Thoughts New and Old.

T is time for us to understand that our American primary education is radically wrong. It is time for us to understand that it can not be made right by any system of patching or mending. Objectteaching is a move in the right direction; the word method is partly right, and is a groping after the true way. But the system is wrong in its first principles. We are utterly, almost hopelessly, superficial in our view of the scope of primary education. We are great believers in "the three R's." In our primary education we proceed upon the principle that reading, writing, and arithmetic are the "essentials" of education. The teacher who, by hook or crook, by coax or drive, gets the child soonest through the sloughs between alphabet and reading, carries off the palm. There is no thought of mental development; no fear of the evil effects of this forcing. We do not ask whether learning to read is the best preliminary drill to the child's faculties. In fact, if we must speak frankly, the great vice of our primary education is its empiricism. The necessities of teachers oblige them to bow to popular demand. What people want is speed in the direction of the "three R's." It is what they can measure. Mental discipline is to them a shadowy nothing; they measure education as they do calico, by quantity. In yielding to supply the demand, the profession of teaching is reducdd to resort to quackery, and the real need of the child is left unsatisfied.-The Independent.

AMONG all who have sought to render men moral by teaching them morality, no one is greater than Socrates. It was his prime doctrine that virtue is teachable, and day by day for thirty years, with unwearied patience he went through the streets, and shops, and schools, and public assemblies, teaching and discoursing upon his favorite theme.— His whole practical aim seems to have been to make men moral by giving them clear notions of morality. Does any one doubt that his instructions must have convinced the intellect of those to whom they were given? What matchless clearness and subtlety and convincing power these instructions still possess? And yet we have no evidence

that they produced the least effect upon the social life of Athens, or the moral conduct of a single one of his disciples. The intellectual effect of the teaching of Socrates was prodigious. It has reached to our time, and must penetrate all coming ages. But it does not appear that a single person has ever been changed in his moral bent, so as to become more virtuous or less vicious, by it all. It is a very narrow reading of history, and a very shallow acquaintance with the heart, which has not yet told us that something more than knowledge is necessary in order to virtue, that something other than light is needful in order to life.-Prof. SEELYE's Election Sermon.

THAT man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature, and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Naturn or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.— Prof. HUXLEY.

THE problems of life are individual, and the training which fits people to solve them must be individual, to a greater extent than those who are adorers of system alone are willing to admit. There must be a limitation of the number of pupils under one teacher's care to twentyfive, or even a smaller number, before the best results can come from our school training, before the true balance between the training of the individual alone, and of the class alone, can be struck.-Mass. Teacher.

LET him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this precept well to heart: Do the duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer. -THOMAS CARLYLE.

CHILDREN are no longer brought up; they are tumbled up—it is done by machinery.-New York Tribune.

Facetiæ.

POINT education: Gymnastics...... A candidate for a teacher's certificate at Three Rivers was asked by the County Superintendent: "Do you drink any intoxicating liquors ?" The young man grew very red in the face, dropped his eyes to the floor, and flutteringly replied: “I drank three gills once for sickness." He passed, nevertheless...... The University Chronicle says: "One of our genial professors was recently accosted on the campus by a 'medic.' After a few casual remarks, the new-comer said, 'I have just reached Ann Arbor, and am looking for a chum. Now, you are a decent-looking fellew, and can room with me, if you want to.' The professor was compelled to decline, having engaged a permanent room-mate some years ago."...... The following is a bona fide letter, written by a gentleman desirous of taking a school not far from Kalamazoo : 66 Michigan Oct the 8. 1870 sir I! (giving his name) will except of your scool immediate And I wish to know when you will have me take posesion of it. and I will teach for $40 fer 22 days for a month! and boarded Let me know immediate direct thus (his name) Kalamazoo Michigan! put a one sent stamp on the Letter and i will be sure to git the Letter! I (name again) have tought 2 terms school & I attended Colledge 4 yrs at detroit michigan and am 26 yrs avage! I take the school Journal Monthly of Michigan! detroit. Yours with respects That schoolmaster is abroad still....The Chicago Post soberly says that Professor Cooper, of Edinboro Normal School, is devoting himself personally to the hatching of three thousand eggs." This must be a very arduous undertaking for the Professor indeed......The science of sorrow: Sighchology......A school committeeman, not a thousand miles from Boston, after an examination, thus addressed the pupils : "You've read well and spelt well, but you hain't sot still!"...... "Peter, you are such a bad boy that you are not fit to sit in the company of good boys on that bench. Come up here and sit by me, sir.". Why is the earth like a blackboard? Because the children of men multiply upon the face of it......Bad punctuation-stopping the TEACHER.

