Give short lessons. Try to have them well recited. If you fail, and find that the majority of the class are badly prepared, inflict the usual penalty at once; drop the form of recitation, and teach the subject matter of the lesson viva voce. You only waste time and temper by pumping a dry well.

If, owing to the weather, or your head ache, or the weariness of the pupils, or any other "circumstances beyond your control," you cannot fix the attention of the class on the lesson, stop; change the subject; take five minutes for calisthenics, if the weather is cool, or a song, if it is warm; give them a conundrum, or tell them a story; do something, anything, that will bring the thoughts of all the class into one channel, and then resume your lesson. Never allow yourself to talk to a restless or inattentive class, and, remember, the restlessness and inattention may be as much your fault as theirs.

Order is essential; but it should not be your primary object. Order is to teaching what the shadow is to the substance-an accompaniment, a sign, an effect—not a cause. If a school is well taught, good order necessarily follows. But a teacher, well armed, may have good external order, and do no good teaching. Such order is not "Heaven's first law." The more perfect the order in a badly taught school, the worse it is for the scholars. Perfect silence, unbroken stillness, are not in themselves desirable for young children, however necessary they may be for good school work. A good teacher will rather seek to produce them as the results of good teaching than to enforce them as conditions precedent to teaching. Maintain no more and no less order than is necessary to enable teachers and pupils to do their work efficiently. The mind cannot work to advantage unless free from external constraint and internal anxiety. Be careful, therefore, to make your pupils feel at home. Do not drive, habitually, with a tight rein, but be ready to pull up at a moment's warning.- The Teacher.

Arithmetical Teaching-Principles and Directions.

The two motives of arithmetical teaching are1. The development of the reasoning faculties. 2. The habit of accurate and rapid calculation. To attain the first

a. All teaching must be objective.

b. Objective study comprehends either fixing the attention upon

objects directly or concentrating the mind upon mental pictures of objects (percepts).

c. Seeing the relations of things is reasoning; it follows then that without the actual presence of the things, or the impressions in the mind produced by the things, reasoning is impossible.

d. The words of a problem must represent to the mind things and their relations with sufficient clearness, or the problem cannot be properly solved.

e. Pupils should be led repeatedly to fix their attention upon the thing or process to be defined, and then be required to tell what they see. The rule should be deduced from the process and the principle from facts in the same way. When a rule or definition is understood it may be changed to the best form by suggestion and correction, and then learned verbatim.

ƒ. The habit of thoroughly understanding a problem before any attempt to perform it is made, must be seduously cultivated at the outset, and steadfastly adhered to throughout the course.

g. Telling pupils that which good teaching would lead them to discover for themselves, deprives them of opportunities for mental activity.

h. That which is practical (practised in common life), should be constantly used in teaching when it comes within the range of the course, as the use of money, weights, measures, and measurements, judging distance, keeping ordinary accounts, writing bills, notes, receipts, &c.

To attain the second

a. The habit of accurate and rapid calculation is attained by repeated drills, proceeding from the easiest step to the next higher one, mastering one thing at a time, and keeping all previous acquirements in constant practice.

b. Use in calculating, as in the solution of problems, the fewest possible words and the briefest formulas, reading, for example, 4 + 7 as 11, 6 × 8 as 48, just as ho-r-s-e is pronounced without spelling.

c. Teach all that is alike in process together or in immediate succession, the more difficult following the less; thus addition of decimals and compound numbers is substantially one process, and if so taught will afford a wider range from which to draw examples.Colonel F. W. Parker.

EDUCATIONAL DECALOGUE.-The following fundamental principles of education are given by President Edward Brooks, Ph. D., in his Normal Methods of Teaching:

1. The primary object of education is the perfection of the individual.

2. The perfection of the individual is attained by a harmonious development of all his powers.

3. These powers develop naturally in a certain order, which should be followed in education.

4. The basis of this development is the self-activity of the child. 5. This self-activity has two distinct phases; from without inward, -receptive and acquisitive; and from within outward,-productive and expressive.

6. These two phases, the receptive and productive, should go hand in hand in the work of education.

7. There must be objective realities to supply the condition for the self-activity of the mind.

8. Education is not creative; it only assists in developing existing possibilities into realities.

9. Education should be modified by the different tastes and talents of the pupil.

10. A scheme of education should aim to attain the triune results, -development, learning and efficiency.

From the same author we quote the

TEACHERS' Decalogue.—1. In education, culture is more than knowledge.

2. Exercise is the great law of culture.

3. The teacher should aim to give careful culture to the perceptive powers of the child.

4. The teacher should aim to furnish the memory of the child with facts and words.

5. The memory should be trained to operate by the laws of association and suggestion.

6. The power of forming ideal creations should be carefully cultivated.

7. The mind should be gradually led from concrete to abstract ideas.

8. A child should be gradually led from particular ideas to general ideas.

9. A child should be taught to reason, first inductively and then deductively.

10. A child should be gradually led to attain clear conceptions of the intuitive ideas and truths.

A Spelling Exercise.

