The following was their work in arithmetic:

Numbers developed from 45 to 144; multiplication; division; problems combining first four processes, in Popular Educator Arithmetic and Peck's New Arithmetic; linear measure; dry measure; liquid measure; part of square measure; objective work, oral drill and problems with 1, 1, b; 4, 1, 1, 1, 12; first case in percentage.

The same test which was given to the thirty-seven children above was given to this school, numbering forty, except that they were not allowed in the oral work any time to count.

(1) All added correctly 9 +5; 17+ 9; 38 +9.

(2) Three did not subtract 25-8; 11-4.

(3) Four did not multiply 7 × 8; 6 × 7; 9 × 8; 7 x 12.

(4) Five did not give correctly the number of 9s in 54; 3s in 27; 6s in 18.

(5) All added correctly+ 1; } + { ·

These children looked with contempt at the example, “It is now ten minutes after 10, what time was it five minutes ago?"

In English the following was the result:

(1) All began sentences with capital letters.

(2) All began proper names with capital letters.

(3) All used capitals for the pronoun "I."

(4) Ten did not use the interrogation point correctly.

(5) All used the apostrophe correctly.

(6) All used the period correctly.

(7) Ten did not use the quotation marks correctly.

The result in this case is due to good teaching.

The contrast is between children at 12 who have not gained the elements of a common school education and children who at 8 years and 7 months have secured this education.

In this connection it is important to consider those children who from one cause and another do not remain in school until they are 12 or 14. Under this dawdling system most do not get further than the primary school. Last year in one town 584 entered the primary schools. In the grainmar schools, representing the eighth year, there were 98. The usual number that graduated from the high school was 20. Five hundred and eighty-four went in at the bottom and 20 came out at the top. Barely 100 at the age of 12 to 15 have secured a common school education; others have fallen by the way, having attained a part only of what has been outlined above as clearly possible. It is an unredeemed hardship to many children to remain in school unless the schools are doing the most and best for them. It is a crying injustice to waste the time of any child.

The question whether children as a result of instruction in schools read and desire to read was made the subject of particular inquiry.

We find

(1) Many children of 12 can not read any ordinary book or paper intelligently. (2) In most schools they are not allowed to read more than a few paragraphs which are set for a reading lesson.

(3) They are not encouraged and incited to read at home or in school upon subjects which they are studying or are interested in.

(4) In very few cases they are directed in their reading. The subjects which they study are presented to them only in text-books; this is true in geog raphy and history.

(5) As a result the children could not name any books which they had read, and inquiry did not elicit the fact that they had read many.

(6) Few schools had libraries to which children had access, and in few towns were the public libraries open to children.

This deplorable result is not due to inability of children, but to radically defective teaching. The methods of teaching can not secure the most and best education in a reasonable time.

One book is prescribed for the reading of a year, and the class read this book over and over again and they read no other. They can recite this book fluently, and they can read no other book fluently. Often when the book is opened, a picture or a word suggests the text, which can be recited as well without the book as with it. If any other book be opened to the child, he looks at it as a stranger and the teacher considers such a test an imposition and a reflection on her teaching. The result, so sad and harmful, is that for a whole year the reading of the child has been narrowed and impoverished, and the delusion is that a child is learning to read.

When we think how noble and admirable a thing real literature is, it is provoking to know that one book, sometimes containing rublish, is, with the sanction of school officers, crammed into children as their only reading.

Every known method of teaching reading is permitted, the good and the bad are open, and the choice is left to the untrained and inexperienced. Can it be wondered at that 135 of the teachers in New Haven County still dwell upon the letters in the vain belief that the naming of the letters is learning to read?

They teach as they were taught.

In reading should be found the crown and reward of the intellectual influences which the schools call into activity. If children have been taught to see and to hear, to experiment, and to express their ideas, the reading of the lowest classes is a test of intelligence, and the reading of the highest a test of training. There is not monotonous reading; the tone and quality are regulated by the children's ideas. Indistinet utterance is banished because the children have something to say. Reading then displays the play of intelligence which we enjoy, and which lights up a school. But consider for a moment the chaff which the schools often serve up to these intelligent human beings-stuff which would not be offered to children in their home reading, nor anywhere except in school. The system is based upon the supposition that children are not of full size physically, and therefore must be treated to small words without meaning mentally.

These text-books are not merely a means of misleading teachers, but they are a means of paralyzing the brains of children. Note the dismal contents of books given to children for their early reading. To show what children are compelled to do in contrast with what they are able to do, we give below specimens of the actual reading in two schools where the children are on an equality in years, the average being about 7.

A fox. A bad fox. Hen.

See this cat and this man.
The man has a fan in his
hand.

His hat is on the mat.
The cat is on the mat, too.

