T1 J. G. CROSS. HERE are several important consideraations which demand attention, the first of which is that there should be abundance of light. Not only the comfort and success but the health of the pupils renders this imperative. Nature in administering light from overhead indicates the true direction of light for general uses. The projection of the brow over the eye is the natural protection of this delicate organ from the direct ray. This being the only permanent safeguard which nature has provided cautions us to be careful in admitting light from any other direction. The aesthetic sense is better satisfied with light from a single direction than from several, as by this arrangement the division of the surface of all objects into light and shade is simple, productive of harmony, and pleasing. This is more fully illustrated in the morning or evening when the oblique light gilds one side of all objects in the landscape, leaving the other in shadow, producing a general natural division which renders the morning and evening more enchanting than midday. Cross lights in a room are subversive of beauty both by destroying this simple arrangement of light and shade and by producing involved and unmanageable reflections. The best artistic effects require the light from a single direction and the aesthetic sense will not allow us to ignore this in the arrangement of the private dwelling, or the public hall; much less in that of the schoolroom, to which we consign childhood for the impressions which are to form it for manhood. But from what direction shall the light enter the school room? If it was a picture gallery in which the beautiful creations were to be arranged on all sides, then unquestionably it should come from above centrally, that all the pictures might be equally illuminated, and that the eye lifting upward toward the light should meet them in a subdued glow. Equally beautiful and serviceable is the effect if, with the light from overhead, the object to In most be viewed is placed before the eye. school-rooms light from directly overhead is impracticable and for the chief work of the school an elevated side light is equally serviceable and more picturesque. He The work of the school-room demanding light is reading and writing, and the light should be so admitted that in this work pupils will have no embarrassments, from insufficient light, from cross lights, nor shadows. The writer should receive the light from the left that the point of the pen or pencil may not be obscured in shadow. Any one may be convinced of the importance of this by trying to write with his right side to the light. will discover not only that the hand overshadows the paper, but that an intensely black shadow keeps playing at the left of the point of the pen obscuring every word that is written. With the light from the left this is wholly relieved. That it may not shine directly in the eyes it should be admitted from the upper part of the window, the lower part being shaded. The room thus constructed will conform fully to the law of sunshine. The writer recently entered a school-room being newly refitted, the seats being arranged so that the light should fall on the pupils from the right. On asking the reason for the arrangement he was informed that it was "to place the teacher's desk near the door, the better to preserve order." It was the writer's opinion that if this arrangement was necessary to the good order of the school, this particular door should be closed and one constructed at the opposite end of the room, and the seating order of the room reversed that the pupils might have the advantage of broad light rather than be obliged to work in per petual shadow. This arrangement of elevated light from the left gives the fullest advantages of the light, in all the works of study. In a school room thus arranged the classes that stand to read and recite should stand with the back or side toward the light rather than facing it, that the light may fall on the book instead of on the eye. If the light is admitted from the back of the room each pupil shadows his own work, while if it is admitted from the front of the room each pupil shadows the work of the pupil behind him. The writer recollects once having conducted an examination in a room lighted from the rear, and while the blinding light too strongly illuminated his face, that of each pupil was in strong shadow utterly ob scuring all play of feeling so necessary between teacher and pupils in a successful recitation. The teacher recorded on the tablet of memory an irrevocable vow, never again to allow himself to work under such a disadvantage. While the laws of unity and contrast require that the light shall fall from only one direction, its practical application in the pupil's work clearly shows that it should come from the left. Chicago Practical Teacher. PAR THE SCHOOL HOUSE. DARENTS who have comfortable houses will frequently allow their children to attend school where everything is wanting to advance the interests of education, to say nothing of civilization. Let us mention a few: For fifty children, there should be a house with school-room, and comfortable sittings for the children, and it will be profitable also to provide a gallery or class-room, in which a monitor may aid the pupil. For