singing a little song, which being completed, a class of forty girls, averaging about eight years, took their seats upon the four long benches, ranged one behind the other. Their instructress was about twenty years of age, and appeared to be a real wide-awake and active teacher. She first requested them, each in turn, to read a sentence or so from their reading books, which was done satisfactorily and the necessary corrections made. They then closed their books, placed them upon the benches and sat upon them. The first question asked, "Give the points used in reading?" was promptly answered by a bright little girl of six. Various questions in regard to the German articles, "der, die, das" were given; the different genders and numbers were illustrated in sentences, and each time the article was correctly given. Rules were given in regard to the formation of the plural of nouns, and they seemed to have been well instructed in the use of prefixes, illustrating in sentences and defining the words used. Adjectives were given and compared, and the various tenses of verbs named. Questions in arithmetic like the following were then asked:Mary had eight apples and Anna had 16 more; how many had Anna and how many had both? How many pfennige in a mark? One mark less 14 pfennige is how many? How many 5-pfennige pieces in 3 marks and 50 pfennige? How many are 9 times 9 less 6 times 6? How many times must I take 4 to form 60? 16 minus 1⁄2 is how many? What is of 100? How many times 6 is 2 times 40? How many must I add to 10 to make 3 times 7?

These questions were generally answered correctly, and the teacher was exceedingly careful that each child should form a perfect sentence in giving her

answer.

Then followed a poetical dialogue by ten of the class, after which all sang several little songs, while two of the little ones beat time together.

This class was then dismissed and sixty others averaging about the same age, 7 to 8 years, took the seats vacated by the others. Their reading was not equal to the previous class, although they did well for children of that age. A large picture of the interior of a dining-room was placed before them. They were then questioned in regard to the different kinds of buildings, various apartments, etc., and for what | purposes used. One little girls' reply, that a cellar was for wine, brought a smile to many of the listeners' faces, which seemed to acknowledge the truth of the assertion. The different articles of furniture were named, and the clock in particular brought forth many questions like the following: How do we know it is not supper that is ready? How many meals do we have each day? With what do we measure time? Give the parts of a clock? How many hours in a day, days in a week, and days in a year? When do we have more than 365 days in a year? Where do we put the extra day? Name the seasons. When does spring begin?

In reference to the second question, it may be interesting to some of your readers to learn that here, the Germans generally have five or six meals each day: Coffee at 8, breakfast at 9:30, dinner at I, coffee again at 3, vesper bread at 6 and supper at 8.

After mentioning a number of spring flowers, one little girl recited a poem entitled "Flowers ;" other poems, "Mother," "The Sleeping Apple," and "The Fisherman," were well rendered.

from statuary. One large room displayed a quantity of neeedle-work done by the girls. This did not consist only of lace, embroidery, fancy tidies, mats, pincushions and slippers, but also of knitted stockings, samples of darning and patching, aprons and shirts of which any American father would feel proud if made by his daughter. Sewing is taught in all the schools here, and it is a very customary thing to see little bareheaded girls knitting stockings on their way home from school.

TH

NORMAL SCHOOLS.

E. D. S.

HE first Normal School was founded in 1681, by the Abbe De la Salle, canon of the cathedral at Rheims, and sixteen years later a teachers' class was opened in connection with an orphan school at Halle, pupil-teachers receiving two years training under the head-master, August Hermann Francke, under whom the system developed surprisingly, and soon received the invaluable support of Frederick the Great. Other Normal Schools were opened in Hanover, Austria, Switzerland, France, Holland, Belgium, and about forty years ago in Great Britain, whence they have extended into nearly every civilized country. The aims of the schools are well expressed in the following extract from the Prussian law; "The directors of teachers' seminaries shall rather seekto conduct the pupilteachers by their own experience to simple and clear principles, than to give them theories for their guidance; and with this end in view, primary schools shall be joined to all teachers' seminaries, where the pupilteachers may be practiced in the art of teaching." There are now about 850 Normal Schools in Europe, the British colonies, and British India, the latter having 104.

The

Massachusetts was the first State in the American Union to establish Normal Schools, of which there are now 137, with over 29,000 pupils and over 1,000 instructors. Ohio and Pennsylvania each have twelve schools, while New York State has nine, Illinois and Missouri eight each, and Massachusetts seven. largest number of pupils are in New York, however, where there are 4,158. The necessity of such schools needs no other enforcement than a few statistics relating to education in the United States. Nearly 6,000,000 scholars are enrolled in the public schools. Nearly 5,000,000 are in attendance daily, and about 231,000 teachers are employed, including 133,000 women. The amount expended annually upon this vast scheme, which seems almost fabulous, is about $82,000,000, and the imagination is carried away by the tremendous suggestiveness of the figures.

