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has produced an improvement to which it would be difficult to find a parallel in any age or country. Such an experiment as this would be regarded as conclusive in surgery or chemistry, and ought, I think, to be regarded as equally conclusive in politics. These are the reasons which have satisfied me that it is the duty of the State to educate the people.

First among the objections is the cost. Surely, no person who admits that it is our duty to train the minds of the rising generation, can think a hundred thousand pounds too large a sum for that purpose. If we look at the matter in the lowest point of view, if we consider human beings merely as producers of wealth, the difference between an intelligent and a stupid population, estimated in pounds, shillings and pence, exceeds a hundred fold the proposed outlay. Nor is this all. For every pound you save in education, you spend five in prosecutions, in prisons, in penal settlements. I cannot believe that the House, having never grudged anything that was asked for the purpose of maintaining order and protecting property by means of pain and fear, will begin to be niggardly as soon as it is proposed to effect the same objects by making the people wiser and better.-Macaulay.

RECITATION HEARING.

ANNA C. BRACKETT.

UT the fact is that the main business of a recitation to the educator is not to

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from which the lesson has been assigned. It is to ascertain how far he has grasped the thoughts and ideas, and to what advantages he has used his mind as he read it over. Any pupil who is not an idiot can commit a lesson to memory. The feat requires only a certain number of repetitions by the lips evenfor some children more, for others fewer; and the pupils from whom such recitations are expected prepare for them accordingly, and do not become "discouraged and demoralized by being asked questions which they cannot answer."

But the teacher's business is not thus mechanical. She may not, in the course of a long recitation, ask for a single fact found on the page which her pupils have had to consider. But when the recitation is over, she will have probed their understanding, and the grasp of it, to the bottom. She will have suggested relations and pointed out resemblances or differences which the children had never thought of. She will have shown connections with this and all her other lessons. She will have set them thinking in a just and logical way, and the class will go back to their seats not "demoralized or discouraged,” but as if they had drunk the wine of a new life. At recess we may hear them discussing, in their childish way, some of the issues brought up, and their parents at dinner will probably be entertained with vigorous conversation.-New England Journal of Education.

-County Commissioners and examiners are earnestly requested to assist us by urging their teachers to subscribe for the ECLECTIC TEACHER. Present our claims at your County Institutes, and also on your days of examination of teachers.

OUR EDUCATIONAL CREED.

E believe in that system of education that will prepare the rising genera

We believe that the broad fundamental truths of morality and correct living, as set forth in the Bible, are the foundation of all true education.

We believe that the profession of teaching is second to none in point of honor and influence, and therefore the world has a right to demand of its members the highest possible qualifications.

We believe that educated labor deserves as great a compensation in our profession as in any other, and that a cheap teacher is the synonym of a poor teacher.

We believe that the union of Church and State in educational matters is detrimental to the best interests of our country.

We believe that women are by nature as well qualified to be teachers as men, and that when they do equal work they should have equal pay.

We believe that the teacher who is influenced by no higher consideration than the salary paid, is unworthy of his calling.

We believe that it is the duty of every teacher to attend Teachers' Institutes, read school journals, &c., and thus keep up with the times in regard to the best methods of school management.

We believe in that true manhood that will cause a man to have decided views of his own, and will enable him to maintain those views in all meekness, though the whole world oppose him.-Utah Educational Journal.

E

SUCCESS IN TEACHING.

J. A. COOPER, Prin. State Normal School, Pa.

VERY teacher desires success.

It can be had. Will you try to deserve it?

If so, decide in your own mind what success is; then how to seek it; and lastly, work for it. Success is obtaining the right results. In teaching, it consists in making the pupils know; in leading them to love study; in training them to right methods of study; in forming right habits; in cultivating their tastes and talents judiciously.

To obtain success, one needs knowledge and skill. He needs to know the right methods of work, and have skill in the same.

Avoid all common errors. Make a list of such errors as you know other teachers have; make a list of your own, and avoid them all. Seek perfection. The requisites of a good school are: a good school-house, a good teacher, and good scholars.

You can keep your house neat, quiet and well ventilated. The house has an influence on the school. Keep the air pure and the rooms neat.

You can be a good teacher. Success depends not upon one great effort, but upon regular, patient and faithful work. Keep at it. "With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes satin."

Go to school in season. Call school at the right time. Have the pupils come in promptly and quietly. Write out your order of exercises. Arrange your programme as well as you can. Carry it out to the minute. Consider it as necessary for you to follow it as for the children to follow it. Provide enough work for every pupil. Suppress whispering. Secure the co-operation of your pupils. Lead them to see that it is for their interest to have good order and a good school. Require hard study from the pupils. Lead them to love study. Give short lessons. . Assign them so plainly that none may mistake their lessons. Have the lessons well studied. Require clearness, promptness and accuracy in recitation. A little, well known, is of great value. Let not "how much," but "how well," be your motto. Do not assist the pupils much at recitation. Cultivate their self-reliance. Self-help is their best help. Do not let them help each other. Excite an interest in study. Be enthusiastic yourself, and you will make your pupils enthusiasts. Encourage those who need encouragement. Review often. Talk but little. Be quiet yourself. Speak kindly and mildly. Be firm. If you love the pupils, they will love you. Keep good order. Government is the main thing. Have order, and good order, whatever you lack.

A good teacher can become better. Be not satisfied with your present skill. Seek to improve yourself as a teacher. Study hard yourself, and study daily. Try to learn more each day than you learned the day before. Have a fixed time for your own study. Use that in study. If you do not love learning, why should your pupils?

Talk with parents about their childern. Many parents can give you useful hints about teaching. Urge the parents to send their childern to school regularly, and to talk with them about their studies. Mark down your errors-their causes and effects; shun them in the future.

