causes oftentimes entire failure, and always more or less distortion and want of symmetry.

Again. Studies are oftentimes of value to the learner in more than one particular. Always there may be gained (1.) a discipline of the mind, and (2) an increase of knowledge. Besides these two, there are points of morals, of religion, &c., which are more or less incident to every properly taught school study. Hence:

V. Studies should be selected and instruction imparted with reference to securing the greatest comprehensiveness of result and consequent improvement from the pursuit.

The school is designed to qualify youth for active and useful lives in a republican state and under free institutions, free almost to license. Hence :

VI. The school should be made to exemplify the excellence of the social and political organization, under which the scholars are soon to find themselves.

Again: Since parents are primarily entrusted with the whole care and responsibility incident to the education of childhood, and cannot without great wrong lay it wholly aside. It follows that:

VII. Teachers should hold themselves auxiliary to parents, and not as an independent power or authority.

These fundamental principles when applied in detail, work very remarkable changes in the methods to be used by a teachAre these principles true?

er.

For the sake of clearness, the following illustrations are arranged, not in the order in which they came up for discussion in the Institute, but by subjects, viz. :

1st. Language. (1. Talking and alphabet; 2. Spelling and reading; 3. Grammar; 4. Analysis and Composition.) 2d. Arithmetic and Mathematical Instruction.

3d. Geography and History.

4th. Penmanship and Drawing.

5th. Articulation, Vocal Exercises and Singing.

6th. Discipline; (order of exercises and school government.) 7th. Mutual Relations of Parties in a School, viz, parents, teachers, scholars, school officers, and the public in general. 8th. Selection of Studies, Books, etc.

9th. Summary and Conclusion.

1st. LANGUAGE.

"Talking and the Alphabet." Very much is implied under this brief heading. Language is, strictly speaking, but the instrument with which all other knowledge makes itself active, useful and impartible. Yet in school, it must be pursued as an end, a special object of pur

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suit; and while this is true, it is equally true, that in school, language should be taught as it is to be used hereafter; i. e. as the medium for all thought. Hence:

1. Every study and every recitation should have the language-training element fully developed and recognized.

"I know, but can't think," "I know, but can't tell," are frequent answers in all schools. They both imply, whenever heard, that the language element is wanting in that particular study. It is not enough to have a child learn Arithmetic or Geography; he needs also to talk Arithmetic and talk Geography. It is always easier to teach a child "to cipher," than 'tis to teach him to explain fluently and gracefully. There is an arithmetic of the head, one of the fingers, and one of the tongue. Usually we find but one of these taught, viz.: ciphering, or "of the fingers."

Again: Language begins with mere imitation and submissive adoption of arbitrary sounds, heard by the child and remembered. Hence:

2. At the very outset of school instruction, we should draw our method of teaching these purely arbitrary things, names, &c., from the practice which prevails in every home, where a child learns to talk, nominally without teaching, really with the only true teaching-pleasant talk.

We cannot excite an appetite directly, in very young children, for the alphabet and print. We have all of us violated, time and again, our third principle. The idle, vacant faces, the restless mischief, or the happy sleep of nine-tenths of the A B C scholars in our schools, should teach us that we are often premature in our alphabetic lessons. True, children are sent to school too early in life. But when we find them with us, we should aim to make them a home at school, since we cannot get them home from school.

There are many lessons to be learned by little children, before they learn the alphabet. A little class sent out to see and called in to recite what they have seen, are in a fair way to learn to talk, and talking should be taught before reading. Children do not know how to use intelligently any one of their five senses. We can create an appetite to use the eye and ear and hand, we can teach to observe, we can teach the names of things and scenes observed, long before we can properly teach the convenient art of reading and writing.

When a class has observed and recited a week or a month, it will soon be found by them, that memory is treacherous and lets slip much they have seen, and which they wish to recite. An older scholar accompanies them and makes a memorandum, and reads fluently item after item, which they, alas, forgot. The use of writing and of print thus become obvious to

the little class; an appetite begins to awaken within, and by a judicious intermingling of eye and hand lessons with the dry tasks of letters and of words, this appetite may be increased, so that the A B C class may become as busy and as happy at school, as such children always are at home.

It should be observed here, that the motive for every study should be drawn, not from queer devices and toys, which always overlie the thing learned, so heavily to conceal it, but from an intelligent exhibition of the actual value of the thing to be learned. Sauces may tempt an invalid to eat but he eats not the bread, but the sauce. Hunger makes an oat cake sweet.

"But the sounds of letters and the spelling of words are so abominably irregular, that after all, there must be a long term of years spent in learning their arbitrary use, and after all, there's no royal road to reading!" True: therefore,

3. Whatever of regularity and law there is, should be carefully selected and taught. The alphabet is a jungle, dense and dark; but it has great landmarks, nevertheless: and in learning to read there is much room for inference and constructive skill.

