor to the young.*

Natural philosophy, as commonly taught, is not sufficiently illustrated from common phenomena. So, also, in chemistry, the processes of the laboratory are principally taught, when to the common learner the chemical actions that are going on all around us and within us should furnish the chief subjects for instruction. I often meet with exemplifications of the defects referred to in the teaching of these sciences. A young lady who had gone through with a book on natural philosophy, gazed with ignorant wonder as a gentleman made a dandelion stem act as a syphon, showing that her knowledge of the principle of the syphon was not of a practical character. Then as to chemistry, I have seldom met any young person, who, after going through a text-book, or attending a course of lectures, on this branch, could explain the chemistry of so common a thing as striking fire.

Very commonly pupils are given to understand that most of what they learn is useful simply in disciplining the mind. This is unsatisfactory, and it is not so far true as is commonly supposed. More of knowledge can be turned to practical use than is gene

*[We recommend to our contributor, and to our readers, to examine the little books of Pres. Hill, of Harvard College.]

rally thought. This can be shown to the pupil by practical applications, and at the same time he can be profitably told that there are more to be met with hereafter. One of the great benefits of such a book on Geometry as I have suggested would be, the connecting in his mind of practical results with the long succession of propositions which he would afterwards go through with in Euclid.

It is obvious that the knowledge which can be most used should be most largely communicated. Especially should this rule apply when the plan of education extends over but a few years. Tried by this rule, arithmetic has now altogether too much prominence. It is well that all should be accurate in figures, but great agility in them is specially useful only to those who are to be accountants. To those who are going into the arts and trades (and of such there is a majority) a knowledge of natural science would be much more profitable practically than skill in arithmetic.

I had intended to dwell at some length on the utterance or communication of knowledge, as one of its prominent uses, but on this I must be content with throwing out a few hints. This is a use which touches all the intercourse of men, whether public or private, and is a source of such abundant and multiform influences that it surely should be well taken care of in education. The way in which one expresses himself, or in other words the method in which he communicates his knowledge, has vastly more to do with his influence and success in life than is commonly supposed. And yet comparatively little attention is paid to this point in the training of our schools or even our colleges. Seldom is a pupil corrected as to his forms of expression. These may be ill-shaped, whenever he departs from the exact words of the text-book in his recitation. They may be ungrammatical, though he learns rules enough in grammar to keep him straight, if that would do it. But the grammar and the model furnished by the text-book do not suffice. It needs the watchful, correcting guidance of the teacher, but this is seldom applied. Much less is there commonly any training of the pupil in making well-arranged statements, or in giving lucid descriptions, either verbal or written. The results of the prevalent neglect in these particulars may be strikingly seen

in the incorrect and bungling expressions so often used in the written answers to questions propounded in examinations, and in the want of proper sequence of ideas and statements in compositions.

There is one glaring fact which I cannot forbear to notice here in regard to our colleges and theological seminaries. While the student is trained in writing to some extent, he is not trained at all in extemporaneous speaking, but this is left to chance or to practice in the societies.

I would conclude my hints on this subject with saying, that, as there is much talking to be done in the world, in both business and common intercourse, it is worth while to be a good talker; and that much of the incoherent, wordy, and misplaced talking which we are obliged to hear might be got rid of, if education were made to bear in the right way upon this matter.

NEW HAVEN.

W. H.

THE HALF-TIME SYSTEM.

The following are the letters of Mr. Edwin Chadwick and Prof. Owen referred to in our article on this subject in the last number of the TEACHER:

DEAR OWEN, - Permit me to submit to you for your consideration, and for my instruction, some questions on topics of observation made from time to time officially in the common practice of popular education, whether in the duration of sedentary attention which its theory requires it is not at variance with elementary principles of physiology.

First, let me observe upon the very young of our species, their mobility at the period of growth, particularly in infancy — their constant changes of bodily position when free to change their incessant desire for muscular exertion- their changes, short at first, longer as growth advances these changes being excited by quickly varying objects of mental attention, and forming incessantly varying alternations of exertion and repose, with manifestations of

pleasure when allowed free scope for them- of pain when long restrained. Now, to what physiological conditions do these alternations of exertion and repose subserve?

When obstructed and subjected to constraints for long periods, and when pain and mental irritation and resistance are excited amongst classes, are not the pain and resistance to be taken as a remonstrance of nature against a violation of its laws?

The theory and the common practice of school instruction require five and as much as six hours' quietude, and for intervals of three hours each, perfect muscular inactivity and stillness of very young and growing children from seven to ten years old, and during this constrained muscular inactivity continuous mental attention and labor.

To endure these conditions of continued bodily inactivity and prolonged mental labor the common office of the schoolmaster is everywhere a war for the repression of resistances and incipient rebellions. But are not these resistances excited by nature itself? Are not desk-cutting, whittling with knives, mischief, conditions of irritability, manifestations of excessive constraints against physiology? If the condition of muscular inactivity were completely enforced, what does physiology tell us may be expected from these restraints? I might ask you indeed, whether much of the insanitary conditions of our juvenile and very young populations are not consequences following from them.

First, there is the proverbial palefacedness of the young scholar and a lower bodily condition of those who are subject to the confinement of schools, even of the best construction and ventilation than of those who are free from them and at large, at liberty to follow natural instincts.

When the weakly fail in health, in a marked degree, the remedy is restoration to natural freedom which commonly leads to improved health. I cannot but attribute to the lowering of the system, and bodily debility produced by this excessive school restraint (even where there is good ventilation), and the consequent exposure to epidemic conditions and other passing causes of disease, a large share of our juvenile mortality, especially between seven and ten years of age, when the opportunities of retrieving

the effects of the school constraints by athletic exercises are less than at later periods. . . .

What I seek is the sanction of your opinion as to whether if the laws of physiology be duly consulted for providing a sound body for a sound mind, other treatment is needed than that which prevails in schools of requiring five or six hours of sedentary occupation for children in the infantile stage, and seven or eight for those in the juvenile stage.

MY DEAR CHADWICK,

I have perused and carefully considered every point in the inquiry which you have addressed to me, and I concur completely with your belief in the agreement with nature of the changes you recommend in the distribution and change of the periods devoted to school restraint and studies, and to bodily exercise and relaxation.

All the nutritive functions and actions of growth proceed more vigorously and rapidly in childhood and youth than in mature life, not merely as regards the solids and ordinary fluids, but also in the production of those imponderable and interchangeable forces which have sometimes been personified as "nervous fluid," "muscular force," etc. Using the latter term to exemplify my meaning, the excess of nervous force is in the child most naturally and healthily reduced by its conversion into muscular force; and at very short intervals during the active or waking period of life the child instinctively uses its muscles and relieves the brain and nerves of their accumulated force, which passes by the intermediate contraction of the muscular fibre into ordinary force of motion, exemplified by the child's own movements, and by those of some object or other which has attracted its attention.

The tissues of the growing organs, brain, muscles, etc., are. at this period of life, too soft to bear any long continuance of their proper actions; their fibres have not attained to mature tone and firmness; this is more especially the case with the brain-fibre. The direct action of the brain as in the mental application to learning soon tires; if it be too long continued, the tissues are unhealthily affected; the due progress of growth which should have