There is no doubt too that in a great many cases children are shut up in school at too early an age. Their intellectual training is begun and carried on in advance of and out of all proportion to the physical and the moral. Dr. Johnson once inquired what became of all the clever children.

There is more of this hurrying of education with us than among other nations, and it results from the circumstances of the country and the character of our people. A man here has finished his education and begun the practice of some trade or profession at an age when in the old countries he would be just leaving school for college. He is thrown upon the world early and upon his own energies for support, and this no doubt leads to or at least encourages the forcing system which we are so apt to pursue with the youth of America.

In deciding upon the number of studies and the amount of information to be given, circumstances and the discretion of the teacher must govern. We can lay down no invariable rules. But we may be guided in the exercise of this discretion by considering the object and design of education.

What then is the aim of education, or rather what should it be? What does the parent-not every parent-but the wise and judicious parent wish his children to be? We should consider what is his destination or object of life upon earth-what is to be his destiny for eternity. We may probably sum it up by saying that the object should be to make him a useful and respectable member of society and to cultivate such habits and give him such information as will make him as happy here as the conditions of a world of trial and probation allow, and happy in the life to come. With the Romans and the ancients generally, the idea of education was to make a citizen useful to the State, and every thing was made subservient to this. Modern civilization under the influence of Christianity, teaches us to consider the happiness of the individual as well as the good of society and to extend our aim beyond the present world.

In this view, or in any view in fact which we may take of the subject, strength of mind should be regarded as one of the great objects of education. While the communication of information is one object, we should not forget that another and not less important-perhaps the most important, is to discipline the mind, to learn the scholar to think for himself, to habituate him to meet and overcome difficulties; and that

it is only the knowledge which is well digested and made his own that is of much use to him. We may smooth down the difficulties of learning, explain every thing and communicate a great deal of knowledge, but unless the child's mind is set to work and exercised in the process, the knowledge will be lost nearly as soon as acquired. And it will even be worse than useless, for the child will be acquiring habits of mind, which will unfit it for intellectual exertion afterwards.

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"The History of England," says Sir Walter Scott, speaking of the modern practice of attempting to render every thing easy and amusing to children, "is now reduced to a game at cards. There wants but one step further and the creed and the ten commandments may be taught in the same way. It may in the mean time be a subject of serious consideration, whether those who are accustomed only to acquire instruction through the medium of amusement, may not be brought to reject that which approaches under the aspect of study, &c."

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One of our objects, then, should be to produce mental power, and to teach them how to apply this power. The well educated man should be capable of concentrating all the powers of his mind upon any subject he undertakes, however difficult. And to this end, for those who can afford the time and the expense, there is nothing to be compared with mathematics or the dead languages. I say the dead languages, for the very objection to the modern languages, considered as a means of discipline, is that they can be acquired with very little labor. For those who cannot afford the time or expense of these, the best substitutes must be adopted the nature of the case admits of. A good drilling in arithmetic (in this light) is invaluable. We should use the scholar to pursue hard studies, studies which are not pleasing in themselves, but which he is to look upon as a stepping stone, a necessary preliminary to understanding or excelling in other studies. The scholar who is habituated to meet and overcome difficulties, will find his future studies rendered pleasant and easy by it.

Of the two, if I must go to either extreme, give me the young man who has by studies difficult but of no immediate utility, well disciplined his mind, increased his powers and acquired the faculty of directing them, in preference to one who comes from school or from college crammed with learning upon the easy system. I could not hesitate as to my

opinion which would most certainly succeed in life or which would make the most useful member of society.

But it does not necessarily follow that we should go to the extreme of either system. Without interfering with the ordinary studies a teacher may relieve the tediousness of school hours by occasionally devoting a few moments to exercises of the sort I have mentioned, and in such a way as to make it a relaxation and a pleasant change from severer studies.

one.

I have spoken of some of the means by which a teacher may make himself useful to his school and to the community. The life of the faithful teacher is at best a laborious He needs for his own support a strong sense of duty to sustain him in his trials. He who without a sense of duty looks to interest alone and who merely thinks of getting a living for a year or two, until he can find more profitable business, will seldom succeed. He has no motive to improve.

NORMAL SCHOOL.

