Our Book Gable. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY for October | tory of England can be condensed to two contains the closing chapters of Oliver hundred pages and still preserve the Wendell Holmes' One Hundred Days connecting links. It is attempted howin Europe," "Two Moods of Failure," by ever in this book, but we think it would Helen Gray Cone, "Anecdotes of Charles have been much better if double the Reade," by E. H. House, "Schurz's Life number of pages had been used. Hisof Henry Clay," besides other articles tory loses its value when it is so conof deep interest. Every number of this densed that the institutions of the past magazine is a literary feast and its con- are not set forth in their proper light and stant readers have the possibilities of a with their modifying circumstances. liberal education. MESERVEY'S BOOK-KEEPING, SINGLE vey, Ph. D. Published by Thompson, THE EARTH IN SPACE. A MANUAL OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY. By Edward P. Jackson, A. M., D. C. Heath & Company, Publishers, Boston. Those teachers who wish to devote an occasional hour to Mathematical Geo THE NEW PRINCETON REVIEW for September contains several valuable articles. Teachers and students will be particularly interested in "The First Century of the Constitution," by Professor Johnston, "The Dorr Rebellion," by Mr. W. L. R. Gifford, "The Essay as a Literary Form and Quality," by Dr. Zabriskie and "The Town's Mind," by William Robert Bliss. The editorial department contains valuable comment and criticism.graphy will find this brief manual of interest. It was prepared for use in the The CENTURY for October contains in Grammar Schools at the request of Miss the frontispiece a striking portrait of Lucretia Crocker, one of the Supervisors Harriet Beecher Stowe and articles of of the Boston Public Schools. special interest on English Cathedrals, The American Game of Foot-Ball, The Hundredth Man by Stockton, The Lincoln History, a continuation of the War Papers, besides the usual amount of poetry and fiction. The War Papers alone are worth more than its cost for students in United States History. CHAUVENET'S TREATISE ON ELEMENTARY GEOMETRY, Revised and abriged. By W. E. Brierly, Professor of Mathematics in Harvard University. J. B. Lippincott & Company, Philadelphia. Price $1.50. This edition of Chauvenet's Geometry has been prepared expressly to cultivate independent thought in the pupil. For this purpose the first propositions are demonstrated in full, but as the work proceeds they are more and more condensed until, in many cases, they are reduced to mere hints. A large number of theorems and exercises are given for drill in original work. A HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By A. P. Boston. ELEMENTARY POLITICAL ECONOMY. By ton. This work was prepared particularly for young people and consequently avoids all discussions and theories so common in most books on this subject. A few underlying principles and facts are presented in an attractive manner so that the book is really of interest to the general reader. SELECTIONS FOR WRITTEN REPRODUC- This is a book of one hundred pages containing brief exercises of a narrative or descriptive character which the teacher is to read to the class once and then require a reproduction in the pupil's language. The extracts are, in the main, well adapted for the purpose for which they are to be used, and the possession of the book by the teacher, saves the trouble of looking up something of the kind when It is difficult to understand how a his- it is needed. CONTRACT FOR SUPPLYING SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOLS LATELY AWARDED TO THE "AUTOMATIC." The eats were ide from Photographs of the desks themselves, and are, therefore, perfectly accurate. The illustrations show the great superiority of the Rear-folding Seat over all others in Durability, Economy of Space, and Tendency THE "AUTOMATIC" AS COMPARED WITH OTHER SEATS. to induce a Healthful Position. From photograph of the Automatic Rear-folding Seats; in use over five years. The Automatic Seat, being supported in front, can NEVER SAG, and as the seats fold as the pupils rise, and remain folded and out of the way until they take their seats again, the desks are set much nearer The above are set the right distance apart, securing an EASY, GRACEFUL and HEALTHFUL POSITION of the pupil. together. Anyone buying desks without considering the Automatic, will surely regret it. Send for Circulars and Price Lists, saving money. THE J. DEWING COMPANY, Sole Agents, 420 and 422 Bush Street, San Francisco. From photograph of the best (?) Hinge-Seat Desks; in use less than five years. dis PACIFIC EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL. Official Organ of the Department of Public Instruction. VOL. II. NOVEMBER, 1887. No. 4. WANTED—A REMEDY. It is said that one of the Faculty of the State University lately remarked that the entrance examinations held in Berkeley showed that a large proportion of the schools are simply wasting the time of their pupils so far as English is concerned. The schools around the Bay, feeling more or less the influence of the University, send candidates, who, as a rule, know what is required, and know also how to tell what they do know. It is not pleasant at any time to be told that we either are not qualified for the duties we have undertaken, or, that we do not discharge those aright. Yet it would be worse than folly to shut our eyes to the facts, and plod on in our gadgrind way. It is no discredit to those of us who have taught for ten or more years that our attainments in English when we began to teach, were very meagre. After the ancient classics were dropped out of the schools, the only substitution was the mechanical grammar drill. Many of us probably parsed a book or two of Paradise Lost. What it all meant it would have been marvellous if we had known. The treadmill process necessarily