the young people know of the public spirited men, who have served and are serving the city with conspicuous fidelity. In studying the broader range of history, emphasis should be laid on the price that has been paid for all the political and civil rights enjoyed by the people.

Another service to the state and city that must be more thoroughly done by high schools, is the fitting of the boy and girl for economic efficiency and independence. Technical high schools and commercial courses meet the demand. Youths with skill for some definite service, become thereby qualified as valuable servants of the state.

Finally the high school must seize upon the latent instincts, desires and springing ambitions of the adolescent period and direct and guide these elements of life into paths of true service. Formerly discipline meant repressing all the natural activities of the young. Now the aim is to give them opportunity for right expressions. Unless there is such a self-realization in youth, men and women fail of attaining full development.

The instincts of the high school period are largely concerned with organization and co-operative action. They are the raw material out of which our civilization has been fashioned. Genuine boys under proper guidance find excellent opportunity for exercising their talents for organization and leadership in connection with athletic teams, literary societies and various school activities. Their natural instincts have such room for expression there is less of a disposition to mischief and evil.

The wisest policy of the school is a sympathetic supervision of all the various societies and organizations.

In the general discipline of the school, there should be a certain amount of freedom, as thereby responsibility is felt by the pupils and they grow into an attitude of loyalty which is better than forced obedience. Marks and the struggle for personal ends should be given subordinate place.

Another means of seeming devotion to the school is to cultivate the historic sense by making much of the past of the institution and of its teachers and pupils, who have done conspicuous service to city and state. Much may be learned from the great public schools of every land in the cultivation of the regard and reverence of youth.

There is great need of a rallying of community press in our cities in the struggle against corruption and in the movement for betterment of conditions. Our high schools should furnish a great body of trained disciplined citizens inspired with high ideals, and filled with the true civic spirit.

DEPARTMENT OF NORMAL SCHOOLS.

THE CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF NORMAL SCHOOLS IN NEW ENGLAND.

ALBERT G. BOYDEN, PRINCIPAL, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, BRIDGEWATER, MASS.

The State supports public schools for the education of its children, to supplement the education given by the home and the church. It supports normal schools that its children may have better teachers in the public schools; that the school may do its part in developing the children into true men and women who shall maintain the educated home and the Christian church, and thus secure the highest well-being of this great people.

The public school is an indispensible agency in the education of the children of the State. The normal school is an indispensible agency in the education of the teachers of the children.

James G. Carter of Lancaster, Mass., was the first to call public attention in this country to the necessity and advantages of normal schools, by a series of articles published in the Boston Patriot in the winter of 18245, with the signature of "Franklin." In these he maintained that "the first step towards a reform in our system of popular education, is the scientific preparation of teachers for the free schools; and the only measure that will insure to the public the attainment of the object, is to establish an institution for the very purpose."

Mr. Carter made the definite proposition for the establishment of a new kind of institution founded on the thought that teachers must be educated to fit them to direct the unfolding and perfecting of young human lives, just as doctors must be educated to fit them to secure the preservation of the health of human bodies; just as lawyers must be educated to fit them to secure the prevalence of justice among human beings.

In 1837, Hon. Edmund Dwight of Boston, a member of the Massachusetts State Board, offered through the secretary of the Board to furnish ten thousand dollars, "to be expended under the direction of the Board, for qualifying teachers for our common schools," on condition that the Legislature would appropriate for the same purpose an equal amount. The Legislature accepted the proposition. With the sum of twenty thousand dollars at their command, the Board decided to establish three schools for the education of teachers, each to be continued three years as an experiment. The first was opened at Lexington, in July, 1839; the second at Barre, in September, 1839; the third at Bridgewater, in September, 1840. These were the first three State Normal Schools in America.

At the end of three years these schools were so vigorous that their lease of life was renewed for another three years by an appropriation made by the Legislature for their support. Upon the expiration of this second lease they were adopted by the State and christened State Normal Schools.

In 1845, some thirty or forty friends of popular education, to express their approbation of the course of Horace Mann in the conduct of the great work of reforming our common schools, proposed the placing

of the normal schools upon a firm and lasting basis by furnishing them with suitable and permanent buildings. They pledged themselves to furnish five thousand dollars, and to ask the Legislature for a like sum for this important purpose. The Legislature appropriated five thousand dollars, and Charles Sumner gave his bond for the five thousand dollars pledged by the memorialists, that the funds might be immediately available. When the Board of Education had secured plans for the erection of new buildings for the schools at Bridgewater and Westfield, the other school had been provided for by the gift of a building by Josiah Quincy of Boston,-it was found that no contract could be made for the amount at the disposal of the Board. Horace Mann came forward and gave his own obligation to make up the deficiency. He mortgaged his law library to raise money to pay the last bills in settling the cost of these buildings. Mr. Mann was at this time receiving the munificent salary of one thousand dollars as Secretary of the Board of Education. The sum advanced by Mr. Mann was afterwards reimbursed from the State Treasury.

At the dedication of the new building at Bridgewater in August, 1846, Mr. Mann said in responding to the toast "The health of the Secretary of the Board of Education," "Let no man who knows what has been suffered, has been borne and forborne, to bring to pass the present event, accuse me of an extravagance of joy. I consider this event às marking an era in the progress of education,-which, as we all know, is the progress of civilization,—on this western continent and throughout the world. It is the completion of the first normal school house ever erected in Massachusetts,—