EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

The MONTHLY is mailed promptly before the first day of each month. In most cases, it should reach Ohio subscribers not later than the second or third of the month. Any subscriber failing to receive a number within a few days of the first of the month, should give prompt notice, that another copy may be sent.

As a general rule, the MONTHLY is sent to subscribers until ordered discontinued.

Requests for change of address should be received before the 25th of the month, and the old as well as the new address should be given.

New subscribers must begin with this (November) number. We thought the edition of the October number was ample, but only a few copies remain, and these must be reserved for completing sets. We have added several hundred copies this time. Send on the orders.

Extract from a recent letter:-"In our building, we each take a different educational paper, and exchange. THE OHIO EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY HAS DONE US MORE REAL GOOD than any of the other papers."

We offer to exchange current numbers of the MONTHLY, two to one, for copies of the September and October numbers, 1882, July and September, 1880, and March, 1876, in good order. We also want The Ohio Journal of Education for 1854, 1855, 1856, and the OHIO EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY for 1860, 1861, 1862, 1863, and 1865. Persons having any of these volumes, and willing to dispose of them, are requested to write us, stating terms.

We ask for our symposium on The Country Schools of Ohio," in this number, a careful reading. The writers speak from the stand-point of experience. Some of them are now engaged in country school work, one is a school director, and all have given much thought to the problems involved.

We bring this subject forward at this time because we believe the urgency is great. In view of what is possible for our rural schools, it is humiliating to such a body of educators as Ohio has, that so little has been accomplished. It is time to act. Dr. Hancock's closing sentence points the way. Who will lead?

At the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Ohio Teachers' Association, held at Columbus, in 1856, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted:

1. Resolved. That school examiners ought never, under any circumstances, to give a certificate of qualification to teach school to any person who habitu

ally uses any kind of intoxicating liquors; and that school officers, when other things are equal, should systematically give preference to the total-abstinent candidate.

2. Resolved, That all school teachers should use their utmost influence to suppress the kindred ungentlemanly and foul-mouthed vices of uttering profane language and using tobacco.

Has the moral tone of the Ohio Teachers' Association declined in the last thirty years?

We spent an afternoon with Brother Moulton, in the Warren schools, at the time of the recent meeting of the North Eastern Ohio Teachers' Association. The schools of Warren are in excellent condition, and in saying this we intend no empty compliment. We witnessed some very fine exercises in language, vocal music, reading, etc.; but what impressed us most was the excellent spirit everywhere manifest. No frown or scowl was visible. Every room seemed to be filled with an atmosphere of cheerfulness and refinement. The bearing of the teachers was characterized, in an unusual degree, by simplicity and grace, and the appearance and conduct of the pupils said to us, more effectively than words, that Warren is a community of more than ordinary intelligence and refinement.

We noticed that wherever the superintendent went, whether in or out of the school-room, the pupils expected and received from him a kind recognition. He evidently keeps large room in his heart for the children.

The superintendent and teachers of Warren have reason to be grateful that the lines have fallen to them in such pleasant places, and the people of Warren have good reason to be proud of their schools.

Superintendent Clemens presents, this month, "the other side" of the corporal punishment question. He thinks Superintendent James's article in our October number is a little too radical. Our creed on this subject is a very short one, and may be stated in one sentence: It is better to control a school by the use of the rod than not to control it.

Mr. James is right in saying that the better half of any corps of teachers will usually report much less than half the number of cases of corporal punishment, and that the greater part of the punishing will be done by those weak in discipline. It may be that in the "good time coming" teachers will be strong enough and wise enough to control their schools without the rod. We once heard Horace Mann quoted, in a gathering of teachers, as saying that if we could import angels from heaven to supply all the schools with teachers, we might be able to dispense with the rod. Judge Higley, now of Cincinnati, who was present, begged to add that we could make sure of it by importing little angels also from heaven to supply all the schools with pupils.