one hundred children, there should be a house with two class-rooms with comfortable sittings (one for an elementary and one for an advanced division), and trustees are recommended to provide a gallery, also to employ a monitor. For one hundred and fifty children, a house having one gallery and two good classrooms with comfortable sittings, or a house having a gallery and two apartments, one for an elementary, and one for an advanced department, with a teacher and two assistants. If one commodious building cannot be secured, two houses may be provided in different parts of the district, with a teacher and assistant in each: Trustees and school boards should pay attention to the following particulars in the erection of school houses, viz. : 1. The school house should be but one story high, in rural sections. 2. A separate room should be provided for every fifty pupils enrolled in the school. By means of sliding doors, these separate rooms could be thrown into one on special occasions. 3. Provisions should be made for one or more gallery or class-rooms in every school, according to its size as heretofore prescribed. 4. Separate entrances with outer porches to the school house, or room, for boys and girls, should invariably be provided, where the number of pupils is over fifty. 5. The entrance porches should be external to the school house. 6. The external doors of the school-house should open outwards. 7. The school-rooms must be well ventilated. 8. The light should be admitted to the school and class-room behind or at the left of the children, and either from the east or north, but in no case should the children face it. 9. The window sashes should be made to move up and down on pulleys, and the sills should be about four feet above the floor. 10. Each school-house should be provided with a bell. II. If the house be brick, care should be taken to make the walls hollow, but air-tight, otherwise the walls will be damp inside. All furniture and apparatus, such as desks, seats, blackboards, maps, library, books, and other furniture necessary for the efficient conduct of the school should be furnished. 1. The privy building, or closet, should be masked from view and its approaches equally so. 2. There should be little or no exposure to mud or wet weather in reaching it. 3. There should be no unpleasant sight or odor perceptible. 4. The apartment should be well finished. 5. It should be kept entirely free from cuttings, pencilings, or markings, and scrupulously clean. 6. There should be, at least, two privies attached to each mixed school, and they should be so separated there be either sight or sound observed, in passing, or that neither in approaching nor occupying them, can from one to the other. This cannot be effected by a mere partition; nothing can secure the object but considerable distance, or extra heavy brick or stone walls resting on the ground. It is a serious error ever to omit this precaution.-N. Y. School Journal. I A REVOLUTIONARY TEACHER. WAS talking with a school teacher the other day, who will certainly come to some bad end if he does not change his opinions. He had the audacity to hold that children went to school not as prisoners, but as pupils, the social equals of teachers, but to obey because realizing that discipline advanced the interests of all. He held that it mattered not how the pupils learned that Michigan was bounded on the south by Ohio and Indiana, so long as they came to a distinct knowledge of the fact; and he, therefore, said to his young class in geography: "Now, children, the President of the United States used to live in Ohio, and Senator Morton, now dead, lived in Indiana. Tell me in what direction those two States lie from Michigan." It is very wrong in him, because the pupils take real pleasure in hunting out the answer. No pupil should be allowed to search for any answer not regularly laid down in the textbooks. This teacher sets another awful ex ample. Right in the face of the fact that there is a school reader containing the history of William Penn, and the adventures of Now, children, I shall let one of you read this report of recent excavations in Pompeii. Before we read, let some one tell me where Pompeii is." "In Italy," is the answer. "And what happened to the city?" mands of what is popularly known as Society, are imperious and relentless. Many protest; all, perhaps, them and mark out for themselves and their children lament; but very few have the good sense to ignore a different course. Parents! teachers! children! is there no way to make this fast age a little slower? to supplant a sham parade with genuine worth and culture? Shall we devote more care and time and money to the apparelling of these mortal bodies that perish, than to these No answer, because it is not down in their immortal minds that live forever? Is it not posssible readers. to inspire the young, at least, with a pure, sweet passion for learning that shall not slumber? to enkindle a steady enthusiasm that, keeping its great aim in view, will neither flash up for an instant and die out as soon, nor go off at a tangent, but hold its course persistently onward, till they shall find that knowledge is indeed power, and the fruits of intellectual culture well worthy of their most loyal devotion? What is to