It travels a long way to get here.
It travels with the light millions of miles.
Some heat comes from the fires that we
make.

Heat is often made without any light.
This is the case with the heat of our
bodies.

Our bodies are not made warm by fire or clothing.

They keep themselves warm.

The fires and clothing are to keep the
heat from flying off too fast.
Heat is also made by rubbing.

Rub your hands together swiftly.
See how much warmer they grow.

Now rub two smooth sticks together.

See how warm they become.

The Indians used to kindle their fires in this way.

They rubbed two sticks together till they burned.

Before matches were made it was not
easy to get a light.

A flint was struck upon a piece of steel.
In this way a spark was made.
The spark would set fire to the wood.
So you see heat is sometimes made by
striking two hard things together.

II.

A piece of lime was put into water.
The water was cold.

Soon it became very hot.

The lime and the water had united.
Heat is made when lime and water unite.
When two things unite in this way, heat
is always made.

A great deal of heat is made inside the earth.

The inside of this big ball is like a furnace.

Sometimes the fire comes out.

It comes out through the volcanoes.
Volcanoes send out fire, ashes, and lava.
Lava is melted rock.

Hot springs are found in many countries.
The hot water rises from the inside of
the earth.

Sometimes the ground trembles.

Houses and trees are thrown down.

Sometimes the people are buried in the ruins.

Such skakings of the ground are called
earthquakes.

This heat inside the earth is very strong.
It can do a great deal.

There is really no such thing as cold.
When we say a thing is cold we mean
there is little heat in it.

We do not know whether all the heat can get out of anything.

There is a little heat even in ice.

The following is a list of books found in one good school library. The average age of children in the school was 8 years:

The children were able to use the dictionary, consulted the cyclopedias, and were reading the books intelligently.

Few teachers ever learn to teach penmanship; they lean upon the copy book. These books pretend to be graded for different stages of progress. The children copy the letters at the top of the page a few minutes each day. The last line is often less correctly drawn than the first, because it is an inch or two farther removed from the copy. Yet to ask children to write outside of the copy book is often called unfair. Can it be said that permitting the children to make the letters or words in one or even five writing books is teaching penmanship? Should a person who can not teach penmanship be given a certificate of qualification? The record shows that more than half of these teachers do not claim to be able to teach penmanship.

Consider the instruction in arithmetic, the 80-called “practical" branch. The best instruction in arithmetic does not regard addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as four processes graduated from the lowest to the highest, and to be learned successively; it assumes that the true progress is from small numbers to large, and from easy processes to more difficult ones. Hence, the beginner adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides all the numbers in succession. He ascertains the parts of each number, including its fractional parts. He then applies the number to common things, like time, and measurements of every kind. He learns to perform different arithmetical processes and explains what is within the limit of numbers he has gained.

He proceeds in this way from one number to another. Large numbers and all extensive notation are reserved until later, or entirely discarded. By thus knowing simple and manageable numbers, and by infinitely varying the exercises upon them, he obtains a mastery of cominon and useful processes. He gains genuine preparation for dealing with larger numbers if he ever needs them. He approaches problems which are not obscured by large figures. The method is a workable and rational one.

The papers of all children under 10 were rejected in making the summary, and the result of the test shows what children of 12 have learned in the public schools. In giving the oral questions, the children were allowed reasonable time and all reasonable helps. In the written work and problems they were allowed all the time they desired.

It should be noted that these are the elementary, the very simplest processes, perfectly casy to children of 6 or 7, as can be readily shown. They ought to have been acquired in the first two years of school life.

The following table gives the per cent of incorrect answers:

Children whose failures are here recorded are taught to work the examples in the book, and to repeat the rules in the same book. There are cases where children can begin and repeat every rule without prompting. These rules are taught verbatim, and the children sedulously practiced in working examples. The real needs and capacities of young children are disregarded; business facility in the common operations not thought of. Arithmetic has thus become a science of difficult trifles and intricate fooleries peculiar to common schools, and remarkable chiefly for sterility and ill-adaptedness for any useful purpose. It is pertinent to inquire, and parents ought to inquire, why children over 11 years of age can not correctly divide 546 by 3. The reason is that there has been no teaching whatever, or that the method of teaching is radically unsound.

II. Many teachers do not possess the necessary practical wisdom and professional skill. They do not know how to so arrange courses and to so instruct as to do the most possible of what is worth doing in a given time.

