Practice schools will enable teachers to acquire much which they cannot get in any other way. By practice schools she did not mean model schools-schools of thirty, but rather a school of ten grades, with sixty pupils in each grade. She would have them exactly like other schools, and would prefer that the teachers should go to the school rather than the pupils should go to the teachers. The growth of character coming from contact with children every day in a practice school, is far beyond that which can be attained in any other way. The most earnest attention was paid to Miss Stickney during her remarks by the entire audience, which crowded the room. No exercise has attracted more attention or been better received during the sessions of the Association, and none received higher compliments.

A business meeting of the Association rendered an adjournment necessary at this point, and in a few words, Mr. Rounds, President of the Department, returned his thanks for the courtesies of the members during the sessions, and declared the Department adjourned until 1873.

DEPARTMENT OF HIGHER INSTRUCTION.

The session of this department was opened with an address upon the "Method of Teaching English in High Schools," by Prof. March, of Lafayette College, Pennsylvania.

In regard to the subsequent course of instruction the professor made the following suggestions: First, that good habits of speech in conversation are caught rather than taught, and accordingly there should be times set apart for free conversation in the school-room, in which both teacher and pupils should take part, the former in the attitude of a critic. Second, the declamation of choice passages of English literature is an important means to proper education. Third, there should be special exercises in regard to errors of speech, not such errors as were comprehended by the word "slang," but errors of construction of sentences. In regard to slang, he remarked that too much study of slang made the students too much masters of slang. Fourth, translating from other languages is really studying and practising the English language, and should be carefully improved as such. Fifth, in all studies that admit of it, the practice of teaching by topics should be followed. The student should stand up and face his audience in

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the school-room, and speak to them upon the subject on which he is to recite. This last was the most efficient means the professor knew of for giving power of connected discourse. In respect to the pronunciation he followed the modern usage in all writers since Chaucer, and the Anglo-Saxon pronunciation in regard to writings of an earlier date. Shakspeare was the writer upon whom critical power could be lavished to any extent, and the critical reading of his works was very instructive, both in regard to the perfections and the defects there to be found.

Officers of the department for the coming year were elected as follows: President, D. A. Wallace, of Illinois; Vice-President, J. D. Runkle, of Massachusetts; Secretary, W. D. Henkle, of Ohio.

THE ESSENTIALS IN PRACTICAL MATHEMATICS IN COMMON
SCHOOLS.

It is a mature reflection of a visitor to his own school, that much he thought practical in learning, has in actual experience proved to be of minor significance. Particularly after some years battling with the world, the weapons he wields, (to use a trite figure,) are not they he would have supposed in the armory to be most effective. Or, dropping the figure, he learns, after a while that mathematics, though valuable, are not in every station in life, of the only importance. Like the little fellow who yesterday ran away from home for Kansas, supposing it to be a few miles distant west, he discovers over and over again that he lacks knowledge of Geography, if he neglected that study. If he despised Algebra, as unpractical in school, or Natural Philosophy, or Geometry, he only knows by paying a man a greater price who knows those things well, that they are quite as desirable · as the one practical branch of study. For one does something in life besides reckon.

Many an envious thought is begotten of them who see a companion better furnished in these so called unpractical branches, outstrip them in the race for place and influence.

I shall illustrate no further, lest I weary my reader at the outset.

PRACTICAL MATHEMATICS IN COMMON SCHOOLS.

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Let us descend to particulars in Mathematics, and say, so is it there with these very things. What is, let us say, the greater accomplishment? Is it not to be master of numbers? Is a knowledge of the use and application of the rules of Interest so practically universally valuable as to know how to add, subtract, multiply, divide with unerring certainty? Nor now referring to thoroughness in these prime elements, I mean only the skill one finds by thorough acquaintance with the numbers themselves-who knows what is the form of every combination of every digit figure with every other digit, can always tell at a glance, whether devizable by 2, 5, 10, 11, 9, 3, 25, this certain number may be which he, at this hour, in shop, counting-room, or store, is operating upon. How to wield, rather than how to roam among numbers, is his aim. As one is to be envied who sculls a boat, rides a horse, sails a ship with ease, so is he to be envied who easily works every kind of number, performs at will with sure certainty what he is doing with numbers.

Some orators know the characters of the men they would move. A mechanic should know what is the material he uses. Your chemist can read in a dictionary all the properties of every solid, gas and liquid. This kind of knowledge is that which is practical. To mathematics, then, that knowledge is most beneficial which is knowledge of the elements he works with.

