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Books referred to.

you to Trench on the Study of Words, and to Webster's or Worcester's unabridged Dictionary. From either of these works you may derive a vast amount of interesting and valuable information. If you will keep by you a small blank-book, in which you may record such words and phrases as come under your observation, you may, at the end of a year, have a collection that you will highly prize. If you can induce your pupils to adopt a similar plan, you will do much to awaken in them a spirit of observation and investigation.

MISCELLANEOUS KNOWLEDGE.-Improve every opportunity for imparting general information, and awakening an interest in passing events. Almost every newspaper will furnish you some pertinent topics. If you meet with an account of any event or transaction of importance, make it the subject of a few minutes' conversation, and explain whatever may be necessary. If places are named, have them pointed out on the map, thus both fixing in the mind the event itself and the locality of the So far as possible, give a practical turn to all miscellaneous exercises. By exercising a little judgment and care, you may introduce all the exercises named in this letter without interfering with any of the regular and prescribed studies of the school; and their introduction will add to the general interest and progress of the school in other matters.

same.

Your sincere friend,

C.

1

LETTER XX.

PRIMARY SCHOOLS.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

I IMAGINE you may express some surprise at the subject of this letter. Perhaps you will exclaim, "What have I to do with primary schools?" If so, I will say, that I hope you may, at some time, become qualified to take charge of one, though I confess that I have doubts on this point. We may differ somewhat in our estimates of these schools. In my opinion, they have never been properly appreciated nor suitably cared for.. Lying as they do at the very foundation of a system of education, they are too often regarded as unimportant, though unavoidable, appendages to our common-school system. Teachers of moderate attainments and without experience are often employed in them, merely because their services can be secured at a lower rate of compensation. But, in reality, these schools are of the first consideration, and they should receive the services and influence of the best of teachers. As it is in them that the young receive their earliest school impressions, it must be readily seen that

Early Influences.

it would be no easy matter to over-estimate their true importance. The influence of wrong discipline, erroneous teaching, or improper example, in these schools, will be felt unfavorably in all our higher schools and seminaries of learning. While I hardly dare hope that you will ever become a model teacher of a primary school, I do hope the few lines I may write on this subject will tend to form in your mind a just estimate of the influence of such a school in our educational system.

We well know that the instructions and influences to which we were exposed in early childhood were those which most strongly and indelibly impressed themselves upon our minds and characters. How many lessons which we then learned, how many sights which we then saw, how many impres sions which we then received, seem closely inwoven into our very natures, and to be fresh and forceful in our memories, while many of the lessons and scenes and incidents of a later period are either wholly forgotten, or but dimly and imperfectly remembered! How many there are who pass through life constantly suffering from the influences of the exaggerated or fictitious stories and representations to which they listened in childhood's tender years, -influences which maturer years and riper judgment cannot entirely eradicate, though they may bring a sort of conviction of their falsity! How many superstitious notions and absurd ideas have been so thoroughly inwrought into our early being, that no after-training or culture could remove them!

Importance of Early Training.

How many foolish prejudices and senseless antipathies the young have received from persons with whom they have associated, or from the circumstances by which they were surrounded! How many, during the first few years of their existence, have formed and fostered those uncharitable feelings, and those distorted and unseemly habits, which have tended to darken and embitter the whole current of subsequent life!

In view of considerations like these, how essential is it that special care and attention be devoted to the early training of the young! The lessons and teachings, the scenes and the habits, which exert their influences during the first six or eight years of existence, make more lasting impressions than those of any score of years of after life. The little songs and hymns, the maxims and the verses, which lisping children learn by slowly repeating as their mothers dictate, find so secure a lodgment in the mind, that no future lessons can wholly supplant them. A distinguished statesman once said, "Let me make the songs for the youth, and I care not who make the laws." With far more of truth one might say, "Let me have the control of the young during the first four years of their school life, and I care not who has their subsequent management.'

But notwithstanding the immense importance of early training, how sadly and how extensively is it neglected or perverted! In how many instances are children not only not taught to go in the way they ought, but are left to go in their own way, or,

Early Teachings should be correct.

what is worse, left exposed to such examples and impressions as will most surely lead them in the way in which they ought not to go! How many of those untoward manifestations which are so often made in the community, and of those feelings of insubordination and disorganization which so frequently and so greatly shock good citizens, owe their origin to the neglected or perverted opportunities and privileges of early youth!

If such are ever the tendencies or results of injudicious or wrong early training, or of neglect, it must seem obvious that primary schools should assume a high position in the public estimation. In them the young receive their first and most enduring school impressions. In them they form habits and views which will "grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength." Most truthfully and expressively has the poet said,

"The mind, impressible and soft, with ease
Imbibes and copies what she hears and sees,
And through life's labyrinth holds fast the clew
That first instruction gives her, false or true.”

How desirable, then, that these early lessons and influences should be of the right kind, and imparted in the right way! The mind of a child may be casily turned from a correct course by ill-judged and unwise plans, or by the chilling effects of neglect, on the part of those under whose care they pass their early years, and some trivial circumstancę, or some apparently insignificant cause, bearing

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