system, is at present established in the Fourth Ward school building. Besides the Training School, this building contains a city Primary with its classes A, B, C,-a Junior A, B, C, and a Senior A, B, C. Each Primary and each Junior school throughout the city is provided with a permanent principal and permanent assistant for each of the classes. In the Fourth Ward schools, however, only one assistant is permanently appointed. The place of the second assistant is supplied from the Training School. The exercises in these two grades are the same throughout the city— except in the building of the Training School, where additional exercises, hereafter to be described, are introduced. In this building, then, we shall find the ordinary lessons in "Object Teaching" as well as the peculiar lessons of the Training School. Let us enter any Primary school at the beginning of the year, with the C class at the age of five, fresh from home life, for the first time to enter upon school duties. They come with their slates and pencils-and this is all. Their first exercise is not to face the alphabet arranged in vertical or horizontal column, and echo the names of the letters after the teacher in response to the question, "What is that?"-a question the teacher knows they can not answer, and, therefore, ought not to ask. But some familiar object, one of the boys of the class, it may be, is placed before them, and called upon to raise his hand-the class do the same. This is beginning with the known. Then he is called upon to raise his right hand. This may be an advance into the obscurely known; the class do the same if they can make the proper distinction; if not, the first lesson marks clearly the distinction between the right hand and the left. Something real and tangible is done. The children can now distinguish between the right ear and the left ear, the right eye and the left eye. Here is acquired knowledge applied.

But what of their slates? The teacher may first give a lesson -practical of course-on the use of the slate and pencil. Standing at the blackboard, she uttters the sound represented by some letter, as t. The class utters it. They repeat it, till the sound becomes a distinct object to the ear. She then prints upon the board the letter t. This becomes an object to the eye. She points to it and gives the sound-they repeat the sound. She points again, they repeat. She gives the sound, they point.

Two ob

jects are associated. Now in their seats the letter t is to be made upon their slates till the next lesson is given. In this second lesson an advance is made upon the parts of the human body, or another sound—as the short sound of a is given, then the character as before. Now the two sounds are put together-then the two letters. Two objects are combined, and we have the word at. But before this lesson is given, the children go through with a series of physical exercises. Perhaps, next, the whole class is sent to the sides of the room. Here is a narrow shelf, answering both as a table and a ledge to the blackboard. Under this are apartments containing beans. The children take them one by one and count. They arrange them in sets of two or three, etc. They unite one and one, that is, bean to bean-one and two, etc. They take away one from two, one from three, and so on. They now return to their seats and make marks upon their slates, to take the place of the beans. In short this Primary room is a busy workshop-not one idle moment. One year is passed in this manner. The children have learned many useful lessons; have mastered a set of Reading Cards-have learned to spell many words involving the short sounds of the vowels and most of the consonants. They have lessons on form and color, on place and size; on drawing, on moral conduct; and these are changed once in two weeks.

They are now promoted to the B class. They commence reading from the primer. They can write upon their slates and form tables. They have Object lessons more difficult and more interesting. They can read the statement of the facts developed as they are drawn off upon the board. They can write them themselves. They now learn to make their own record of facts upon their slates. Their written work is examined and criticised. They read their own statements, and do it with ease and naturalness, because the thoughts are their own. They learn to represent numbers with figures. They make out numerical tables for addition and subtraction, not by copying, but by actual combinations with beans or otherwise. They thus realize these tables. In short, a mingling of Object lessons with writing, spelling, reading, singing, physical exercise, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, elementary geography, and natural history, occupies their attention through the first three years. All the lessons are given

objectively. The children realize what they learn; and this is not the mere theory of the system, it is, in the main, the actual working of the plan. The schools are not all equally good. The teachers are not all equally imbued with the spirit of the system. There were failures. There were misconceptions of the objects aimed at, and misconceptions of the method of reaching it. There were given lessons which were superior-even brilliant. Others were fair-perhaps moderate.

In the Junior grade, similar, but more advanced lessons are given, until the pupils are prepared for the Senior schools, where these peculiar characteristics cease. As to the time occupied by these peculiar lessons, or general exercises, it should be said that two exercises per day are given of from fifteen to thirty minutes each in the Primary schools, and one only in the Junior. And yet be it remembered that all the exercises in the ordinary school work are intended to be true object lessons.

