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FREE TEXT-BOOKS.

In 1892 the number of schools in which text-books were supplied free of cost to the pupils was 2,481. The act of May 18, 1893, makes it obligatory upon school directors and controllers to purchase, out of the school fund of the district, the textbooks and other school supplies needed, in addition to those at present in use in the hands of the pupils, or owned by the district. No legislation has, for years, so thoroughly shaken up the entire school system. The competition between the book firms proved a severe test for the integrity of their agents and the directors with whom they were dealing. To their praise, be it said, no scandals or crooked dealings have come to the notice of the department; but, after the orders were placed, many of the publishers could not furnish the books rapidly enough, hence many of the schools were somewhat embarrassed at the opening of the current school year. The beneficent results of the free text-book act are visible in many of the larger towns and cities. So far as has been ascertained, at the present writing, the attendance has greatly increased, especially in the upper grades. The children will no longer be kept from studying certain branches through a lack of the necessary books; nor will the boys be kept out of school as they reach the advanced grades, because the parents are unable to purchase the text-books. The care of the books will inspire respect for public property, while the danger of infection, which some feared from soiled books, has been largely overcome by the use of paper covers, which can be cast aside and replaced by a fresh cover when a book passes into new hands. The system has not failed, except in schools whose teachers lack disciplinary power.

THE FIVE MILLIONS.

The effect of increasing the annual appropriation to five millions is seen in an increase of teachers' salaries, in the lengthening of the school term, and in the erection of better schoolhouses. Marked progress has been made in the erection of school buildings, and in the purchase of libraries and apparatus. Every where the idea is gaining ground that the school should be made as pleasant and attractive as the home. The methods of lighting, heating, and ventilating are studied by experts, and the competition between rival companies stimulates men to put their talent and genius into this branch of the work. American school furniture has been vastly improved, and is now the admiration of the civilized world. Nevertheless, school diseases, such as myopia and the overwrought condition of the nervous system, sometimes named "Americanitis," are on the increase, and deserve careful study. This has led to the shortening of the school day to five hours in the graded schools of some cities. Nor can the increased appropriation be said to have produced the effects which ardent friends of the public schools had expected. Reference to the statistical tables shows that the resulting increase in the monthly salary of male teachers was but $1.79, and in that of female teachers only $1.63. The average increase in the length of the school term was but one-third of a month. The total increase in the cost of tuition was $701,779.83, and the decrease in the amount of tax levied for school purposes was $321,795.95. Add to these amounts the increase in the cost of building, purchasing, and renting ($777,591.73), and the increase in the cost of fuel, contingencies, debts, and interest paid ($1,072,277.37), and there remains a balance unaccounted for in the three million increase of the annual appropriation amounting to $126,569.12, which must have accumulated in the treasuries of some of the districts instead of being expended upon the improvement of the schools. Unfortunately, the spirit of progress has not permeated all parts of tho Commonwealth. In too many districts the directors have yielded to the temptation to reduce the tax rate to less than a mill, and to run the schools on a cheap plan, by hiring cheap teachers. The statistics on this point are startling, indeed. The total number of college graduates employed in the public schools is 284. The graduates of State normal schools, academies, and seminaries, who teach in the public schools is 7,064. Hence, 17,991 teachers have never enjoyed the advantage of a full course of study beyond the public schools. Some of these, by private study and by partial courses at normal and other schools, have risen to the rank of those holding professional and permanent certificates; but the startling fact remains that over half of the teachers of Pennsylvania (12,975) hold the provisional certificate, and almost a myriad of them (8,979) never had any training outside of the common schools.

The provisional certificate carries on its face the evidence that the holder's qualifications are not up to the standard in all the branches to be taught, and especially not in the theory and practice of teaching. Nor can it be expected that poor human nature shall exemplify all the virtues of the educational decalogue at salaries ranging from $12 to $25 per month. Some future historian will record it as the marvel of the ages that, in the closing decade of the nineteenth century, many parents were willing, in the rich Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to intrust the education

of their children into the hands of persons whose services were not considered worth the wages of a common day laborer. Indeed, one is sometimes tempted to ask: Do the schools exist for the benefit of the children, or do children come into being that there may be schools and school directors, and employment for teachers? If the later alternative be accepted, it may be right to appoint the daughter of a citizen for the reason that he is a taxpayer, or cripple because he has no other means of earning a livelihood, or a fellow who gets periodically intoxicated because, in this way, his relatives can most easily help him and his to bread; but, if the school exists for the child, then teachers ought to be employed and retained solely upon the basis of merit; that is, upon the basis of fitness for, and skill in, the art of instructing and training the young; and all other interests should be subordi nated to the interests of the children, for whose sake schools are established and maintained.

