School Officers' Department.

The articles in this Department have special interest to school officers. Communications from the State Commissioner of Common Schools and other school officers, are specially solicited. All articles not otherwise credited, are prepared by the editor.

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENTS.

The April meeting of township boards of education is too much devoted to financial questions, as the levying of taxes, the distribution of funds among the sub-districts, etc., to give due attention to measures which relate to school instruction and management. These are usually reserved for the September meeting, and as this occurs near the beginning of the school year, it is an opportune time for their consideration. We hope the meeting this month may inaugurate needed improvements in many townships.

Among the measures which would greatly enhance the efficiency of our country schools, we venture to suggest four:

1. A better arrangement of school terms or sessions. The plan of having the schools open early in the fall and continue, with a short vacation in the Christmas holidays, until spring or early summer, as the funds may allow, has several important advantages. We are glad to know that it is gradually superseding the old arrangement of winter and summer schools. 2. The securing of a uniformity in school books. of but one series of books in each branch of study. classification and instruction.

What is needed is the use
This is essential to proper

3. The adoption of general rules and regulations for the guidance of local directors and teachers. This is necessary to secure desirable uniformity in school management. The absence of such regulations often gives rise to serious difficulties and greatly retards the progress of the schools.

4. The organization of graded sub-district schools. Wherever a sub-district is or may be made large enough to require two teachers, the true plan is to place the smaller pupils in one school and the larger pupils in another. A graded school of two departments is greatly superior in efficiency and value to two separate schools. The true policy is to enlarge rather than divide subdistricts.

BLACKBOARDS.

[We copy these excellent suggestions on an important topic from the School Officers' Department of the Indiana School Journal for July, edited by Hon. G. W. Hoss, State School Superintendent. We shall be pleased to receive any additional information which our readers may be willing to communicate.]

Among the many important provisions for the school-room, few are more important than blackboards. Realizing the utility of good boards, and the dif ficulty of procuring them, I have taken some trouble to obtain information concerning the best and cheapest. I have found nothing that promises better

than the following recipe, given by Prof. E. A. Sheldon, of Oswego, N. Y. The following is a portion of his letter, in answer to mine touching this subject: "OSWEGO, May 8, 1867.

"HON. GEO. W. Hoss-Dear Sir: I have delayed answering your note of the 20th ult. until our man of all work' could test, more carefully, the proportions of differ ent materials used in our blackboard paint.

"He tells me to-day, that the following proportions are correct: 1 gal. alcohol, 1 ft. shellac, 2 ozs. lamp black, and 2 ozs. ivory black. Make the mixture twenty-four hours before you apply it, that it may become thoroughly dissolved, then strain it through fine muslin, and it is ready for use. Apply it rapidly and smoothly with a fine, flat varnish brush.

"The mixture should only be prepared as it is wanted for use, as the alcohol evaporates rapidly. It may be renewed, however, by adding more alcohol. With new wood boards one coat of common paint should first be applied-lead or any dark color will do. Then put on two coats of the mixture. The amount named in the above recipe will cover from three hundred and fifty to four hundred square feet, two coats. It may also be put on any smooth, hard finished wall, without paint. Old boards require but one coat, and are ready for use as soon as put on.

"With this recipe a common laborer prepares all our boards, and I have never seen any better blackboard surface. It is cheap, good, durable, and smooth, which I believe answers all your questions. Truly yours,

"E. A. SHELDON."

Cost. I have taken the trouble to obtain the prices of the above-named ingredients from an Indianapolis druggist, which prices are as follows:

Quantity of Board.-Precise quantities can not be fixed, yet it will be safe to say that no room should have less than the amount that can be placed on one entire wall; many should have more-twice or three times as much. Do not be alarmed, reader, when you make the comparison, and find this is ten times as much board as is found in some houses in your neighborhood. Ten times as much is needed, if your houses have only what some houses have; namely, a board 3×5 feet, suspended by two ropes fastened by two nails. A skillful teacher wants board-room enough for half her school to be employed at the same time, in drawing maps, writing spelling lessons, writing definitions, or copying paragraphs from the reading lessons, etc. Without a blackboard ample in quantity and good in quality, the skillful teacher is shorn of nearly half

In the Journal for August, a correspondent thus indorses this recipe: "During the last five years I have been using nearly the same recipe as given in the Journal of last month, and can recommend it as being cheap, durable, and in every way working well. The ingredients are easily obtained, and can be mixed and put on by any common laborer or by the teacher himself. I have painted thirty square feet of board during a morning recess, and had my class use it during the next recitation.

