Society interested in the Education of Every Youth.

What an appalling fact it is to every contemplative mind, that even wars and famines and pestilences, terrible calamities as they are acknowledged to be, have been welcomed as blessings and mercies, because they swept away, by thousands and tens of thousands, the pests which ignorance and guilt had accumulated! But the efficiency or sufficiency of these comprehensive remedies is daily diminishing. War will never again be waged to disburden the crowded prisons or to relieve the weary executioner. The arts of civilization have so multiplied the harvests of the earth, that a general famine will not again lend its aid to free the community of its surplus members. Society at large has emerged from that barbarian and semi-barbarian state, where pestilence formerly had its birth and committed its ravages. These great outlets and sluiceways, which in former times relieved nations of the dregs and refuse of their population, being now closed, whatever want or crime we engender, or suffer to exist, we must live with. If improvidence beget hunger, that hunger will break into our garners. If animal instincts are suffered to grow into licentious passions, those passions will find their way to our most secret chambers. We have no armed guard which can save our warehouses, market places, and our depositories of silver and gold, from spoliation by the hands of a mob. When the perjured witness or the forsworn juryman invades the temple of justice, the evil becomes too subtle for the police to seize. It is beyond legislative, or judicial, or executive power, to redeem the sanctuaries of religion from hypocrisy and uncharitableness. In a word, the freedom of our institutions gives play to all the passions of the human heart. The objects which excite and inflame those passions abound; and, as a fact, nearly or quite universal, there is intelligence sufficient to point out some way, lawful or unlawful, by which those passions can be gratified. Whatever children, then, we suffer to grow up among us, we must live with as men; and our children must be their contemporaries. They are to be our copartners in the relations of life, our equals at the polls, our rulers in legislative halls, the awarders of justice in our courts. However intolerable at home, they cannot be banished to any foreign land; however worthless, they will not be sent to die in camps or to be slain in battle; however flagitious, but few of them will be sequestered from society by imprisonment, or doomed to expiate their offences with their lives. Hon. Horace Mann.

School Government.

The government of a school is, commonly, the most perplexing and difficult part of a teacher's labor. The difficulties attendant upon its administration are many of them inseparable from the employment, and can never be entirely obviated. They may be greatly diminished by having well-constructed school rooms, comforable seats and all the other conveniences and means of instruction; to secure these is the duty of the school officers. The teacher may do much to diminish them by meeting his scholars in a pleasant, cheerful and animated manner, and by manifesting a deep interest in their welfare and improvement. Parents may do very much to obviate many of them by sending their children punctually and regularly to school, having them comfortably clad, clean and tidy in their appearance, supplying them with suitable books, slates, etc., by manifesting confidence in the teacher, respecting his judgment, and endeavouring to cultivate in their children a desire to secure his approbation; and above all, by accustoming their children to a habit of ready and cheerful obedience at home.

Even when all these are secured, there are still difficulties in the government of a school of forty or more scholars; and any parent who reflects upon the subject for a few moments, will wonder that teachers have so little, rather than that they have so much trouble as they do, upon this subject.

It is therefore to be wished that parents would endeavor to make the case of the teacher their own. If they find it no easy thing to govern the four or five of their own children properly, need they wonder that the teacher cannot always manage ten times that number just as he would wish, or they would think proper? If they are now and then betrayed into a hasty speech, an unguarded act or an improper decision, or if they sometimes punish when they afterwards think they might have avoided it, or use a degree of severity which subsequent reflection decides to have been unjust or unnecessary, will they not be charitable to a teacher, even if he does, now and then, do what both he and they might, on deliberate reflection, think was injudicious? Can any parent of even three children, honestly say that he has ever governed them for three months, or for one month, without a single error, without in any instance doing injustice to any one of them? And will parents demand of the teacher of forty children, what they cannot do in the

govern.ent of three or four?

1

This is a subject of the greatest moment; it is highly important that there should be a full and fair understanding of it on both sides. The parent should be accustomed to feel that while the teacher is in the main judicious, prudent, considerate and conscientious, he must be allowed to govern his school without any interference; and the teacher needs to feel that so long as he is thus, so long as he manages wisely in the main, in nearly every instance, the directors and parents will sustain him fully and cordially. Parents should not expect that the teacher, with ten times the trials and perplexities they ever have, will be perfectly free from the liability to err, when, with all their affection for their offspring, to aid their convictions of duty and propriety, they sometimes do injus tice to their own children.

