And from Hon. S. M. Etter, superintendent of public instruction, State of Illinois, who writes:

This morning I received the circular giving notice of the meeting of superintendents on the 27th. I desire very much to be present, but I fear it will be impossible. After the reading of the letters the department adjourned until 3 o'clock p. m.

AFTERNOON SESSION, JANUARY 28, 1875.

The department resumed its session at half-past three o'clock.

The president announced, as the executive committee of five on the Centennial Exposition, General Eaton of Washington, Mr. Wickersham of Pennsylvania, Mr. Philbrick of Boston, Mr. Abernethy of Iowa, and Mr. Ruffner of Virginia.

Mr. Wickersham, of Pennsylvania, for the committee on the relations of the Federal Government to public education, then submitted a report, accompanied with the following resolutions:

Resolved, That this body reiterate and reaffirm the positions taken at its meeting in this place one year ago, as follows: 1. That the Federal Government should leave to the people and local governments of each State the management of their own educational affairs without interference. 2. That great service was done to the cause of education by Congress in establishing and maintaining a Bureau or Department of Education, whereby appropriate information from all parts of the world may be gathered, digested, and distributed, and whereby much useful aid is furnished to the practical work of education throughout the country. 3. That the proposition to set apart the public lands of the United States exclusively for the purposes of free education meets with our heartiest approval. 4. That it is the duty of Congress to furnish special aid to the school-authorities of the District of Columbia.

Resolved, That as, in order fully to perform the work pressing upon it and make its usefulness still more widely felt, we are satisfied the National Bureau of Education needs increased clerical force; and as it is equally plain to us that the distribution directly by the Bureau of at least ten thousand copies of its annual reports each year, among school-officers and those specially interested in the work of education in the different States and Territories, would do an incalculable amount of good, we therefore respectfully petition Congress, in the interest of the education of the people, to take the necessary steps to bring about these desirable ends.

Resolved, That a reasonable appropriation by the General Government is necessary to secure a full and creditable representation of the educational interests of the country at the approaching Centennial Exposition to be held at Philadelphia, and we sincerely hope that such an appropriation may be made by the Congress now in session.

J. P. WICKERSHAM.
JOHN D. PHILBRICK.
B. G. NORTHROP.
ALEX. C. HOPKINS.
J. K. JILLSON.
ALONZO ABERNETHY.

The report of the committee was received and the resolutions unanimously adopted.

Mr. MARBLE. I move that the same committee who reported these resolutions be instructed to embody the same in suitable form and present them to Congress as a memorial from this body.

The motion was agreed to.

General EATON. There is one matter of interest to which I desire to call the attention of the department for a moment. The people of Chili propose to hold an international exhibition at Santiago in 1875, opening, I think, in September.

The minister of that country has, on several occasions, expressed to me his desire that the educational interests of the United States should be represented at this coming exhibition.

Recently a communication has been forwarded from the Secretary of State to the Secretary of the Interior, containing inquiries in reference to the feasibility of such a representation from this country. It having been officially referred to me, I have made the following reply, which I bring to your notice as showing our status in regard to participation in the exhibition:

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, BUREAU OF EDUCATION,

Washington, D. C., January 7, 1875.

SIR In reference to the letter of Hon. Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, bearing date December 24, 1874, to the Secretary of the Interior, concerning the practicability and expediency of making an educational representation at the international exhibition to be held at Santiago, Chili, in 1875, which was submitted to me for bonsideration, I have the honor to report that, so far as such representation may consist of the reports and occasional publications of this Bureau and of the official reports on education published by the several States, cities, and towns, and by them furnished to this Office, it is perfectly feasible and, in my judgment, expedient.

Any attempt at a fuller representation of the educational facilities and appliances existing in the United States, such as was made at Vienna, could not, however, be undertaken by this Office without congressional or executive authority and financial assistance.

The effect of such a full and complete exhibition of the school-appliances, furniture, and public-school-systems of the United States, could hardly fail to lead to more intimate relations between the countries, and would, therefore, in itself considered, seem desirable.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Hon. C. DELANO,

Secretary of the Interior.

JOHN EATON, Commissioner.

I wish, also, to say to the gentlemen representing the different States and cities here, that if they desire to send copies of their official reports to the Chilian exhibition they can do so by forwarding them to the Bureau of Education, so that they may be included in material sent from that Bureau. Even if nothing further can be done, these reports will doubtless be of value and interest. It may be, perhaps, advisable for you to communicate the fact of this exhibition to those persons in your several localities who may be interested in exhibiting school-furniture, apparatus, and books.