"I take one gallon alcohol and put into it one pound gum shellac, and let it stand about sixteen hours; then put in one ounce lampblack and two ounces chrome green. The last two ingredients must be used dry, and should be well pulverized before putting them in. I apply this mixture in the same way as described in the July number of the Journal.

"Now, as the cost of a good blackboard is so trifling, and as an energetic teacher can readily make one for himself, there is no good reason why every school should not be well supplied in this particular.

T. C."

her strength. I say skillful teacher, for the unskillful makes but little use of a board, and therein is her unskillfulness significantly apparent.

Place of Board.-The place on the wall the board shall occupy is somewhat of an open question; some holding that it should be in the rear of the pupils; others that it should be in front or at their side. The prevailing custom in the better class of houses, however, is to place it in front and on one side; the side being for the pupils and the front for the teacher and pupils as circumstances may determine. To this end one side wall should be free from doors or windows, and the front free from windows.

Height and Width.-In Primary rooms, the lower edge of the board should not exceed two feet in heigth above the floor, or above the platform if there be one (which is not a necessity except for the teacher's board). The height for other rooms should grade according to the size of pupils, not exceeding two feet ten inches. The width of boards may grade according to the size of pupils from three feet to four and a half. Any width beyond four and a half feet is of little value, unless it be for difficult drawings which are to be retained for several days or weeks, consequently must be placed above and beyond the ordinary line of the board.

Chalk-Boards. A good chalk-board should extend along the entire lower line of the blackboard. This want is so obvious that it would seem unnecessary to mention it. Yet obvious as this want is, it is not difficult to find good and ample boards without one foot of chalk-board attached. It is hoped that builders will take note of this small, yet necessary item. Other details might be mentioned, but to avoid tediousness they are omitted for the present.

AN ERROR ILLUSTRATED.

The feeling has been quite too common that any one could "keep school;" so that many schools have been kept, while but few have been well taught; they have been kept from true knowledge, and not in garnering up for future usefulness. Hence, mere striplings, or men of maturer age with no fixed views or plans, engage in "keeping school," though they never teach, because themselves untaught. They can neither discipline nor instruct, because they have never themselves been properly disciplined and instructed.

When Dinter was school-counselor in Prussia, a military man of great influ ence urged him to recommend a disabled soldier, in whom he was interested, as a school-teacher. "I will do so," said Dinter, "if he can sustain the requisite examination." "O," said the colonel, "he does not know aught about school-teaching; but he is a good, moral, steady man, and I hope you will recommend him, to oblige me." "O yes," said Dinter, "to oblige you, if you, in your turn, will do me a favor." "And what favor can I do you?" asked the colonel. "Why, get me appointed drum-major in your regiment," said Dinter. "It is true that I can neither beat a drum nor play a fife; but I am a good, moral, steady man as ever lived."-Northend's Teacher and Parent.

Editorial Department.

WE do not fully agree with our excellent contributor "S. A. N." in his conclusions respecting the comparative value of ancient and modern languages in a middle or high-school course. We would place Latin before French or Ger man, or both. Mr. Mill goes so far as to say that Greek and Latin are the only foreign languages which he "would allow a place in the ordinary curriculum." If a knowledge of the modern languages were the chief end desired, we would first master Latin as the easiest and best mode of reaching it. President Woolsey, of Yale College, states that if four years were assigned to the study of the four principal Romanic languages-French, Italian, Spanish, and Por tuguese-there would be a gain in devoting the first two years to the classical tongues. Substitute Latin for "classical tongues," and we would fully agree with him. Two years of Greek would not greatly help in the mastery of the Romanic languages.

