THE CHAUTAUQUA TEACHERS' READING UNION.

The teacher of youth is set to that calling for a double purpose: the one for the inculcation of the principles and methods of a progressive mental and moral growth, co-extensive with life. The other and equally important, that of illustrating in his own life and thoughts the doctrines he teaches.

The Chautauqua Teachers' Reading Union has been organized to assist teachers to attain a higher rank in their profession, and be more fully equipped for the most successful work. It proceeds on these principles:

1. Man, the teacher, a self-educable being. 2. Self-knowledge, the end of all knowledge. 3. Healthy progress, slow but sure. 4. The world, his school-room. 5. Nature, man, history, spirit, his teachers. 6. Life, the school-term, with no vacations. 7. All knowledge, his servants. 8. Himself a debtor to all men in its use. 9. The rewards in using, not in possessing.

The Chautauqua Teachers' Reading Union is an extension of the scheme of the C, L. S. C., adapted to the day-school teacher, and applied to his work.

Dr.. Harris says of it: "I believe heartily that the time is just at this moment ripe for you to extend your department of secular education of teachers over the country. With your facilities for giving diplomas for work done, and for keeping up professional reading by your ingenious device of "Seals," your movement will co-operate with all the State movements, and offer special advantages to every individual teacher ambitious to elevate himself in his profession. I am heart and soul in favor of your movement."

Equally cordial endorsements came from Gen. Eaton, Com. of Ed., Dr. E. E. White, Hon. J. W. Dickinson, Dr. J. W. Stearns, Miss Clara Conway, Dr. D. B. Hagar and many others of national reputation.

The regular full course of reading extends over three years and embraces nine leading subjects or departments. The time allowed will enable the great body of active teachers and others professionally occupied to do the work assigned in the most satisfactory way, while those who have more time may complete the work in a shorter period.

The following important and necessary subjects will be embraced in the regular three years Course:

1. Principles of Education. 2. Methods of Teaching, 3. Biography and History of Education. 4. School Economics. 5. Kindergarten and Primary Work. 6. Psychology. 7. General History. 8. Political Economy. 9. School Supervision.

Three subjects are assigned for each year's reading, with the most approved text-books, and supplementary helps, furnished to members of C. T. R. U. at greatly reduced prices.

FIRST YEAR'S COURSE.-CLASS OF 1886-9

1. Principles of Education; one book. 2. Methods of Teaching; one book. 3. General Culture; one book. 4. Socratic League Leaflets, on practical topics for teachers, will be furnished the members from time to time without added cost.

CERTIFICATES, DIPLOMAS, MEMBERSHIP, ETC.

A certificate of the C. T. R, U., signed by the Chancellor and the presidents, will be given to each student who shall fill out the required memoranda relating to the first year's reading. This certificate will become a Diploma, by the addition of two Socratic League Seals which will be given for the completion of the second and third year's readings. Members taking written examinations on the several courses will receive special recognition by affixing the Gold Seals of the Chautauqua University.

The year's work may begin at any time. The annual fee of the C. T. R. U. is fifty cents, to be paid on application for membership to Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N, J. A Certificate of membership will be returned on receipt of the annual fee.

Our readers who are desirous of knowing more of this importaut movement will do well to address President Bicknell at Boston, or Miss Kimball at Plainfield, N. J., for the C. T. R. U. Bulletins and such other information as may be needed.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

The MONTHLY is mailed promptly before the first day of each month. In most cases, it should reach Ohio subscribers not later than the second or third of the month. Any subscriber failing to receive a number within a few days of the first of the month, should give prompt notice, that another copy may be sent.

Requests for change of address should be received before the 25th of the month, and the old as well as the new address should be given.

A Michigan superintendent writes: "I still find the MONTHLY the most helpful educational paper that I read, and the exponent of the most advanced reliable ideas and methods of education."

An Ohio superintendent writes: "If all the teachers of the State were readers of the MONTHLY the schools would be greatly benefitted. A single number is often worth the subscription price for the year, and the bound volumes are a valuable addition to any teachers' library." Thank you, good friends.

