It has been deemed advisable to publish this year, as an additional aid and stimulus to the further development of this important branch of our school system, the reports of the several union schools making such reports. These reports, which will be found in the Appendix, contain much information of great value to district boards and teachers, which will enable them to form fair estimates of the actual and relative success of the several schools, and to compare the several systems of grading and courses of study now in vogue. The Superintendent has visited in person a considerable number of the Union Schools to inspect their organization, and to view more closely their progress and success. He was welcomed everywhere, and in most cases addressed both the schools and the public, on the urgent invitation of the teachers and the school officers. What he saw greatly confirmed his conviction of the inherent excellence of this system of schools, and of the propriety of its still wider introduction. The air of refined culture, and the spirit of earnest scholarship pervading nearly every high school, the modest and correct deportment and evident intelligence of the pupils, their neatness in personal appearance, and kindly courtesy in speech and manners, their quiet obedience to teachers and fine zeal in study, spoke volumes for the noble work these schools are doing for them and for mankind. THE PRIMARY DISTRICT SCHOOLS. These are preeminently the people's schools. To these must the great masses of our children look for whatever of school instruction they will ever receive; and to the improvement of these, therefore, will the wise statesman and philanthropic educationist give their most serious attention. I have repeatedly expressed the conviction that many, if not the majority of the schools are not accomplishing all that we might reasonably expect of them. The education they give is neither so thorough nor so extensive as it might easily be made. In the case of large numbers of children, it is scarcely worth the time and money spent in attaining it. Term after term, these pupils endure the tedious confinement of the school room, and the hated drudgery of committing to memory incomprehensible lessons, and finally leave school, able to read, but without ease or correctness,—to write, in a stiff and almost illegible chirography, a few blundering sentences of bad grammer and worse orthography, to solve the simple problems in some text book on arithmetic so as to get the author's answers to the same,— and perhaps to answer a part of the questions in some school geography. A year or two of active life serves to drive out of the memory the scraps of knowledge learned at school, and, save the ability to read and write a little, and to make some simple computations with figures, naught remains but the dreary recollection of hard benches and irksome restraint, and perchance some dim and unreliable notions of nearly forgotten studies. No love of learning prompting to life-long study, no taste for literature making books a ready and perpetual solace, no cultivated power of logical thought enabling to grasp and solve the daily problems of life, no cultivated refine ment of manners and feeling fitting for the enjoyment of home and social circles, no power of correct and elegant speech as an instrument of power among men, no fund of sound and well digested learning to enrich the mind and illumine its path-not one of all these, the proper fruits of right education, remains to repay them for the years spent in school. How to remedy these defects, found in so large a number of our schools, and make all the schools as productive of good as some are already, demands the serious consideration of all school officers. Doubtless the most comprehensive and efficient remedy of the evil will be found in the employment of well qualified and earnest teachers-men and women who thoroughly understand their work, and will, with good sense and patience, perform it. But until the school officers and people come to understand more clearly what are the characteristics and requirements of a good school, they are not prepared to select competent teachers, nor to judge their work intelligently when obtained. The good teacher is not unfrequently hindered and thwarted, not only by the lack of earnest co-operation of the district officers and parents, but, still worse, by the positive opposition to his plans and methods, prompted by a misunderstanding of their real utility. There are, however, radical defects and errors in the organization and work of common schools,-in the selection and succession of studies, and in the modes of instruction,-which greatly impair their usefulness, and prevent their success. I know not how I can better promote the true welfare of these schools, than by pointing out the proper branches and order of study, and the true principles of teaching, in them. PRIMARY, OR COMMON SCHOOL STUDIES. I do not remember to have seen any regular course of studies proposed for the common district schools. Nor am I certain that any such regular course will be generally received as feasible or desirable. But it must be evident to all reflecting minds, that all true education must proceed by some regular steps, and in some natural and rational order. It cannot be, therefore, either a useless or unimportant service to offer some discussion of the real and relative usefulness of studies, and to suggest some hints for the arrangement of these studies in a proper and natural course of study. The introduction of the so called common school studies, seems to have been mainly accidental, though springing, doubtless, in part, from some dimly recognized wants of the people. The earliest common school studies were orthography, reading and writing; and in many of the earlier schools, no other studies were permitted. Arithmetic, if taught at all, was confined to evening schools. In time, however, the importance of learning "to cipher" came to be generally admitted and arithmetio The common district schools of this State are denominated, in the laws, "Primary Schools," but as the term "primary school" has come to have a restricted use as the de signation of the lower or primary departments in the union schools, I shall, to avoid conf sion, use the older term "common schools." с assumed its place among common school studies, though often confined to boys and to the older classes. Many will recall the qualifications of Goldsmith's Schoolmaster in "The Deserted Village." "The village all declared how much he knew, Later still, it occasionally happened, that some ambitious pedagogue, who had spent a term at the "Academy," and who was ambitious to show his "learning," and anxious to enhance his reputation as a teacher-or who advanced in thought beyond his age, was willing to do his pupils a greater service, organized a class in English grammar. Geography followed in due time; though no reason can well be given for its introduction, except the ambitious desire for a new and unusual study. The first geography introduced, was without maps, and was used simply as a reading book. Even now, grammar and geography are not taught universally to the pupils of the common Schools, but are counted as optional studies; reading writing and ciphering, being still considered by many as of old, the only ones absolutely essential to a common school education. Other branches, such as book-keeping, algebra, natural philosophy, physiology, and history, are often taught in the better class of common schools; but they have not yet come to be generally accepted as common school studies. Such, in brief, is the history of the introduction of the sev eral branches of instruction now recognized as belonging properly to that great class of schools in which the great body of the people are to be educated. How evident it is, that chance and caprice, rather than a careful consideration of the capacities of childhood, and of the intrinsic character and value of these several studies, have controlled in their selection and use. The questions seem never to have been asked, what can children best learn? and what studies will best educate their minds and fit them for the duties of life? "Milk for babes and strong meat for men," has been easily accepted as nature's own law for physical nurture; but no natural and necessary order of mental feeding has been dreamed of, as giving law to the culture of the mind. The art of reading was seen to be essential to the study of books. Writing and ciphering are useful in daily business. Beyond these, it mattered but little what was studied, or in what order. To sit down to a patient observation of the natural inclinations and tastes of the childish intellect; to watch carefully its modes of reaching truth; to test by repeated experiments its native power of thought and attention; to measure and weigh thoroughly its natural necessities of knowledge; and then to select wisely from the realms of science, and arrange, in a course of easy and natural successions, the branches and forms of learning, which will delight its tastes, and meet and nourish its powers-to do all this has never been thought necessary in choosing the studies for the schools. Whatever a grown up teacher knew, and could explain, that a child could be compelled to study, and forced finally to understand. In every high school and academy, it has been thought necessary to have a regular course of study; the pupils must ascend the hill of science by nicely graded paths; but, in the common school, it matters not 'in what order the studies come; the education is not an advance along some certain road, but a mere aimless ramble in the fields; not a conquering march, but a foraging raid into the territories of knowledge. The folly of all this is too obvious to need serious refutation. Nothing is plainer in human experience, than that the mind is interested in different subjects at different ages in life; and that it works by different processes, and with widely varying powers, at the different periods of its growth. Even a child's pleasures and griefs differ from those of manhood, by a whole hemisphere; the work of the one being but the recreation of the other. How illogical, then, is it to count a study proper and valuable for children, because it chances to be interesting and perhaps useful to grown up men. The celebrated reply of the old Greek philosopher, that children "ought to learn the things |