We wish to add that had we the direction of the studies of the high-school pupils of the State, we would require all who intend to complete a three years' or longer course of study, to take Latin. We are sure that at the end they would have a better mastery of mathematics and natural science by studying Latin than they would have by devoting all their time exclusively to English studies. The study of language shortens the road to all other knowledge, and affords easy facilities for its acquisition. We do not, however, believe in requiring boys from twelve to sixteen years of age to devote two-thirds of their study to Latin and Greek and the other third to mathematics. We would put the Greek later, after the Latin, and make the objective studies, as natural science and history, form full one-third of the course. The three great classes of studies, of which language, mathematics, and natural science are respectively representatives, should go hand in hand throughout the entire scholastic. course. We would also have more language and less technical grammar taught. But we forbear.

INSTRUCTION IN LANGUAGE.

John Stuart Mill in his recent inaugural address as Rector of St. Andrew's University, remarks that a "reform even of governments and churches is not so slow as that of schools, for there is the great preliminary difficulty of fashioning the instruments: of teaching the teachers." As an illustration of this fact he instances the failure of teachers to adopt the improvement in teaching languages which have been sanctioned by experience-a failure which is strikingly evinced in the prevailing mode of teaching the English language in

American schools. Notwithstanding all experience demonstrates the folly of attempting to teach language by beginning with the rules and technicalities of abstract grammar, this "intensely stupid custom," as Herbert Spencer calls it, still prevails. Even in graded schools which are under the supervision of eminent teachers, we still find children put to the study of technical grammar before they are taught to write correctly the simplest descriptions of objects, or even to construct the simplest sentences. The schools doggedly go on teaching the rules of grammar before the facts of language, and the mechanical formulas of parsing before practical composition-and this, too, notwithstanding the practice is condemned by all intelligent educators, and notwithstanding its known failure to teach either grammar or language. Children faithfully drilled from ten to thirteen years of age in the grammatical rules and definitions and the glibbest parsing, possess as a class very little actual knowledge of grammar and less skill, thus acquired, in speaking and writing. They have, as Dr. Woolsey expresses it, simply been "picking up chips, and putting them into the basket of the mind."

Intelligent and progressive teachers are generally agreed that grammar be longs to the same period of mental development as elementary algebra, and some class it with mental philosophy. They are also agreed that the study of the principles and rules of grammar should be preceded by a thorough and progressive course of training in the use of language; that synthesis or composition should precede and prepare the way for analysis and parsing.

Why this wide difference between opinion and practice? Mr. Mill has unquestionably hit on the true explanation. Teachers as a class do not know how to teach language. They can go through the text-book drills in technical grammar because the work is all laid out for them, and all they are required to do is to pour in the successive grists and turn the crank. They are moreover accustomed to crank-turning. But to map out and conduct a systematic and progressive series of practical exercises in sentence-making and composition, to teach language progressively and rationally, requires a degree of invention and skill which they do not possess. It is "out of their line." Hence the first step in substituting practical instruction in language for the technical gibberish which now prevails in the schools under the name of "elementary grammar," is the training of teachers. They must be shown what is to be done and how to do it. Scientific grammar must be pushed forward to its proper place, and a course of daily instruction in language as practical and progressive as the present course in arithmetic, must be mapped out and made familiar.

We do not wish to be understood as affirming that our schools are doing nothing to increase the pupil's ability to speak and write correctly. Unquestionably the ordinary course of school instruction enlarges the pupil's vocabulary, and makes him more or less familiar with correct forms of speech. This is specially true in schools where all errors in language, whether made in reciting or in conversation, are faithfully corrected. Such instruction is of great value, and the teacher who neglects it sadly fails in duty. Line upon line and precept upon precept are demanded. We also take pleasure in admitting that many of our best teachers go farther than this, and make each recitation a practical drill in the use of language. The pupil's power of expression is cul