The confidence above spoken of is indispensable to the success of the teacher. If parents are accustomed to call in question the propriety of his management, in the presence of their children, to pronounce sentence upon him without hearing a full statement of the case - of both sides of the case- - his influence upon their children is at an end, and they will be likely to be emboldened to transgress every rule, to disregard every requirement, and to study mischief, feeling that they are sure to have their parents on their side in case of any difficulty.

It should ever be borne in mind that learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, is only one of the several objects for which children attend school; the formation of correct habits is equally as important as study and thought; and among the habits which children should learn at school, none is of higher importance than that of respect for superiors, and cheerful, prompt obedience to properly constituted authority.

A. D. L.

Importance of Punctual and Regular Attendance at Schools.

We would that this number of the Journal could reach every one of 150,000 families, whose children will attend school during the coming fall and winter; that we could urge upon them, by every consideration which should influence the hearts of parents, to have their children ready to commence attending on the day the school begins, and to allow nothing but sickness or absolute necessity to detain them from school for a single half-day, or even an hour, during the session.

One of the greatest impediments to the improvement of our schools

ance.

and the advancement of the scholars, is their irregular or tardy attendScholars can not be taught unless they are in a school; they will not learn unless they have time for study; they will not love their school, or feel any interest in their studies, unless they attend regularly, so as to follow the course of study pursued. Pupils must, in a school of any size, be instructed in classes. To do this, regular lessons must be assigned, there must be a regular time for studying and reciting them, and the scholars must be present to do both, or they can not be expected to profit. If not present to study the lessons, they can not be benefited by the recitation or the instructions of the Teacher; and if absent from the recitation, they lose both these advantages, as well as the opportunity of hearing the lesson recited by others, which has a tendency to impress it upon the mind even more effectually than silent study.

It needs no argument to show that the absence of a scholar once or twice in a week, or even three or four times in a quarter, must do much to destroy all the interest he may have in his studies. But this is not all; his absence diminishes the spirit and interest of his class, and discourages his Teacher. On this point it should be remembered that very few scholars come to school with an active, earnest desire to learn, with a real love for knowledge. True, this is not so much to be wondered at when we think of the multitude of influences calculated to draw their attention from every thing of a serious and profitable character. The Teacher has, therefore, to awaken in their minds that interest without which they can not be expected to study or make any effort to improve. This requires constant and unremitting effort on his part, and an amount of ingenuity, tact and skill rarely thought of by those who are not familiar with teaching. And when the teacher has made a favorable commencement with a scholar, has learned his peculiarities, secured his confidence, and awakened something like a proper degree of interest in the employments of school, a single absence for the purpose of doing some trifling errand, attending a circus or seeing its company enter the town, will often undo the work of weeks or months; and the scholar returns to school to idle his time, or otherwise to thwart the Teacher in his plans, and destroy the pleasantness and profitableness of the school. This is no fancy sketch: such incidents are occurring frequently in almost every school. The children who do thus are from families of every rank and condition in life: they are not confined to the ignorant or the vicious; nor to those who might plead poverty or necessity as an

excuse.

Parents, will you take this subject into consideration? Will you do your part toward correcting this fruitful source of difficulty and disturbance in your schools. A year or two since, the Superintendent of Schools in one of our large cities made the following statement:

"Scarcely a difficulty has occurred since the schools were organized, not a complaint for punishment, or any thing of the kind, which can not be traced directly or indirectly to tardiness, truancy or some form of irregularity in attendance. Yet the parents of such scholars are too frequently the first to find fault both with the government and the management of schools!" The correction of this formidable evil depends entirely upon parents: the power is in their hands.

A. D. L.

HOME EDUCATION.

The Boy who kept his Purpose.

[We know of no way in which we can promote the advancement of education in the family more directly, than by now and then giving an anecdote illustrative of the manner in which character is formed, and good and great men are made.]—RES. EDITOR.

"I would not be so mean," said George Ward to a boy who stood by, while he put the candy he had just bought in his pocket.

"You have no right to call me mean," replied Reuben Porter, “because I don't spend my money for candy."

"You never spend it for anything," continued George, tauntingly. It was true. Reuben did not spend his money. Do you suppose he loved it more than other boys do?

Reuben turned slowly away, meditating upon what had occurred. "I will not care for what he thinks," he at length said to himself;, “I have four dollars now, and when I have sold my cabbages, I shall have another: I shall soon have enough;" and his heart bounded joyfully, his step recovered its elasticity, and his pace quickened, as the pleasant thought removed the sting which the accusation of meanness had inflicted on his sensitive spirit. Enough did not mean the same with Reuben as with grown people. It had a limit. He hastened cheerfully home, or to the place he called home. He had no father or mother there; but, in their stead, kind and loving friends. Mr. Porter had died two years before, leaving a wife and four children without property