Let us now pass to the Training school. Here, it should be borne in mind, are regular Primary and Junior schools under permanent teachers, who act the part both of model teachers and critics before the members of the Normal school, or Training class. The members of this class become alternately pupils and teachers, known under the name of pupil-teachers. At the beginning of the term they are assigned to act as assistants one-half day and as pupils the other, alternating with each other during the term, so that each may go through every exercise. The regular teacher gives a lesson to the class. The assistants observe and mark the methods as models for imitation both as respects the steps in the lesson, and the management of the class under instruction. One of the assistants--a pupil-teacher-next gives a lesson. She is now under a double criticism, first from her equals the other pupil-teachers present; and second, from the regnlar teacher. She is not doing fictitious, but real teaching. She has not first to imagine that a class of adults is a class of children, and then she is to give a specimen lesson. Nor has she a class of specimen children. She has a class of children sent to school for real purposes, by parents who entertain other views than to have their sons and daughters made mere subjects for experimenting.

There is work under the feeling of responsibility, with all the natural desire to succeed-nay, to excel. Under these circum

stances the merits or demerits of her lesson will be pretty surely made known to her.

The superiority of this plan over any other for Normal training is obvious. Some of these pupil-teachers evinced great presence of mind and no little skill.

But now the scene changes; these pupil-teachers return to the room of the training class, and their places are supplied by the retiring set. In this room the theory of teaching is discussed, and exemplified by practical lessons given by the Normal teachers to small classes of children brought in from the Primary or Junior grades. These lessons are to be drawn off by the class and examined as illustrations of the theory. Then, again, a pupil is called upon to give a lesson to a similar class-while both the training class and teacher act as critics. The points of excellence and of defect are freely discussed, and practical hints as to the method of the lesson, its effect upon the class, etc., etc., are freely given. Under this kind of training, a most efficient corps of teachers is prepared to fill all vacancies, and give increased vitality to the schools throughout the city.

The system has been modified from time to time as new suggestions have come up, or as theoretic plans have been tested. Farther experience will undoubtedly result in other changes.

The lessons in the English language had some points of great merit.

The habit of writing exercises by all the pupils every hour of the day can not fail to secure ease of expression with the pen, and with the incessant care that is practised at the outset by the teachers to secure neatness and order in the writing, correctness in the use of capitals and punctuation marks, accuracy of expression, and faultless spelling, is laying a most excellent foundation for a high order of scholarship.

The opportunity for cultivating correct habits of conversation which is afforded during the object lessons does more than any other one thing to promote a good use of language in speaking. The children are uttering living thought, and not text-book language. Their own habits of using words come out conspicuously, and are made subjects of cultivation.

The more formal lessons in language were in the main admirably conducted. Here the teacher made use of objects present, or

the conceptions of familiar objects absent, and accepted for the time any or all of the various expressions employed by the pupils to enumerate their ideas of the same action or event. Then came the question of a final choice among them all. A box was moved along the table, and the children gave, "The box moves, is pushed, is shoved, slides, etc." A very large majority chose the expression "slides."

Occasionally, the sentences and forms of expression had a bookish aspect, and lacked spontaneousness; and there were enough of these, if captiously seized upon, to make the method appear ridiculous. So again expressions and terms were sometimes evolved, which would not be out of place in a scientific treatise. These were accepted of course. But if used too frequently they would. seem like the coat of a young man placed upon a mere boy.

These, however, at most were but spots on the face of the sun. The whole plan was admirable in theory and in practice.

The spelling exercises were multipled and varied. They had regular spelling lessons. They wrote words upon the slate. They wrote on the board. They spelled orally for the teacher when she wrote, and they spelled on all occasions.

On the whole, the views which Mr. Camp, the Superintendent of Public Schools for the State of Connecticut, a member of this Committee, gives of his observations on Object Teaching, were fully confirmed here. He says: "Having had an opportunity to observe the methods pursued in Object Teaching in Boston, Mass., Oswego, N. Y., Patterson, N. J., and at Toronto and Montreal, Canada, and in connection with other methods in some other places, I will, at your request, give the results, as they appeared to me. When ever this system has been confined to elementary instruction, and has been employed by skillful, thorough teachers in unfolding and disciplining the faculties, in fixing the attention and awakening thought, it has been successful. Pupils trained under this system have evinced more of quickness and accuracy of perception, careful observation, and a correctness of judgment which results from accurate discrimination and proper comparisons. They have seemed much better acquainted with the works of nature, and better able to understand allusions to nature, art, and social life, as found in books. But when 'Object Lessons' have been made to supplant the use of books in higher instrue