What a teacher ought to know.-Orthography. of the Hon. Horace Mann, Secretary of the Board of Education, the compensation of teachers within ten years has advanced thirty-three per cent.; nor is it reasonable to suppose that this advance has been made, independent of any improvement among the teachers. Their system of supervision has increased in strictness, during this time, in an equal ratio; and many teachers, who were entirely incompetent for their places, have thus been driven to other employments. The cause is still onward; and the time is not far distant when the people will demand still more thorough teachers for the common schools, and they will find it for their interest to pay for them. Under these circumstances, it will not be my design to give the very lowest qualifications for a teacher at present. I shall aim to describe those which a teacher ought to possess, in order to command, for some time to come, the respect of the enlightened part of the community. I will not say that a man, with less attainment than I shall describe, may not keep a good school; I have no doubt that many do. Yet if our profession is to be really respectable, and truly deserving of the regard of an enlightened people, we must have a still higher standard of qualification than I shall now insist on. The following is a list of the studies of which every teacher should have a competent knowledge. I add also to each, such word of comment as appears to be necessary. 1. ORTHOGRAPHY. than mere spelling. This implies something more 50 LITERARY QUALIFICATIONS Our alphabet.-Elementary sounds.-Normal chart. sable. No person should ever think of teaching, who is not an accurate speller. But the nature and powers Our of letters should also be mastered. We have in our language about forty elementary sounds; yet we have but twenty-six characters to represent them. alphabet is therefore imperfect. This imperfection is augmented by the fact that several of the letters are employed each to represent several different sounds. In other cases, two letters combined represent the element. There are also letters, as c, q, and x, which have no sound that is not fully represented by other letters. Then a very large number of our letters are silent in certain positions, while they are fully sounded in others. It were much to be desired that we might have a perfect alphabet, that is, as many characters as we have elementary, sounds, and that each letter should have but one sound. For the present this can not be; and the present generation of teachers, at least, will have to teach our present orthography. Those systems of orthography are much to be preferred which begin with the elementary sounds, and then present the letters as their representatives, together with the practice of analyzing words into their elements, thus showing at once the silent letters and the equivalents. These systems may be taught in half the time that the old systems can be; and when acquired, they are of much greater practical utility to the learner. As my views have been more fully presented in the "NORMAL CHART OF ELEMENTARY SOUNDS," prepared for the use of schools, I will only refer the reader to that work. Few good readers.-Mr. Mann's statement. 2. READING. Every teacher should be a good reader. Not more than one in hundred among every teachers can now be called a good reader. To be able to read well, implies a quick perception of the meaning as well as a proper enunciation of the words. It is a branch but poorly taught in most of our schools. Many of the older pupils get above reading before they have learned to read well; and, unfortunately, many of our teachers cannot awaken an interest in the subject, because very likely they cannot read any better than their scholars. It would be interesting to ascertain how large a proportion of our youth leave the schools without acquiring the power readily to take the sense of any common paragraph which they may attempt to read. I am inclined to think the number is not small.* In * Since writing the above, my eye has fallen upon the following, from the second Annual Report of the Secretary of the Mass. Board of Education. "I have devoted," says Mr. Mann, "especial pains to learn, with some degree of numerical accuracy, how far the reading in our schools is an exercise of the mind in thinking and feeling, and how far it is a barren action of the organs of speech upon the atmosphere. My information is derived principally from the written statements of the school committees of the different towns,-gentlemen, who are certainly exempt from all temptation to disparage the schools they superintend. The result is that more than eleven twelfths of all the children in the reading classes in our schools, do not understand the meaning of the words they read; that they do not master the sense of their reading lessons; and that the ideas and feelings intended by the author to be conveyed to and excited in the reader's mind, still rest in the author's intention, never having yet reached the place of their destination. It would hardly seem that the combined efforts of all persons engaged, could have accomplished more, in defeating the true objects of reading. How the cause of this deficiency is to be apportioned among the legal supervisors of the schools, parents, teachers, Hard labor.-Analysis of words.-Writing. this way I account for the fact that so many cease to read as soon as they leave school. It costs them so much effort to decipher the meaning of a book, that it counteracts the desire for the gratification and improvement it might otherwise afford. It should not be so The teacher should be a model of good reading; he should be enthusiastic in this branch, and never rest till he has excited the proper interest in it among the pupils, from the oldest to the youngest, in the school. It would be well if our teachers could be somewhat acquainted with the Latin and Greek languages, as this would afford them great facilities in comprehending and defining many of our own words. As this cannot be expected for the present, a substitute may be sought in some analysis of our derivative words. Several works have somewhat recently been prepared, to supply, as far as may be, the wants of those who have not studied the classics. I should advise every teacher, for his own benefit, to master some one of these. 3. WRITING. It is not respectable for the teacher of the young to be a bad writer; nor can it ever become so, even should the majority of bad writers continue to increase. The teacher should take great pains to write a plain, legible hand. This is an essential qualification. 4. GEOGRAPHY. A knowledge of the principles of Geography is essential. This implies an acquaintance and authors of text-books, it is impossible to say; but surely it is an evil, gratuitous, widely-prevalent, and threatening the most alarming consequences." Geography.-History.-Mental Arithmetic.-Anecdotes. with the use of globes, and the art of map-drawing. The teacher should be so well versed in geography, that, with an outline map of any country before him, he could give an intelligent account of its surface, people, resources, history, &c.; and if the outline map. were not at hand, he ought to be able to draw one from memory,—at least, of each of the grand divisions of the earth, and of the United States. 5. HISTORY. The teacher should be acquainted with history, at least, the history of the United States. He can hardly teach geography successfully without a competent knowledge of both ancient and modern history. It should, in the main, be taught in our common schools in connection with geography. 6. MENTAL ARITHMETIC. Let every teacher be thoroughly versed in some good work on this subject. Colburn's was the first, and it is probably the best that has been prepared. That little book has done more than any other for the improvement of teaching in this country. It is not enough that the teacher is able in some way to obtain the answers to the questions proposed. He should be able to give the reason for every step in the process he takes to obtain them, and to do it in a clear and concise manner. It is this which constitutes the value of this branch as a discipline for the mind. I may never forget my first introduction to this work. On entering an academy as a student, in 1827, after I had "ciphered through" some four or five arithmetics on the old plan, my teacher asked me if I had ever |