PLAIN CRITICISMS ON OUR SCHOOLS.

The writer, a teacher of experience, has spent the past school year chiefly in traveling in Ohio, and his business has led him to visit the union schools in many of our county-seats and incorporated villages. It is not in a spirit of fault-finding, but with an earnest desire to correct what is wrong, that he presents the following criticisms to his old associates and co-laborers:

I. There is apparent a lack of thoroughness of instruction in the common branches. This is manifestly the case in the senior and graduating classes. I have seen more than one class, to graduate at the close of the term, on the recitation seat trying to analyze and parse quite plain sentences. The truth was not only evident to me, but was admitted by the teacher, that scarcely one in ten of the members of these classes was able correctly to analyze and parse a simple, plain sentence. Their exhibitions in arithmetic were scarcely more flattering. Indeed, several members of these classes in schools of high reputation have said to me complainingly, that they had never been allowed to go further than interest in arithmetic. I have looked over at least sixty graduating essays and orations before they had been criticised, and the exhibition of spelling and punctuation would have done discredit to a properly trained intermediate class; indeed it was disgraceful to somebody, whether student, teacher, or superintendent, I pretend not to say. I found more than one teacher expressing deep mortification and chagrin at this condition of their classes, declaring their conviction that the class was wholly incompetent to graduate, and saying that they had repeatedly so informed the superintendent; but that his reply was to this effect: "Put them through in some way. We must have a graduating class for its influence on the public."

Again, I heard several graduating essays read upon the platform whose originals I had perused. The essays read scarcely bore a semblance to the originals. Upon inquiry I found that the criticism of the teacher had amounted to the re-writing of the essays.

Now I have been wont to think, and I can not well get over that old-fashioned idea, that our public schools should teach their pupils correct spelling, fair writing, a good degree of theoretical and practical arithmetic, and, at least, a fair knowledge of our own language. Our schools profess to do this and a great deal more. In doing, or attempting to do, the latter, they fail in

the former and far more important part of their work. I look upon a large number of these "graduates" as sent out into the world cheated, perhaps not so much by intention as by negligence, but nevertheless cheated. If I am right in the cause of this, it is found in the prevalent disposition among principals and superintendents to make every year a grand display, and make the public believe that something wonderful has been accomplished. As a local superintendent, I am free to say that I would not graduate a class of the kind named, if I never had a graduating class. Closely connected with this is another, the very common custom of late in many schools of allowing the graduating class, during the last term of the year, to attend school regularly or irregularly as suits their convenience; in other words, releasing the members from the ordinary rules upon this subject, by which the balance of the school is still holden. I have seen the bad influence of this liberty upon the general good order and punctuality of more than one school that I had previously found in excellent condition in these respects. My associates must pardon me, if I regard this practice as an aping of the last term of college life, and again cheating the graduate with the illusion that he is something more than he really is.

II. In the subordinate departments of union schools, which I visited even more than I did high schools, I found many excellent teachers who seemed to be working under an artificial restraint. The programme or course, marked out for them by the superintendent, seemed to leave little if any chance for the play of that tact and aptitude, which I regard as a natural qualification, and whose exercise is essential to the well-being of a school. They told me that they were given just so much to do, and it must be done in just such a way. No matter how fertile the teacher's brain might be in methods and appliances, no matter if she could do the same work in half the time and far more thoroughly, she must obey the manipulation of the machine. In fact I did not know just what to call this kind of teaching, until I read the doings of the late meeting of the State Association. Some one there called it "machine teaching", the superintendent turning the "crank." That hits the case exactly in my mind, and we may ridicule it or disbelieve it as we will, the truth is our union schools are full of it, and its exhibition to an intelligent visitor would be painful, were it not ridiculous.

III. Some superintendents are becoming tyrannical. I am orry to believe this, but my observation during the year forces

this conclusion upon me. And just here let me say, that I have occupied a superintendent's position too long to wish to see it deprived of any of its just and legitimate powers and duties. Boards of education in numerous instances seem to have abandoned the duties imposed upon them by law, and have thrown supreme power into the hands of the superintendent. In fact I think the latter superintend the boards quite as much as they do their schools. I am led to doubt whether many even intelligent men upon these boards, know any more of the actual working of their schools than the most illiterate person in the community.