SECONDARY EDUCATION.

The high school course in Pennsylvania is like the letter x in algebra-an unknown quantity, whose value must, in each case, be found in order to be known. Some cities and boroughs strive, with commendable zeal, to realize the true ideal of a high school, viz: A fitting school for those who wish to enter a higher institution, and a finishing school for those who must begin the struggle for bread. Some high schools neglect preparatory studies, but aim to teach branches which are better taught in the colleges, by reason of superior equipment and endowed professorships; and at the end of a three or four years' course their graduates are mortified to find that they can not enter a respectable college anywhere. Other high schools have courses that were evidently arranged by persons not familiar with all grades of school work. Occasionally, one finds a curriculum so ill fitting and illogical, that it must have been shaped to meet the limit qualifications of some ambitious teacher, whose friends needed a pretext to give him the salary of a high school principal. At no distant day, a conference of representatives of our best colleges and secondary schools should agree upon a minimum high school curriculum, leaving room, of course, for local needs and future developments. The legislature could then follow the example of other States in setting apart a share of the annual appropriation for the purpose of fostering and strengthening the high schools which come up to the proposed standard.

THE MASSES.

The great majority of the pupils never reach the secondary schools, still less the colleges and the universities. The education which they receive should fit them to make the most of the life which is before them. It should conduce to their happiness, as well as to their material prosperity. The bearing of reading, writing, and ciphering upon business and social life is well known. The duty of the schools to increase the sources of happiness, by developing a taste for good literature is not so well understood. Teach a man to read, and you widen his horizon and his aspirations. He sees new phases of life, and longs to realize them for himself and his family. If his reading fixes his eye upon luxuries which can not be purchased with his earnings, he will grow dissatisfied, and the discontent may ripen into strikes and mob violence. The ability to read, instead of producing this result, should increase the sum of human happiness by multiplying the possible sources of enjoyment. The application of steam to the printing press has brought the great dailies within the reach of everybody's purse, and has cheapened the works of standard authors to such an extent that a choice collection of classic authors is possible in every home. He who reads may associate with men of wit and genius, when these are at their best, and may choose his company from the authors of every age and elime. Here the rich man has no vantage ground over the tiller of the soil or the toiler with the hand. More expensive binding the former may have; of the real essence of the book, he can enjoy no more than any other intelligent reader. Indeed, in one respect, the man who eats his bread in the sweat of his brow has the advantage over those engaged in a profession. The lawyer, the physician. the clergyman exhaust their mental energy in professional duties; when evening comes they must seek rest and recreation in physical exertion, in a change of occupation. The laborer, on the other hand, can find rest and an agreeable change at the close of the day in literary pursuits, in the study of art or some branch of science. While our colleges are training a generation that grows wild with delight over football and other athletic sports-that too often talks and thinks of nothing except the heroes and the vicissitudes of the last game-the public schools, by their improved methods of teaching reading, are striving to educate a younger generation of boys and girls, whose taste for good literature and knowledge of good books will bring the future toilers of the land to the front in point of culture, and yield them sources of enjoyment more enduring than the luxuries by which the idle rich now seek to dispel their ennui.

RHODE ISLAND.

[From report of State board of education, 1892-93.]

MANUAL TRAINING AND DRAWING.

Two events have occurred during the year of special significance to the work of education in this State-the completion of the manual training high school by the city of Providence, and the erection of a building for the Rhode Island School of Design. These two institutions stand henceforth for a decided advance in the line of true industrial education and development. This State has been unduly slow to move along these new lines of educational growth, and some of our sister Commonwealths have obtained quite a start in the race for honors along this line.

But with these two institutions in Providence, another of similar character to the manual training school now in process of erection in the city of Newport, and the prospect of similar facilities in other sections of the State, there seems to be no reason why we should not now enter upon a new career of progress. When art and skill join hands under the guidance of a definite purpose, there is nothing unattain. able within the limits of human effort. Let the study of drawing be taught in every grade of our schools, from the lowest primary up to the high school, so that every child shall always have at his command the two modes of expression for his ideas--words and pictures; let his eye and hand be thus trained to work for each other; and also let the ordinary curriculum of the schools be supplemented by such means as shall suggest to the pupil that school life is but the preparation for, the open door to, the real life of the world, and a new atmosphere will be created in our schoolrooms, and an impulse will be given to every form of industrial entort in the State. Boys and girls will go out of school into the shop with definite purposeз already formed, with both taste and capacity for original work.

