TULARE County has over 16,000 volumes in the school district libraries, There are 3 high schools, 66 grammar schools, and 78 primary schools in the county. THE city of Los Angeles has 2,552 more pupils enrolled now than were enrolled last year. There is a pressing demand for the erection of the new school buildings contemplated. ADELAIDE R. HASSE, of the Los Angeles public library, has charge of the arrangement and classification of the heretofore unarranged mass of Government publications in Washington. IN Chula Vista district, San Diego county, a second election on the question of issuing bonds for the purpose of acquiring a site and building a new schoolhouse, resulted in favor of the bonds. MISS NORA A. SMITH and her sister, Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggins, are preparing an educational book, which is to be published in three volumes, and to be called "Talks on the Kindergarten." EX-LIEUT.-Gov. J. B. REDDICK, who died at his home in San Andreas, September 16th, was educated in the public schools of Calaveras county and afterwards in the College of California, from which he was graduated in 1869. THE Plumas National-Bulletin points to the fact that the State Normal School, together with the new high school and the grammar and primary schools, is making of Chico quite an educational center in the northern part of the State. WHERE SOME OF OUR TEACHERS ARE LOCATED.-S. C. Garrison, Crescent City; E. A. Seaman, San Pablo; Will Hocker, Sebastopol; C. J. Thom, Fowler; C. S. Taylor, Rocklin; N. B. Countryman, San Lucas; E. N. Henderson, Woodland; E. A. Owen, Santa Maria High School. THE new school house in Sulphur Spring district, Plumas county, is now occupied. Most of the funds for this building were provided by subscription. Pacific school district, Humboldt county, has voted $1,500 bonds to build a new school-house. LOS ANGELES has just let contracts for the erection of $180,000 worth of school-houses. The city has lately expended $68,000 for school-house sites, $38,000 for alterations and repairs of old school buildings, $22,000 will be spent for heating and ventilating the new school-houses, $15,000 for furniture and $6,000 for blackboards. A SUIT of considerable interest to school teachers has just been decided at Morgan Hill, Santa Clara county. The teacher was discharged in the middle of the term. She claimed that she had a contract for the entire term, and that $300 was due her. She brought suit in the Justice's Court and the jury gave her a verdict for the full amount and costs. THE Bakersfield school has opened for the present school year with J. W. Evans as principal, who will also teach the first grade; Miss Jameson, second grade; Miss Maples, third; Miss Yoakum, fourth; Miss Metcalf, fifth; Miss Hutchings and Mrs. Houghton, sixth; Miss Williams, Miss Colton, seventh; and Mrs. Rousseau, Mrs. Miller and Miss Gorman, eighth. PROF. C. V. RILEY, who resigned his position as United States Entomologist a few months ago, was thrown from his bicycle, September 14th, and received injuries which resulted in his death in a few hours. Professor Riley was well known in California in connection with his services in the study of phylloxera, and his introduction of the Australian ladybird, which has destroyed the orange scale. THE San Diego Union complains that the practice of importing teachers for the public schools is much too common in California cities, San Diego among the rest. The Union claims that it is unfair toward teachers who have been educated here, and desire to remain here as instructors; that it is not for the best interest of our schools, and that if as competent and as efficient teachers as those imported are not produced here, it is time that the public know it. PROFESSOR and Mrs. J. G. Lemmon, the well-known Pacific Coast botanists, have become established in their new home in Oakland, which has been constructed with a view to affording a permanent place for their extensive herbarium. The professor has just published a handbook of West-American Cone-Bearers. This is a convenient pocket edition, of which a notice will be given in the JOURNAL later. The professor is engaged in the preparation of a comprehensive volume of about 350 pages on the same subject. Mrs. Lemmon will soon have ready for the press a volume on "West-American Ferns and Where They Grow." PERSONAL MENTION.-Fred Scott, of Fresno county, is principal of the school in Bishop, Inyo county......F. N. Miller, of the Fresno Colony School, is now at the head of the commercial department of the San Diego High School....... The new high school in Merced has opened with J. Elmore, of Stanford University, as principal, and Margaret H. Elmore, assistant.......Miss Curtis, of Grass Valley, is the new teacher of English in the Fresno High School......George W. Hinkle is principal of the Lemoore school, and A. D. Wolfe is principal of the Traver school......E. P. Rowell has charge of the public schools in Chino, with over 500 pupils enrolled. A WRITER in the San Jose Mercury says: "The slate must go. It is noisy dirty, soon becomes greasy, and consequently the writing upon it is illegible and strains the eyes. There is not enough contrast between the slate and the writing at best to make the use of the slate aught but a menace to the eyesight. Besides, the use of the slate is contrary to sanitary principles. The children use them as cuspidors, their slate rags or sponges are dirty, there is always a foul, fetid atmos. phere in a room where slates are used. Writing with a slate pencil is conducive to a hard and cramped style of holding the pen or pencil in after years. Still, to a child a slate has charms that no piece of fair white paper can ever hope to equal." EX-PRESIDENT ANDREW J. WHITE, of Cornell University, ranks the Sutro library among the first four in value of the libraries in the United States. When this library is arranged in the special building which Mayor Sutro purposes erecting for it, the students of the many institutions of learning which cluster around the Bay will find it of immense advantage to them in the pursuit of their studies. The library contains at present nearly 250,000 rare volumes. The Regents of the State University have accepted Mavor Sutro's gift of thirteeen acres adjoining the library site, on which to erect the buildings for the accommodation of the Affiliated Colleges of the University. The value of this gift and of the library when completed will approximate $2,000,000. THE DAM AND HEAD WORKS OF THE FOLSOM WATER POWER COMPANY, SHOWING SECTION I OF THE EAST CANAL. THE PACIFIC EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL. Official Organ of the Department of Public Instruction of California. ISSUED MONTHLY BY THE EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING CO., I P. O. BOX 2509, SAN FRANCISCO P. M. FISHER, Editor and Manager. EDITORIAL OFFICE, A. MEGAHAN, A. . COFFEY, Associate Editor. - NO. 211 CENTRAL BANK BUILDING, OAKLAND, CAL. Drafts and Money Orders should be made payable to the order of the Manager. Yearly Subscriptions, $1.50, Payable in Advance. VOL. XI. NOVEMBER, 1895. CURRENT EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT. No. II It is a strange commentary that in our ungraded schools throughout the country the children attending school from four to six months per year for a period of from six to eight years are better educated and prepared to enter upon the ordinary duties of life than the majority of our children after taking the full course of eight years of ten months per year.—PRESIDENT FELKEL, Grand Rapids, Mich., School Board. A GREAT many people go through life with the idea that books are only to be read through; and along with this they associate the idea only with such books as are read through-romances especially, and perhaps some biographies and books of travel. They stick fast in the lighter and more carrying part of the literature, and become passive observers, borne along by their reading instead of ruling it. The whole region of reference literature, of books consulted for elements of information that are to be woven together into a new result or vitalized in a new relation, is to them a closed country. It ought to be opened early; students need to be familiarized with book-land, the touch of literature, the principles of search.-J. F. GENUNG, Amherst, Mass. Of the old school of teaching it may be said that the end and aim |