fessional men seldom finish their studies before the age of twenty-one or twentytwo or twenty-four years, and yet many of our youth who hope to become useful and valuable members of the community, leave their studies at the early age of thirteen years. Ought not parents and teachers to unite in their efforts to discountenance the practice, now so common, of leaving school at an early age? If pupils who are to engage in business, in manufacturing, or in farming, could be induced to remain in school until the age of sixteen or seventeen years, how much it would contribute to their future success and happiness, and how great would the benefit be to the community! May we not hope for some change in the three particulars to which we have thus briefly alluded?-New England Journal of Education.

THE

SOURCES AND USES OF KNOWLEDGE.

HE mind uses knowledge, if it uses it rightly, always in the same way, and for the same purpose. The adage, "many men of many minds" would lead the careless observer to conclude that each mind operated in a different way. It is true that men differ in conclusions; but with the same facts men ought not to differ. The difference lies in power to judge. This is the high faculty, and no pains should be spared by the teacher to improve the pupil's power of judgment. Before, however, we can judge we must have knowledge, and hence we must consider how we obtain that.

The first source is personal observation. How do we know the sun shines? Obviously the most direct means of knowing is to see it. How do we know that a book has weight? We apply our hands to it. The old adage that "seeing is believing," is the announcement of the truth that the knowledge in which we depend with absolute certainty is that which is gained from the use of the senses. The next source is evidence. By this we mean the announcement by another of his own personal observation. If all men spoke the truth then we might doubt. "May not the witness be mistaken we ask? But more commonly we ask, "Does he speak the truth." Hence we turn our thoughts to discover whether there are any means by which we can determine this fact. We ask concerning his character for speaking truthfully, his general habits; we look to see what motives can influence the man; we inquire whether it is for his interest to lie; we ask to know the morality, the religious belief of the witness. This is a large field and brings into view many questions concerning the doctrines of motives. We learn from induction, we cannot learn from witnesses everything. We conclude something ourselves. Thus we hear the mewing of a cat. We are confident the cat has four legs. We have seen that all individual cats have had four legs and this gives us a certainty about the class. This is called the power of induction. It is the faculty of mind by which we judge concerning a class from having examined many individuals of a class.

We learn by inference, that each individual of a class has the same characteristics as the class. We read of the white dove that sat on Mahomet's shoulder, and are sure it had feathers, because we have learned that the class are clothed in feathers, and we believe that to be true of each individual, that is true of the

class. This process by which from two statements we deduce as a third is called deduction.

We use knowledge by thinking with it. The senses bring us knowledge, and we connect by our judgment this knowledge in the two ways spoken of aboveinduction and deduction. By judgment we mean the connections of two things as subject and predicate that are properly related. The active mind is constantly employing its powers of judging; it does this intuitively or without effort. The sluggish mind simply rests like the patient frog or owl; it may have the appearance of thought without the reality.

Error. But the teacher will also show the pupil that in spite of what might seem to indicate that the mind would come to the same conclusions, there are instead widely varying conclusions. Why is this? In the first place then is prejudice. A pupil is given the grammar to learn. It has been told that it is dry and hard. The teacher asks if this point or that is not interesting; some say yes, and some no. Why is this? Some answer free prejudice. Again. Some are asked if it rained yesterday. Some say yes, and some no. Why is this? Some did not use the first source of knowledge-observation. Again the question is asked if all school-rooms have desks. Some will say yes and some no. Why is this? Some generalize from insufficient observation. A large number must be examined before it can be applied that what is true of the individuals seen is true of those not seen. Sometimes the mind errs from a confusion of words. A man is charged with being a thief, he is proved to be a vagrant. This satisfies many a juror.-New York School Journal.

NORMAL SCHOOLS.

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C. F. R. BELLOWS, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, MICHIGAN.

a previous paper we aimed to show that so far as any action of the National Educational Association was authoritative on the question of the function of normal schools, such action was plainly in the direction of an assumption of the fact that it was within the province of normal schools, contemplated as a complete system, to provide the preparation requisite for teachers of every grade and position. It will be the object of the present paper to consider the appropriate work, as we conceive it, of such schools, and the natural limitations, if any, which practically confine these institutions within a certain sphere. However general a form our discussion in some of its parts may assume, we trust that many of our readers will be able to see that we do not intentionally controvert the truth of the familiar saying as to where charity begins.

