simply assigning a given number of verses to be learned, and of requiring the pupils to answer the questions in the book merely, is, to say the least, a great waste of time. The importance of map-drawing cannot be over estimated; by this means more definite instruction can be given, than perhaps in any other

way.

Eighteenth. Concert exercises should be given occasionally in reading, and on such subjects as "Tables of Weights and Measures," "Sounds of the letters," "Spelling words by Sound," etc. Much care should be taken, however, in all concert exercises, to avoid the " sing song" tone and the false enunciation which they are apt to produce.

Nineteenth. In teaching arithmetic, never require your pupils to learn rules until the principles have been thoroughly explained, and are well understood. Teach the principles by familiar questions and examples, rather than by rules. Let every step and every principle be thoroughly impressed on the mind of the pupils by the performance of numerous practical examples. If you would have your pupils make rapid progress in this study "make haste slowly," and review often.

Twentieth. Language, though one of the most important of all studies, is, in many schools, either entirely neglected, or very indiffently taught. “Language Lessons" should receive the careful and constant attention of every teacher. In one form or another, each class, each pupil, should receive daily instruction in language.

The reading lessons will afford excellent opportunity to teach language to primary classes. Require all your pupils to use correct language at all times.. Never allow an incorrect or improper expression to pass uncorrected. Oral instruction in grammar should always precede the introduction of the text-book, which should be used by the more advanced classes only. Grammar and composition should be taught in connection with each other.

Twenty-first. Important as are the physical and intellectual training of children, any course of instruction which includes these only, must be, and is, fatally defective. Embrace, therefore, every opportunity to impart moral instruction, and keep the closest watch over your pupils, not only in school, but during the recess and intermission. Endeavor to develop in them all the nobler faculties of the mind. Let your dealings with them be characterized by love and an earnest desire to do them good. Be what you would have them become.

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Twenty-second. Finally as you are laying the foundations of knowledge, aim to be practical and thorough. Embrace every opportunity to add to your stock of professional knowledge. Familiarize yourself with the views and methods of prominent educators, by reading such educational works, as Pages' Theory and Practice of Teaching," "Teacher and Parents," "How to Teach," etc. Subscribe for some "Educational Journal," Attend the Teacher's Institute, and when convenient, visit the schools. In a word, be a live teacher.- Working Teacher.

-Of about 600 graduates sent out from Rochester University, 195 became clergymen, 116 lawyers, 155 business men, 28 physicians, 75 professional teachers, 22 professors of colleges or professional schools, 12 journalists, 1 astronomer, and 1 geologist.

THE TEACHERS' IMPROVEMENT.

THE great demand of the times is, not cheaper teachers, nor more teachers of

the kind we have, but better teachers; better in all the elements of a successful and symmetrical make-up. The profession needs-wants-not the halt and the blind of humanity, but those who can and will give their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto the Lord, and who are ready to have their minds renewed for the all-important field assigned to them. Sufficiently long has the profession been imposed upon by the refuse of other callings in life. Now, hereafter, only the firstlings of the flock, and those the most perfect, will he accepted.

But we began this article for the purpose of specifying a few means which lie at the foundation of the teacher's work of preparation and success in life. We specify in the order of importance: First,

SCHOLASTIC TRAINING.

Every teacher needs to be specially educated for his work, just as the lawyer or doctor, or architect for his. This preparation can be most effectually obtained in the high school, or normal school. If his education has been measurably secured in the academy, or the college, it may be utilized for the teacher's work by a term or two in the normal school. Second,

INSTITUTE INSTRUCTION.

This is the same in kind as the scholastic training, but not so extensive. It is mainly suggestive, and professional in character, and designed to foster the spirit of progress and excellency. The agency can not be too highly appreciated. Third,

EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE.

Under this head we would mention the school journal of the state in which the individual lives. Of course he will read that. He cannot afford to do otherwise. Nor should he even stop there. Let him select one or two other journals, say those from leading educational states, and read them carefully. New school books, giving the latest views and discoveries on controverted subjects, deserve constant attention. No one can, while in attendance at any school, so thoroughly fill his mind with truth and facts as to preclude the necessity of continual study and reading. Works on teaching, on history, on the progress of education in various parts of the world, must and will be read by the live teacher. He must be "up with the times" in the matter and methods of instruction; otherwise he is destined to be shelved, and that, teo, at no distant day. Fourth,

DAILY SPECIAL PREPARATION.

