THE VOCATION ONCE MORE.

OUR ears are often assailed in these days with woful lamentations over the low estimation in which the profession of teaching is held, and the provoking backwardness of the community to discover and acknowledge its importance and its merits. One feels it a grievance, that in our National Festivals, schoolmasters should be tacked upon the tail of the procession, and that, while the Clergy, the Army, the Navy, and the Militia are toasted, there is no toast for Education or its professors, although education in its true sense, is the most important of all conservators of republican liberty. Another complains because the business of instruction has not been voted a learned profession, and placed on the platform with Law, Physic, and Divinity, and admitted to the same honors and emoluments. Others still are dissatisfied with the tone of the current literature and the newspaper press, which too often deal praise upon education, and sneers upon its professors. This class can hardly forgive Sir Walter Scott and Washington Irving for introducing to the world Dominie Sampson and Ichabod Crane.

Now that this is a true bill, we shall neither affirm nor deny. But suppose it to be true. Suppose the charges to be much more numerous and aggravated. What then? Whose fault is it? I beg you, gentlemen, who make the complaints, to examine yourselves closely, and review your own course in regard to your profession. Have you discharged all your obligations to it?

Every man owes a debt to his profession, unless he has paid it. My good sirs, let me inquire if you have paid yours? Have you ever paid the interest on it? If not, pray do not complain that the whole corporation is bankrupt. We may be singular and eccentric. But we have opinions, and they are ours. When we can find better ones, we will exchange.

We hope we shall give no offence by making some of them known.

In the first place, then, it is our humble opinion, that every teacher who means to escape the imputation of being a dead weight upon his profession, and upon the cause of education, must patronize some educational journal, and read it, if he does not contribute to its columns.

Not that every teacher who does not now patronize and read a publication devoted to the interests of education and the business of teaching is actually a reproach to his profession, but he is in danger of becoming such. He is liable to deteriorate, and fall into a retrograde motion, relatively, at least, if not absolutely.

But if such a teacher, by his short-sighted and illiberal policy, does not positively contribute to bring his profession into disrepute, he must himself confess that he leaves undone that which would tend to elevate it to its true rank, and at the same time build up his own improvement. If a teacher reads diligently what pertains to his business, he will keep bright; and if he writes upon it occasionally, he will keep brighter. A growing teacher is honored, and brings honor upon his calling.

But the duty of teachers to sustain educational journals, rests not merely on immediate personal advantage. They should do it for the cause of education. The press is an engine which we should use to create a correct and healthy public sentiment on the subject. If we will not use it when it is in our power, then let us not be so unreasonable as to repine if we are sufferers by the neglect. There is no way in which a teacher can do so much with the same outlay to promote education, the interests of his profession, and his own imimprovement, as by paying a dollar, annually, for an educational journal.

Another duty which every teacher owes to his profession is that of attending, annually, at least one Teachers' Convention. It is worthy of observation that no one has ever called in question the utility of these gatherings, except those who have not been in the habit of attending them. Absentees are not so good judges as those who attend. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating.' The beneficial effects of such meetings, both upon teachers and the community, are too obvious to need extended illustration.

They promote good fellowship and fraternal feelings between the members of the profession; new interest and enthusiasm are awakened by the new and encouraging views of the business which are presented; and much useful and solid information is to be gathered from lectures, discussions, and conversations. Let those who have not hitherto availed themselves of their advantages neglect it no longer. At least let no one ever complain of the state of the profession, till he has discharged the obvious obligations due to it from himself.

TRAINING OF IDIOTS.

WE have a twofold object in offering to the readers of the Teacher a short article on this subject. In the first place, it is a subject of no inconsiderable interest, whether viewed with ref erence to its novelty-the number and character of those whose good is sought-or the results which have already attended the efforts made.

Besides, there is, perhaps, no one influence which makes so much against permanency in the teacher's profession, and the consequent elevation of the office, as the feelings of impatience which teachers too often allow themselves to cherish and express in view of what they consider the repulsive features of their work. Now let us look at the materials on which the teacher of the idiot has to labor, and seriously ask ourselves, whether, after all, our patience is put to a test worth naming. Do we have to endure the constant sight of the most loathsome objects? Are we compelled, every step we take, to rack our invention to devise some new and unheard-of process by which to awaken the faintest glimmerings of intellect? Do we have to toil a whole year, and then find that all we have accomplished is to teach an apparently healthy boy of six or eight years the use of his limbs? Let us henceforth imitate the benevolence, the self-sacrificing spirit, the patience, the FAITH, of the teacher of the idiot, and apply ourselves with new zeal and increased ardor to promote the intellectual and moral well-being of our pupils. The history of the movement in behalf of the idiotic, so far as we can gather from the documents at hand, is briefly this. Not far from the year 1830 the condition of the idiotic in the insane hospital at Biçêtre attracted the attention of certain leading physicians, and especially of M. Ferrus, the Inspector General of the Lunatic Asylums of France. He organized a school for them, caused them to be taught habits of order and industry, and to be instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, and gymnastic exercises. This attempt was speedily followed by more systematic and extensive efforts, both at Biçêtre and at Paris, for the improvement of this unfortunate class of beings. The late George Sumner, in a letter to Dr. S. G. Howe, in 1846, speaks of about one hundred who were then enjoying the benefits of these benevolent efforts; and says they were making very surprising progress. In 1848 an association was formed and funds raised in England, with this object in view. What success has attended those efforts we are unable to say. In the United States, to Massachusetts belongs the honor of making the first movement in this benevolent work. A commission was appointed by the Legislature in 1846, at the head of which was Dr. Howe, " to inquire into the

