the same stories told, language, expression, grammar, and numbers, all taught at Each child has ten blocks, and the game begins. The teacher leads the

once.

sport.

"I have five blocks, two and two and one. are there now?"

with enthusiasm

How many

Now I hold one more. Half the hands are up. "Well, Teddy?" Seven," says Ted, "How many think Teddy is right? None. Well, Kitty, tell us about it." "I have five blocks, and I add one, and have six." Six what?" "Six blocks." "How many noses have we around the table? Well, Tommy?" Eight." "No; we will not count company. Tell me something about it." "I see seven noses." "Now we'll all go to sleep." Every head is bent down while the teacher quickly removes two of the six blocks. "We wake up and find something." Every eye is intently studying the blocks. "Tell us about it, Jenny." "There were six blocks, and two have been taken away." "How many are left, Teddy?" "There are four blocks left."

With exhaustless patience, good humor, and ingenuity the lesson proceeds, every problem being performed with the blocks, and every fact fixed in the mind by a statement made by the child. If bad grammar is used, it is quietly corrected without a word of explation. The habit of right speaking is the only aim.

By this time the school is becoming weary. They have all worked hard for fifteen minutes. It is time for a change. The class is dismissed, and the teacher begins to sing. It is a merry song about the rain and the snow, and all join with the greatest interest, because at the end, when the snow falls and covers the ground, there are mock snow balls to be picked up from the floor and tossed all over the room in a jolly riot of fun. Everybody feels better and ready for work again. The teacher writes a series of simple sums in addition on the board, and the whole school watch her with the keenest interest. Now for a grand competition in lan. guage, grammar, arithmetic, and imagination. As soon as the figures are set forth a dozen hands are up. 66 'Well, Lizzy?" Lizzy rises and says: "I was walking in the fields, and I met two butterflies, and then I saw two more, and that made four butterflies." "Good." The answer is put under the sum, and another child is called. "I had seven red roses, and a man gave me three white roses, and then I had ten roses." By this time the school has caught the spirit of the game. Forty hands are up, trying in almost frantic eagerness for a chance to bowl over one of the sums and tell a story. Whispering is plenty. One by one the sums are answered and the quaint stories told. Then all the upper figures of the sums are removed, and the lesson is changed to subtraction. Again the stories. "I had four red apples, and I gave two away, and then I had two apples,” etc. Nearly every one mentioned the color of the object described. The children plainly observed color in everything. They took their subjects from out of-doors, as if all their thoughts were of the woods, the fields, and the street. The most striking feature of the lesson is the intense eagerness to tell something, the alertness, the free play to the imagination of the pu pils, and the absence of formality and anything like a task or recitation. It is practically an exercise in imagination, grammar, language, expression, and arithmetic.

Then follows another song. The slates of those who have been writing are examined, and even the babies who were playing with the shoe-pegs are commended for their work. They are not strictly learners. They are like little fellows put in a boys' choir, not to sing, but to sit among singers in an atmosphere of study.

A class in reading is then called up. Each child has a book and reads a sentence

in turn. The manner of reading is peculiar. The pupil first reads the entire sentence over to herself in silence, and then, looking up from the book, speaks it in a natural manner, as if talking to the teacher. The lesson is a story, aptly illustrated by a good picture, and the children not only understand what they read, but enjoy it. This done, they turn back to a story they had read before. Now the exercise is to read the story, a paragraph at a time, in their own words, to practise expression, and to prove that they understand what they read. Next, a new story is taken, and the class gives its attention, not to the text, but to the picture. "Can any one tell me something about this picture?" There is an intense study over the book for a moment, and then the hands go up. "I see a dog." "I see a crane." "The crane is standing on one foot." "The dog is a pug." "Tell us something about the dog." "The dog has four legs." "He has two ears." "The crane has wings"" "The crane is a bird.” “The dog is an animal." "The dog looks very cross. Perhaps he is going to bark at the crane." All these statements are given in breathless eagerness, as if each child were anxious to add something to the sum of human knowledge, and not one of them is over seven years of age.

66

Another class is called. They form a line before the blackboard, and the teacher says: "Who can tell me something? Well, Susie ?" "I have a red apple in my pocket." The teacher writes it on the board, and before it is written the hands are up and there is a ripple of laughter through the class. Teacher has made a mistake. "Where is it, Tommy?" "You made a small i at the beginning." Right. Another story." "It is a cloudy day." This is written, "It's a cloudy Day." The hands go up again. "Where is it, Jane?" "The capital D is wrong" The hands are still up, eagerly thrust right in the teacher's face, in a sort of passionate anxiety to get the chance to explain the error. "She said it is and not it's." 66 Right." Still the hands are up. "The dot has been left out." "Good. Any more mistakes ?" Not a hand is raised, though the eyes scan the letters again to see if there be nothing more. They crowd close up to the blackboard and watch every word as it is written with unflagging interest.