All the means specified are utilized by the one just mentioned. A teacher's educational privileges may have been somewhat limited, and yet by personal preparation of every day's work, every recitation, every subject, he may be known and appreciated as a live teacher. His knowledge has a freshness about it which is not felt in the case of him who relies upon his past acquisitions to meet present demands. This is the secret of successful teaching. Let it not be disregarded.

Ada, O.

J. FRAISE RICHARD.

THE CULTIVATION OF THE MEMORY.

DAVID B. SCOTT.

S there not danger that, in the multitude of radical advisers on the paramount question of school-training, the faculty of memory may be quite thrust aside? The daily and weekly press, secular as well as religious, seldom lose an opportunity of thrusting a lance into what is called the most mischievous error of the schools, "parroting." The educational press have occasionally joined in this outery, without considering that there might possibly be danger in yielding the whole point involved, without earnest protest. For the point covers a great deal more than appears at first sight, and its abandonment may involve that of the training of one of the most useful faculties we possess.

Surely, it may safely enough be granted that the mere learning of verbal definitions, rules, selections of poetry and prose, pages of history, and the one parrot-like repetition of the same to the teacher, under the idea that this is schooling, is the most absurd folly. Any such idea of the teacher's business, embracing this and little or nothing besides, ought to show the utter unfitness of the person holding it to fill any position as a teacher of youth. But it may safely be questioned whether there are many persons of any experience in the business of teaching who hold such an idea, and base their practice upon it. At least the number cannot be so large that it should occasion fear sufficient to warrant the attacks we so often read against the prevailing method of instruction. Within the limits of cities, towns, and well-organized school-districts, it is becoming more and more difficult to find any considerable quantity of schoolroom work that lies open to such an objection. The whole tendency has been quite otherwise for a number of years.

The complaints that have found utterance through the public press are explainable enough, on another theory than "parroting." The lessons to be learned at home are in many cases most excessive in amount. They are given out often by pages, but are not intended to be committed to memory word for word. Unfortunately sufficient care is not always taken by the teacher to show what portions of the lesson are to be committed to memory, what are to be read carefully, and what may be either read hurriedly or left for class-room instruction on the morrow. If this is not done, the pupil has no other way left open to him when he prepares his lesson, than to memorize everything. This he seldom accomplishes. It is often hard, dry, technical, and unintelligible. The mere mass frightens him, and unless he has uncommon natural powers, he abandons it unlearned with disgust. Such work presses still more heavily upon girls than on boys, because the young feminine mind seems to commit to memory the school lesson more readily than boys; at least it adheres to its work with a finer conscientiousness than does the average young masculine mind. So it happens that when the hours fly by and the task is unfinished, the girl's pride quite breaks down, and the whole sympathy of the family is evoked by her tears. It is therefore not wonderful if the parental and maternal mind, losing all patience, inveighs strongly against memory lessons, and expresses itself when it can,

through the avenues of the press, with more force than courtesy, finding a convenient term in the word "parroting."

The teachers have not been slow to perceive the popular complaint; at least, not so slow as the pungent newspaper articles indicate. The supply is, sooner or later, regulated by the demand, in teaching as well as in other callings, and so it has come to pass that in an anxiety to rectify this subject of complaint, we find a disposition to put the cultivation of the memory in the background, and to elevate to its place the training of the reasoning powers. In that remarkable treatise on Education, the "Emile" of Rousseau, this great educational reformer, in his anxiety to free the minds of children from the pedantic training of the times, opens the flood-gates of his passionate soul in appeals to his readers to free the children from compulsory training of the faculties. It was the revolt of a powerfully sympathetic mind against what is believed to be the ignorant oppression of the schools. But, as a revolt, it carried the point quite too far, although unquestionably it served an admirable purpose in releasing educational methods from the choking ligatures of the age. It is the same tendency we notice in the disciples of Rousseau-the German school-to exaggerate the method, or system of methods, which for the time was uppermost in their minds And precisely because such a reaction must be vigorous in its attempt to overthrow the deeply-rooted wrong methods which have provoked the reaction, arises the danger that the attack will be pushed much too far.

