We continue our selections from the revised opinions and instructions of the Commissioner, as published in the new edition of the School Laws:

Section II.

2. TIME AND PLACE OF ELECTION.-A school meeting for the election of directors must always be held at the usual hour of holding such meetings, except when the local directors, as provided in the last clause of section 2, designate a specific hour by posting up written notices. If any thing prevents the holding of the meeting at the usual place, the local directors should appoint another place of meeting, and cause notices thereof to be posted up, as is provided in case a specific hour of meeting is appointed.

3. TERM OF OFFICE.-The following provision of this section, viz: "of those so elected, the person receiving the highest number of votes shall hold his office for three years; the person receiving the next highest number, shall hold the office for two years; and the person receiving the next highest number, shall hold the office for one year"'-was intended to apply only to the first election held under the law. When a vacancy occurs in the office of director by death, resignation, or otherwise, making it necessary to elect two directors at a school meeting, each voter should designate on his ballot which of the persons voted for is to serve three years, and which is to fill the vacancy aforesaid. See section 3..

4. TIE VOTE. The provision for casting lots, "in case of two or more persons elected having received an equal number of votes," applied only to the first election under the law, and related, not to the election of directors, but to the duration of the official term of those already elected. A tie vote at a school election is a failure to elect. Whenever two persons receive an equal number of votes, another ballot should be taken, either at the time or at an adjourned meeting. Successive ballots may be taken at a school meeting, if necessary to effect a choice of director.

5. ELECTION OF DIRECTORS IN NEW SUB-DISTRICTS.-When a new sub-district is formed, as prescribed in section 14, the township board of education should cause to be posted up, in three of the most public places of such subdistrict, a notice in writing, describing such sub-district, and appointing a time and place for the first meeting of the qualified voters thereof, to elect, by ballot, three school directors. If the board fail to call such meeting, any three qualified voters resident within such sub-district, may call a meeting to elect directors by posting up, in connection with the written notice of the meeting, a certificate from the township clerk, showing the action of the board of education in forming the new sub-district, and describing the boundaries thereof.

The mode of determining the respective terms of office of the directors of such new sub-district, must be the same as prescribed in section 2 for the first election of local directors under the present school law.

6. ELECTION OF DIRECTORS IN JOINT SUB-DISTRICTS.-All the qualified voters resident within a joint sub-district are entitled to vote at school elections, and persons residing in any part of such joint sub-district may be elected to the office of director. The clerk of the board of local directors is a member of the board of education of the township in which the school is situated, whether such clerk resides in the same or another township. Section 16, as amended March 28, 1865. The first meeting for the election of local directors in a new joint sub-district, should be called by the board of education having control of the school, in the manner prescribed above for the first election in a new subdistrict.

Editorial Department.

THE Editor is greatly indebted to his Associates and other excellent contributors for timely and valuable assistance this month. During the preparation of the next and succeeding numbers, he will be relieved from pressing official labors, and with a continuance of the excellent aid the MONTHLY is now receiving, he hopes to make it worthy of a generous support.

HIGH SCHOOLS AND SUPERVISION.

A little more than a year ago, in an editorial article upon the Public Schools of Springfield, we alluded to the abolition of the High School and the office of Superintendent four years before, and the effect of the action upon the efficiency and standing of the Schools. The question involved was one of general interest, and as such we felt it to be in the line of our duty to put on record the result of the experiment.

The following editorial article from the Springfield Daily Republic fully accords with the views we then expressed; and is, moreover, in accordance with the experience of every city that has made a similar experiment:

"OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS-WHAT WE NEED.-We have repeatedly remarked that the most important feature of Springfield was her public school department. It is important not only from an educational point of view, but socially and commercially. We wish to bring this remark again before the people of this city, with such additional remarks as shall do something toward enforcing it upon public attention.

"We have taken some pains to inform ourselves as to the present status of the several public schools. We are satisfied that there has been some improvement-that the grade of scholarship is advancing. The schools are better than they have been heretofore. We may safely say that we have pretty fair public schools. But "pretty fair public schools" will not answer the purpose-in Springfield. We should have firstclass schools! They should not be a whit inferior, in thoroughness, drill, discipline and diversity of branches taught, to those of Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland, or any other city! There has been improvement enough in our schools, during the past two years, to show what they are capable of being made.