Does any teacher who reads this sentence, believe that the main part of study in schools is directed to the acquaintance of a pupil with material? How much does the student learn of the easy, ready, quick ways of working figures? Can the student know what will be the result of multiplying a certain number by 10? Then he has before to learn aright. I would at the first so soon as a pupil can count and numerate, teach him what are the odd and even numbers, that is, what is divisible by 2. I would then, that he may acquire facility, require him to

1. Add by ones, beginning at 1; do., beginning at 2, 3, 4, etc. 2. Add by twos, beginning at 1, 2, etc.

3. Add by threes, fours, fives, sixes, sevens, eights, nines.

4. Teaching him what are prime and what composite numbers; cause him to write all numbers, designating them as prime or composite, as far as 100, or to 50, if this be heavy work for him.

5. Tell him how to find by inspection, a multiple of 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11; and

6. Set him to factoring numbers innumerable, say seventy.

By the time he has proceeded as far as this, he is ready for addition, both in columns of one, two, or three places, and also mentally in sums of small numbers, as far as 100. Then tell him to subtract, then to divide; next to get a half, a third, a fourth. Hence, such an exercise as the following may be kept up ad infinitum, day after day, as a recreative pursuit, a few minutes in each day. 8+6+ 2+3-1+5X1X2X2÷4=.

Who shall not see how facile numbers will ever after appear?

HENRY CLARK.

er

SWISS SCHOOLS.

Zurich," (says Mr. Hepworth Dixon,) "is the centre of a Switzer's intellectual life. The University is here; the Polytechnic is here; the cantonal schools and burger schools are here. This block abutting on the Minister is the ladies' school. Those buildings in the tulip trees are secondary schools. In the Virginis Quarter, and near the Town Hall, stands the city schools for boys. On every side, in almost every street, you find a school; a primary school, a secondry school, a supplementary school; day schools, evening schools, schools for the blind; schools for the deaf and dumb, (all models of their kind); industrial schools, commercial schools, linguistic schools, yes, schools of every sort and size excepting actual pauper schools. For canton Zurich has no pauper born and bred; no paupers known and labelled as a class apart." This passion for schooling is not confined to Zurich, nor even to the large towns; it is universal. The people are all united on one point, and that is, that education is essential to the preservation of national life and liberty. Alluding to the surrender of the authorities, in Berne, of a charming piece of their public garden for a new girl's school, Mr. Dixon says truly, "No pride and glory of this town must stand between a Switzer and his school." He tells an amusing story to illustrate the prominence given to school

buildings, of a little girl of ten, who was taken from her native land on a tour through France, and could not be brought to believe that the grand edifices she saw were anything but great schools. Even at Versailles, in front of the huge palace, she clasped her hands and cried with glee, "Look here, papa, here is the schoolhouse! Look !" It will be a long while before an English child mistakes the Mansion House or Windsor Castle for a grammar school. In Switzerland, however, this great net-work of schools is comparatively new. "I am not an old man," says one of Mr. Dixon's informants, "but in my youth you might have passed from Basel to Ticino and not have seen a decent public school." Nor can it be said that there were not peculiar difficulties to be surmounted. Two races, Teutonic and Celtic, divide the country, although here, as elsewhere, the ail-conquering Teuton has the vast majority on his side, and sends his blood thrilling through the veins of 2,000,000 souls, while the Celt claims only 670,000. Then, again, there are peculiarities of language; German, French, Italian, are familiar on the tongues of the people. We ourselves have seen the road down the Brunig Pass, portioned out by some worthy English tourist, with religious tracts written in French, which were quite neglected by priest and peasant as they passed them by, not because they despised them, but simply because their own language was not French but German. But difficulties of race and tongue are vincible. We in England shall have no great obstacle in the way of their solution, when we get our school system to work among Celts, the Gauls and Saxons, in the broad dialect of Yorkshire, the gutturals of Wales, and the unruly aspirates of St. Giles. As much cannot be said of the religious difficulty, which, in Switzerland as much as in England, threatens the peace of the community. In Zurich the two parties met lately in fierce fight, over the position of a new girl's school. The clerical faction would have it nestling under the shadow of the minister; "if we keep the women," said they, "we shall always have the men." The radicals would none of the cathedral shadows, believing that the darkest place is just underneath the candle. "No more connection," they declared, "of the church and school; the clergy have no business in the class-room; let us build on neutral ground-beyond the ancient walls, among the vineyards, in the sunshine." This little country, ill-favored by na