We think our creed is well adapted to the present imperfect state. It is better to control a school by the use of the rod than not to control it. An ungoverned school is a very demoralizing institution. Our advice to teachers has always been, "Govern your school by the highest and best means at your command, but govern it.

"FIRST EXTRACT THE THORN FROM THINE OWN EYE."

Twenty boys averaging fifteen years in age, and all graduates of Boston grammar and high schools, were examined in that city the other day to see which was best qualified to fill a position as general clerk in an insurance office. The requirements were moderate, demanding only fair penmanship, good spelling, correctness at figures and the use of good English, but out of the twenty not one came up to the required standard. The Boston paper which mentions the occurrence gives various reasons for this lamentable failure, but reaches the root of the matter, probably, when it points out as a defect of the school system that pupils are not made to depend upon themselves, but that the teachers do the work and give so much oral instruction that the children, though entertained and somewhat enlightened, do not get the permanent benefit to be derived from laborious study, and leave the school-room with a confused jumbling of facts and no firm foundation of learning fixed in their minds. It is a popular notion that children nowadays study too much and too hard; but there is reason to believe those among them who cannot endure the school work are bewildered more from the multiplicity of subjects which demand their attention than from close application to their books. At all events, it is a fact not to be denied, that boys and girls of a former generation, whose entire schooling was comprised in half a dozen three months' terms, learned to spell, and write, and "cipher" with an ease and accuracy which many children do not now attain after a ten years' course in the schools.— Indianapolis Sunday Journal.

We have little confidence in the hasty conclusions so often drawn from comparison of the present with the past. The concluding sentence of the foregoing extract is a good example of this kind of reasoning. It is no doubt true that the few exceptionally bright and industrious "boys and girls of a former generation, whose entire schooling was comprised in half a dozen three-month terms, learned to spell and write and cipher with an ease and accuracy which" the dullards and laggards "do not now attain after a ten-year course in the schools." It does not follow that the former days were better than these. We do not believe that the scholarship of the better half of those attending common schools then was equal to the average now. The attainments of the few then were conspicuous by contrast. There is greater diffusion now. The many now have more and better schooling than the few then had.

When it is said that not one of the twenty boys came up to the required standard, we naturally inquire what the standard was. Is it not quite probable that the position in question was one which, fifty years ago, no boy of fifteen was expected to fill?

In connection with the statement that all these fifteen-year-old boys are graduates of the Boston grammar and high schools it should be remembered that Boston does not admit boys to the high school under the age of fifteen.

It must be admitted, however, that the passage in italics touches the heart of an evil in modern educational methods. The tendency is to too much teaching. There is an excess of the grand-mother element. The boys and girls must have a smooth and easy road to travel, and the result is weakness and inefficiency.

It should be noted that mental confusion and weakness are not the necessary result of oral instruction, for it is based on a true philosophy and has a legitimate place in child training. The great majority of teachers are ignorant (much less so now than formerly) of the principles on which right methods of teaching are based, and, as a consequence, are incapable of using either oral

or text-book methods according to their true spirit and intent. The true purpose of oral instruction is not to relieve the pupil from effort, but rather to stimulate to self-activity and cultivate self-reliance; but in unskillful hands it is liable to degenerate into mere talk on the part of the teacher, and indifference and inactivity on the part of the pupil.

It should be further noted that the responsibility does not rest wholly upon teachers. The want of self-reliance and efficiency in our young people is due far more to the home training and habits than to the school. Indeed it is quite probable that, but for the counteracting influence of the schools, the evil complained of would be much greater than it is. The tendency of the times is to luxury and effeminacy. The boys and girls must dress well and have a good time. They are relieved, by the hired man and the hired girl, from all necessity of working with their hands, and thus grow up without habits of industry and efficiency. The gravest defects in modern child-training are in the home. Parents are too much absorbed in business and society to attend to the hometraining of their children, and a large part of the present popular elamor about the schools is an attempt, unconscious perhaps, to shift the responsibility. "Why observest thou that splinter in thy brother's eye, and perceivest not the thorn in thine own eye."

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR.

