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SCHOOL MANAGEMENT.

NY teacher in any institution that cannot arouse such a spirit of cheerful labor in a pupil as will overcome his natural laziness, his love of mischief and his tendency to animal indulgence is, so far as that pupil is concerned, a failure; imparting weakness instead of strength, willful virulence instead of manly self-control in every sensual gratification. And any institution, I care not how many and how commodious its buildings, how able and celebrated its professors; I care not how extensive and well selected its libraries, how costly and well adapted its laboratories, how ample and well arranged its museums, how well stored and attractive its art galleries; I say any institution which cannot excite in any pupil a spirit of earnest industry and enthusiastic endeavor in legitimate pursuits, that will displace his lazy, shirking habits and evil tendencies, is educating that pupil in vice instead of virtue, for future evil instead of good, and to be a curse rather than a blessing to himself and his kind. Such an institution and such a pupil ought to be separated; and the sooner the better. How many colleges, or academies, or normal schools act on this principle?-Holbrook.

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SCHOOL GOVERNMENT.

HE following is a synopsis of an address delivered by W. W. Woodruff, of Pennsylvania, before the Teachers' Normal Institute, of the city of Wilmington, Delaware:

More teachers fail from want of ability to govern than from any want of scholarship, and it is more easy to increase our scholastic attainments than to acquire an ability to govern. One great object is to govern ourselves, to teach others to do the same, and put pupils on their feet so as to take care of and to control themselves. Much time is wasted in making scholars like soldiers. Military order is necessary for soldiers, but scholars do not go out into the world in platoons, nor appear in society as they appear in school. You may succeed in establishing order, but unless you have laid the foundations of a good character, you have failed.

Teachers should have correct ideas of what government is, and should teach their pupils that there are laws, and illustrate the same by showing that there must be system. Coming to more specific requirements, teachers should obtain the confidence of their pupils. This can be done by showing that you have sympathy for them, and that you are honest and sincere. It is not necessary always to confess your fault to your pupils, but show that you are ready and willing to do so when it becomes necessary. Then you should come before your scholars and say you are sorry. This must not be done every day, as your hold upon the scholars would be weakened. A candid acknowledgment to your pupils, once in awhile, will not weaken the respect and confidence of the pupil. One of the best recipes to secure the love and confidence of a scholar is to free our minds from all vanity and affectation.

The first rule in governing well is to have no rules at all. If you adhere to

printed or written rules, you challenge your school to break those rules. But for the prohibition, the desire to transgress would not be created. It is necessary to have regulations, subject to modification, and but few rules.

In the enforcement of order, a great element to success is to learn to wait. We are apt to feel that all resistance to government should be put down, but there is a rough and a smooth way of doing it. If strong enough physically, you can drive right through, but if you will wait and be persistent, you will accomplish the same result in a more pleasant manner. Charles Sumner, when he lectured in West Chester, fifteen years ago, stopped in the middle of a sentence while a man got up abruptly and walked down the aisle. When he had passed out, Mr. Sumner resumed where he had left off, in the middle of the sentence. No one offered to move afterward. He had conquered by silence and waiting.

Another point is to behave well yourselves. We all have some shortcomings, failures of some kind. Equality cannot be expected in good scholars. If you expect order, you must be orderly; if punctuality, you must be punctual; if study, you must study yourselves. Teachers who show indifference to study, or who merely study enough to get along, will never be successful. You must have a zeal and a love for the work, which will carry you beyond the requirements of the hour.

Teachers must show that they expect much from their pupils. They should seem as little as possible to govern, and let it be quiet-no command. If the wish is recognized, the will need not be expressed. Study the time to do so, and but seldom find fault, and study the mood or mind before speaking of them. Teachers should govern more with the eye. They talk too much. Men control wild animals by looking them in the eye. Children can be controlled in the same way, if there is behind it a kind, benevolent heart. Govern kindly by love; not a watery, sentimental kind, but a sincere, true love that wins. There are great depths of love in the heart that have never yet been reached. Govern with discrimination. No two pupils are alike. Some children are strangers to kindness. Parents may love them, but they never give expression to such love, and some only find when grown up that their parents ever loved them.

