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English by expending grammatical knowledge and labor in making decent speech out of the slang of the street, as we may by attending closely to the nearly perfect expression of correct writers and speakers. The habit of attending to the correct modes of speech that we make our own conform fo them, that we may notice little differences between our own speech and that of our superiors in the use of language, rather than any formal application of rules of syntax to sentences made or compiled for the purpose of being purged of purposely introduced solecisms that we may hereafter avoid these solecisms, will lead to better practice.

The instinct of good English comes from contact with good English and careful discrimination of varying modes of expression both within, and outside of, any rules which it would be profitable for a pupil to learn, as rules. Indeed, very many of the corrections which fairly good English requires to make it good English, are not covered by rules which can properly be called grammatical. The agreement of verbs and subjects, the right comparison of adverbs and adjectives, not using two negatives in a sentence, may be put under rules which the pupil may be required to learn, but entire conformity to all that is generally given in these rules still leaves much more to be done to insure language which is more than technically correct, language which is good as well as Srammatical. Many of the proprieties of speech-what all would recognize as such-cannot be half as well stated in a rule as they can be felt in an example by one who is familiar with good English as well as with technical grammar, aud many times, a correction which is given a reason and without quoting a rule does far more good than to detect those which a rule or an observation in some particular grammar can be found to cover.

The most careful writers sometimes furnish "examples for correction." If young pupils may correct the sentences given for that purpose under rule v, or observation vi, and may report in the grammar class any errors they have heard in school, older ones would find it a useful language exercise to notice inaccuracies they may find in their reading of well-written books. Please to observe that it is not said they should search good books to find in them flaws of language, but while they are reading they should notice, among many other points, expressions and constructions which are to be avoided by them as erroneous or inelegant. I recently heard a teacher say, "there's an omnibus goes to every train." Addison, in one of the Roger de Coverley papers, says, "there was a man below desired to speak with me." Nevertheless Addison is an English classic, while he and the school teacher are unequal except in the one small point of incorrect construction in the two sentences. If one desired to be very critical he would correct a child who says he will try and do better, and would tell him to say try to do; yet in chapter xv, book ii, of Daniel Deronda, so accurate a writer as George Eliot says, "try and secure Diplow as a residence." It is not yet recognized good English to put an adverb between the sign to and the verb; yet Herbert Spencer writes, "unless the pupil is intelligent enough to eventually fill up the gaps." I heard a teacher say to her class, "You cannot get your lesson without you study," and the author of Nicholas Minturn, in Scribner's Monthly writes, "it was two mornings after Mr. Benson's conversation that the former reached the culmination of his schemes."

Much less frequently found in good books, but still very frequently used by those who know better in spite of their incorrect habits, are such expressions as : "I should thought," "he lives a long ways off," "he is home now," "he seldom ever has his lesson," "read a couple of pages,' 99 66 you can learn it, if you are a mind to," "take the balance of the chapter to-morrow," "I've no sympathy for your laziness," "such answers don't set very well," "you will study this subject the rest of the season," "I meant to have told you yesterday;" all of these the writer heard from the teachers since he was asked to write this article for the Monthly. This is not to say that they are not good teachers of other subjects, and of language-in the main.

Of the sort that are hardly worth correcting, but which should, almost, be made state-prison offenses, this is one. A person who, with a company of such, had been parading and talking all day in a palace car after the usual manner of the vulgar-rich, declared in a voice which all were obliged to hear, after a short lull in their continual clatter of tongues, "Wall, I hain't slep a wink; no, sir." The glory of rings and chains and rich furs, and the obsequiousness of porters, went down before this illustration of, "Speak, that I may know thee."-National Teachers' Monthly.

RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS.

IT

T is, theoretically speaking, "never too late to learn;" but may we not learn some things too late to have the knowledge of practical use to us? If so, it stands us in hand to be in earnest about the learning of those things, and not content with thinking it is "never too late." For instance, as parents, present or prospective, we may learn many things of great importance respecting the ante-natal life and its laws, and in reference to the rearing and training of children, too late to. have the knowledge of practical use to us so far as our own children are concerned, and they become life-long sufferers in consequence.