"Springfield is a city of 12,000 inhabitants-intelligent, enterprising people, not overwhelmed, to say the least, with poverty. Her preachers, attorneys, physicians, and other professional men, rank with those of other cities, and do not suffer in comparison with any. Then why should our public schools suffer in comparison with those of any other city? We do not know why.

"There is, in our opinion, one important fact concerning this matter, which overshadows all other facts connected with our schools-namely, that the system upon which our schools are conducted, is a failure! This system does not and can not give us a first-class public school. It is a mongrel system. It is partly one thing and partly another, and mostly nothing at all, considered as a system. It is not a graded school, and it is not anything else! It purports to be a graded school. The people decided that it should be a graded school, but it is not.

"We believe that we should have a graded school, in which a pupil should commence at the foot of the educational ladder, and ascend to the highest round! But we have no highest round. It is generally supposed that we have two, but neither of these are high enough.

"We can never have efficiency, thoroughness, perfect unity and completeness of action, and the highest success in our public schools, until they are MADE A UNITY, with one competent mind to conduct, to manage, to CONTROL the whole-to select such subteachers as shall intelligently and heartily carry out his plans, so that the efforts of each teacher shall tend in the direction of accomplishing the grand result. Should there be teachers who are not competent, or not willing to co-operate, the public good demands that they should be dismissed! Poor public school teachers are a worse public scourge than small-pcx or cholera!

"And a twin idea with the one we have mentioned, is a single higher department, to which each pupil may aspire, and which will secure to all the advantages of a thorough common school education.

"Nothing short of these two features will secure to Springfield a first-class public school department. We think the members of our school board are pretty well convinced of this, and we assure them that if they will make their arrangements to commence the next school year upon the improved plan, they shall have as good and substantial backing as they can desire. And if they find that funds are lacking, there are a number of public-spirited men in Springfield who will do their part toward supplying the deficiency out of their own pockets."

INDIANA STATE TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION.

We attended the meeting of the Indiana teachers, held at Terre Haute during the holiday week. The meeting was large, earnest, and harmonious in its discussions. The addresses throughout were able and of practical bearing on the interests of education. All the speakers with one exception, and he was unavoidably detained, were punctual in the performance of their duties; and there was no hitch in the working of the programme as arranged by the Chairman of the Executive Committee from the beginning to the end. There was little or no idle talk for mere talk's sake. No offering of resolutions having no object except to get the mover's name on the minutes, or at the head of a committee, portending a flatulent report at a future session. Any distinction among the speakers where all discharged their duties so well, would be invidious, even if our space would permit it. Ohio was ably represented among them by Wм. E. CROSBY, of Cincinnati.

The action of the Association of most general interest was the adoption of a resolution calling upon the delegates of the State in the National Congress to forward by all means in their power the formation of a National Bureau of Education. A resolution was also adopted condemning in the strongest terms the law of the State which cuts off from all educational privileges the twenty-five thousand of her colored population, and claiming equal rights for all in their public school system.

Onr Indiana friends have a very absurd law, which permits the people of a school district to meet together, and by vote nominate the teacher of their school. This power, of course, leads to endless neighborhood quarrels and bickerings, where all should be harmony and united effort. The Legislature was requested to repeal it.

The Association greatly felicitated itself on the passage of the law creating a State Normal School; also on the school funds having come into the princely inheritance of five millions of dollars, the proceeds of a sinking fund from the State Bank.

The members of the Association were entertained in a most hospitable and princely manner by the citizens of Terre Haute.

From what we have noticed of the work and spirit of the Superintendent and teachers of the State, we are conviced that Indiana is making giant strides for the foremost rank in educational progress; and that unless we bestir ourselves here in Ohio, she will outstrip us in a very few years.

J. H.

HELPS OVER HARD PLACES.

To know when to give a pupil assistance, and when to refrain from it, is one of the most perplexing of the teacher's problems. As a general rule, nothing should be done for the pupil which, by proper exertion, he can do for himself. But then how is it to be determined that he has made the proper exertion? It certainly is not well to permit him to flounder on day after day, and week after week, in a very slough of difficulties, with no ray of light to guide his way out, until he is ready to give up in despair, under the plea that he is to rely on himself and do his own work. The teacher's place is not to cut the knot of diffi culty, but to place in the pupil's hand the end of that thread which, if faithfully followed up, will unravel it. It requires rare tact and penetration on the teacher's part to determine exactly where the pupil's trouble lies, and what is the exact remedy for it. But it was not of help in general, but of certain kinds of help, which are always objectionable, that we wished to speak.