become of A' PERSISTENCE IN STUDY. "The trouble with the young people of America," remarked a gentleman friend of ours the other day, "is simply this: There is no genuine persistence in study-no real love for intellectual culture for itself, and the secret, secure delight it must bring to its possessor. There is a great deal of book-reading, but very little assimilation; a little smattering of many things, but no pains-taking thoroughness anywhereno solid, substantial, slowly-acquired possessions." Be as reluctant to admit it as we may, there is certainly a great deal of truth in this remark which it might be wholesome for us to consider. The blindest people in the world are those who, having eyes, refuse to see. We find the young folks everywhere all eager enough to be distinguished in literature, if indeed some fortunate hit could be made; they want, of course, to be considered intelligent and cultivated; they have a certain sort of lazy ambition that plans and dreams, and accomplishes next to nothing; but when it comes to the real, persistent tug and strain, to the actual making the most possible of good, or mediocre, or even inferior talents, where are they? Children's Friend. SCHOOL GOVERNMENT. ALSTON ELLIS. LL teaching is disciplinary. The powers of the mind are developed by study and rational training. School discipline, in a general sense, applies to all that is done in the school-room to secure the progress of the pupils. School government is an important branch of school discipline. The teacher must not only know what to teach and how to teach, but he must also be able to maintain such control over his pupils that his teaching may realize its full mission. Much good instruction is wasted on disorderly, inattentive pupils. The teacher who cannot keep an orderly school has made a mistake in his selection of a vocation. The good of the pupils requires the prompt rectification of the error by the school authorities. The examination, to which the law requires applicants for positions as teachers to submit, measures, to some extent, their scholarship, but it fails to secure unquestioned testimony as to their ability to govern. Governing power is perhaps more indispensable to the teacher, at the outset, than mere ability to teach. He must establish order before he can instruct. He may not know the best methods of teaching the branches to be taught in his school but experience and a willingness to learn will enable him to attain the desired knowledge. A failure to govern involves a failure to teach successfully. School government should have a twofold purpose. Primarily, good order is essential to the proper prosecution of all school work. The teacher strives to secure this in order that he may uninterruptedly pursue his labors as instructor. Government in school has yet a higher aim than the preservation of order. It seeks to establish and confirm habits that will make pupils happier, better, and more law-abiding. These results cannot be lost sight of in any wiselychosen scheme of school government. The restraints of the school-room are necessary alike to the well How many boys in your neighborhood would give up a croquet party to study natural history? How many hoard up their first earnings to buy books? How many little girls can you find who are willing to devote a leisure afternoon each week, even under the best of teachers and the most favorable circumstances, to pursue (mark that word!) the delightful study of botany, as little girls, to our certain knowl-being of the school and the protection of society. edge, used to do twenty years ago? The truth is, the minds of the young folks, as well as the children, are absorbed in dress and fashion and so many extraneous things, that there is little time, as well as taste, for anything else; and in this whirl of excitement, the things altogether lovely and desirable, the weightier matters, are neglected. The de There is enough lawlessness stalking abroad in the land. Disorderly elements must not hereafter draw recruits from the ranks of those who are under training in our public schools. Respect for law should be strengthened rather than weakened. The child's training at home and in the school determines his character, associations, and habits in after-life. are persons who can retain some tranquillity of mind when suffering bodily pain, but their number is not great. The teacher needs a vigorous mind in a healthy body. Every teacher knows that the day that finds him suffering from sickness of any kind is one of trial. Truth compels him to confess that his work when he is sick is not entered upon with the same energy that characterizes it when body and mind are active and alert. The teacher who can not do accustomed work when weighed down by physical weakness should realize that his pupils may at times have some difficulty of a similar kind to contend with. Realizing this truth, the teacher may often see in the inattention and restlessness of some pupils the effects of an abnormal condition of the body rather than the results of a perverse disposition. The nature of the government to which children | over difficulties, and generates cheerfulness. There are subjected in school determines its disciplinary value. A tyrannical system of government my compel order, but it