condition of the Idiots of the Commonwealth." This commis sion reported in part in the winter of 1847, and made their final report in the winter of 1847-8. This report was followed by an act of the Legislature appropriating twenty-five hundred dollars annually, for three years, to defray the expense of teaching ten idiot children, as an experiment. The report of the first year's experiment, made last winter to the Legislature by Dr. Howe―a very interesting document, is now before us. From this report, and from an article in the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, of 1848, we shall take a few extracts, to make up, for the most part, the remainder of this article.

By a calculation based on a careful examination of sixty-three towns, Dr. Howe estimates the "human beings, who are condemned to hopeless idiocy," in this State, "who are considered and treated as idiots by their neighbors, and left to their own brutishness," at the astounding number of fourteen or fif teen hundred.

The objects aimed at in teaching idiots may be gathered from the following extract taken from pp. 26, 27, and 28 of the report:

It is not expected that those who are below the grade of simpletons will ever gain such acquaintance with the common branches of learning, as will be of much ornament or direct use to them. It is not expected that they will be raised to a level with ordinary persons, or play an independent part in the world and take care of themselves. Great pains are taken, indeed, to teach them to read simple sentences,-to count, to write, to sing; but this is not with the expectation that they will ever be able to do these things well, or have any direct benefit from them, but mainly with a view to training and strengthening their intellectual faculties by exercise in the attempt to learn them.

It is hoped to train them up to cleanliness and decency; to prevent or root out vicious and debasing habits; to moderate their gluttonous appetites; and to lessen the strength of the animal nature, generally, by calling into some activity the higher feelings and desires, and by substituting constant occupation for idleness.

It is proposed to train all the senses and perceptive faculties by constant and varied exercise; to strengthen the power of attention; to teach, as much as possible, the rudiments of knowledge; to develop the muscular system; and to give some degree of dexterity in simple handicraft. Efforts will be made to call out their social affections, and to lessen their inordinate selfishness, by awakening some feeling of regard for others, in return for kindness and love manifested towards them.

The still harder task will be attempted of appealing to the moral sense, and drawing out what little capacity there may exist for comprehending right, for exercising conscience, and for developing the religious sentiment.

It is hoped that part of them will gain some really useful knowledge; that most of them will become cleanly, decent, temperate, and indus

trious; and that all of them will be better and happier from the efforts made in their behalf.

If the experiment should succeed, the good done to the ten individuals who are the subjects of it, compared to the good that must follow to others, will be as the grain of mustard seed to the goodly tree, in whose branches the fowls of the air find rest. The capacity of idiots for culture once shown, Massachusetts will gather them from the alms-houses and the by-places, and give them careful nurture and instruction; and when Massachusetts shall show to her sister States these redeemed ones, snatched from the slough of brutishness, and made tidy, and decent, and industrious, and happy, then her example of true and practical Christianity will be followed by others; and thousands who are are now grovelling in filth, and depravity, and wretchedness,-the parias of civilization, will be brought back to the bosom of society, and treated with that kindly regard to which their terrible calamity entitles them.

The following extracts from Mr. Sumner's letter to Dr. Howe will not only exhibit the methods of instruction pursued, but also convey a tolerably good idea of the results of that instruction:

"Let us take a young idiot, in whom scarce any of the senses appear developed, who is abandoned to the lowest passions, and who is unable to walk or to execute voluntary movements. He is brought to Bicêtre, and placed at once in the class of those boys who are executing the moving power. Here, with about twenty others, who have already learned to act somewhat in unison, he is made, at first, by holding and guiding his arms and feet, and afterwards by the excitement of imitation, to follow the movements of his companions. These, at the order of the teacher, go through with various steps and movements of the head, arms, and feet, which, at the same time that they give wholesome exercise to the animal part of the system, develop the first personal sentiment, that of rest and immobility. After this, at the word of command, the class is made to designate various parts of the body. On the 20th of January, the number of this class was eighteen; some of whom had been several months under treatment; others of whom had been but just attached to it. The teacher first indicated with his hand a part of the body, as head, arm, hair, face, eyes, hand, and named it aloud; the children repeated the movement and touched the part. 2d. The teacher designated with the voice a part which the idiot touched. 3d. He designated a part by gesture, and the pupils named it aloud. There are many, of course, who are slow to do this, but the love of imitation, and the care of teachers, produce, in time, the necessary regularity of movement; the organ of speech has yet, however, to be developed in others."

"The next step is to educate the senses, beginning with that of feeling; and beginning with this, inasmuch as it is the sense