OFFICE OF THE SCHOOLMASTER, LONDON, ENG.-Dear Sir: I shall have much pleasure in exchanging our paper for the ECLECTIC. A copy is mailed to you this day. With best wishes, I remain, Yours, sincerely,

W. SHELLARD LATHAM, Secretary and Manager.

The Schoolmaster is a weekly newspaper, large quarto, containing from sixteen to thirty pages each issue. It is truly a welcome visitor and the most valuable of all our exchanges. Granting that it is a European journal, nevertheless it should have thousands of American readers. One copy, one year, 6s 6d.

Editor will please send us rates to American subscribers.

The Journal of Education, (London, England,) for February, a monthly magazine, size and style of this journal, contains a most valuable article on The Organization of a Teaching Profession by the Right Hon. Lyon Playfair, C. B., M. P. Subscription price, 78.

QUERIES.

N. B.-Questions are numbered consecutively. The answer has the same number as its question, found in the previous issue.

ANSWERS.

15. (a.) Flint is a natural formation; it is one form of quartz. The "Indian points" or arrow heads were made by hand. (b.) 6 and 5 is 11.

2.

2

2

4.

2.

2

16. Transposing (1.) x=11 minus y or x=sq. root of 11 minus y. Transposing (2.) x=7 minus y Hence sq. root 11 minus y-7 minus y Squaring we have 11 minus y=49 minus 14y plus y Transposing and arranging, y minus 14y plus y minus 38. Applying the method for solving cubic or higher equations (to be found in any higher algebra) we have x=3, y=2.

17. We think it cannot be solved mathematically, and have not the time to guess it out.

18. "All men are mortal," "men" is in the masculine gender. "Teacher," noun, com., third, sing., mas., obj., governed by as.

QUESTIONS.

LEXINGTON, KY.-19. Will you state the difference between "concepts" and "judgments" as used by logicians.

A. N.

MT. ARBIT, OHIO.-20. What do the terms "Hoodlum" and "Bummer" mean as used at the present time?

21. Is it correct to say, "to-morrow is Tuesday?"

S. H.
M.

22. One Historian says, Vermont was the fourteenth State of the American Union; another says Kentucky was. Which is correct?

C.

THE

HE introduction of permissive compulsion was one of the boldest innovations attempted by Mr. Forster in his act of 1870. The principle was so opposed to English ideas and sentiments that many boldly predicted the utter failure of the attempt to compel, by process of law, the attendance of children at elementary schools. Dire results were confidently anticipated should School Boards endeavor to enforce their compulsory by-laws upon free-born Britons. Although not enunciated in the nervous language of the Bishop of Peterborough, the sentiment" Better England ignorant and England free," was entertained by a large proportion of speakers and writers on educational topics. On the other hand, the enthusiastic advocates of compulsion argued for it as the one thing needful to insure the safety and prosperity of the Nation. England was rapidly losing the foremost place she had so long held among the nations of the earth -her commercial and manufacturing supremacy. To enable her to hold her own, whether in peace or in war, she must see to the education of her working classes. Since these classes were largely indifferent with respect to the instruction of their children, compulsion must be introduced, as it has been in Prussia and other Continental States. Coupled with adequate provision of school accommodation, compulsion was calculated to cure all our educational ills, to supply all our educational deficiencies. The battle raged loud and long between

the advocates and opponents of compulsion. The thoroughly English result was a compromise. School Boards, where established, might or might not enact compulsory by-laws, which, when sanctioned by the Education Department, were legally binding upon the inhabitants of their various districts. By this means about half the population of the country has been brought under the operation of compulsion, and the experiment has been tried a sufficiently long time to enable us to judge of the value of the principle.

In the first place, the fears of those who regarded with apprehension the introduction of a measure so un-English in its character have proved unfounded. The principle has been very extensively tried, and the people have submitted quietly. What difficulties have arisen have been chiefly caused by those who opposed the adoption of compulsion rather than by those subjected to its operation. Few public men are now found to oppose the extension of the principle which was carried by Lord Sandon last session. It has undeniably succeeded in securing the atttendance at school of many children who would otherwise have grown up in ignorance. At the same time it has not been so successful as its more ardent supporters predicted. Large numbers of children in the districts in which compulsory by-laws are in force have still to be induced to attend school; while, with respect to the regularity of attendance of those on the rolls of primary schools, it has in some cases accomplished no good, even if it has not done harm. So far, therefore, it has proved but a qualified success. It has hitherto justified neither the hopes nor the fears with which its introduction was regarded. We do not, however, look upon it in any way as a failure. If disappointment is felt with respect to the results of its operation, it is due chiefly to two causes the exaggerated expectation of its more enthusiastic advocates and the inefficient manner in which it has in many cases been applied. There is no one nostrum able to remove our educational ills. Compulsion is but one of several measures necessary to secure the efficient education of the masses of the people. For the successful accomplishment of the objects it is calculated to secure a considerable period of time is required. Mistakes in the methods employed must be made and corrected. The general habits and ideas of the people must be greatly modified. And when all has been done that can be done, we cannot hope for perfect success. If the great majority of children receive the training desired for them, we may regard the measures employed as being as successful as the nature of the case allows.