To vary the lesson, a sentence is written on the board containing two words the children have never seen. They swarm like bees around a plate of honey, standing close up to the strange words, even touching each letter with the tiny fingers, and silently trying to spell them out by the sound of the letters. One child tries and fails, plainly showing that nearly all the sentence is understood, but the new words are not wholly mastered. Another tries and gets it right, and is rewarded by dismissal to her seat. Other sentences and new words are tried, and there is a lively competition to read them. No one speaks the new words alone, but each reads the whole sentence in an intelligent manner, as if it were grasped as a whole. As fast as the right answer is given the pupils return to their seats, till all have answered.

The first class in simple fractions then comes up. It is studying the deep science of wholes and halves, quarters and eighths. The first step is really to see a whole divided into eight parts, and then to study a diagram on the board. The class gather around a low table, and each is given a lump of clay. Each one pats his lump down to a square pancake on the table. The object now is to enable each child to see visible quantities by size and weight, and the effect of division. The cake of clay is divided into two equal parts, and these again divided, and the portions compared by size and weight. Each experiment with the clay is made the basis of an example of fractions, and must be explained in words. The addition of fractions is studied

in the same way. One child's cake is divided into eight parts, and four are taken away, and half a cake is added to make a whole cake. The children see the one half and four eighths put together to form one whole, and they speak of it as a real fact, and not as an unmeaning formula read in a book. On the blackboard they draw in white chalk four bands of equal size. Then each is divided by green lines. The pupil sees, by tracing the colors through each band, the exact relation of whole, halves, and quarters.

With all the lessons that have been described there is at frequent intervals a story or some exercise to change the current of the thoughts. Not all these lessons can be seen in one day or in one school. They are only typical lessons as seen by the writer in different primary schools in Boston, Dedham, and Quincy.

If there is any one thing over which the children of the United States have shed floods of useless tears, it is the "Tables of Weights and Measures" in the ancient arithmetics. Here is a new set of miserables just come to the edge of these horrid tables. Shall they go on in the same unhappy way, trying to say "two pints make one quart," or shall they see the things, and, half in sport, learn the easy lesson? After the lesson they can glibly recite the table, because they have seen what it

means.

Here are the tin and wooden measures, with a pail of water and a bushel of bran, ranged on the table before the class. The teacher holds up the smallest tin measure and asks what it is. Some say it is a quart, others a pint. After some delay it is decided to be a gill. "Can any one spell it or write it on the board?" This is done, and the next step is to experiment with the measure. One of the girls fills it with water and makes a statement about it: "I have one gill of water." Having obtained a unit of measure, the next is taken, and the pint is considered by filling it with water, by means of the gill measure, and counting the number of gills required to fill it. For dry measure, the bran is used instead of water.

This class are from nine to twelve years old. They are in the upper primary classes, and have already spent two or three years at school. It might be thought that they would not care for such methods of instruction. It does not so appear. There is the same alertness of attention, the same eagerness to tell a story or to express themselves, as in the youngest children, with perhaps a little less playfulness and more gravity.

A class in geography is studying the shape, surface, and the general features of the continent of Australia. One of the class is appointed to act as its scribe and write out the facts as learned. The pupils are supposed to have read their books, and are up now for examination. On the table before the class is a pile of brown moulding sand. The first step is to spell the name Australia. This, it may be remarked, is the constant practice-to spell all the important words of the lesson as it proceeds, the correct spelling being at the same time written on the board by the scribe. The study of the shape of Australia, its surface, mountain ranges, and plains, is performed entirely with the moulding sand. Each pupil volunteers a fact concerning the matter, and illustrates it in the heap of sand. First the general outline, then the capes, bays, etc., then the mountain ranges, plains, etc. If any one makes a mistake, either in describing the thing or in arranging the sand, there is a vote taken to see if the majority of the class can correct the error. By the end of the lesson a complete relief map has been constructed in sand on the table. Every subject in geography, the divisions of land and water, etc., that can be shown by a plan or map, is illustrated

on the table in the sand or with modelling clay. The child is not told to read in a book that "an island is a portion of land entirely surrounded by water." These children are given a lump of clay and instructed to make an island of clay on the table, and then to cover the top of the table (it is really a shallow tank) with water, to show that the island is really surrounded by water. In some schools the table is painted blue to represented the water, and the brown sand aptly indicates the land.

