a public school, is open to all, no matter what school they attended before, who can pass a satisfactory examination and fulfill the conditions which the Board prescribes for admission. Hence, we receive pupils not only from the public schools of this city, but also from the country schools, parochial schools and other private institutions, so that we have some pupils that have never attended any city or district school, and in consequence do not know anything about their management. Teaching is not only a science, but also an art. We can teach the science of teaching; we can accustom our pupils to exactness in conduct and language, habits that are invaluable for their future profession, and create a consciousness of high responsiblity, and plant the germs of a pious devotion to the cause of education; but the art of teaching they must observe in a district school in order to be able to imitate it. It is not sufficient that they notice how they are taught themselves by their own teachers, for, as the aim of a Normal school is different from the aims of a district school, so their methods must differ greatly. Their visits to the School for Observation will give to our pupils a knowledge of that side of the art of teaching which they need most in their future vocation.

After having gained their first practical experience by teaching their own class, as necessitated by the peculiar character of our recitations, and by visiting, regularly, the School for Observation, they are sent out to district schools to teach there, one week at a time, under the supervision of the experienced teacher of the room and the principal to whose school they are sent. Towards the end of the course they are sent out to teach, without special supervision, in place of absent teachers. Thus, they gain valuable experience in addition to the regular training which the Normal School gives. They first observe practical teaching in the School for Observation, then teach for some time, in succession, under the supervision of teacher and principal, and then take charge of rooms independent of direct supervision. I do not hesitate to say that I consider this a very essential feature of our course, and believe that results are being accomplished by it which could not be brought about in any other way.

Teachers of our time need all the training and culture they can acquire. Our age is more dependent on intellectual culture than any other. The supremacy of labor in the service of intellect over labor guided by mere habit and instinct is established beyond dispute or argument. Between the weak hand and the gigantic, but yet formless world of matter, thought has interposed the powerful tool, the representative of thought in the material world, which, making the intellectual accomplishments of the wise the common property of all, remains powerful even if wielded by the untutored hand. The hands of our age are not more skillful than the hands of ages that shaped the works of art which still delight and charm our eyes, nor has the rigidity of the material world out of which civilization must tear its sustenance become less stubborn.

But between the hand and its task there has intervened a powerful instrument, and it has accomplished wonders. To the present age it was reserved to demonstrate the great truth that it is on the instrument, the agent, that the result is dependent. The highest result demands the highest instrument. And thus the success of our system of education will be largely dependent on the instrument that is employed to achieve it-the teacher. All ages have tried to educate, but to our times it was reserved to see the importance of perfecting the most important instrumentality in education.

Respectfully submitted.

LOUIS SOLDAN,

Principal.

THE HIGH SCHOOL.

The educator is called upon especially to scrutinize the character of his elementary work. He must see from afar the effects of the trifling things with which he makes his beginnings. It is the feeling of this duty that has in late years drawn so much attention to Froebel's theories of the Kindergarten and to primary education generally. It is all essential that the foundation should be sufficient for the superstructure. Of late therefore much thought has been expended on the question of adapting the course of study in the common schools to the actual demands upon the citizen in after life. The same zeal which has challenged the methods and subjects of the common schools has with still more emphasis challenged the higher education in our colleges and universities. It has demanded the substitution of more practical studies for the traditional disciplinary course. It has asked for more science and less Latin or Greek, and for a radical extension of the elective system of making up a course of study for each individual. Much has been accomplished by this movement towards gaining its points. Meanwhile a vigorous reaction has set in and the old finds its defenders and apologists. The discussion widens its scope and extends to many other phases not originally called into question, not only the proper course of study for the Public Schools but their right to exist on appropriations from the public treasury; especially with reference to the Public High School, the discussion is a warm one. Teachers and directors of public school systems have become suddenly aware that there may be an "irrepressible conflict" between the system of public and that of private instruction. It is somewhat startling to learn that there are two systems firmly established in our land confronting each other with radically different theories as to a proper course of study. Such

test.

hostility could not but develope sooner or later into an open conNow that the general attention is directed to education as an element of national and social strength, we can no longer avoid a discussion of these differences and of the theories on which

they are based. The peaceful victories of industry at Paris,

London, and Vienna, and the colossal victories of Prussian arms at Sadowa and Sedan have aroused statesmen and political economists to the study of public education as essential to national strength in productive industry and in the field of battle as well. What this education should be, how far it should be carried, whether compulsory or not, whether there should be different courses of education, adapted to the supposed destinies of the pupils these and other kindred questions must be discussed in the light of fundamental principles. On the one hand it is contended, in the interest of productive industry, that the Public Schools, being for the masses who are destined to fill the ranks of common laborers, should give a semi-technical education and avoid the purely disciplinary studies. The latter should be reserved for private academies and preparatory schools founded by private enterprise and open to such of the community as can afford to patronize them. The higher education in this country conducted in its colleges and universities should according to this view have no organic relation whatever to the Public School system, but only to the system of preparatory schools and academies supported by private wealth. That the effect of such a state of affairs is to injure the cause of education in general, who can doubt, when he reflects that such isolation must have the effect of arraying the supporters of Public Schools, and those who have received the primary education given in them, against the supporters of higher education and against the class of citizens who have received it. For it will result that those who receive a higher education will have been, during their whole course in a system of schools founded on a basis different from the Public Schools, having a different course of study and supported in a radically different manner. That the graduates of higher institutions should under those circumstances be in sympathy with Public School education is impossible. The Public Schools would necessarily be the schools of a caste-of

the proletariat-the class whose chief organ is the hand and whose brains are educated solely to serve the hand better. The very persons themselves are called hands" very appropriately.

In this country, with its boundless possibilities-living as we do largely upon our hopes, conscious of a rapid development in the past and of great prospects in the future, with a national history whose biographical side is the story of "self-made" men, aspiration is the leading characteristic of the people, and the poorest immigrant here soon kindles with its impulse and while he endeavors by thrift to accumulate a fortune, he prepares for its perpetuity by educating his children.

There is nothing more favorable to the character of the foreigner newly arrived on our shores, than this, that he is everywhere eager to avail himself of the school privileges. To the self-respect born of aspiration, what greater shock can be offered than the establishment of caste schools-Public Schools founded especially for the industrial class to the end that its children being born from "hands" shall be "hands" still and shall not mingle with the children of the wealthy nor with those of the liberally educated. Such discrimination leads the laborer to refuse all school education unless he can afford to pay for it in the private school.

The complete degradation of the Public School results. On the one hand those who have received higher education have been nurtured in an atmosphere of contempt for the free schools of the laboring classes; on the other hand the laboring classes themselves despise the symbol of their inferiority and the institution designed to make their inferiority hereditary.

But it may be that a higher education demands a primary education specially designed as preparation and introduction to it. It is possible that an education, to be completed in three or five years, ought to be on an entirely different plan from that intended to cover ten or fifteen years. If such were found to be the case our only remedy might be a twofold course in the Public Schools a so-called "general course" and a "classical course." Where this were not feasible we might lament the fate of the Public School, but could not remove its necessary evils. It would inevitably become the school of the proletariat, and the flourishing private school would draw away the children