It would be of great advantage if the objects which compulsion is designed to attain were clearly apprehended and distinguished. These are two, which are in many respects different, and require different methods for their successful accomplishment. To secure the attendance at some efficient school of every child of school age is one thing; to secure the regular attendance of those who professedly attend school is another thing. Wherever the population is sufficiently large to justify the measure,it would be advisable to employ different agents to secure these two different objects. Compulsion can only be used with respect to the first, while, with respect to the second, compulsion should be employed only as a dernier resort. The London Board employs a large staff of visitors at a very considerable expense. These are under the direction of the superintendents of visitors for the various divisions. The same men are responsible for securing the attendance, and the regular attendance, at school, of the whole of

the children of their respective districts. There can be no doubt that there is great waste of time and effort in the endeavor by one man to perform two different duties. In addition, the teacher of each school is made responsible for the good attendance of his children, and to induce him to pay attention to this matter, the promised annual increment to his alary is to some extent dependent upon his success. At the same time the visitors are not under his control, nor obliged to carry out his plans. Where the teachers and the visitors work well together, good results may be secured. In several instances there is cause to fear that the influence of the visitor to some extent counteracts the exertions of the teacher. The visitor is not at all bound to carry into effect the views of the teacher, while he must obey his superintendent and the divisional committee. A conflict between the teacher and the visitor is thus at times inevitable. It has been prepared for by the regulations of the Board. No man can serve two masters. The Board is wrong in making two concurrent jurisdictions. It is either the teacher's duty to secure the regular attendance of his pupils, or it is not If it be, make him responsible, and supply him with the necessary authority. If it be not, then the less he is troubled with the matter the better. To make him responsible, and not supply him with the means necessary to enable him to perform the duty, is another example of the Egyptian bondage of which teachers have so often to complain. It is asking them to make bricks without straw. The Schoolmaster, London, Eng.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON PRIMARY TEACHING.

A

EVA DARLING, A.B.

CERTAIN teacher once had a girl pupil of about fifteen years of age, with the average ability and maturity of ordinary district school girls, who did not learn her lessons. She had a careless manner in class, and was very hard to interest. The teacher talked to her one day, and tried to see if she would not acknowledge some obligation to get the most good she could from study and class, but she said she thought one could do as she pleased about anything.

It is a question often discussed, Which influence does more to mold the character of the young, that of parents or teachers? But here was a girl whose parents had well nigh put it out of the teacher's power to help, or at least to change. To be sure, in rare instances one might receive such an answer as the above, and one given in good faith, from a child of earnest and clear-sighted parents, but this scholar, as the teacher took care to learn, had received little, if any, wise training at home.

That a child should live to be fourteen or fifteen years old and have no sense of personal obligation to do right and to do well, argues a woeful lack in the character and training of the parents. With most individuals much time and strength has to be spent in bringing the forces of our nature to work in harmony and in one direction. According to a thousand circumstances, one person has more or less of this hard work to do than another; but all the causes that constitute inheritance and influence have their hold upon us, and no one can wholly

escape. Of course personal exertion must be the one indispensable element in all this, yet most sad it is when one has not in youth some true help to look upon life with steady purpose to make much of it. Suppose a teacher to go into a school of forty scholars, many of them nearly grown. He will hardly find ten whose rational development has any direction to it. There are, so to speak, the protoplasmic bases of mental and moral life, but the continuously harmonious action which is to constitute mental and moral life has hardly begun.

The pupil is not ready for the teacher, and so much time has to be spent in making him able to work. In many cases nearly all the time of the teacher must be spent, and then few minds are oriented."

Napoleon Bonaparte, when asked what France most needed, replied, "mothers." But men and women are correlatives, and one cannot be truly and generously elevated without its influence on the other.

It is not easy to reach and wisely change the fathers and mothers of our land. The ministers pay far more heed to doctrine than to conduct; and so reformers have decided that the hope of our country lies with the young. These considerations seem to point toward some clear conclusions:

First of all, that people are very wrong in supposing persons of inferior character and ability to be well enough able to teach primary schools. They should see that the aggregate influence upon small children especially needs to be really wise and strong influence. Then, the teachers themselves engaged in such schools need to be touched by some impulse that shall open their eyes to see what work awaits them. If one of these could but see what there is to be done for the children under her care, or rather, what she is to make them able to do, she would hardly dare work at all, except reverently and with her might.

Dr. Arnold, the great and good teacher, said that the one requisite for the teacher's success was sincerity. One thinks, at first, that he should have added persistence; but then if one is sincere, he must have seen the " beauty of truth," and he who has seen that, will be persistent.

One great part of the work to be done is so to study perfect clearness in presenting subjects to children, to be so clear and to illustrate so well that a lesson may be valuable for suggestion as well as for fact. There will always be some pupils who will " read between the lines," and hear between the teacher's words. For what is the final object of all study but to look at length continually toward what is good and great, and to know that these cannot fail. Because, if by steady effort, I resist an evil to-day, or if I work my way to some new beauty by the light of truth, I shall be proving that "work is victory." Just as is the endeavor, so the real effect will be.

Nothing helps the youth to comprehend the law of cause and effect that governs all action, physical, mental and moral, so much as the habit of logical study, and the habit of logical thought. We think upon this law as pitilessly true and tremble; we think upon it, too, as mercifully true, and are thankful. How important that the young should have some real conception of the consequences of feeling, thought and action; some conception of the power for good or ill that is in themselves. When a child is very young, that is the time to lay the foundations of his future. If his moral sense can be awakened so that he will begin to refer all his activity to the standard of doing right because it is right, and of