II. "That in regard of any particular school, the Board shall consider and determine upon any application, by managers, parents, or ratepayers of the district, who may show special cause for exemption of the school from the operation of this Resolution, in whole or in part."

March 15th. "That such explanations and instructions as are recognized by the resolution of Mr. W. H. Smith, which was carried on the 8th of March, shall be given by the responsible teachers of the school."

The teachers educated in accordance with the principles of the British and Foreign School Society, are trained to "that respect for conscience, that veneration for conscientiousness even in the humblest and poorest, upon which all education should be based." The British and Foreign School Society has at present two Training Colleges, accommodating 100 male and 102 female students. The Committee is preparing to double (at least) the number of teachers sent out every year. These teachers are recognized by the Education Department as certificated when they leave; most of them are qualified to teach drawing and singing; some possesses the certificates of the Science and Art Department; all have had careful instruction and practice in the art of teaching.

The last published Report of the Committee of Council contains the following remarks:

"At the Borough Road, order and cleanliness, and careful attention to sanitary considerations, were conspicuous in every part. The teaching and superintending staff of the college remains exactly the same as it was when Dr. Morell reported upon it last year. It is an excellent staff, and does its work most thoroughly. The lessons, recitations, and reading of the students, which occupied a large portion of the week, were quite as satisfactory, on the whole, as I have ever known them to be. They afforded evidence of careful training and thoughtful preparation. The merits of individual students varied greatly, some of the best appearing to me to do their work excellently, whilst a few of the feeblest could not be classed as more than moderate. But there was nothing like an absolute failure in any case. The arrangements for at

tendance on the part of the students in the practising school are sub

stantially the same in most respects as they have been for some time past. . At Stockwell the dormitories are in excellent order, and due supervision is exercised by responsible persons, having bedrooms on the same floor with the students. The dormitory regulations issued by order of the Committee are very practical, such as that every student is to leave her room neat, that no wearing apparel or other article is to be left on the bed, but everything must be laid in its appointed place. Among the general regulations I find the following memorandum :- The Ladies' Committee wish it to be distinctly understood by all candidates for admission, that they consider neatness and plainness of dress incumbent on those who undertake the instruction and training of the young, and it is the express wish of the Committee that no flowers, ornaments, or other finery should be worn.' . . From the reports filed by the teachers of the girls' and infants' schools it appears that as regards the students, due provisions are made for learning to teach. In the infants' school, lessons are given by the mistress in the presence of the students.

"From the tenor of the foregoing remarks it is apparent that, in the opinion of the officers appointed by your Lordships to inquire into the present state of these institutions, they are performing the service which they undertake in a highly efficient manner, and fully deserve a continuance of that public support which they have now for so many years been accustomed to receive."

The Relation of the British and Foreign School Society to the School Boards is one of friendly co-operation. By a recent arrangement of the Committee

Any school in which an education embracing Bible teaching is supplied to the children of the industrial classes without distinction of sect or party, and without the use of catechism, creed, or formulary, may be affiliated with the British and Foreign School Society on payment of an annual subscription of one guinea (or upwards.) The benefits to be derived from such affiliation are

1. Assistance in case of a change of teacher, or any temporary permanent demand for extra teaching power.

"2. An annual visit of an agent of the society, and any further service which may be possible in the way of visitation, public examinations, advice, etc."

The first of these may be as valuable to School Boards as to Local Committees. School Boards in certain districts may find it desirable also, at any rate at first, to make use of the knowledge and experience of an agent of the Society. Such assistance will be cheerfully rendered, as far as the funds of the Society allow.

THE GRADED SYSTEM.

BY O. H. KILE.