Children may be found reciting, "A's a harrow," "B's an ox yoke," "C's a pail handle," &c., who know not any of these valuable articles by sight, and have learned the "harrow" and the "ox yoke" just as blindly as they learned the "A" and the B." To learn the alphabet thus, is no gain whatsoever. True, the names are learned, but we never use the names of consonants-we use only their powers. Hence:

1. Consonants should be learned by their powers and not by their names.

But having taught one long sound to each vowel, viz.: a, e, i, o and u, and having learned the powers of the consonants, it is time to give the little laborers a taste of their harvest. Words on a blackboard, using these known sounds, should be read, copied and written by the scholar. G OT, (goat,) BAT, (bait,) &c., always a familiar word, spelt phonetically, that is, by its sound. For,

2. Spelling words, English words, is one thing, and spelling sounds is quite another. And,

3. Learning to read and write is quite a distinct labor from learning to read and write English; as is fully evinced by the boy who wrote "&ru Jaxn."

Having thus taught one power, and only one, for each letter, and exercised the class for a week or more on phonetic spelling with these slender materials, the class themselves will find many familiar words, which they can speak, but cannot write.

4. Reading and writing advance side by side; they are, both of them, language, the former using the eye and the tongue, the latter the eye and the hand.

Selecting from these familiar words, a set that contain the short sound of each vowel-as kat, set, bit, log, bug, &c.; a word of instruction tells the class, that these letters stand for two sounds, and we have to guess by the sense what is meant. "Does k at spell cat, or Cate?" Ans. "It spells both." "Well, 'The cat or Cate catches mice;' in that sense which does kut spell?" Ans. "Cat." "How do you know?" Ans. "By the sense," &c.

And so progressively the class advances, until it has learned for A four sounds; for E, two; for I, two; for O, three; for U, three; and for the very few ambiguous consonants, which have no other letter to express their anomalous use, their double or triple power.

The class are now phonetic writers and spellers; and the record of phonetic triumphs in England, shows how brief a time is needed to teach thus far; while the bright intelligence and cheerfulness of a class under such training, would make the longest road seem "the shortest way home."

Let it be observed here, that the class have learned to talk well what they know, have learned to use their senses for observation, and can now write or print whatever they can speak.

5. Phonetic spellers and readers are shrewd guessers, at the meaning of a word when disguised by English spelling.They are far abler to read, than any ordinary ABC conqueror is, to make out of" be a ka e ar," the simple word baker. Now, and not until now, begins the necessity of giving the learner a book-a Reader.

The necessary limits within which this outline must be confined, will not allow so full illustration of the remaining principles discussed under the head "Language." Enough has been given to show the application of several of our introductory principles to this exceedingly elementary department of a teacher's duty.

Thus far we have taught the child to talk, and faithfully to draw, as it were, the pictures of the sounds it utters. Now comes the labor of teaching the child to recognize, in the caricatures which we call words, the same sounds which it has learned to pronounce, and write. In other words, we have treated of "talking" and the "alphabet," and now have come to" spelling" and "reading.”

1st (contin.) LANGUAGE. "Spelling and Reading." We have said already, that "to spell words is one thing, and to spell sounds quite another." In teaching, the two should be kept separate. Hence :

1. We need orthoepic classes as well as orthographic ones. The former train the organs of speech, the latter, train the eye and the hand.

In business, we never detect a man's faulty spelling until he is called upon to write. In actual life we are never called upon to spell a word orally. The most accurate proof readers will often fail in oral spelling. The most thoroughly drilled spelling classes invariably fail in written accuracy. Hence:

2. Spelling is an art learned by the eye for the guidance of the hand in writing. The tougue is idle when we write, and it is folly to train in school the tongue to do what it never needs do again. Spelling should be taught by writing. Again,

If a man spells faulty, thus, "beleif," " recieve," "comon," "pursuade," "persue," &c., it does him but little good to be able to spell "phthisic," and "chevaux-de-frise," and " rendezvous," correctly. Hence:

3. We should teach ordinary spelling thoroughly ́ere we look up "puzzlers." Again:

In the various languages used by men, there are many valuable words, whose orthography we ought to know; but it is folly in the extreme to commit to memory a Latin Lexicon, without once looking at the significancy of the words we spell. Equal folly is it for us to teach "perplexity," "reciprocity," "fatuity," "onerous," &c.; for, to childhood, these words are mere Greek. Hence:

4. Definition and the use of words should go hand in hand with their correct spelling. Again:

In actual life, we never spell words for the sake of the spelling merely. We spell only when we wish to write; and then we use all sorts of words. Hence:

5. We need no spelling classes distinctively; but all our studies and all our classes ought to be "talking, reading, writing and spelling classes." Arithmetic ought, Geography ought, every recitation ought to exercise the class in these four arts, which in life's labor are never practised alone, but always in connection with some business or labor other than the mere reading, writing, &c. &c.

[To be continued.]

The RHODE ISLAND EDUCATIONAL MAGAZINE will be published monthly. All pamphlets, exchange papers, or communications, should be addressed to E. R. PorTÉR, Providence, R. I. Letters (post paid) may be directed to Providence or Kingston. Terms, fifty cents per annum, in advance.