WHAT A BOY SHOULD KNOW AT EIGHTEEN.

A youth of eighteen, who is to have the best chances, should know how to study, and how to do it with enthusiasm also, because he has learned the lesson at least five years before.

Enthusiasm, guided and controlled by knowledge as to the use of the powers, is the true life of a living man, alive with the spiritual forces. Everything else is in sleep or is dead.

I make my starting-point and my guiding thought the thought that he should learn how to study, and should gain enthusiasm at the beginning.

In the first place, as I think, the study of language may be most hopefully and successfully started in these earliest years. The boy moves joyously where the man finds only labor and weariness. The children of our households to-day may gain the same thing that we gained at five and twenty, and far more than we gained, when they are ten or twelve; and the progress is like the joyful song of their childhood, when they are led along the rational method. They grow up into French or German, as it were, as they grow up into English, and talk, read and sing in these languages, just as they do in their own. Why should they not breathe in enthusiasm with every breath of their learning? It was with a great price, indeed, that we obtained this freedom. But they were free born.

. Let me say here that, in my judgment, every boy who has the best chances ought to have the mastery of the French or German language (I should say of both) before he is eighteen years of age—a mastery kindred to that which he has of English. He should, also, have such a knowledge of Greek and Latin as will mean power in and over those languages, and will enable him to read them with ease and with satisfaction when he enters upon his college course. The man who knows the ancient languages as he ought to know them, will never contend against their holding a place in the education of all widely educated and roundly educated men.

The boy who has the best chances ought, in the years between twelve and eighteen, to be set forward on his course in history and the beginnings, at least, of the literature of his own language.

My feeling is that the boys who have the best chances should know something of music and should, at least, see the opening of the door toward art studies. The opinion is now well established, I suppose, that all persons can be instructed in vocal music with a measure of success. I believe that the same thing can be accomplished in the line of instrumental music.

That the mathematical studies should be pursued energetically before the youth has reached the age of which we are speaking, I may add, is admitted by all. The men of the former generations and the men of our day agree at this point.-President Dwight, in April Forum.

GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY WORK OF THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL AT SAN JOSE.

Five weeks is given to the method of teaching primary geography and twenty weeks to the subject of geography as a study.

The methods and ten weeks of general geography are to be given in the junior year, and ten weeks of physical geography in the senior year.

All the work is to be founded upon true science, and will show how to connect the actual observation of nature with the study of books, pictures, maps and other apparatus practical in the stndy of geography. The special aim of the work should be to give students the ability to acquire knowledge for themselves and to use that knowledge correctly.

History and geography, depending as they do upon each other, must be studied and taught together, therefore, it will be seen all through the course, that whether the work bears the name of geography, or of history, that the two are pursued as one study.

The work begins with methods of teaching observation lessons, taking for subjects those things that have a direct bearing upon the study of geography, as lessons upon plants, insects, birds, domestic and wild animals, people, rain, wind, sunshine, minerals, etc.

In all cases, when giving these lessons to children, the teacher is to deal with such objects only as are at hand, as the purpose of these lessons is to lead children to discover the phenomena of nature through their own personal observation.

This is followed by instruction upon the teaching of home geography, which includes lessons upon direction, location, distance, the school-room, the school-yard and vicinity. Apply observation lessons in studying productions, occupations, slope of land, climate, etc.

Proceed from the study of immediate vicinity to California as a whole. Teach use of sand maps in studying slope, soil, irrigation, production, industries and commercial centers.

Use outline maps, maps cut from paper or card-board for fixing shape. Teach the use of pictures, books and apparatus.

The study of the people, occupations and industries should lead to the history of California, which may be given in pretty story form. After the thorough study of California give a series of lessons upon the globe, or world as a whole.

The following books will be found of great help to the pupils while taking the above work: Seven Little Sisters, Jane Andrews;

Each and All, Jane Andrews; World by the Fireside, Kirby; Aunt Martha's Corner Cupboard, Kirby; Overhead, Misses Moore and Nichols; Animal Life, Miss Marwood; Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe, Yonge.

As helps for teachers, Frye's Child and Nature, King's Methods and Aids in Geography, Methods of Teaching Geography, by Miss Crocker, and Geography Methods, by Col. Parker, will be found invaluable.

Give in story form some of the most prominent voyages, discoveries and early settlements in the history of America.

Show how the work upon California may be adapted to the teaching of any country.

In the ten weeks of geography as a study, spend one week upon the Pacific Coast, following the same general plan used in the lessons upon California.

Position on the globe, with reference to a few simple lines in latitude and longitude. Continue use of sand maps in studying slope, highlands, lowlands, irrigation and drainage. Use rapid outline and profile maps. Use California continually as a unit of comparison. Study commerce, transportation and travel.