Negroes, mulattoes, and sambos carried those pianos through the porticoes, and the echoes from the grottoes rose as tyros played solos round the heroes and hidalgoes, who were playing dominos and eating mangoes and potatoes, while tornadoes and siroccos raged round the volcanoes in the archipelagoes, frightening desperadoes and musquitoes as lassos do buffaloes.

Braggadocios, bravadoes, mestizos, viragoes, and albinos saw halos in grottoes, and on palmettoes with stilettos wrote centos and mottoes, mementos and manifestoes with innuendoes of the peccadillos of renegadoes and rancheros.

A harebrained numskull known as a prejudiced civilian and unparalleled rascallion superseded the colonel of the battalion.

A fiery erysipelas succeeded the rheumatic inflammation arising from exposure in the planing mill. N. B. W.

The Massachusetts Experiment in Education.

BY CHARLES BARNARD.

The conventional school, with its book-lessons and recitations, is familiar to all; but the new public school, with its realistic methods, its entertaining sessions devoted apparently more to talking than recitation, more to amusement than drudgery, is unknown as yet except to the fortunate children of a few towns. We recently visited a model primary school-room in eastern Massachusetts, and, sitting down among the little children, tried to see the system pursued there from the little one's point of

view.

It is a plain room, with windows on two sides. In the sunny windows are blossom. ing plants, and on the walls above the dado-like blackboard are pretty pictures, stuffed birds, and crayon sketches of plants and animals, shells, and curious things from fields and woods. The boys and girls enter the room together, and take their seats behind their little desks, on which are slates and pencils-nothing more. The teacher comes, a smiling woman with flowers in her hand. She advances to the front of the twoscore children and begins to sing. They all sing: "This is the way we wash our slates, wash our slates, so early in the morning. This is the way we wipe our slates,

wipe our slates, so early in the morning." Some of the girls bring little pails of water, and each child dips a sponge in the water and washes the slate as they sing. Pussy Willow's class," says the teacher, "may copy the red words; Tommy Thorndike's class may take the green words; and Jenny's class may take the white words."

These words are already written in colored crayons on the blackboard. Three rows of the children take their slates and begin to copy the colored words-a happy device for teaching to write and "to tell colors."

"Sophy May's class," resumes the teacher, "may come to the blackboard, and the babies may make a fence and a gate with the sticks."

One of the giris places a handful of large shoe-pegs on the desk of each of the youngest children, and several of the children come to the teacher's desk and stand before the blackboard. They are invited to tell what the teacher holds in her hand. Every hand is raised with almost frantic eagerness. They know what that is. "What is it, Johnny?" "A cat." "Can you tell me a story about it?" Every hand is up. "Well, Katy ?" "I see a cat." Good; now look at this on the board." She writes in script "cat." "What is that?" Not a hand is raised, though every eye is intently studying the unfamiliar letters. "What is this?" says the teacher, rapidly making a sketch of the cat. They all see that. ing to the word] what does this stand for?” Two hands are up. "Freddy?" cat." "Oh, no. Mary?" "Cat." Right! Now I will add our old friend," and with this the article is prefixed to the word. "Now Freddy is right-' a cat.' Who can find another?" With this the word "cat" is written a number of times on different parts of the board, and the children eagerly hunt it up.

Now [point"A

The sentence," I see a cat," is written on the board. That puzzles the children. One has it; another, and another. "Mary?" "I have a cat?" "No. Sophy?” "I see a cat." The word "see" is wholly new to the class, and they get at it from the context, and have its appearance fixed in the mind by association. "Now you may copy this on your slates. Good-bye." This dismisses the class, and they return to their seats to write and rewrite the two new words whose sound, meaning, and aspect they have just learned. The pronoun and the article they learned before; so that now they join them to new words, and study spelling, language and writing at the same time.

At first sight there appears no special novelty in this lesson. Other teachers have used objects as a basis of instruction. The thing to be observed is this: These children do not know their letters. They do not study the alphabet at all. The aim is far wider than mere learning to read. First, the child's interest must be won by the sight of some familiar object. Secondly, the word is a substitute for the picture. The child is not told anything. He must arrive at things through his own thinking. There is no reward or punishment, no head or foot of the class. Each one must tell a story—that is, he must say something, make a complete sentence, and not use detached words. Lastly, and perhaps the most important of all, the young scholar must be happy in his pursuit of knowledge, because that which is happily learned is remembered.

The youngest class in numbers is now called up to a large table, on which are scattered a number of wooden blocks, such as are used for toys. The six little men and women have learned already five numerals. They can count five, but no more. To-day they are to learn five more numbers. Again the same merry session,