The preceding paragraphs are taken from Harpers' Magazine for April. The intentions of the writer are good, but his statistics are sadly at fault. He gives Ohio twelve normal schools, whereas the fact is, we believe, that she is just now talking about establishing the first one. Pennsylvania has only eleven, not twelve. Neither Illinois nor Missouri has eight such schools, nor has Massachusetts seven.

of the Board, held in the College Building, Market street above 17th, on the 4th inst.

setts.

TH

A NEW DEPARTURE.

HE following circular will explain itself. We believe in the plan of attaching shops for practical work to technical schools. There ought to be no doubt as to the success of the effort to raise funds :

The Board of Trustees of the Polytechnic College of the State of Pennsylvania, appeals to the friends of industrial education for aid in providing the tools and appliances of a Machine Shop, to be used for the purpose of practical instruction.

With but few tools and under many disadvantages, the Students of the College have voluntarily, from time to time, made machines and other structures in whole or in part, and have prepared collections of Natural History.

Samples of their work shown at the Centennial Exhibition, received from the International Jury on Education and Science the highest award of merit, Prize Medal and Diploma: the award being "To the Polytechnic College of the State of Pennsylvania, for Stu. dents' work, in Natural History, in Architecture and in Mechanical Engineering."

Encouraged by these results, the Trustees referred the proposition to make practical work in the Machine Shop a portion of the college course in Mechanical Engineering, to a committee of the board, consisting of Dr. A. L. Kennedy, Mr. Wm. H. McCallum and Mr. Chas. H. Cramp. The Committee submitted a report setting forth:

That the Collections of Students' work in the Centennial Exhibition, as well as the obstacles to the admission of youth into machine works, call for the introduction, into courses of Technical Education, of practical instruction in the use of tools.

That a room and basement, lighted both from Barker street and the College yard, be set apart for the purpose of the shop.

That a steam engine and boiler, a geared screwcutting lathe, a speed lathe, power forge and tools, drill press, pipe tools, pattern-makers' tools, bench vises, ratchet drill, and a full assortment of small tools, will be indispensable.

That students be required to work in the shop under a Master Machinist, as many hours per week as the Faculty, with the approval of the Board, may appoint. That subscriptions would be cheerfully given by the friends of industrial education, towards a fund for the proper furnishing of a Machine Shop for students.

That subscriptions be received in tools, materials and money.

The report was unanimously adopted at a meeting

The prolonged depression of this industry tells heavily upon the resources of the College, and the Trustees respectfully and earnestly ask their fellowcitizens to aid them in continuing and extending the us efulness of this Institution.

Subscriptions may be sent to the members of the above named committee, to Wm. H. Pancoast, M. D, Chairman Finance Committee, S. W. Corner 11th and Walnut Sts., or to the undersigned.

IT

FURMAN SHEPPARD, Sec'y Board of Trustees, No. 717 Walnut Street, Phila.

AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM.

VIEWED BY FRENCHMEN.

T will be remembered that, upon the occasion of the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, a commission was appointed by the French government to visit the exhibition, and report upon it, and upon the system of American schools generally. The commission, of which Mr. F. Buisson was chairman, have just published their report, a superb volume issued by the imprimerie nationale, addressed to the Minister of Public Instruction, from which some interesting extracts can be made. After stating the difficulty of answering the questions, What conclusions do you draw? What lessons have you learned? What examples do you propose for our imitation? in short, What is the practical result of your mission? Mr. Buisson observes:

Scholastic institutions are not like industrial institutions or scientific establishments, which, if recognized good in one country are equally so in all others, because schools are not institutions that can be studied apart and by themselves like a system of railroads or telegraphs. Schools are nothing by themselves; they only exist for and by the people who have made them after their own image, and have put into them their own spirit; they live of their life, they have their defects, their qualities, their genius; it is a social institution, inseparable from its own society, impossible to transport entirely from one country or one regime to another. Even if we had seen in America the perfection of the scholastic system, it would be none the less chimerical on our part to decide on the importation here of such a system. Applied to other manners, other traditions, other social conditions, it might and probably would prove detestable, for it would only be a corpse; the soul would no longer be there.....