I will only note one form of the development of this tyranny. A school term approaches its close. The teachers, mostly ladies, have labored arduously, faithfully, and to full satisfaction during its passing weeks and months. They look forward to a week's needed rest and relaxation in that "dearest spot of earth", home, in the society of parents and brothers and sisters. Their wages, although perhaps fair, have not allowed them to employ milliners and dress-makers by the year. In many instances, their board has cost them more than a moiety of their salary. Their wardrobes and other "fixins" perhaps demand a week's special attention. But the superintendent dashes all their expectations to the ground by gravely telling them at the last meeting, that there is to be a teachers' institute so and so during vacation, and unless they attend as members, they will not be reëmployed as teachers. He means this, and, whether he has said any thing to the board or not, he knows that he can induce them to ratify his dictum. No matter what amount of education a teacher may have had, nor how much of her earlier years she has spent in the seminary and the normal school, nor what are her wages or her grade of school, the order is inexorable; the teacher must go or lose her place, and this, too, though the institute teaching, however well intended, may be nothing less than a bore to a well disciplined student.

The result of this tyranny is a flattering, often sickening, fawning of the teacher around the superintendent, exaggerated representations of his good qualities in community and a concealment of the bad, while down deep in the heart of the teacher there is an utter contempt for him, which nothing but the fear of losing her place suppresses. I am pursuaded that if many superintendents knew the true feeling entertained for them by some of their best teachers-in other words, if they could see themselves as they are seen by those most intimate with them,—they would

be surprised and perhaps uncomfortable. My estimate of the good accomplished by a constrained or hired attendance upon an institute, is infinitessimal. As a superintendent I was accustomed to say, that I neither wanted nor would have in my corps, if I could help it, a teacher of either of the two classes. I have discovered no reason for changing my mind. I believe those who know me will say that few have given stronger evidence of a high estimate of a good institute, few have done more in proportion to their means to sustain them and encourage inexperienced teachers to attend, but when I have represented their advantages to my teachers, I chose to leave them entirely free in their action. IV. The above remark, using the words "hired attendance", brings to my mind a criticism upon the action of many boards of education. It seems to have become quite customary in certain localities to commence paying teachers regular wages one or two weeks in advance of the actual opening of the schools, provided the teachers use the time in attending an institute. Where boards find any legal warrant, even by implication, for such a use of the school money, I can not tell. I think it would be difficult to show. Upon the same principle, a school board may take any teacher or any number of teachers, and pay their expenses a year or longer at any normal school or seminary in or out of the State..

V. Being utterly ignorant, or supposing myself to be, respecting the "new light" system of "object lessons", I made it my special care during my travels to become thoroughly posted upon it. A., B. and C. of iny old associates, still in the field, and whom I shall ever profoundly respect, were writing, speaking, and growing hoarse in laudation of this kind of teaching, and I concluded that I must be away back in the rear of this grand army of the advance. I resolved quietly to work my way forward. During the year I heard or witnessed more than a hundred lessons, including several given by teachers direct from Oswego. I made it a point usually to ask for one in all the schools I visited. Judge of my astonishment when I found that these lessons were precisely like those given to me when a lad of six to ten years, in the old "land of steady habits." Yes, I remember, that good lady teacher, Miss Logan, took out her pocket-knife, and "went through" it to the vast amusement and instruction of us urchins around her. I am quite sure she had never been to Oswego, nor were such exercises known then as "object lessons." I was just concluding that my old honored.

friends were monomaniacs upon this subject, when the perusal of the doings of the late various educational associations disclosed to me that their cases were not all hopeless, and that in all probability the malady would be entirely removed in one or two years.

These criticisms are written with the best motives, and all I ask for them is a candid and earnest consideration.

MORE ANON.

PRISON REFORM.

The meeting of the Prison Reform Congress, recently held in Cincinnati, was in many respects one of the most important gatherings that has ever taken place in any country. The questions discussed were some of the most important and difficult that can engage the attention of siciologists; and, it is but fair to say, they were met and grappled with in the most catholic spirit. The papers presented were from the foremost thinkers on the specialties treated of, both at home and abroad; and the discussions following them were, in the main, able and pointed. The speakers spent no time in preliminary remarks of a nature personal to themselves, but struck directly at the heart of their theme.

A few of the participants in these discussions, it is true, were inclined "to gush" in their rhetoric, and to be visionary in their views; but while one may have felt inclined to smile at these weaknesses, he could not but respect the great-heartedness and earnestness that prompted them. Mankind will be slow in coming to the conclusion that the original Eden is to be found on our Reform Farms, or that the purest and most hopeful classes of our community are hedged in by penitentiary walls; but they will respect all efforts which, while they make no attempt to obliterate the broad distinctions between vice and virtue, tend to ameliorate the severities of the criminal's imprisonment, or to make him feel that he is not altogether dead to hope and society.

But when the hard-headed (not hard-hearted), practical men, whose lives had been spent in prison management, came to speak, one was forced to the sad conviction that of the class of criminals committed to our penitentiaries for the higher grades of crime, but few ever regain their lost places in virtuous society.