How often do we hear old people, those who have raised large families, make the remark, "We need to raise one family, that we may learn how to raise a family well;" and our hearts bear witness to the truth of the saying. As we note with sadness the tendencies cropping out here and there in the children of our hopes, which, if not counteracted and balanced by other tendencies, will dwarf and embitter their whole lives, but few of us are wise enough to counteract these tendenciess when they are inherent in the nature of the child. Physical deformities, and diseases, too, are fastened upon our children because we learned too late the laws which govern these things. How few of us, in contemplating marriage, give one thought to, much less have any just conception

of the responsibility that must rest upon us as parents. We are more concerned to know the merits of this or that style of dress goods—the most becoming hat— or whether from a social or moneyed point we are likely to marry well; and this, not so much because we would shirk our responsibility and remain willfully ignorant, but because we do not feel the vast importance of these vital and practical laws of our being; it has never been a part of our education.

In this matter parents are at fault, either ignorantly, through a feeling of

false modesty, or lack of time. As parents, we have a very important duty to perform; namely, to see to it that we first understand these things, and then teach them to our children-our sons and our daughters. Half, and perhaps all, of our children are born ere we begin to look for the causes which produce certain traits of character that we deplore in them, or where the germs of certain diseases spring from, or why physically deformed. Then we find that the causes lie far back in their ante-natal life, and we have learned the law of hereditary too late to be of practical use to us. Thus are our children virtually robbed of their first great right; namely, the right to be well born; that is, born healthy-physically, mentally and morally.

The only thing left for us to do, then, is to profit by our experience, and atone for our ignorance by teaching to our children, as they grow to manhood and womanhood, those laws which we discovered too late to be of practical use to us in the raising of our children, but which they may learn, and their children be spared the many ills that ours were subject to; but how few of us do this! Hence, our children are left to grope their way in ignorance and darkness, and, like ourselves, to learn by experience-when too late to be of immediate use the true wisdom of life.

This is all wrong, and parents should see to it that this duty we owe to our children should not be neglected or crowded aside for less important ones. God and future generations will not hold us guiltless if we neglect these paternal duties. Of course, life is too short to do and learn all we desire and feel to be important. Many things must be left undone and unknown, but we must see to it that those matters which are crowded out are not the very ones most important for us to know and to do.

Again, in the disciplining of our children, we find, practically, that the adage fails us; for here, too, we grope in darkness, failing often of the desired results, and then mourning in spirit when we see, too late, that our children have been robbed of another great right; namely, the right to be well governed; that is, so governed and restrained at home as to make honorable and law-abiding citizens of them when they grow to manhood and womanhood. The end of all discipline should be reformatory, and so administered as to help the child to self-government and self-dependence; but how few of us understand well enough the nature of our children, or are wise, patient and loving enough to so discipline! We are so hurried, so many things claim our attention, that the little ones are crowded aside, till, ere we are aware of it, the golden opportunity has passed and we cannot recall it. A knowledge of these things should receive a large share of our attention before we take upon ourselves the responsibilities of parenthood, and much careful thought and study afterward, as knowledge comes to us by every new experience. If our own teeth only were set on edge by the "sour grapes," our responsibility as parents would not be so great; but the innocent are the greater sufferers, therefore, our responsibility as parents is greater, since the results of failure in us will follow the child through all the years of its life, dwarfing and racking with pain the body that is dear to us, dimming the intellect that might have been a leading star in social advancement, and bowing the soul in death that might have held communion with the angels, but for our learning too late what great things were possible to us in moulding the common man and woman.-Evening at Home.

-AND

SOUTHWESTERN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.

A Monthly Magazine conducted by leading | The OFFICIAL ORGAN for State Departments Teachers of the Southwestern States. of Public Instruction.