There are well-meaning, hard-working teachers who, from their extreme good nature in giving assistance to their pupils, never accomplish any thing. We well remember one of this kind who had the rather difficult task of developing our intellect in its period of very young veal. We had tried to "work a sum" in the Arithmetic of the venerable Pike (whose name we can not mention without awe to this day) until we were tired,—not a very long period by the way,and had taken it up to the "master" for assistance. "Ye ancient pedagogue" pulled his glasses down from his forehead to his nose, took the slate, worked the sum, and handed the slate back to us without a word of explanation. We looked the work over pretty carefully, rubbed it out, and resolved to give the example another trial. We did so, but with no better success than at first. Reluctantly we were compelled to ask aid the second time. The Master looked at us with surprise, if not with some irritation. "Why," said he, "I have done that sum for you. Go on to the next." And that was the way we went through the arithmetic.

How often have we seen the scholar hesitating for a word in the midst of a sentence, upon which the whole meaning depended, kindly supplied with that word by the teacher, who never seemed to dream that the pupil in failing to get that had failed in obtaining any idea from the sentence whatever, and that instead of its being a collection of words making complete sense, it was a jumble of words making complete nonsense. Thus: "John what is English Grammar?" John starts very volubly, and on a very high key: "English Grammar teaches

us how to read the English language "-teacher interposes, "Teaches how to speak, isn't it?"-John readily assents: "Teaches how to speak the English language correctly." "But it teaches something else, doesn't it?" "Yes, sir." "Well, what else is it that it teachers?" "Why, sir, I know very well what it is, but I can't just think of it." "It teaches to write the language correctly, doesn't it?" "Yes, sir! I was just going to say that." Now, if the teacher were to ask John, after all this catechising and these leading questions, to give the definition in full, he probably could come no nearer it than at first.

No teacher can be sure that his pupils have an intelligent knowledge of their lessons, unless they can recite the words of the text promptly, and without the straining effort to recollect, that it is painful to witness. Whenever a scholar fixes his eye on vacancy with a dull leaden look, accompanied by knit eyebrows and an evident unconciousness of every thing going on about him, and runs over the words of his lesson with precipitate rapidity, he should be stopped at once, as he knows nothing more of what he is attempting to recite than though it was Choctaw or Sanscrit. He should be compelled to go over the text very slowly, enunciating every word with the utmost distinctness, giving the definition of every word, and, at last, the sense in his own language. Even after the subject has been held up, suspended, as it were, in a dry light, so that the pupil can look all around it, and has answered every question upon it, the teacher can not feel too sure that it is thoroughly understood. We remember a case in point in our own experience. We were examining a class that we had taught in English grammar, and which, we had a great deal of confidence, understood pretty thoroughly as much of the subject as it had been over. One of the questions was--"What are the three methods of distinguishing gender in English?" The answer, of course, was-" By different words, by different terminations, and by words prefixed or affixed." What was our disgust to find that several of the class had written determinations for terminations, showing by this most ridiculous answer, that they had attempted to commit words to memory. without the most remote conception of their meaning. If our friends, who think they are doing remarkably well in their teaching, and are inclined to be puffed up thereat, let them put their pupils through a pretty stiff written examination, and our word for it, they will have the conceit taken out of them pretty effectually.

To return to suggestive questions as helps over hard places. A friend of ours relates that he once was present at the examination in geometry of a graduating class in a young ladies' academy, which proceeded something in this wise:

"Yes, sir!'

"Yes, sir."

Teacher" Miss A. what proposition have you to demonstrate?" Miss A. says nothing, and looks embarrassed. "It is to demonstrate that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, is it not?" "You draw the triangle ABC, do you not?" And she draws it. "You then draw the line ED parallel to the line AB, do you not?" "Yes, sir." And so on through the whole demonstration! That was a process for unfolding mind, wasn't it?

Another pause.

Let us say, in conclusion, if any of our readers have been in the habit of attempting to help their pupils over difficulties by suggestive questions, reform it altogether as you value your success as teachers.

J. H.