CINCINNATI, O., Oct. 2d, 1885. My Dear Dr. Findley:-I so seldom see anything in your editorial pages that I do not fully approve, that I half suspect that you did not write the editorial in your last issue on Judge Mehard's decision.

It may be wise for school directors not to require the Bible to be read in school to let the Bible alone, as you put it,-but your statements seem to justify the inference that teachers should also let it alone-that they should only take the Bible into the schools in their spirit and life—that is, that the Bible should not be read in public schools. While the "perfunctory" reading of the Bible by teachers who have little faith in its divine precepts may be a mere form, an empty shell," this is not true when the Bible is read by teachers who have "its principles and its spirit in the heart." It is reverently read by thousands of teachers with happy and beneficial results.

It may be that your position is that the reading of the Bible in school should be left entirely with teachers, and that your objection is to its perfunctory reading under a regulation of the school board. But the legal question decided by Judge Mehard involves not only the power of school directors to authorize the use of the Bible in the schools, but the right of the teachers to use it. It can hardly be maintained that the teacher has the right to do in this matter what the school directors have not the legal power to authorize. The real question is, can the King James version of the Bible be legally used in a public school? Judge Mehard's decision seems to me not only sound, but of great importance.

It may not be wise or expedient for school boards to require or even authorize the reading of the Bible in the schools, and it may not be wise for teachers, under all circumstances, thus to use it, but the power or right to authorize or use the Bible as an aid in moral training is a very different question. Some things are lawful which are not expedient.

It seems to me unwise for school boards to authorize the reading of a particular version of the Bible. It makes little difference whether the teacher reads the King James version, the Douay version, or the " new" version. I think I would advise a Catholic teacher to use the Douay Bible, as I did advise one twenty-five years ago. I am sure that not a pupil in her school ever detected the slightest variation from the common version.

May I ask what Mr. Thring means by these three sentences which open the extract copied in the October MONTHLY, (p. 475)?

"The teacher's subject is not books, but mind. On the other hand, the lecturer's subject in the first instance is not mind, but books. This distinction is vital, and the most important results follow."

If this distinction be so vital and important, it ought to be clear, and I must confess that I do not see it, and the subsequent discussion of it in the article is to me a source of confusion. What is the process of teaching reading? Does not the teacher of reading deal both with books and mind? Does the lecturer necessarily deal with books? There is a distinction between objective and indirect teaching and direct oral instruction, but does not the art of teaching include both? Is Mr. Thring's distinction fundamental?

You may possibly conclude that I am in an unusually critical mood. I have had the leisure within a few months to read some of the more recent discussions of the theory of teaching, and I find not a little confusion and uncertainty.

Have you ever read Joseph Payne's "Science and Art of Education?" I made several attempts before I reached the last lecture. I think I never read a more kaleidoscopic treatise. Each lecture after the first is a new "shake" of the ideas in the preceding. I stopped several times to see if I was not re-reading a lecture. Did you have a similar experience?

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Excuse these interrogations, and believe me,

Most truly yours,

E. E. WHITE.

Our confidence in Dr. White's judgment is such that, on first reading his letter, we feared we had erred; but a re-reading of the few sentences we wrote, re-assures us. We were not trying to express all our thought on the subject in a half-dozen sentences. All we said was intended to bear on one point, the inexpediency of boards of education either requiring or forbidding the use of the Bible in schools. We supposed our position in regard to the Bible and its use in schools was well understood. We always used it-never taught a school

in which we did not use it, and for many years began no day in school without prayer. But we have never been in the habit of either reading the scriptures or praying by statute or regulation. The Bible contains the principles and ordinances of the Christian religion. The pure and peaceable religion of Christ does not require the support of majorities. It is a divine system whose laws and essential interests are above the reach of human governments. We believe with James Madison that "religion is not within the purview of human government. There are causes in the human breast which insure its perpetuity without the aid of human law."

With the highest and best part of a teacher's work a board of education has nothing to do. We once heard Dr. White say in a teachers' institute that the moment a teacher enters into a contract with a board of education to teach a