I do not believe that the popular demand for short sermons and paragraphs is a sign of strength; it does not come from mental force but from mental fidgets. Recognizing the nature of childhood and its demand for frequent change of occupation, we should make the recitations in the lower grades very short; but to secure a correct mental training for the older child, he should be taught to think consecutively as well as intently, and, to secure this end, the time of a recitation should be gradually lengthened. M. R. A.

The main thing in composition-writing is good store of subject-matter. A mind well filled with matter that deeply interests will have little trouble about forms of expression. There is nothing like vigorous thinking for forming a good, strong, idiomatic use of English. Treatises on style, and formal drill on set themes are only husks. The thought is the kernel. The teacher of composition, as well as the teacher of drawing, should aim at freshness, originality, freedom, boldness rather than finish.

Much of young people's effort at composition-writing is like pumping at a dry well. The pump may be perfect in all its parts, and the pumping may be done ever so skilfully; all is to no purpose. But go to a flowing well or spring, and with any old tin pail you can get an ample supply of good water.

Fullness and freshness of thought are the essentials of good composition. With this as with good reading, all other studies contribute.

Moral:-Never require, nor even permit, your pupils to write on a subject they do not know anything about. This applies to graduates as well as other pupils.

Dr. G. Stanley Hall fires this shot into the anti-grammar camp. The italics

are ours:

"The reading-teacher must not neglect grammatical drill, which is one of the most important of all educational instrumentalities and the basis of the study of language. It has been overdone in the past, and has often fallen into the hands of pedagogical Philistines. No less than twenty-eight parts of speech, twelve tenses, and twelve modes, etc., have been distinguished in school-books, When the deeper meaning of the Bible was thought to lurk mysteriously in the sentence-structure, a good grammarian was proverbially a good theologian, and even now there are pedagogues who assume that there is something wrong in an author if his idioms, which from their very nature are antigrammatical, cannot be brought under the ready-made formula and 'parsed.' But nothing yet known makes its place good in teaching to talk and write correctly, and with its neglect in our schools an increasing number of candidates for admission to college are deficient in the practical knowledge of their own tongue. What is needful is, of course, not prosody but syntax and enough parsing and analysis to develop a sentence sense.'

A UNIQUE SCHOOL SYSTEM.

Steelton, Pa., has in some respects one of the most unique school systems we have heard of. While attending the institute at Harrisburg, we spent a night with a friend at Steelton, where we made the acquaintance of Superintendent L, E. McGinnes, who has charge of the schools of the place. The town is a suburb of Harrisburg, being but three miles distant, and contains a population of eight or nine thousand. It owes its importance, almost its existence, to the great Pennsylvania Steel Company, whose extensive works are located here, employing about 3,500 men and a capital of nearly four million dollars. Through the kindness of Mr. C. P. Baker, a gentleman connected with the works, we spent an hour in looking through, and witnessed the process of making steel.

The works occupy nearly two hundred acres of ground on the banks of the Susquehanna river, and are among the most extensive of the kind in the country. The ores used come from almost every quarter of the globe, large quantities being imported from Russia and Austria.

But what interested us most is the relation the Steel Company sustains to the public schools of the town. The company recently erected and donated to the town an elegant school building, costing $100,000. They chose to do this, in preference to paying over their surplus earnings to the State, as required by the laws of Pennsylvania.

Ample school accomodations being thus provided, all the employes of the company are compelled to send their children to school regularly, under penalty of losing their positions. Any unnecessary absence from school may be reported at the company's office by the teachers, and when a case is so reported, the father of the offending pupil is notified to appear at the office and explain. This arrangement might be called steel-clad compulsory attendance, and it is said to be very effective. In addition to this, the Steel Company provide very effectively against truancy. Any constable or policeman of the town may receive a fee of twenty-five cents, on presentation, at the office of the company, of a teacher's certificate that he has brought in a truant. The efficiency of these regulations in securing full and regular attendance at school may be

appreciated, when it is known that the company's employes and their families comprise almost the entire population of the town.

It is not often that a great corporation takes so much interest in the wellfare of its employes. This one seems to have a soul. It is worthy of note in this connection that, though these works have been in operation twenty years, no labor strike has ever occured in them.