What we have tried to do in this study, is to become penetrated with the American spirit in its application to scholastic life; to comprehend the organization of the free system; to seize its spirit; to follow its course and state its results. We have tried to

judge American schools in their bearings and connection with Americans for whom they are made, and not with respect to Europe or France, for which they were not made. In blaming or in praising, according to our conscience, the schools of the United States, we have had no intention thereby of eulogizing or criticising French schools, nor was this our mission. This, then, is the testimony which we, simple reporters, have to render. American schools, so far as we have been able to discover by the Exhibition, by our reading and our visits, seem to present in a striking manner the following characteristics:

the beautiful benediction once uttered by the lamented Col. Black, "Let us all with one accord, say God bless our public schools, for they are to the wintry condition of the world what the sunshine of spring, the rain of heaven, and the distilled dews of the night, are to the earth in her struggle to bring forth, through ribs of frost, the bud-the leaf-and the flower."

Most of the changes made met with more or less opposition from citizens, teachers and directors, who were wedded to the theories of other years, and were unwilling to admit that the curriculum and methods of the last century were susceptible of improvement. There are yet teachers in our midst who worship the old, and refuse to conform to the new ideas which are pervading every profession and moving the world forward to a nobler and grander destiny. We have

2. The scholastic organization is rigorously municipal. The law only establishes in principle the necessity of public instruction, but each community provides for it in its own way; there is no constraint from the State, no other subsidy than the public lands formerly given by the Union: within a few years only each State has had a general right of surveillance, which is almost always confined to a statistic centralization, to an official pedagogical direction, and to the support of the State normal schools.

3. The higher direction and supervision of primary instruction are confided to councils (or committees) elected, and to officers sometimes elected and sometimes appointed by the councils themselves, from which these various consequences result: the frequent renewing of councils and superintendents, the often regretable influence of political pre-occupations and local interests, the possibility of abrupt changes in the scholastic organization; in short, the necessity for the people to enlighten themselves upon questions relative to schools, upon which they are continually called to vote.

PITTSBURGH SCHOOLS.

N responding to calls for a speech after his election to the superintendency of the Pittsburgh schools for the fifth time, Superintendent Luckey delivered an interesting address from which we make the following

extracts:

During my administration there have been some material changes made in our school system. The High School course has been gradually widened and broadened to suit the demands of a more practical age; the school accomodations and facilities have been enlarged and perfected, and the branches of study so arranged as to give the mass of children in our commercial and manufacturing city the necessary preparation for the active life that awaits them; the color line has been blotted out, and every child, whether white or black, rich or poor, native or alien, is admitted alike through the same portals to partake of the beneficent bounty which a generous people has provided for the moral and intellectual advancement of the youth of our city. Above the smoke of 10,000 furnaces, and towering side by side with the temples dedicated to God, glitter the spires of our magnificent school houses, suggesting ever to the thoughtful heart

repeat almost every sentence within the lids of their text-books, but had no knowledge of how to apply this information to any practical use. They knew twelve inches make a foot, and three feet make a yard, and yet had no mental conception of what an inch, a foot, or a yard was; they could not tell you whether the frame of their slate was an inch, a foot, or a mile long. Since our last meeting we have met with very great success in teaching the art of drawing in the schools of the city, and, although a number of the principals have steadily refused to give it that attention which its importance demands. yet, through the persistence of live teachers, the good judgment of parents and directors, and the attractions it has for the pupils, it has been firmly engrafted on the public school course.

To show that we do not over-estimate the importance of this study, I quote from a report of one of the French Commissioners to our late Centennial Exposition. He informs the proper department of his government "that while the work of the American schools evinces thorough culture and great mental discipline, the education of the hand and eye is sadly neglected." He refers to the disadvantages likely to follow this neglect to educate our children in mechanics and the arts. I have been constrained to admit the force of this criticism, and believe that the effect of the study and practice of drawing-pre-eminently the education of the eye and hand-has a greater tendency toward making education practical than any other study.

electing the best qualified teachers to fill future vacanI desire to call your attention to the necessity of cies in all departments. An impression exists with some directors that but little scholarship and training is needed for teachers in the lower grades, and where school boards have acted upon this theory, much harm has resulted. It is true, and cannot be successfully denied, that the best education, the finest culture and the ripest culture is needed in our lowest grades; for that knowledge which is first obtained by the pupil is the most lasting, and if through the incompetency or gnorance of parent or teacher false impressions are made in the beginning, their traces will be seen in all the after-life of the child.

To obtain well educated and competent teachers we must provide them the facilities for obtaining this education and training. I know that there are persons who claim that the public has no right to provide this training, and that each teacher should educate himself for his life-work; but experience is our best instructor, and we know that private enterprise cannot provide the proper education and training for teachers any more than it can provide for the proper education

and training of the officers of our army and navy. Besides, we are a young nation, and will do well to be governed by the experience of older governments. Every nation of Europe that has undertaken the education of the masses has established the normal school as the basis of that great work.