All understand that the object of the normal school is the preparation of teachers for the work they have to do in the schools. Teaching is thus admitted to be an art that may be acquired, and which ought to be understood by those who would engage in it. The vocation of the teacher is hereby recognized as a profession, to fit for which special schools are as necessary as they are for those who would pursue law or medicine. Such is the general conception of the normal

school in the minds of the people. But popular ideas of things are often crude, and frequently contain elements which render them impossible in fact. Experience is the handmaid of all safe theorizing upon almost every question; and so we find in the existing character of our normal schools throughout the country, and in the views of normal school men generally, a modification, to some de gree, of the extreme position on the normal school question, usually held by those who are mere theorizers on the subject. All agree that the work of the normal school, as such, is a professional one, but differ as to whether an amount of ordinary school work is not practically unavoidable, or going a little farther, whether a course of academic study may not be pursued in connection with the professional work, either as an addition thereto, or else as a necessary means to an end. The parties to this controversy are, however, by no means confined distinctly within the limits of those on the one hand who have had more or less experience in normal school work, and of those on the other who, without any personal experience, nevertheless have a theory as to what that work should be, but we find each in full force and vigor in the ranks of normal school men themselves. On the one hand, are those who distinguish a very wide difference between the proper work of the normal school, and that of the common or public school; and on the other, those who seem to act on the principle that any such difference is quite inconsiderable. Between these extreme positions, a great variety of others are interpolated. The normal school is thus "a house divided against itself." It is useless to deny so obvious a fact. And, for our own part, we feel to record right here our conviction that the sooner we admit the fact and force of this spirit of division, and set about uniting on some high and tenable ground, the sooner will our own heads be safe from the impending rafters.

What that common ground is upon which normal school men are thus urged to come is, we think, equally obvious. It is discoverable by a simple consideration of the nature and direction of the forces which have been operative to produce the present unsteadiness of the normal school orb. These disturbing forces seem to us to have been developed as the simple and natural result of the too near approach, and continued course of this body along the track of other members of the system. The early history of normal schools in this country was so nearly contemporaneous with that of other parts of our school system that these perturbations, though perhaps no less real than now, were, however, less noticeable, simply because of the general chaos which everywhere prevailed. But the public school and the college members of the system having now become somewhat fully developed and settled in their respective orbits, without a corresponding appropriate development of the normal school, and the consequent consistent determination of its sphere, these irregularities are now becoming localized and alarmingly apparent. They are now observed to inhere in the normal school, and seem sometimes to threaten its precipitation upon the body of one or the other members of the system. To avert this catastrophe but one thing can be done; and, if we rightly read the signs of the times, that thing must be done speedily and thoroughly. It is, as we have already intimated, for all connected with normal schools to unite upon a high plane of true and distinctly professional work. Our extended courses in academic study, in the sense we now have them so largely, that is, in a way differing almost imperceptibly from that in

which they occur in other schools, must be remanded to the public school and the academy or college, just as far as these institutions afford the necessary facilities for the requisite academic preparation of students for the professional course of the normal school. The average opportunity for such preparation, furnished by the schools of the state, must, of propriety, be made the measure of the requirements for admission to the normal school. The standard thus presented ought to be a sort of sliding scale to be kept constantly at a level with the changing mean of the public school, as it enlarges and improves its work. In practice, occasionally will occur the admission of a student who in some respects may not be quite up to the adopted average. With such, a small amount of academic work may still have to be done; but it will be only as mending a road at an occasion al spot in order to get on-a very different thing from cutting through the timber and the hills and making the road at the first. As already intimated, the work of the normal department should be the theory and practice of teaching-lectures on the general principles of methods, supplemented with the illustration of the application of those principles to the teaching of the various branches pursued in the schools, and also with practice in the actual teaching of these branches in the training school. This practice-teaching should be done under the constant eye of the teachers of the normal department acting still as instructors, besides as critics. All of the teaching in the model or trainschool, and also all the details of government and handling of this department, should, we think, be done by the pupils of the normal department. And then, thus at best, there will be generally less of that kind of work than might be profitably done by those for whom that school is designed.