In a recent lay-sermon, the speaker said that one of the great dangers of the times is the tendency of even christian parents to rely on the public school as the chief agency in the education of their children. This is true, there is no doubt about it. In the effort to build up our free school system, it has been so much the custom to extol the excellence of the public school, that the masses of the people have come to depend upon it for what it cannot accomplish. It is only one of the agencies for the training of the young, and that not the chief. The home is first and best of all educational institutions, and nothing else can ever take its place. All the schools in the universe are insufficient to relieve parents of their great responsibility for the right bringing up of their own children. A child receives the most important and the most enduring part of its education before it reaches the school. Teachers may improve aud build upon the foundation already laid, but they never can undo what has been done for the child in the first six years of its life, no more can they make up for neglect during these years.

The speaker referred to gave some illustrations of the efficacy of home training, and among them the training which Jewish parents give their children. By the time the Jewish child leaves his home, he is so thoroughly trained that, though he should be cut into inches, every inch remains a Jew.

These lines are not written to lighten the teacher's responsibility, but rather to remind parents of theirs. The teacher should magnify his office, but let it be ever kept in mind that parents hold the first and highest place in the work of education.

One other thing we cannot help saying. There is more of a child to be educated besides its head. Schools seem more adapted for head training; and perhaps one of the effects of the tendency to rely too much on the school is to exalt the intellect. We are reaping the fruit of our neglect to train the heart. A child is not likely to love God and his fellows unless he is trained to do it; but this is the chief thing, both for the good of the individual and for the good of society.

THE OLD OHIO LIBRARY.

A politician of Eastern Ohio was lately telling me how much he was indebted to the old district library, distributed between 1855 and 1859. He said this library had furnished him nearly all the valuable reading of his boyhoodbooks which he could find in no other place. With me he thought that no other money spent for education within that decade had made better returns. I can also look with pleasure to the happy hours spent in devouring those books. I read, at least once, all the history and biography to be found in four districts. Plutarch's Lives were my favorites, but I always thought him par

tial to the Romans and unfair to his own countrymen. Hume is not very inspiring, yet historical debates gave even those dry pages some interest. Burlamaqui and Cousin were read and forgotten. The book to which I look back with fondest recollections is Dana's Household Book of English Poetry. It gave me the first taste of poetry outside of Paradise Lost, the Course of Time, and Night Thoughts. How the weird pictures of the Ancient Mariner appealed to my boyish imagination! Even yet, in hours of loneliness, these lines and others of the poem come back to me:

"O Wedding Guest! this soul hath been

Alone on a wide wide sea,

So lonely 'twas, that God himself

Scarce seemed there to be."

The Dies Ira, from the same collection, made such a vivid impression that I can yet repeat many stanzas that have not been read since boyhood. Comus did not touch my heart, and even now I can not read it with pleasure. We had no memory gems" selected for us in those days, but I made my own selections from Dana's.

Longfellow's poems were in our library and I read Evangeline again and again, but only as a prose story; its beautiful rythm was made audible to me long afterwards.

I am glad to see that grammar and high school teachers are taking more pains to guide their pupils in the selection of books. If we turn a child loose in the libraries of the day it is doubtful if the mere ability to read can be considered a blessing. M. R. A.

Marietta, O.

A COLORADO SUPERINTENDENT'S QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 1. Is there in your State, any legal obstacle in the way of contracting with a superintendent or teacher for a longer term than one year?

Answer. The statutes of Ohio provide that no employe of a board of education "shall be appointed for a longer time than that for which a member of the board is elected." Boards of education elected for two years may contract for two years, and boards elected for three years, as some are, may contract for three years.

2. Is there a tendency toward an increase of the length of term of employment?

Answer. There is a tendency in the direction of engaging superintendents for the full term allowed by law. A good many superintendents are engaged for two years; a few for three years. I have not known any cases in which teachers were engaged for more than one year. Country teachers are usually engaged for three or six months. It is a rare thing for a teacher in the country to make an engagement for a longer term than six months.

3 What advantages and what evils would result from longer engagements -say for three or five years, or during good behavior?

Answer. I think there would be an adyantage in longer engagements, in the case of superintendents and teachers of acknowledged ability and success. Such a course would give greater permanence to the occupation of teaching,