rank of duties to be performed. The relation of intelligence to prosperity, and the relation of ignorance to poverty and crime, impose upon the State an obligation which can only be met by laws so framed and executed that ignorance itself, when not due to mental or physical weakness, shall be considered and treated as a crime.

By collecting taxes for educational purposes, the State admits and voluntarily assumes the responsibility, not merely of providing means for the education of the people, but of seeing to it that the people are educated.

The laws of Massachusetts upon compulsory education may be arranged in three divisions.

The first division is intended to prevent parents or guardians from allowing children under their care to grow up in ignorance, and requires that children, with certain exceptions, shall be sent to school three months each year between the ages of eight and fourteen years, or eighteen months in all. The second division applies only to those children that labor in manufacturing and mechanical establishments, and requires that they shall attend school fifteen months between the ages of ten and fifteen years.

The third division provides that cities and towns may make all needful regulations to prevent truancy, idleness, and wandering about the streets, of children between the ages of seven and sixteen years, and provides concerning neglected children under sixteen years of age.

The first division excepts from its provisions, among others, those whose parents or guardians are unable to send them to school, and those that have been "otherwise furnished with the means of education for a like period of time." This law is practically unknown to the parents and guardians of the State. A case of its enforcement has never come to the knowledge of the writer.

The second division, because of the good sense of those generally in charge of such establishments, is, to a considerable extent, complied with; it cannot be said to be enforced.

The third division is the only law we have upon this subject which is executed; and this law is executed only in a small proportion of the cities and towns of the Commonwealth.

The weakness of these statute provisions is due in part to the jealousy with which all encroachments upon personal liberty have been regarded, to the low estimate placed upon education itself, to a want of definiteness in the requirements and limitations of the law, and a want of simplicity and certainty in its execution. The law does not appear designed so much to promote education, as to prevent idleness, truancy, and overwork. At most, it requires that means be furnished, but does not require that an end shall be attained. Public opinion, which secures at present the education of the majority, does now no more for the minority than simply remove some of the obstacles in the way of their education. It has not yet taken the form of a law in which the good aimed at is the thing required, the question of its attainment an easy one, and the immunities and penalties known and certain.

We consider our position in matters of education an advanced one, and yet our legislators have hardly ventured to treat the subject upon its own merits. "

The question whether a child shall be required to attend school or not, should depend only upon its age, mental or physical condition, and the knowledge already acquired. In no case should it be made to depend upon the length of time it has already attended school, or upon where the child works, or whether he works or runs in the streets or not, nor even upon the question of whether the parents or guardians are rich or poor.

If the condition of the parent should not prevent the child from going to jail, it should not prevent him from going to school. And if the age of children was determined by the school committee in all cases in which the parents could not establish it, so many children in manufacturing towns would not pass immediately from the age of ten to the age of fifteen years, without any intervening birthdays.

If an easy graduated scale of advancement in the elementary branches of education were prepared for all minors of sound mind and body, between the ages of ten and twenty-one years, and if all such as fail to obtain from the school committee a certificate that they have attained their proper rank in this scale, were held amenable to the law as truants, if absent from school without

good reason during the sessions of the public schools where they reside, the law would be definite in its object and universal in its application. If this scale were not so extended but that it could all be acquired by the time that the studious child, favorably situated, is thirteen or fourteen years old, and if all persons who had not passed a reasonable examination in all that it required, should be held in all respects as minors until they arrived at the age of twenty-five years, the ambition of the child, the interest of the parent, the interest of employers of children, and of all political parties, would be united in securing, not merely the attendance of the child at school, but the education of the child. There would be no discrimination against any branch of industry. There would be nothing required of the children of one class that is not also required of the children of every other class. All would be interested in securing the best of school accommodations, the best of committees, and the best of teachers.

If in this, or in some better way, the gathering clouds of ignorance could be made to disappear, the census would not report so many that have passed at least a portion of their childhood in Massachusetts, and yet cannot read and write. The children would be educated, the community intelligent, and the State would be safe.