In considering the means of improving our teachers, we should not omit the subject of a Normal School.

By a Normal School is generally understood a school or academy for the education of teachers with a special view to teaching; and with provision in most of them for the gratuitous instruction of such as intend to make a business of teaching.

This name, (says Mr. Barnard,) was first used in Austria, and was applied to schools where young men received a practical education as teachers by being employed as assistants in the school, and at the same time received lectures on the principles and practice of teaching. The same name was applied in France and is used in England and this country to designate seminaries for the education of teachers, sometimes with and sometimes without a practical school attached to them.

To the Austrian system it has been objected that its tendency is to perpetuate old errors, ancient modes of instruction; and to the teachers' seminaries as sometimes conducted it has been objected that the education given was of such a nature as to render the teacher discontented with his situa

tion and compensation, and unwilling to teach in the ordinary schools.

A well qualified teacher, and one who intends to make a business of it, will be desirous of permanent employment.This the greater part of our country districts, where schools are kept only a portion of the year, cannot give him.

One of our greatest difficulties in regard to the subject of a Normal School arises from the very freedom of our institutions and the newness of our country. In Europe where society is permanently divided into various ranks and there is but little opportunity for a man to change the situation or mode of life to which he happens to be born, the teacher's profession is generally taken up as a business for life. He has little prospect or hope of change. The governments can therefore exert themselves to improve the condition and qualifications of the teacher, and can justly tax the people to do it because they know that the people will be repaid by the improved quality of the services he will render during his life.

But in our country few undertake the business of teaching, as a business for life, and from the circumstances of our country, it must probably long remain so. All the avenues to wealth and distinction are here open to all. Wealth is the great means of social distinction. And while the temptations to leave the teacher's profession are as great as they are, we shall constantly find young men of enterprise deserting it for more profitable occupations.

The same difficulty has been experienced by the United States government at the West Point Academy, designed to educate officers for the army. Even the certainty of a permanent and increasing salary for life, has not been sufficient to retain the graduates in the service, when the business of civil life was unusually prosperous and offered them inducements for change.

Mr. Barnard concludes his observations on the Normal Schools of Europe with these practical and common sense remarks, "In conclusion, it may save some misapprehension of his own views to remark, that with all these agencies for the education and improvement of teachers, the public schools of Europe with their institutions of government and society, do not turn out such practical and efficient men as our own common schools, acting in concert with our religious, social and political institutions. A boy educated in a district school of New England, taught for a few months in

the winter by a rough, half-educated, but live teacher who is earning his way by his winter's work in the school-room out of the profession into something which will pay better; and in summer by a young female just out of the oldest class of the winter school and with no other knowledge of teaching than what she may have gathered by observation of the diverse practices of some ten or twelve instructors who must have taught the school under the intermittent and itinerating system which prevails uuiversally in the country districts of New England--a boy thus taught during his school life, but subjected at home and abroad to the stirring influences of a free press, of town and school district meetings, of constant intercourse with those who are mingling with the world and in the affairs of public life, and beyond all these influences, subjected early to the wholesome discipline both moral and intellectual of taking care of himself and the affairs of the house and the farm, will have more capacity for business and exhibit more intellectual activity and versatility than the best scholar who ever graduated from a Prussian school, but whose school life and especially the years which immediately follow, are subjected to the depressing and repressing influences of a despotic government and of a state of society in which every thing is fixed both by law and the iron rule of custom. But this superiority is not due to the school, but is gained in spite of the school.Our aim should be to make the school better and to bring all the influences of home and society, of religion and free institutions, into perfect harmony with the best teachings of the best teacher."

There has been great diversity of opinion and practice in this country as to what should be taught in our Normal Schools. In some, direct instruction is given in all the branches taught in our common schools. But to this there are serious objections, and some of the considerations I have mentioned, apply with great force. Those entering a Normal School should certainly be required to have studied all the branches they intend to teach, and then the time may be profitably spent in occasional reviews to refresh their knowledge, and in direct instruction in the principles and various modes of teaching. The latter seems to be the proper province of the Normal School.

The want of a Normal School among us is at present partially supplied by the institution of the Normal Department in Brown University, an account of which by Professor Greene, is appended to this report.