No better opportunity has ever before been offered to the school authorities of Pittsburgh for the establishment of a normal and training school than is now open to them. By the discontinuance of the colored school, we are left in possession of a suitable and valuable property on Miller street, which, at a little expense, could be used for that purpose. If the people were aware of the fact that a normal and training school is of necessity almost, if not altogether, a selfsupporting institution, the objection of expense, which is usually offered, would cease to have any weight.

GRAND CENTRAL EDUCATION.

THE

HE argument for a National University has been presented in the columns of The Journal. We find the following statement of reasons against the establishment of such an institution in a late number of the New York Tribune. We publish it in order that our readers may see what can be said on all sides of a question agitated since the days of Washington.

There are many indications that the Great National University is stirring itself up for a fresh start, which, after all, is not very surprising, inasmuch as this is about what the Great National University has been doing for the past ten years. The spacious project seems to have originally lodged itself in the minds of several worthy but rather underdone educators, who have convinced themselves that a university of magnificent proportions was essential to our country's welfare; that in some indefinite way it ought to be National, that it should be founded, maintained and conducted by the Central Government, and that it should be in the city of Wash ington. Of course, not a single one of these fundamental propositions has been established, and the most enlightened persons of that class who have any well-recognized claim to the much-abused title of edu cator, unite in denying them all. But the words Education, University and National have a seductive flavor for emotional patriots, and it is not to be wondered at that fussy philanthropists who are always hankering after appropriations to do good to somebody, should be led captive by any scheme of this sort, whether it presents itself in the form of a huge Federal text-book factory to secure "uniformity" (which is another excellent word to conjure with) or of a great National University at the National Capital.

So long ago as August, 1869, Dr. John W. Hoyt addressed a Teachers' Association at Trenton, N. J., on the "Progress of University Education," and fired by his eloquence the Association at once resolved "that a Great American University was a leading want, and that in order to contribute to the early establishment of such an institution, a committee should be appointed to take the matter into consideration, and make such a report as the interests of the country should seem to demand." This looked like a prosperous send-off, and Dr. Hoyt began to consider. The next year he reported in favor of the University

in what was characterized by President Eliot, of Harvard, as "elevated language." The doctor also reported in the following year, and he has continued to report at intervals ever since, all the while industriously seconded by gentlemen of more strictly local renown. Meanwhile some official sympathy was elicited. Mr. Sawyer, the amiable Senator from South Carolina, introduced a bill of Dr. Hoyt's to set the University in motion. Senator Timothy Ö. Howe, of Wisconsin, also introduced a bill for the same pur. pose; and since then other Senators and Representa tives have tried to force some money and life into the concern by legislative injection. Mr. Commissioner John Eaton, too, has hurled himself into the movement from time to time, and finally the benevolent disposition of President Hayes has made him a proselyte, and he was led to adopt the University as an integral part of his policy in his first message.

But in spite of this wealth of approbation, the projectors of the institution seem to feel that it will continue to need a great deal of energetic boosting before it looms up into its prophesied grandeur as the "intellectual centre of the nations." Just now those newspapers whose relations with the departments are more or less intimate, are exerting themselves to reformers are brought out and deodorized. create sentiment. All the arguments of the original We are told that culture begins at the top and works downward, and therefore the General Government ought to furnish the highest education, because no one else It is pointed out that the Smithsonian Institution, the Congressional Library, the National Observatory and the various Government collections, all stand waiting to be solidified into an established foundation which would need only a little topping out and a starter of $20,000,000 to furnish a ready-made university of the first magnitude. But the machine educators bear down with the greatest stress upon the recently patented patriotic argument. It seems that the youth of our country have hitherto been educated into a contempt for politics, and therefore it is urged that each Congressman should be allowed to transplant from his district a given number of promising young Americans to the Washington University, where, under the genial influences of that political climate, they would be sure to develop a patriotic love and respect for our Government and its methods.

can afford to take the contract.

Of course it would be useless to squander any effort of the reasoning faculty upon gentlemen who seriously believe that an institution of learning, equipped, manned, and steered by the Congress of the United States, would increase the popular respect for our politics or our government. The so-called argument is only stated to show the mental condition of the eccentric theorists who are associated with Mr. Hayes as active partners in this enterprise. Fortunately there are now a great many sober citizens who do not believe that this government was founded for the sole purpose of exercising a motherly care over every interest which, in the opinion of the tender-hearted, needs to be nursed. The powers and responsibilities of the General Government are accurately defined in the Constitution, and as soon as the Government steps outside of these limits to embark in the general welfare business at a venture, it is sure to make a mess of it. It does not follow that we are to be given over to unrighteousness because Government does not assume control of our religion, nor that we are to sink into dense ignorance because an appropriation is not voted for the great National University. Even if it were not