The interests of the public are seldom adequately served, without some injury to the individual. Under the graded system of schools, this familiar principle is doubtless illustrated. There is now and then a pupil whose perceptions are dull, and whose enthusiasm it is hard to awaken. He may require more personal attention than the teacher can possibly give. Again, there are pupils whose ready apprehension, and wonderful power of memory, make it very easy for them to outstrip the slower majority. These gifted persons will not always find scope for their genius, nor incitement commensurate with their ambition. Occasionally-not being sufficiently advanced to enter the next grade, and towering somewhat above their own-they will, it is very likely, feel themselves under restraint. But, fortunately, the great mass of boys and girls, like the great mass of men and women, are neither dolts on the one hand, nor geniuses on the other. As respects intellectual ability, they are "seated in the mean," and hence the propriety of arranging a scheme of elementary education, under which, in every subject of prime importance, a certain moderate degree of proficiency may be demanded of all. Under the graded system, the topics presented, and the amount of work required, have reference, always, to the medium ability of the class, and thus the public school is made to work the "greatest good to the greatest number." To conduct a public school on any other basis than that of the strictest impartiality, would be to violate not only the plainest principles of justice, but every maxim of common A public school, so far as pupils are concerned, is a demo

sense.

cracy. The rich and the penniless, the learned and the unlearned, the native and the foreign, all meet upon one common basis of equality. Social distinctions are ignored; the accidents of birth, the facts of nationality, are forgotten; and the personality of "Johnny" is quite as high and quite as mighty as that of "Jonathan." Now this may be an objection to graded schools. I am inclined to think it is. But it is an objection which can be urged against any public, and for that matter, against almost any private school, or almost any walk of life in this country. Not only at school, but on the streets, in places of business, at church, on the cars, everywhere, are the cultivated, the refined, and the sensitive, liable to be jostled, perhaps buffeted, perhaps contaminated, by the ruder classes of humanity. A delicate mother is startled when her little boy repeats an oath, or an obscene jest, which he heard at the public school. Is a private school the native home of virtue? Might not that dear boy have heard the same wicked words upon the street, or the same with variations from the hostler? The truth of the matter is, we cannot deliver children from evil, so much by keeping them away from it, as we can by educating them to resist it. It would be well, perhaps, if we could restrain the better class of our youth from all knowledge of wrong, from all contact with coarseness, until so encased in purity that "Satan would get behind them" without waiting to be invited; but I do not see how this is possible, unless some radical change can be wrought in the existing order of things.

Let people who object to graded schools, or to any public school, on the ground that there is too little discrimination practiced in bringing the different classes of society together, remember, that things have been somewhat "mixed up" in this world, ever since the time of old father Adam, and that no scheme of politics or religion, as well as none of education, has ever been devised, under which it proved possible to keep the "tares separate from the wheat." Again, it should be borne in mind, that in a well-ordered school, where every pupil is put upon his good behavior, where recesses are short and infrequent, where the oversight of teachers is faithful and constant, there is almost as little moral peril incurred-almost as little vulgarity encountered-as there would be in the retirement of an ordinary household, or in a street promenade with "father and mother." A

long experience in educational affairs, many conversations with teachers, and with people nurtured under both systems, have convinced me that the " hydra" of vileness lifts its head ten-fold higher in Boarding Schools, distant from the attractions of home and the watchful care of parents, than in graded and High Schools, where a better quality of instruction ought to be given, and where the pupil is not generally deprived of the guardianship of his best friends.

There is a law of mental growth as well as of physical: "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear!" In marking out our present course of study, we have tried to pay due deference to this great principle. "From illustration toward abstraction." "Simple perception first, reason and judgment afterward." These maxims, which the best philosophy of the age approves, should never be lost sight of in the instruction of youth. Under the graded system, circumstances especially favor conformity to the laws of mental development. The course of study should be in harmony with these laws. Each subject should be presented when the opening faculty which it is intended to strengthen demands it. Once adopted, the course cannot be changed at the will of every ignoramus who can persuade some easy-going committee to give him a certificate. This course can be made comprehensive-so comprehensive that no important topic or principle of an elementary character need be left out. Thus the education obtained under it, if teachers do their duty, is symmetrical, well-rounded, and we are not made to stand aghast at the melancholy spectacle of young ladies and gentlemen, fresh from their English literature, or their French, their Geometry, or their Latin, who can not add fractions, and never heard of the "true multiplicand!"

Pardon me, gentlemen, but this is not half of what might be said. Our country abounds not only in pupils but in teachers, who have dabbled with many a topic in the ordinary High School course, yet who cannot explain so simple a process as that involved in division of fractions, and who would be utterly lost in perplexity if you should ask them what determines the positions of the tropics, or which way one's shadow falls, if at noon, on the first day of August, he stands at the North Pole! I attribute these monstrosities very largely to the following named causes :