An examination of our schools will seldom reveal a teacher who is devoid of interest in her work. Many of them are young. Some of them are uneducated, while only a small per cent ever received anything like special training in the art of instruction. They are like lawyers who begin to practice when they begin to study, and like doctors who begin to give medicine when they first open their books. The analogy would be complete if physicians were appointed over limited districts and the children within these districts were obliged to take medicine and advice from them, or not at all. There should be no more thought of employing a publicschool teacher who does not know how to give instruction than there is of employing a musician whose musical education is limited to the hearing of a street band. The ends of education, therefore, demand that teachers be trained, and that if the State is to establish schools, it also expend some of its money in giving our teachers greater skill. Omitting one town, i. e., New Haven, in the county under review, it appears that 35 of 203 teachers visited by the examiner had normal school or equivalent training. Such training may mean much or little; the minimum would be a tolerable knowledge of the way to teach the common branches.

Evidence is wanting that committees are strenuous in their efforts to secure teachers of approved character and qualifications. There are many pernicious influences at work of which family and locality are the most conspicuous. No new blood can get in. The natural influx of trained teachers is prohibited, and the inefficient are protected. This is educational politics. The machinery and the output of this machinery are well known, and yet we do nothing about it but let the children suffer. Thus worked, the school system is not performing a great public duty, but perpetrating a great injustice.

Often when an inadequate examination is passed and a certificate is secured by a teacher, professional equipment is regarded as complete. Of serious and systematic reading, of the pursuit of any branch of letters or of science for its own sake, or of the habit of self-instruction which alone can furnish the freshness of intellect needed by teachers, there is not much evidence.

Those whose class work is observed and tested sometimes have some technical skill in the art of teaching, but there is absolute poverty of illustration and thought. This results from lack of reading and observation, by which light would be shed upon lessons and text-books.

The recent development of primary education, so remarkable and widespread, has not touched many of these towns, and has not compelled an improvement in the qualifications of teachers. There are some men and women who have no conception of progress in education. They do not reject the idea; it has never been in their minds. Their schools are not only behind this age, but behind all ages.

Nor is there in some towns much encouragement for teachers to secure by expenditure of money and hard work substantial qualifications. The school officers have prescribed schemes of instruction, founded on text-books, and exhibiting in minute detail the work to be done; no discretion either in plan or detail is left to the teacher. There is no scope for her training, or knowledge, or individual experience. There is a limited and solidified programme; every subject and part of subject is obligatory. The question for the teacher is, not what is useful, not what is best for this child or that, not what will do each the most good, but what is prescribed by the committee, school visitor, or superintendent.

It follows that children are not expected to know anything outside of this limited routine, because it is not in the course of study, or has not been reached in the course of study; it is not in this grade; the page where it is found has not been turned over. That a subject is not prescribed, or has not been regularly reached, is an all-sufficient excuse for ignorance. For instance, in many, perhaps most, schools fractions are not touched until children are 10 or 12 years old. In such schools if a question involving a fraction is asked, it is then sufficient to say that the children have not had fractions. If the children should be asked to add a half and a quarter before they came to written addition of fractions in the book, they ought not to have heard of such an operation. They ought to keep silence if they have heard of it. An illustration is found in the fact that at least one-fourth of the children over 11 did not work correctly the example, 546-3; they had not reached division. Children learn to add, and leaving school at 8 or 9 years of age, can not subtract nor use small fractions.

The courses of study, if any exist, are in reality constructed to conform to textbooks, while the books themselves are books of reference, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but not suitable to direct the method or even the order in which subjects should be presented.

The same adherence to text-books is found where there is no course of study. The children will be required to give what the book contains, to perform the examples, say the rules, enumerate the mountains, and recite the battles in the order of the book. One teacher exhibited a boy as a meritorious scholar who had begun at the beginning of a United States history and repeated without verbal error 45 pages. Another boasted that his class could begin at the beginning of one of the larger arithmetics and give every rule and definition without prompting. Both of these teachers were men and adults.

III. There is no adequate supervision.

In 23 towns the schools are visited and supervisory duties performed twice in a

term.

There are in this county two large districts, New Haven and Waterbury, which employ a superintendent.

It is quite impossible to characterize the ordinary visitation of schools as supervision. It has no effect upon the teacher and is only intended to satisfy the visitor that in general the legal requirements of the school have been met. This is all he is obliged to testify to. It is not essential to a legal school that any child or any class should have made any progress, or that a single child should have learned anything whatsoever. It is only necessary that the school should have been begun, continued, and ended in conformity to the statutes, which require no test of the quality of the education.

This is a go-as-you-please system, which will make a good school if there happens to be a good teacher who is not hampered. The school system of the State does not, however, supply any assurance that the quality of the education will be good. On the contrary, we should naturally expect that it will sometimes be good and sometimes bad, and that children will sometimes be educated and sometimes not. The only conditions absolutely essential are that the teacher shall be employed and the schoolhouse kept open. It is not even necessary that the studies prescribed by the State shall be taught. It is found that in many, perhaps most, schools writing,