At whatever stage in his education the child may leave school, he will have acquired some skill with the hand, ideas of an entirely new nature will have been made familiar to him, and they must influence his whole after life, both his thoughts and his actions. But if he can stay on through the various grades, and finally complete his purely intellectual training in such a school as these new manual training schools, if he has any natural aptitude for these things, he must become thoroughly alive to their every detail and grow to a thorough mastery of them. If to this preparation he can add the benefits conferred by the school of design he can not help becoming a master workman-than whom there is no one more honorable. Here is, indeed, a field of labor most inviting, and as yet but little occupied. Shall we not euter in and possess it?

RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN.

The annual report from the board of management of the school of design shows an increasing field of activity and usefulness, and commends the school more and more to the fostering care of the State.

Within the year the school has been presented with a beautiful building on Waterman street, between North Main and Benefit streets, through the liberality of one of the citizens of Providence, a leading manufacturer of the State. Through the enlargement of its facilities the school will be able to do far better work than ever before, and also to accommodate much larger numbers.

Already the funds provided for State scholarships have proved wholly inadequate to meet the demand, and there is no doubt but that a much larger sum could be readily and wisely employed for this purpose. One hundred and twenty-three scholarships have been given out-20 for the day classes, 5 for the Saturday class, and the remainder for the evening classes. The applicants for these scholarships, for the most part, come directly from the factories and shops of Providence and vicinity, and they realize their need of just such training that they may be successful in their several lines of labor. There can be no doubt but that every dollar invested by the State in this way will pay a large interest in the added skill and productive power of the pupils. Some addition should certainly be made to the fund for scholarships unless we propose to put a decided check upon a movement among the younger wage earners of our community, which we have labored earnestly to arouse and which we believe is fraught with great benefits to the State if properly trained and developed.

FREE PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

Forty-two libraries are now receiving State aid annually. As a whole there is not much change in the condition of affairs from that of last year. Slight fluctuations in the circulation up and down are to be noticed, but no marked change which demands special attention.

In a very few libraries, however, there have been improvements in circulation which call for a word. These are in the direction of a general increase in circulation, and especially an increase in the proportion of good literature read. In every instance these results have come about, not by chance, but through the wise, intelligent efforts of the librarian, who considered it her task not merely to hand out what wsa called for, but to so guide and direct that she should really determine what should be called for.

There is not much use in piling up great masses of books unless it is proposed to place some one in charge of them who shall know how to make all of their hidden treasures available to the average man and woman, boy and girl. These persons are lost in such a place and need a pilot to steer them through its unknown waters. But in too many cases the librarian knows but little more than the visitor, and it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind.

The permanent librarian, trained for his duties, or constantly studying to perfect himself therein, is the great need of the free public library. Who will champion the cause of the librarian as, next to the teacher, the most important servant of the people, and hence as worthy of his hire, so that for all of these two score we may soon have competent librarians in charge, and the treasures of the libraries brought clearly before the eager gaze of the people? We fully believe, if this arrangement could be made, that our public libraries would take on a new lease of life, and that they would soon sink their roots down so deep into the life of the State that they would draw as unfailing a supply of nourishment as do the public schools.

[From report of Hon. Thomas B. Stockwell, State school commissioner.]

GAIN IN COLLEGE-EDUCATED TEACHERS.

In the education of the teachers there has been quite a gain in those who are college educated. This is partly due to the fact that more and more women with college education are entering into our schools. Already the supply of collegeeducated women is in excess of the available places in the high schools, and I look before long to see the upper rooms in our grammar schools occupied by college graduates. The more general diffusion of college training will inevitably lead to its laying hold upon a wider range of occupations and positions. The most significant features in the report upon the education of the teachers are the marked falling ofi in those reported as from high schools, and the more than twice as large increase in the number from normal schools. This shows that mere knowledge is not considered, so much as heretofore, a sufficient qualification for becoming a teacher, but that some special training for the work is required. In this connection I am glad to recognize the contributions made to our teaching corps the past year by normal schools outside of our own State, notably by the Bridgewater, Mass., school, in supplying men for grammar school positions. The demand for this class of persons in this State is so limited that practically men have been driven out of the business, so that for two years or more we have not had in our normal school a single man engaged in the work of preparation for teaching.

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION.

Within a few years quite a fundamental change has taken place in the methods of instruction in many branches. What is now known as the laboratory method of study has quite largely supplanted the text-book method of former years. This is specially true of the natural sciences, but has worked its way into such studies even as history, literature, mathematics. The fundamental principle is that of individual work by the pupil with original materials.