begets no respect for that which it establishes. Children are not always the best judges of the system of government best adapted to their needs, but unless the plan pursued has some features which are recognized as necessary, sensible, and just by the general sentiment of the school it will not be productive of lasting good. The teacher's actions in the schoolroom, and elsewhere as well, must win the respect and confidence if not the love of his pupils. The hasty adoption of arbitrary measures, the ebullitions of an undisciplined temper, and the imposition of severe penalties for trivial faults, are offences which the teacher cannot commit and yet hope to stand well in the estimation of his pupils. Teachers are sometimes intensely hated by their pupils. This bitterness of feeling manifested by pupils toward their teacher is generally conclusive evidence that his system of administration has something censurable about it. The teacher who has no friends among his pupils has but little power to do them effective service. His time is unduly occupied in ferreting out the perpetrators of mischief and visiting upon them punishment for their misdeeds. The government of some teach. ers may be fitly characterized by the word little. They are given to magnifying trifling matters into things of portentous import. They are suspicious also. Every act of every child is watched with almost infinite zest. Every nice offense must bear its comment. Punishment is little in quantity but of frequent occurrence. The fussy teacher is out of place in the school-room. Again there are teachers who never see the bright side of anything. Cheerfulness is a word unknown to their school vocabulary. Their pupils are the dullest, the most cross-grained, the most untidy, and altogether the worst of any it has ever been their misfortune to teach. They enter the schoolroom on the morning of a bright, sunshiny day with a cloud on their faces and a rebuke in every motion. Happy children glance from the sour, fretful face of the teacher to the bright sunshine without and are seized with an almost irresistible longing to escape from the thralldom of the school-room and to wander at will through pleasant walks and green fields. It has been said that cheerfulness is contagious. The teacher of buoyant spirits, confident demeanor, and pleasant speech is just the one to make school work attractive and interesting to children. They work as if moved by inspiration. The school-room loses every disagreeable feature and becomes the scene of The methods of governing in school have been the cheerful, well-directed effort. It is strange that teach- themes of numberless essays. Pupils must be govers whose every act bespeaks their distaste for chil- erned, but how? Here champions of different sysdren and school work continue to teach. Their influ-tems enter the lists and the war of words waxes hot. ence over the youthful minds about them can not be salutary. They make no effort to make their schoolrooms the abode of contented activity. The number of teachers who are habitually despondent or dissatisfied is small, be it said to the credit of the teaching guild; but there is a larger number of those who do not strive as they should to meet the responsibility that they have assumed with courageous hearts, tran. quil minds, and animated faces. Sometimes ill-health unfits the teacher for the work of the school-room. The idea that the cripple, the invalid, and the infirm, in fact almost all unfitted for for anything else, can perform the duties devolving upon the teacher is not so current now as it once was. Good health is one of the teacher's best qualifications. It lightens labor, stimulates mental activity, triumphs | In theory we treat all pupils alike; in practice we do not. The same measures will not apply with equal efficacy in all cases. They are sometimes used because the teacher wishes to avoid the appearance of favoritism. Many a pupil has been unwisely handled in the teacher's attempt to "treat all alike." The dispositions of children are different and demand at times peculiar treatment. When one method of procedure is followed in every case of a like kind it becomes a kind of kill-or-cure process. The pupil reforms or becomes incorrigible. The judgment of the teacher must point out the best course to follow in governing different pupils. It may be objected that pupils will lose respect for a teacher who pursues what seems to them a vacillating policy. This is true if pupils think that the teacher changes his policy to favor the pupil rather than to reform his conduct. This feeling on the part of the pupils does not inevitably arise as the result of the teacher's change of tactics. A teacher allows a lame pupil to remain in his seat while his classmates pass from the room at recess in order that he may not have to keep pace with their unhalting steps. A pupil suffering from myopy is given a seat near the blackboard, and is allowed to hold the book in a different position from that in which it is held by pupils not so afflicted. Those whose hearing is defective, those who are left-handed, and those who are not comfortably clad, all receive some special attention from the teacher without exciting thought or comment from other pupils. The dispositions of children differ not