In studying people give a little in regard to the natives, the first civilized inhabitants and present social condition. Study occupations, industries, and enough of civil government to be familiar with the duties of leading county and State officials.

Give pupils ability to locate upon a map rapidly all places under discussion.

Two weeks are to be devoted to the continent of North America. Teach the same as California, but in a more general manner.

A few natural divisions, the political divisions, comparatively. Use sand, outline and progressive maps.

Life-animal, vegetable and human. Under human life study races, manners and customs, education, religious governments and commerce, in a simple and general way, in order that pupils may have an intelligent and practical knowledge of those subjects. Study, as before, the native inhabitants, a few discoveries, location of leading settlements, growth and prosperity. Careful directions as to how and where to find and make use of information is to be given.

Spend two weeks upon the other continents in the same manner. The following are a few of the books that will be found of great assistance to pupils: Boy Travelers, Knox; Zigzag Journeys, Butterworth; Bird's-eye View of the World, Reclus; Panorama of Nations;

History of the United States, Eggleston; Story of Nations (series), Putnam; Wanderings on Four Continents; Wonderful Cities of the World, Smith; Great Cities of the Modern World, Shepard; What Darwin Saw, Darwin; Madam How and Lady Why, Kingsley.

Five weeks are to be spent upon the world in general, as represented by typical countries and cities.

Great Britain, two weeks; Germany, Egypt, China, Russia, two weeks.

A study of the following cities is to be pursued, so as to gain a knowledge of the countries that they represent: Paris, Vienna, Rome and Rio Janeiro.

The following characteristics should form the basis of the work upon these countries and cities: Political condition, manners and customs, commercial relations, traveling facilities, education, condition of women, religion, both past and present.

DISCUSSION OF LIFE WITH A CHILD.

The following was written as an exercise by a student in the Oakland High School. Each member of the class was required to write a brief paper exemplifying the expository kind of composition and to put it in the form of a dialogue in which one of the characters should be a child, Readers of the Phado will recognize one of Plato's arguments in favor of the immortality of the soul.

Father. "Why child you seem sad, does ought ail you? Come child, tell thy father what sorrow hath befallen thee.'

Child. Father, all summer long I had a rose which grew, and mother said when it should bloom, it would be fair."

F.

"And has it not become so fair as you had hoped my child?" C. "No father, it bloomed as big and white and fair as mother promised that it should, and I had learned to love it and came every day to tend it. But to-day, see father, it is wilted; I have given it water but it will not open its petals. What ails it father?"

F. "Why child, the rose is faded, that is all. To-morrow you shall have another."

C.

"Faded, father? And what is faded?"

F. "Faded is when flowers die, all flowers must fade sometime." C. "Why do they fade, father? If they are watered carefully, will they not always bloom?"

F. "Now child, within thy pure soul moves a question, to which a whole life's study gives but a too brief answer."

C.

F.

What was it father?"

"No child, all things must fade, and die, and change."

C. "And must everything change father?"

F. "Yes child, that is the law of life."

C.

"But father the sky does not change, if it has been cloudy, when the clouds are cleared away, it is just the same great sky as it

was yesterday."

F. Aye! truly child, because the sky is the eye of God, and God only does not change."

C.

"But father, the great linden outside your window, that has

But the linden too must fade in its due season."

C. "And the cactus father, that is blooming by the old broken fountain just as it was yesterday. Do only the fair sweet things fade?"

F. No my child, perhaps the fair things first, but all things in their seasons must fade at last."

C.

F.

"And will old Mount Rainier fade too father, some day?" "No child, Mount Rainier will not fade, it has no life, only things with life can die."

C. "Father, why do all living things need to die?"

F. "So that new things can be born, my child.”

C. "But why need there be new things father? why are not the old things left just as they are?"

F. "And do you think that would be best child? Where would your seeds be then? Would you never like to see your flowers ripen into fruit, but only bloom and come to nothing? The flower ripens to the fruit, the fruit gives its seeds, the seeds grow up again, soon they have buds, the buds open into flowers and we begin again. Do you see my child?"

C.

"But father, why should they die, you did not say anything about that?"

F. "My child I did speak of death when I said they grew again. Do you see, child, birth and death are the same thing. We call it dying when a thing changes its form. Next year perhaps that old apple tree out yonder will die, and the old trunk where your swing is hung will grow rotten and worm eaten till it falls. But the appletree really will not be gone, its life will not be destroyed. of the apple tree which you see now, there will be many little apple trees all filled with the same life, sprung from its seeds dropped this year. The real life is not destroyed, the old tree is changed a little,

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