While there have undoubtedly been some, perhaps many, excesses in the manner in which this new method has been pushed, there is as truly much of good in it. For the stronger student it is by far the better course to pursue, and even for the average pupil its advantages outweigh its weaknesses. It brings the student into much closer touch with the real subject of study; he sees it with his own eyes, instead of through those of the writer of the book; and the reality of the truth, whatever its nature may be, appeals to him as it can not possibly do through the pages of a book.

These changed conditions in the actual work of the schoolroom call for a class of teachers of a different character from those who have heretofore been selected. Book knowledge alone is not the main test; there must be an acquaintance to some extent with the sources whence the book knowledge has been derived. The teacher must be able to guide the pupils along the path by which they are to gain for themselves and by themselves the facts whose acquisition is thought to be desirable.

To this end it will be necessary to modify very materially our methods of preparing teachers for their work. For those who are to enter the profession hereafter the normal schools and colleges with their enlarged resources and improved equip

ments will afford adequate facilities. But what is to be done for those already in the schools, who have never had these opportunities?

The teachers' institute has for many years been recognized as a most valuable factor in the work of improving the qualifications of the teachers, and it has wrought a most excellent work. The time has now come when it must be enlarged into something more than a transient gathering of teachers for the illustration of some new method, the enforcing of some new principle, or the emphasizing of some old truth. The demand of the times is that it shall furnish some systematic and connected series of instruction in certain subjects, so that teachers who now know little or nothing of these topics may be to some extent qualified to teach them; or in case of subjects heretofore familiar may be drilled in the new and better way of presenting them.

SOUTH CAROLINA.

[From report of State Supt. W. D. Mayfield, 1893.]

MORE MONEY NEEDED.

The expense of operating the public schools has increased year by year with the increased attendance, while the increase in the amount of money devoted to public education has been but slight, the most of this increase coming from special taxes raised in towns and cities having graded school systems.

The schools in the towns and cities, in the main, are supplying the needs of the people. This is true because the people have voted an additional tax for the purpose of operating them. As a rule, such is not the case with the country schools, a few of them only having the benefit of an extra tax. These schools are inadequate, many of them inferior, some of them almost worthless, and it is impossible to improve them to any appreciable extent without more money. It is needless to try to shut our eyes to this fact. All efforts of school officers to improve them must continue to be fruitless without more money. There is, perhaps, nothing in the State to be more regretted than the insufficiency of the country schools. The money spent annually in the maintenance of these schools is proportionately small. The amount does not exceed two and a half dollars for each pupil in attendance on them, including the graded schools of the State. The graded schools run about nine months in the year, while the country schools will not average more than three. This is a burning shame and a cruel wrong to the boys and girls of the State who live in the country and are limited principally to the country schools for their education. The legislature has always been liberal in supporting State institutions for higher learn ing; and I trust I may be excused for calling your attention to the fact, without intending to injure these institutions, that there is spent annually in the support of the four State institutions for higher learning of whites, which have not an aggregate of seven hundred pupils, an amount in the neighborhood of one-half as much as is spent on the education of ninety-odd thousand white children who attend the public schools of the State.

The above facts should appeal to every lover of education, which each of you is supposed to be, with such force as to demand provision for an increase in the public school fund. There are now but three ways provided by law for the raising of money for the public schools. One is by a tax on each poll, which is limited by the constitution of the State to $1 per capita. The statutory law of the State now fixes the liability to this tax on all able-bodied male citizens between the ages of 21 and 50 years. The only way by which an increase from this source can be had is to extend the age to its liability, which should be done. Another is the constitutional tax on property, which can not be less than 2 mills on the dollar and can not be more except by your permission. It is advisable that you empower the county commissioners to levy more than two mills on property, the question having been first submitted to a vote of the qualified electors of a county before the 1st day of April in each year. The third is by what is known as the "act of 1888," which provides for the levying of a special tax on property. This act contains so many requirements which have to be repeated each year that it is practically inoperative. It should be simplified so as to render it easy of execution, and allow a tax when once voted to continue from year to year until the people decide by vote to discontinue it. This is the preferred way through which to increase the fund, provided the law be simplified and the work allowed to stand, when once done, until the people say they want it no longer.

PRIVATE COLLEGES.

Information received shows that the private colleges in the State, male and female, have begun the new year most auspiciously. Fears existed that the financial depression, and the losses occasioned by recent severe storms, would operate against them.

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