Scholars should be kept busy, and, in order to keep them busy, teachers should anticipate and prepare beforehand. Being hasty is a grievous fault. Some hastily take a position from which they are compelled to back down, and thereby lose their authority. Do not think I disapprove of the use of the rod, for I do not. But try the full measure of love first, and get the parents to cooperate with you. You can gain the parents to your side by showing that you are sincere. This plan, if pursued with honest feelings instigated by love, can scarcely fail to win the pupil and avoid the disagreeable necessity of using corporal punishment.-Pennsylvania School Journal.

A SMART boy in one of the public schools, having been required to write a composition on some part of the human body, expanded as follows: "The Throat A throat is convenient to have, especially to roosters and ministers. The former eats corn and crows with it; the latter preaches through his'n, and then ties it up."

EDUCATION AND BOOK KNOWLEDGE.

THE high water-mark of a prevalent theory in education is reached in an as

sertion, by one of the foremost educators of the day, to the effect that what

a man can write out fully and fairly concerning any matter, that he knows, and no more. Whatever falls short of this simple and certain test, we are told, is no better than sheer ignorance.

The phrase expresses, with axiomatic terseness, the controlling spirit of the schools; and for this reason, we suppose, it has been echoed right and left as a settled dogma in education. From the primary school up to the highest, excepting a few scientific schools, the grand test of knowledge is verbal expression. The pupil that recites best wins the prize; and as the credit goes to that teacher whose pupils meet the standard required most completely, the tendency is to narrow the range of teaching to those things which can be most readily reproduced in formal phrases. The premium is paid for words, and naturally the teacher gives more attention to them than to the pupil's mental health or mental development. Not that facility of verbal expression is to be despised or neglected. It is an art second to none, and worthy of proportionate culture. In many cases it is also a first-rate test of knowledge. But to make it the ul timate test, in all cases, involves a double fallacy, subversive of the highest aim in education. It implies that all knowledge worth having can be expressed in words, and consequently can be communicated by words, either for informing another, or for testing his information. It implies, too, that the possession of knowledge necessarily carries with it the power of ready and accurate expression.

The fact is, on the contrary, that relatively but a small part of what one may know can possibly be expressed in words; and much, even of that which can be formulated, may be thoroughly apprehended and practically used by one who could not begin to set it down in logical sentences.

Time was when book knowledge wes thought to be the sole basis of scholarship. All teaching was book teaching, and it was no more than fair to expect students to prove their knowledge in book fashion. But that time is past. The bookish estimate of culture no longer satisfies. The library alone can no longer make a scholar; and every scheme of culture which pins the pupil's attention to letters is little better than a wall set around him to keep him from learning what he ought to know. That much of what passes for legitimate schooling is such a wall, is recognized by everybody except the pedagogue.

Men of real culture are well aware that ability to do is vastly superior to ability to say ; and they believe that the development of skill and power ought to receive at least as much attention in schooling as the mere accumulation of second-hand facts; but all that sort of basic culture is not merely slighted but suppressed as soon as the test of verbal description is made supreme. There are less than fifty sounds in the English language. If they were all devoted to the service of a single sense, all their possible combinations would be insufficient to express the distinctions which that sense might be able to recognize. There are five thous

and times fifty fibrils in the optic nerve, as estimated by Helmholtz, each demonstrably capable of conveying many degrees of sensation of the several primary colors. One need not calculate the permutations of two hundred and fifty thousand to realize how meager the richest possible vocabulary of sight terms must be for the expression of sight experiences. Still greater is the poverty of language when used for expressing the infinite distinctions of thoughts and things which the whole man is capable of apprehending. Relatively, indeed, our words are but a clumsy sort of currency for certain common needs, no more sufficient for the complete expression of thoughts and feelings than bank notes are for the measurement of values. For the grosser exchange of life, for marketable values, money answers well enough; but how shall one express in banker's figures, or set phrases either, the value of a kindly word, a mother's love or a cup of water to one perishing with thirst?