Through just such an anxiety to escape from the evil of excessive use, or abuse, of the memory in the public schools we have been brought face to face with the danger that we may be led to undervalue that faculty in our new methods in the school-room. There is something very fascinating in the cry, "Cultivate the reasoning powers of the children," and something quite as powerful on the teacher's mind in the ridicule and caricature of the memory-work. Unquestionably the child is, to some extent, a reasoning being, and, as such, there can be no doubt as to the propriety of our recognizing this in our educational methods. But it is equally true that the reasoning faculty is very slow of development. The discipline of the intellectual faculties, from the simple habit of correct observation onward to the complex habit of weighing and testing the value of evidence, which, more or less, becomes the great business of human intellect, is a well-nigh never-ending process of development. Nor can there be any doubt that this training should be begun at a very early day, both in school and at home. The reasons for right conduct, in particular, in connection with some personal experience, are reasons which a child soon apprehends. The reasons for certain operations in science are much more difficult of apprehension, and must be proceeded with more carefully. But whether in conduct or in school studies, are not attempts by way of excessive explanation or talk, very likely to deceive the instructor in his endeavors to develop the reasoning powers? Scarcely an idea is more delusive than that our constant preachments to children, however plain they may appear to ourselves, must appear equally so to them; and look at it as we may, spontaneity in thinking is in great danger of being destroyed by excessive anxiety on the part of the teacher to impress his modes of thinking and reasoning on the pupil under twelve or thirteen years of age. How is this spontaneity to expand itself? Not by the

child slipping its mind into the shell that the instructor or teacher has prepared for it.

There are a great many points in morals or conduct, as well as in school studies, that we cannot wait to reason into a young child. These must be ac cepted through the force of authority and as settled truths. There are other cases where the pupil must be left to puzzle them out for himself, or wait for the dawning of light that sooner or later comes to even the most moderately endowed intellect. These we trust to the operation of well-ascertained mental processes. But the great majority of young instructors, in particular, are in a hurry for results, and think that by constant talk their children will become reasoning, thinking beings. In this way they fancy that in some unexplained way they will be able to meet this new demand for the cultivation of the reasoning faculties and the abolishment of "parroting."

These remarks are only incidental to the object of this short article, a plea for the cultivation of the memory in our schools. Youth is the time for the exercise of this faculty. If it be neglected then, it becomes more difficult to perfect it as the years advance. Besides, the proper training of the memory is our main dependence for correctly-learned lessons. If the use of text-books is to be continued—and there is no prospect in the immediate future that they will be abandoned-what reliance is to be placed on our home work if the memory be neglected? It will be said that it is only the sense of the author that the teacher wants; he will be satisfied with the pupil's own language. But when is the young child to obtain its vocabulary? From clever children of twelve years, or from others of fourteen, there is some prospect of obtaining an approach to a connected, intelligent answer in their own language; but most teachers know that it is frightfully wearisome work to place dependence on that. The truth is that very few children have a vocabulary of any extent from which they can draw, and one of the first things that we ought to do is to assist them in enlarging it. For this there can be no better plan than committing to memory, with the utmost exactness, well-explained, simple language of a good writer. We say well-explained, because it is utterly wrong to require young children to learn what they do not understand. Possibly it was the doing of this that partly created the revolt in public opinion, expressing itself in that forcible word "parroting." A thoughtful teacher, on speaking of this very matter with the writer, remarked, that if he had the entire training of twelve children uninterruptedly, from seven years of age to twelve or thirteen years, he would undertake to furnish them with such à vocabulary and faculty of expression as would surprise me. He then added that he would do it by requiring them to commit to memory, at first, short pieces of pleasing poetry at least once a week. As the months flew on he would increase the amount. He would review these from time to time. When they learned to write, they should write these as exercises. As the years passed, prose pieces would be mingled with poetical extracts, and in the last two years, perhaps more, he would exercise them in turning the poetry into prose, and in expressing the prose in other prose of their own. Three things would thus be gained, the habit of exact memory, fullness of vocabulary, with facility of expression, and a well-stored collection of short, beautiful, and serviceable extracts for future life. There