Keep a list of your plans, your difficulties and your methods of meeting them. Look at the list often, and see if you are carrying out your plans. Read upon teaching. Read for improvement. Adopt new methods with caution. Hold fast the good; reach after the better. See if you can give a reason for your methods of teaching. Write. Make a list of the marks of a good teacher. Attempt to make these your own. Be not satisfied with doing as well as others surpass them. Surpass yourself daily.

Study and practice these directions. Failure will be impossible.

-In order that THE ECLECTIC TEACHER may be brought before the public as early as possible, we desire to secure a host of active agents, to whom a large cash commission will be given. Not more than one agency will be established in a county. Write immediately for special terms.

Do not

"HOW SHALL WE SUPPRESS TARDINESS?"-Be punctual yourself. Be in your school-room at half-past 8 o'clock, and dismiss promptly at 4. teach after 4 o'clock, or wear yourself out to please a few pet scholars, and gain a little cheup popularity.

TEACHING CHILDREN TO STUDY.

EACHING children how to study-how to prepare their lessons-is by no

their studies. A few simple suggestions on the part of the teacher will often enable the child to get at the essential points in his lessons and accomplish twice the amount of work in a given time. It would be a wise arrangement of the time if children, in school, could be so arranged as that they could do most of their study under the eye of the teacher. If possible, times for study should be set apart, and the teacher should devote himself entirely to supervising the work. The following from the Glasgow (Scotland) News is in this line of thought, and contains many good points:

As for the teacher, his duties are dual in their character. His function is not only to impart knowledge, but to ascertain to what extent the pupil's mind has been affected by the knowledge imparted and retained. To do less than this is not to teach; and even more than this must be done, or there is no education. In order to earn the title of educator, the teacher must draw out the mind of the pupil, make it alive to its own potentialities, and guide it into accurate methods of thought. How many teachers in our modern middle-class schools do this, or are capable of doing it? How many of our modern middle-class schools are really educational establishments? This is, in point of fact, the great weakness of our modern system-that in most middle-class schools, as at present conducted, there is no education and very little teaching. This may seem a startling statement, but it is none the less true. Our modern middle-class schools are, in too many cases, simply establishments where pupils may repeat the book lessons which they have got by rote elsewhere. The persons who arrogate to themselves the title of teachers do not teach; nowadays they simply listen to the repetition by the pupil of those book lessons, which he has prepared either unaided, or with the assistance of his friends and relatives, or his tutor at home, If these friends and relatives are unable, either through lack of education or lack of memory, or through lack of time, or of all three, to teach the pupil at home, heaven help the poor children! They are immediately distanced in the race by those who have tutors, or whose relatives have the best education and the most time and inclination to teach at home. Proper emulation ceases if the pupils are not all on the same platform. Those children who have no one at home to help them in the preparation of their lessons, soon come to perceive how heavily handicapped they are in comparison with their more fortunate schoolmates. Many of them lose heart then. Children have a keen sense of injustice, and who shall tell the number of blasted and soured natures which has resulted from the first bias thus communicated during school-days? At many boarding schools it is the junior master who superintends the preparation of lessons. But why should it be the junior masters to whom is delegated the most honorable and onerous part of the teaching? It is a simple thing to listen to a pupil while he repeats a lesson, and to check him when his memory fails, or when he is guilty of mispronunciation or false quantities, or when he jumbles the terms of a compound-proportion question. It is a simple thing when a

mistake is made to ejaculate "next boy," until the correct answer is obtained. But that is not teaching, although in most modern middle-class schools it is all that is supplied under that name, and in return for very handsome fees. The true teacher is he who assists in preparing the lesson and in imparting the instruction—not he who contents himself with examining the pupil after the lesson is learned and the instruction imparted.--Indiana School Journal.

PERHAP

"NORMAL."

HAPS no institutions in our conntry are more thoroughly misunderstood than the Normal Schools. In the estimation of some, the term "Normal" has a kind of magic potency to change ignorance into intelligence, and inefficiency into competency. It is supposed to be a fountain of special virtues, from which it is only necessary to imbibe a few draughts in order to become as wise as Solomon. By others it is supposed to be a kind of literary machineshop, wherein unfortunate applicants for county certificates may enter and be fitted out with the necessary qualifications, ready-made.

And then, again, the name is applied to all manner of schools, from university -where it really belongs-down to the country singing school. Te such an extent has this word "Normal" been bandied about, among third and fourth-rate academies and colleges, that it has really become a term of reproach and a syn'onym for 'shoddy,' in the estimation of the better class of literary and scientific institutions.

It should be remembered that the legitimate work of a normal school is teaching teachers how to teach, and institutions whose chief work is to teach the subject-matter of the various branches have no claim to the name normal." This word is almost as much abused and misused as the word "professor."Common School Visitor.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.

THE following, from the Phrenological Journal, will be read with interest by

all teachers and parents:

SHALL WE WHIP?

If the reader sincerely believes that whipping will do him good when peevish, fretful or tired, then he may justify himself in administering to others that which he himself would take under similar circumstances. But we believe there are better ways of being subdued and subduing. We believe in the doctrine of "overcoming evil with good." "Better suffer wrong than do wrong." Not long ago strait-jackets were used in all our lunatic asylums. Now they are nowhere used. Not long ago flogging was practiced in our schools, in the navy and in many families. Boys and girls alike were whipped, greatly to their moral degradation, as we believe, and never to their moral improvement. Ignorant or brutal teachers, keepers and parents, who know no better, may be heard to say, "We cannot get along without whipping." So with low, ignorant and brutal drivers of horses. But intelligent and humane teachers, keepers and parents manage to get along better without whips than others do with

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