PRACTICAL DEPARTMENT.

ever.

SPELLING.

O branch of education is taught in the schools, in the oldfashioned way, with more mischievous results, than that of spelling. The pupil comes to the class, often without, or with the most hasty and careless, preparation, to which the method of recitation constantly prompts him. A word is pronounced of whose orthography he has no recollection whatInstead of being encouraged to say honestly and promptly, "I don't know," he is virtually told to guess at it, the teacher waiting for him to "try the word." The best he can do is to attempt to fit letters to the sounds he receives from the teacher's mouth, meanwhile watching his face for indications of approval, and varying the "spelling" accordingly. This effort to render our eccentric orthography is generally a failure, and always more or less ridiculous. It is poor business. Its tendency is to shiftless, inexact, unreliable scholarship. It is an education in guess-work, and so most unfortunate as a preparation for the duties of active life, in which guess-work fares badly. There is a moral element in it, too. Pupils ought to be taught, in all recitations, conversation, or writing, not to state as a fact what they do not know, or have not reasonable authority for believing, to be true.

The only way, in either oral or written spelling, to secure correctness, and promote exact scholarship or positive knowledge, is to require a correct answer or none. The pupil is thus stimulated to an adequate preparation of his lesson, taught to avoid guessing and deception, and prepared for the frequent consultation of dictionaries and inquiry of educated men for correct orthography, which marks the accurate speller in practical life. But there is no effective method of teaching the art in the schools, except the method of its practice out of them.

We shall be pleased to receive, for this department, statements of

ARITHMETIC.

PUPILS will acquire familiarity with the combination of any two figures, by being questioned in the following manner: When 1 is added to any number whose right-hand figure is 0, what is the right-hand figure of the sum? What is it, when the right-hand figure is 1?— What, when it is 2? When it is 3? 4? etc. What is the righthand figure of the sum, when 2 is added to any number whose righthand figure is 0? 1? 2? 3? etc. Ask similar questions for 3, 4, etc. TIME. Children have an imperfect appreciation of the three smallest denominations of time. It will be found a good exercise to require them, first in concert, then singly, to beat and audibly count seconds. first ten seconds, then 20, then 30 or minute. After this, require them to count minute, then a minute, and to raise hands when they are through, the exact time being noted by the time-piece. Again, all the school may be required to sit still 1 minute, then 2, 3, 4, and 5 minutes respectively.

Experience teaches that it is not best to require pupils to adhere rigidly to any one method. Encourage them to solve problems in various way. An original solution, if correct, is better than any memorized formula.-FRENCH'S Mental Arithmetic.

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497 × 12 +4÷11-5×3×9-2 What? 4X44106x9 +5 10 X 4 What? Nothing taught in our schools, under the head of arithmetic, is more important than this ready reckoning; for it embraces within itself ninetenths of all the arithmetical processes that are going on in countingrooms and in the manifold walks of life. And the secret of success in it is to have the scholars so thoroughly grounded in the tables in advance, all of them, that of addition as well as that of multiplication,

that no sooner is the relation between any two numbers indicated. than the mind fastens on the result without a moment's hesitation.The answer must be given to 9 × 8, as readily as to 98.-H. F. H., in Mass. Teacher.

SOME of our readers may not have seen the following:

If a passenger train starts from each terminus of the Pacific Railroad at 6 A. M. every day, and runs through in five days, how many passenger trains will a westward-bound one meet? Only one such train each way is started every twenty-four hours.