G. E. HOOD.

THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF STUPIDITY IN SCHOOLS.

An article under the above title recently appeared in the "London Journal of Psychological Medicine." It is aimed at English schools, but applies, however, with equal force to all schools. We present some of the ideas in this article, in some parts condensing and omitting, and in others quoting the exact words of the author.

In the young of the human species there are two distinct functions of the brain distinctly concerned in education. One concerns the powers of sensation, ideation, and spontaneous remembrance. This belongs to the lower animals as well as to the human species.

The other concerns the powers of recollection, comparison, reflection, and volition, attributes essentially human, or at least possessed by men in common with higher intelligences alone. The powers of sensation, ideation, and spontaneous remembrance, possessed by the lower animals, are sufficient to explain all the particulars of their conduct.

The education of a child may be conducted in the direction and to the extent in which it is possible to educate a horse, a dog, or an elephant, without arousing any faculty distinctly human.

Observation teaches that it is far more easy in 'some children than in others to carry instruction beyond the sense perceptions, and to call the intellect into activity; but it teaches, also, that the supposed difficulty often arises from an improper selection or application of the means employed, and is simply a failure to open a lock with a wrong key. The apparently dull child not unfrequently receives the necessary stimulus from a trivial circumstance, from a conversation, a book, or a pursuit, and may grow into a gifted man.

Upon testing the educational systems of the present day, even by the most elementary principles of psychology, it becomes apparent that a very large number of children receive precisely the kind of training which has been bestowed upon a learned pig. Teachers who have studied at all the operations of the mind, realize the existence of a kind of learning which is sensational alone. The power of intelligent attention may be aroused in the child by care, and perfected by perseverance; but the natural inclination is towards a rapid succession of thoughts, variously associated and remembered in their order, without being understood. In schools, under the pressure of the popular demand for knowledge, it is common to accumulate new impressions more rapidly than they can be received, even by children who have had training at home in the right use of their faculties. The work laid down can often only be done by means of that promptitude which belongs to instinctive action. The child who uses his sensorium to master the sounds of his task uses an instrument perfected for him by his Creator. The child who uses his intelligence must perfect the instrument for himself; must grope in the dark; must puzzle, must catch at stray gleams of light,

before his mind can embrace the whole of any but the simplest question. The former brings out his result, such as it is, immediately; the latter by slow degrees. The former is commonly thought quick and clever, the latter slow and stupid; and the educational treatment of each is based upon this assumption, widely as it often varies from facts. The child whose tendency is to sensational activity should be held back, and be made to master the meaning of everything he is allowed to learn. He is usually encouraged to remember sounds, is rushed forward, is crammed with words to the exclusion of knowledge, and is taught to consider himself a prodigy of youthful talent. The child who tries to understand his lessons should be encouraged, supplied with food for thought, of a kind suited to his capacity, and aided by a helping hand over the chief difficulties of his path. He is usually snubbed as a dunce, punished for his slowness, forced into sensational learning as his only escape from disgrace. The master, in many cases, has little opinion in the matter. Children are

expected to know more than they have time to learn; parents and examiners must have show and surface,-things only to be purchased at the expense of solidity and strength. A discreet teacher may often feel sympathy with the difficulties of a pupil ; but the half-hour allotted to the class is passing away, the next subject is treading upon the heels of the present one, the child must complete his task like the rest, and so a budding intellect is sacrificed to the demands of custom.

Among the children of the educated classes the circumstances of domestic life usually afford to the intelligence an amount of stimulus, which, if not of the best possible kind, is at least sufficient to compensate in some degree for the sensational work of school. The easy nursery lessons of the pre-scholastic age, the story-books of childhood, the talk of parents and friends, all furnish food for leisurely reflection, and serve to suggest those strange questions that are one chief evidence of thoughtfulness in the young. Minds thus prepared may often flourish in spite of subsequent excessive teaching; and by forgetting nine tenths of what has been learned, may find it possible to understand the rest.

In what are called elementary schools, however, we do not commonly find this accidental provision against the paralyzing