As with the weights and measures, so the measures of length are studied by means of tape stretched along the wall. Upon this tape the pupils measure off the foot, the yard, the rod. Each child is provided with a foot rule as a part of his school apparatus, and it is frequently used in the various lessons. The study of the rod and yard grows out of this, and they get what no one who merely learns by rote that "twelve inches make one foot, three feet one yard," etc., ever can get an exact and real idea of the yard and rod. From this tape the teacher readily brings out a lesson in numbers. For instance, she writes on the board: "If I paid nine dollars for eighteen feet of land, how much did three yards cost?" The pupils see the foot and yard plainly marked off on the tape. They have a realizing sense of the comparative lengths, and this assists the mental process required to solve the question. In fact, all arithmetical problems can be taught by the blocks, the wet and dry measures, the rules and tapes, without once referring to a book. In point of fact, it does not appear advisable to use books at all, but to study numbers from objects, or by means of the board or stories of imaginary transactions from real life. The study of numbers is confined to the first four rules, simple fractions and perhaps interest. This carries the pupil about half-way through the grammar school, and it covers all that is required in ordinary business transactions. The tables, addition, multiplication, weights, etc., are in time all learned, but they are placed last, and not first. I heard a teacher recite rapidly a series of sums in this way: "I had six apples, I took one away, added five, divided by two, squared them, gave away five, lost one, sold two, bought ten and ten and five and four and three, and lost seven, and divided them all with Kate and Jenny and Tommy and Jack and Ned. How many did they have, and how many were left?" For about thirty seconds there was a pause, and then one called out that he had it, and then another and another, till all said they had solved the problem. Perhaps a whole minute elapsed, and then, on calling on one scholar for the answer, it was put to the vote of the school whether or not the answer was right. While there may be nothing specially novel in this method of teaching, this point must be observed: These children had been wholly instructed by the new methods. They were probably weak on the "tables," or in the mere parrot-like recitation of formulas, yet they displayed a degree of quickness, a readiness of memory, comprehension, and reasoning, that was remarkable. With shorter questions involving, say, two sums in one rapidly spoken in one sentence, the answers came in a volley from the class the instant the sentence was finished, showing that the mental processes had been just as rapid as the spoken words.

It is said that the majority of public-school children leave school when about halfway through the grammar school. The question is, Does this objective teaching fit or unfit the boy for his probable position in life? Is this the best schooling for the poor man's child? Without venturing our final opinion, it may be observed that the aims of the system are in the right direction, and that all the aims are more or less thoroughly accomplished. First of all, the child must be happy. He must be at ease and pleased with his work, or little will be learned, and the training will be slight.

The child has senses through which he receives all he can know, and makes known the thought that is in him. His senses must be trained by use; hence the games, the blocks, the colors, the music, pictures, and real objects. Imagination is, perhaps, the most valuable mental quality given to human beings: it must be cultivated continually, that the mind may work quickly and surely. This is the aim of the continual story-telling, the imaginary sums, and the use of pictures. The studies are very limited, because reading, writing, and arithmetic are the tools with which the work of the world is performed. These are enough for the boy or girl who must leave school before the grammar term is over. If he has these, the world of work and learning is all before him. It has been said that the boy taken from these schools and made an entry clerk will be a failure, because, while he is quick of observation, lively of imagination, and learned in a thousand things of the fields, the woods, and the sea, his business is to take the numbers from bales and boxes correctly. This is all that is required, and all the rest is useless. This may be true in a certain sense. Let us wait twenty years and see where the boy will be. Will he be still an entry clerk, or a merchant? In mechanical trades there is a fear that such teaching will unfit the boy for tending a nail machine or a shoe-pegging machine. This might be well founded if such trades were to cling to the old minute subdivisions of labor, and the Old World notion that a workman must stick to one trade all his life. A celebrated builder of machine tools once said of one of his lathes: "It will take a man of science to run that lathe." The tendency of all tools is towards complexity, and mechanical trades continually demand more "all round men,” more workmen ready to change from tool to tool and task to task. The American boy from the new schools will be a master at many trades; he has been taught to use his imagination, to observe, to use his senses and his mind in a workmanlike manner.- The Century.

EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS.

OUR READERS will notice the increase in the size of the JOURNAL. With the February number we increased it eight or ten pages. It is not yet as large as we desire. So soon as the increase in our subscription list will justify it we propose to enlarge it still more. Meantime we hope our friends will aid us in increasing our list of subscribers. The meeting of the Conference of Superintendents, soon to occur, affords a very suitable opportunity for our friends in all the counties and cities to send us good lists.

AGAIN we have been delayed in the issue of the JOURNAL. It will, however, reach our subscribers before the meeting of the Conference. We expect to issue the April number immediately after its adjournment.

WE shall hope to have the pleasure of meeting many of our friends at the Conference of Superintendents on the 15th April. The experience of last year has demonstrated the value of the meetings as well as how pleasant they may be made.

THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES will meet at Madison, Wis., July 15-18, 1884. Officers: President, Thomas W. Bicknell, Boston; Secretary, H. S. Tarbell, Indianapolis, Ind.; Treasurer, N. A. Calkins, 124 East 80th St., New York.

National Educational Exposition.-General Director, J. H. Smart, Lafayette, Ind.; Western R. R. Supt., W. D. Parker, River Falls, Wis.; Eastern R. R. Supt., J. M. Hall, Providence, R. 1.