The branches of study introduced and employed thus in the professional course should be for the different classes of pupils, those of the grade of school they are respectively preparing to teach, which may be any one, theoretically, from the rural district school to the college. But it should always be kept in mind that by far the greater part of those who teach are employed in the elementary schools. Just in proportion to the demand for teachers of advanced attainments the normal school, it would seem, should offer facilities for their requisite preparation. That is, if one in twenty-five, for example, of the teachers in the state is needed for the work in our high schools of preparing students for college, our idea is that one in twenty-five on the average of those who graduate from the normal school should be fitted for that work, and similarly for other positions. Of course the higher the scholastic attainments and culture of the teacher the better he will be, other things being equal, even for a most primary position; but while a single normal school in a state cannot begin to prepare a tithe of the teachers needed in the elementory schools, it is a question of grave importance how far such a school shall spend its efforts upon the preparation of higher grade teachers. Here only do we encounter a practical limit to the functions of a normal school in its appropriate sphere.

In conclusion, we wish to urge again that normal school men and women come together in a general conference, and unite upon some plan of developing a complete, thorough, and, as far as practicable, uniform system of professional work --a system that shall be wholly relieved of all entanglements with the functions of other schools, one that shall be universally accepted as lying in a line of a

now much needed magnifying of the special office of the normal school. If the normal school is to continue, we are convinced that its foundations in many cases will have to be essentially reconstructed. Very much less of the treacherous stubble of academic material, and very much more of the science of education, must be put into its walls. It is true that what we call the science of education is, as yet, a somewhat uncertain thing—a sort of unknown quantity in the normal problem-and some even seem to say we have not so much as heard whether there be any" science of education. It is thus incumbent upon normal school teachers every where to labor in developing and confirming the principles of this important branch of human knowledge. Let there not be found a normal school altar bearing the inscription "To the unknown God."-Educational Weekly.

THE

CORRRECTION OF FALSE SYNTAX.

HE correction of incorrect speech is one of the most profitable of language exercises. Parsing and analysis may be useful as instruments in the study of the structure of language, and may be necessary as technical modes of recitation in grammar. The calling of attention to inaccuracies and the correction of such inaccuracies, however, must be more directly practical, if by this term is meant what conduces to the right use of language. To discover and correct errors should tend to make the one who does it more careful and more accurate.

It may be questioned whether "false syntax" made for the purpose is the best form of such exercise. The sentences put into the grammars to be corrected are sometimes so full of errors, are so impossibly bad, that no learner should be set to the task of making them right, the very contact with such English doing his speech more harm than his grammatical knowledge gets benefit from the corrections made. The sight of them, and still more the sound of them, is in a certain stage of a child's power in the use of language, dangerous because such errors are infectious. Sentences full of errors can hardly be kept from a child's ears, they are so common; but ought they not to hear them as seldom as possible, and ought they ever to see them printed? Whatever may be the cause, there seems to be a wonderful power, amounting almost to fascination, in very bad English over a learner's mind. Many correct the sentences, and then use them ever afterward. Is it done in a spirit of unconscious revenge for what they regary, too often, as dry and useless lessons in grammar imposed upon them. It is certainly one of the many instances in which evil example speedily bears fruit after its kind.

A better practice is, to correct setnences which are found in print or heard in conversation, and which are in the main correct; that is, to make quite right, sentences which have been used for ordinary purposes but are inaccurate in one or two particulars. The mistakes in ordinary good speech, made through inattention or through ignorance of some of the less commonly known principles of language, are far more worthy of attention by the learner than the grosser vulgarities of the wholly ignorant. The former give opportunity of profitable criticism; the latter are not worth it. We cannot acquire the habit of good