give an account of the funds appropriated to the purchase of books, &c.;

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❝4. To carry on the correspondence, to make the report to the school-board on the normal school and the school attached to it; to send in a list of candidates for admission, to keep the archives, &c.;

"5. To call up, examine, and choose the candidates for admission, with the advice of the masters;

6. To draw out and present plans of study, after having referred them to the conference of schoolmasters, and to distribute and arrange the subjects of instruction, according to the plan approved by the com petent authorities;

"7. To overlook and direct the masters, both in their moral conduct and their functions;

"To organise and direct the schoolmas ters' conferences, and to draw up prospectuses for them;

"9. To fix and direct the public examinations of the normal school and the school attached;

❝10. To maintain the high discipline of the normal school, and of the school attached by all possible means, even to the expulsion of a student, after the decision of the conference of masters; subject, however, to the obligation of making an immediate and circumstantial report to the competent authorities.

"It is impossible more completely to justify the confidence of the ministry than Mr. Striez, the director of the Potsdam School has done. From year to year the normal school confided to his care has made extraordinary progress, and in 1826 he laid before the public an account of it, which excited the liveliest interest. This account I place before you; it will give you an accurate and complete idea of the material and moral condition-of the whole internal life of one of the best primary normal schools of Prussia.

Report of the Primary Normal School at Potsdam, by F. L. G. Striez, Director of this School and Minister of the Gospel.

HISTORICAL STATEMENT.

"Until the middle of the last century there were no primary normal schools in Brandenburg. The schoolmasters were appointed by the parishes, either with the approbation of the authorities or without their knowledge, and were all drawn from the primary schools then established. All that was required of these masters, who were chiefly mechanics, was to be able to read, say the catechism, sing tolerably a few wellknown psalm-tunes, and to write and cipher a little. Numbers of shepherds, employed in summer-time in keeping sheep, during winter assumed the office of teachers of youth. The nobility used generally to bestow the place of schoolmaster (if it was at their disposal,) on their valets or grooms, as a reward for past services. The primary schools in towns sometimes had masters a

little better informed, but even they had neither good taste nor method in their manner of teaching.

"Johann Julius Hecker, chief councillor of the consistory at Berlin, and minister of Trinity church, was the first who undertook to train young men for the art of teaching. With this view he founded a school to supply masters for his own diocese.

"This establishment, founded in 1748, remained for some time a private one; in the year 1753, it was raised to the rank of a royal primary normal school for schoolmasters and parish-clerks. The provincial authorities were enjoined, in a Cabinet order published the 1st of October, 1753, to select, as far as possible, the members of this establishment for the royal places of parishclerk and schoolmaster.

"But this primary normal school was still far from meeting the constantly increasing wants of the province, and little merited. the name of a royal school. The pupils, scattered in all parts of the capital, were not properly watched nor directed in their

*

studies. Being all mechanics, they laboured at their trades rather than their studies, and were besides exposed to the influence of the corporation spirit, and to the seductions of a great town. In fact, the time which they devoted to their studies at the normal school was in general too short to afford any hope of effecting the end proposed.

"In 1771, Frederick the Great appropriated 4000 crowns, interest upon a capital of 100,000 crowns, to the improvement of the country schools in the Electoral March; he used on this occasion the following expressions: Primary education, especially in the country, has been hitherto much neglected; it becomes imperative to remove the bad masters, and replace them by competent men.' Understanding that the schools were better organised in Saxony, he ordered that masters should be drawn thence,

* In Germany the members of each trade, till very recently composed a Zunft,—guild, or corporation.— TRANSL.