less widely than do their bodily organisms. Tact will, in most cases, enable the teacher to apply particular methods to different dispositions without being charged with acting unjustly. These champions do not always practice their own theories. The teacher who trims his sails to some of the popular pedagogic currents may soon find his frail bark on a boundless sea, at the mercy of the buffeting waves. The problem of school government is one which each teacher must solve for himself. Moral force is an effective agent in governing pupils. Many parents and some teachers tell us that they have found the use of moral suasion sufficient to effect all that government can expect to effect. There is a power in moral agents that makes them do acceptable service in influencing and controlling the minds and habits of mankind. Many men do right from principle. Pupils who from earliest infancy have been under discreet home training are generally alive to moral influences. Our schools contain many ex ernment. amples of such home training. Force may be used The child's bad conduct, which calls for restraint the teacher, evidences, in most cases, the nature of the discipline to which he is subjected when under parental authority. Under such circumstances, what would the teacher gain by referring the unruly child to his parents for correction? The same love which, in the opinion of some, should by make the parent the proper person to inflict punishment upon his child, often blinds the eyes of the parent to his child's ugly disposition, insolent speech, and unruly conduct. of the culpability of his child and the amount of punishment requisite to secure reform is but a theory, and an unsound one at that. If a child is convicted of arson or theft his punishment is not left to a loving father or an over-indulgent mother. The judge and the jury do not have to stand in the relation of fathers to the accused before they are vested with power to mete out justice upon them for their misdeeds. I firmly believe that teachers, as a rule, will inflict punishment with as much caution, justice, and humanity as the large majority of parents will. The good of the school may sometimes require the suspension of a pupil. This step should not be hastily taken. Were every troublesome boy or girl deprived of school privileges our schools would be decimated. The teacher has a duty to do in case of such children which he should not feel at liberty to shun. People acquiesce in school taxation in the belief that they are ultimately the gainers by the state of society which schools are supposed to foster. The law wisely requires that two-thirds of the members of the board of education must be convinced of the necessity of the step before any pupil can be summarily expelled. A speedy expulsion is justifiable when a parent defends his child's disorderly course and threatens dire things if that child receives chastisement. Little good for the child results from his punishment when followed by the misplaced sympathy of his parents. The best teachers, do not resort to the rod with undue haste. Where parental co-operation is cheerfully and prudently given, it is rare indeed that the teacher needs to emply force in order to secure the well-being of his school. Ohio Educational Monthly. IT THE SPELLING REFORM. SUPT. A. P. MARBLE. T is hard to spell English. Many good men make mistakes. Children spend a good deal of time in learning to spell; and after all they never learn to spell all the words in our language. Some people are therefore trying to avoid the difficulty. Eminent scholars have given their support to the plan; and a good deal of talk and a good deal of ink have already been expended on the subject. This may be an interesting way to spend one's leisure, if anybody has leisure to spend; but the attempt to provide a mode of spelling, ready made, must be abortive; and no possible and useful thing ought to be slighted in the pursuit of a chimera. It is not an established fact that parents exercise more self-control in punishing children than teachers do. Some children have two chances for protection when under the teacher's authority to one that they have when under the control of their parents. A hundred eyes, Argus-like, are upon the teacher. If he punishes unduly, arrest, fine, loss of position, and loss of professional reputation, may swiftly follow. He is admonished by these things to be just, discreet, and merciful. Besides, the teacher is selected, it is supposed, on account of his possessing those qualities of head and heart which fit him to grapple with the difA language grows; it is never made. Spellficulties of his calling. The parent may be cruel ating is a part of the language and must change times and the world be none the wiser. The power of law is rarely invoked to shield the child from his parent's unreasonable, ungovernable fury when it is aroused by some childish fault, Witnesses are not abundant to testify to what transpires in the family circle. The idea that the parent should be the sole judge by slow degrees. There is no language where the voice of hard spelling is not heard. No language since the creation ever had its spelling "reformed;" none ever will. Time is wasted in learning to spell, they say; if we only had the reformed spelling, |