killed the poetry, whose beauties, had we merely read it in class, would have kindled our enthusiasm, and whose music-grand as the notes of a great organ in some vast cathedral-would have wakened into life our dormant faculties. But our duty was not to hear music nor to feel the throb of the poet's beating pulse that our own blood might thereby be quickened; but to parse, to give the gender, number, case, of every noun, the mood, tense, etc., of every verb, without any effort being made by our teacher, to give We left us the underlying principles on which grammar is based. school able to parse, and that was an evidence of our scholarship in English! But it is not to our credit, if it is true, that we have utterly failed since to read any of the master works of our own tongue. It is a shame if in our teaching we have been insensible to the powerfui influences that are so rapidly lifting English to its proper position in the schools. If for nothing else but the impetus that it has given to the study of English in the town schools, the University of California is entitled to the gratitude of every one who has a child to educate. That impetus should have come long before from other quarters. The University should at best have been only one of the leaders in this reformation. It should not have been the leader. At the same time it is only fair to say that if teachers send out from their schools, pupils who make wretched failures at the entrance examinations in English, the blame does not by any means rest entirely on the teachers. The schools are what the people wish them to be. A teacher, who is ahead of the community in which he labors, can do something in the way of improvement, but his efforts will be opposed and his career will be one of great difficulties if he ventures to step out from the beaten path. In nearly all High Schools, a proportion of the pupils wish to teach. They think, and their parents think, that so soon as they graduate from the school they ought to find no difficulty whatever in passing the "satisfactory examinations" before the County Board and obtaining at least a first grade, or as it is now called, a grammar grade certificate. A teacher's certificate should guarantee a reasonable amount of scholarship. It should testify that the holder has read more extensively than the necessarily limited curriculum of the grammer schools permits. The High Schools, the next step in the educational ladder, should provide for this wider range of study. It should not only be something more than a first grade, with a smattering of algebra and physics added to the course of study, it should provide for studies that hitherto could. not be provided for. It should aim to give new and much broader views to the mental vision of the pupils. But so soon as it does this, it ceases to prepare its pupils for passing the examination required for a certificate of qualification to teach. The better the High School is the less prepared are its students to pass that examination until they review their grammar grade studies. No better evidence of the inadequacy of these examinations can be found than the fact that graduates of a High School, owing to their having devoted three years to other studies, are scarcely as able to pass them as a graduate of a Grammar School. It is continu ally occurring that girls who intend to teach, if old enough when they leave the Grammar School, decline to enter a High School, on the plea that they can better prepare for the examinations by getting some one to "cran" them for about five months. Graduates of the best universities who try these examinations find their superior scholarship of no assistance, and have the mortification of failing or of barely passing, while some young girl who completed her Grammar School studies eight or nine months before, passes with a high percentage. If her certificate is in any sense a guarantee of scholarship, it means that she is a better scholar than the graduate of a university! This fact it is that makes our schools, "away from the Bay," what they are. Sometime since a gentleman earnestly trying to bring his school into line with genuine High Schools in the English, Mathematical, and Scientific studies, found himself hindered in his laudable efforts because of these examinations for certificates. Scholars said to him: We do no want to read "Evangeline," or "Lady of the Lake," or anything of that kind. They will do us no good. They will not help us to get a certificate, we want grammar, because that will help us to pass the examination, but the English will not help us at all. We have no use for it. Under such pressure, with such a standard as the test of scholarship, it is almost impossible for teachers, no matter how earnest and how we'l qualified they may be to teach, as they should teach, and as they know they should teach; they are compelled by public opinion to prepare for these examinations. They are perfectly conscious that their efforts are largely misdirected, that their own time and that of the pupils could be much better employed. But they are helpless, and must yield to the demands made upon them. If the Professors of the University find that the candidates for admission to the University are grossly ignorant of their own English, it is to be hoped that they will hear the cry "Come over and help us." It is futile to expect aid whence it should have come long, long ago. Those whose influence is greatest, from their position, in shaping the course of educational matters, are apparently incapable of rising to the occasion and lifting the schools out of the ruts. It would seem, therefore, that in self-defense, as well as in the interests of education, the professors should become missionaries. Let them lift up their voice and cry aloud, and spare not. G. The Boston School Board has voted to reduce the time devoted to Arithmetic in the public schools and to simplify the processes of instruc |