EDITORS:

STATE EDITORS:

T. C. H. VANCE, Carlisle, Ky.
H. A. M. HENDERSON, Frankfort, Ky.
W. H. CAMPBELL, Carlisle, Ky.

M. C. DAVIS, Montgomery, Ala.
JULIUS W. THOMPSON, Lonoke, Ark.
B. M. ZETTLER, Macon, Ga.

H. A. M. HENDERSON, Frankfort, Ky.
WM. L. SUTTON, Sardis, Miss.

M. A. WARREN, Columbia, S. C.

TERMS-One copy, one year, in advance, postage paid, $1; single copies, 15 cents; specimen numbers free. Remittances-Single subscriptions may be sent at our risk; in remitting sums greater than $1, obtain check or draft, or inclose in registered letter.

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All business communications should be addressed "Eclectic Teacher Company, Carlisle, Ky." Matter for insertion, either in the general or advertising columns, should reach us by the 15th of the month.

CARLISLE, KY., JUNE, 1877.

SUBSCRIBE for THE ECLECTIC TEACHER, the only educatimal journai south of the Ohio river.

A LARGE number of subscriptions expire with this issue. Please renew at once. You need the ECLECTIC and we need your dollar.

WE wish to establish an agency in each county. We pay cash commission and want none but active teachers. Will you accept the position and solicit subscribers at your county institute?

PREVIOUS to the third day of May we were of opinion that our welcome contemporary, The Educational Weekly, was a journal established in the interest of public free schools, but in a recent issue "W.," in a leading editorial, says: "In the first place there are too many coarse and untrained youths in the public schools for the good of some delicate and sensitive souls." Show us a superintendent or principal of a graded school who has spent the best part of his life in educating, yes educating, those boys and girls for proper members of society, who will admit that the two or three hundred graduates were coarse, untrained youths." On the other hand, will he not tell you that they were ladies and gen

tlemen.

Again. "The young lady needs a home-like, friendly and familiar atmos

phere surrounding her in order to secure her active labor or her enthusiastic study. The set, inflexible ways of the graded school are distasteful to her, and she ought not to be expected to thrive under a course of training so severe and exacting."

In the same paragraph the writer says that he is not ready to advocate a separation of the sexes in education.

Where is there a graded school whose teachers are unmannerly, untaught knaves, and whose pupils are the offspring of liars, thieves and vagabonds? We say, where is the school?

The article referred to reminds us of a discussion at the Ohio Teachers' Association, a few years since. The subject-" Cramming"-was warmly discussed. All were opposed to anything that tended in that direction. Remember that teachers from every part of the state took part in the discussion and denounced even the shadow of machine work."

Mr. H. arose and dryly suggested that "the superintendent, for whose benefit this discussion has taken one hour, must certainly be absent." No further remarks. The Weekly further says: "The graded school work is all "lumped off" too much. There are too many pupils in one building, and too many in one room, and too many in one class. The schools are too many of them wholesale establishments; we want more retail. Scholars are turned out too much by machinery; we want more teacher-power and less wheel-power. The school should not be so much a factory as a manufactory, where each graduate comes from the hands of an individual artist, and is known to have an individuality of his We want less class promotions and more individual promotions; we want less system and more vitality, less routine and more variety, less rules and more exceptions. Graded schools are the only kind of school which an incompetent teacher can hold for any length of time, and even a good teacher is liable to be spoiled by teaching long in them. It is well to keep the private schools as a kind of constant guide for the graded schools. There are many excellencies in the former that are liable to be crushed out of the latter."

own.

"Lumped off too much," "too many of them wholesale establishments," "too much machinery." Please point out the school. Where are the schools that "incompetent teachers" continue to superintend?

Where are the private schools after which our future graded school should be fashioned?

COUNTY INSTITUTES are now in order. The teacher who does not make it his business to be present should have his certificate revoked. He is a drone. He should be drummed out of service. He does harm in a multitude of ways. He is not qualified to teach, and, therefore, implants untold errors in the minds of his pupils. He sneaks into positions and underbids those who are qualified. Those in whose power it is to grant certificates should see to it that such persons do not get them. Our ranks need some pruning.

We should be pleased to announce the time of holding teachers' meetings, both county and state, if of the State Association, note time and place and forward programme, and of county, time, place and the person engaged to conduct the same.

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