The killing fault with scholastic test of knowledge is that, from its nature, it fails to reach-as it fails to encourage-more than a single phase of culture, and that one of inferior grade. It measures verbal acquisition only, not skill or power; and since conduct rather than words, ability to do rather than facility in saying what has been done, or ought to be done, is the ultimate test in life, and should be the paramount aim in education, the word test is necessarily deceptive as well as inadequate. The glib art critic, scarcely able to draw a straight line, might have at his tongue's end a greater array of fine art phrases than a Michael Angelo, and if suddenly called on to write out fully and fairly his knowledge of sculpture or painting, the master might be beaten by the mere theorist. So, too, the veteran shipmaster of a hundred successful voyages might make off hand a poorer display of nautical knowledge than the cadet fresh from the naval school, or possibly the concocter of sea stories for a sensational newspaper.-Scientific American.

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HOW A POOR BOY MAY OBTAIN AN EDUCATION.

ANY a boy who has been too poor to take the course of study in preparatory schools, has asked the question: How can I prepare myself for college? How can I gain the means of paying for a college course?

Some of the most cultured and influential men of to-day were poor boys, and earned the money to pay the cost of their own education. We propose to show briefly in this article, how a boy may follow such examples; what are the preparatory studies necessary for him to pursue at home, and what are the most promising ways of securing literary helps?

PREPARING FOR COLLEGE.-The usual course of preparation for college embraces the following studies: Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography, Algebra--as far as quadratic equations, Latin Grammar, six books of Virgil, six books of Caesar, six orations of Cicero, Greek Grammar, and four books of Xenophon's Anabasis. For the agricultural colleges, business colleges and school of science, preparation in the common English branches only will be required.

A boy will need help in mastering these preparatory studies. There is perhaps no better way for him to pursue, than to state his case to some clergyman or teacher in the neighborhood where he lives, and to make an arangement for

private recitation to him. Any good man stands ready to help a working boy to get an education.

The cost of the necessary text-book, with the exception of the Latin and Greek Lexicons, will be small. The young student must have a Latin Lexicon on beginning Virgil, and he ought to have a Greek one on taking up the Anabasis.

In the English branches, he will need to understand the principles of things, and to be able to state them clearly in his own language, rather than to commit to memory any considerable portion of the exact language of the text-books. He will find Virgil and Xenophon hard to study at first, but not more exacting than many pastimes which boys choose as occupation of their leisure.

EARNING MONEY.—As soon as the young student has acquired sufficient education to teach, it will be well for him to take a country school. He can continue his preparatory studies while teaching, reciting as before to some clergyman or teacher. If he is at all successful as a teacher, he will, by teaching a part of the year, be able to meet all the expenses of his education.

This is the old method of paying for an education. Recently, poor students have found canvassing for the best books and periodicals, and acting as agents for business firms and insurance companies, a healthful and successful way of earning money. Some of these young men have taken up at the same time both teaching and canvassing. About thirty-three and one-third per cent. is usually allowed to responsible agents on subscription books, and a book that meets a popular want will return to an active agent liberal payment for his time and trouble. Choose a book that the people want, and offer it to the people who want it, these are said to be the two principles of successful canvassing.

FREE COURSES OF STUDY.-There are three kinds of schools of superior education from which the student may choose: The agricultural colleges, which especially teach science and the industrial arts; the normal schools, which prepare pupils for teaching; and the universities, which furnish the best preparation for literary professions.

"What helps do the schools of special training and the colleges themselves offer to poor students?"

In the year of 1862, congress passed an act establishing agricultural colleges in the different states, and made a grant of public lands of immense value for the purpose. Thirty-nine agricultural colleges have already been established, having some five hundred instructors and six thousand pupils. Many of these colleges have been liberally re-endowed by the states and by individuals.

These colleges embrace in their courses a classical as well as an industrial education, and especially commend themselves to students of limited means. There are in these schools two thousand and seven hundred free scholarships, and in additon to these helps the students are able to reduce the very moderate price of board, by work on the farms connected with each institution.

There are in the United States some sixty normal schools. These are sustained by public appropriations, and are free to the resident pupils of each state for a certain period of time. These schools not only offer a first-class education in themselves, but furnish, in the opportunities for well-salaried