Mr. LUCKEY. The committee appointed yesterday to report on the subjects embodied in the paper of Dr. A. N. Bell beg leave to submit the following report:

Whereas the health and the mental advancement of pupils are co-ordinates of the same importance; and whereas the doctor has so excellently portrayed the absolute dependence of the one upon the other: Therefore,

Resolved, That we cordially commend the practical thoughts embodied in that paper, and that we will as a body of superintendents enforce more strictly hereafter the valuable rules of hygiene as set forth therein, and that we commend the same to the thoughtful consideration of our school-men throughout the country.

Resolved, That we recommend that the Bureau of Education secure and place before the country statistics showing the need of action by the school-authorities upon this subject.

GEORGE J. LUCKEY.
ALEX. C. HOPKINS.
A. P. MARBLE.

Mr. MCMILLAN, of Youngstown, Ohio. Mr. President, I have nothing to say against the report of the committee, but, as the Chair was about to submit the resolutions for the action of the convention, I was about to protest, not against anything that might be said, so much as against the assumption that the school-houses are killing more children than all other instrumentalities put together. Now, I do not know what they are doing in Washington; I do not know what they are doing in Boston. But, so far as I know, in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, the healthiest-looking children, the happiest children, are those you see flocking in and out of the school-houses; and the healthiest and best-looking of them are those that have gone through this "poisonous atmosphere" and course of hard study, and are in the highest departments of those schools. And I wish to enter my protest against that sort of assumption which has been advanced by nearly all the speakers.

I was very much delighted with the address of Dr. Bell, but that doctrine I did not want to have go out without protest.

The report of the committee was then received and the resolutions adopted.

ADDRESS OF MR. PHILBRICK.

The president then introduced Hon. John D. Philbrick, ex-superintendent of public schools of Boston, who read the following paper:

CAN THE ELEMENTS OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION BE INTRODUCED INTO OUR COMMON SCHOOLS?

The peculiar characteristic of the common school the world over is, that it is the school in which the children of the mass of the people receive all their scholastic education. In our country it is true that this class of schools, comprising the ungraded rural district-schools and the primary and grammar-grades of the villages and cities, are expected also to prepare candidates for the high schools, who are to pursue, to a greater or less extent, a liberal course of study. But this is not their main function, which is to give the best possible education for the practical purposes of life to the mass of children who must terminate their schooling at 14 or, at most, at 15 years of age. And it will not be disputed, I apprehend, that to secure to every child the blessing of such an elementary education is the paramount educational problem of the present times, for it requires no extraordinary penetration to perceive that at the present period "the world is resting its future hopes and quieting its future fears 89

in reliance on the education and enlightenment of the mass of the people." One must be blind, indeed, not to see that the future of nations depends on the kind and degree of their education. As Jules Simon has well said, "The first people is that which has the best schools; if it is not the first to-day, it will become the first to-morrow."

I find it extremely difficult to handle this subject satisfactorily in a brief paper, on account of the necessity it involves of considering the whole field of common-schooleducation, for the instruction in a school-course ought to constitute a complete and consistent whole, all the branches of study being chosen, arranged, and proportioned in respect to each other, by judicious limitations, in such a manner as to produce the desired result. This is the ideal to be aimed at in a programme of studies, which should set forth, in the first place, the general object to be accomplished by the whole course; next, the subjects of instruction required; then the results to be sought at each stage in the course; and, finally, the particular requirements in respect to each subject of instruction in the several stages.

This is what has been done, in a masterly manner, in the common-school-programme recently issued by the Prussian ministry of education. It is the result of the combined wisdom of the most competent experts, and, therefore, its authority must command the highest respect. While it is specific enough to serve as a reliable and intelligible guide to teachers and school-officials, it allows all the freedom that can be profitable in respect to the methods of teaching and management in each individual school. Each teacher is at liberty to make his own particular programme, provided that he conforms to this prescribed general one.

NEED OF REVISION OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDIES.

The interests of common-school-education in this country most imperatively demand at the present time the same sort of service. I am not aware that any State educational authority has undertaken this important task. The school-law's designate the studies that may be taught; but a naked enumeration of the studies required or permitted is a most insufficient guide to teachers and school-officers in the work they have to do. Considerable progress has recently been made by city-superintendents towards working out rational schemes of instruction for their respective systems of elementary schools; but these schemes have only a local authority, and they embody the idiosyncracies of the individual officers by whom they have been framed. Looking at our American common schools as a whole, it is not far from the truth to say that they are working on no better programmes for their guides than the lists of text-books prescribed for their use. It is not impossible to conceive of the construction of a set of text-books which might serve the purpose in view; but I am not aware of the existence of such a set. The text-books for common schools have increased in number and swelled in bulk, out of all proportion to the legitimate objects and wants of our schools. And the practical standard of instruction to be aimed at is the contents comprised within the covers of these numerous and overgrown text-books. The result is that teachers and pupils exhaust their time and strength on the masses of details of little worth contained in the text-books of a part of the studies proper for the common school, while other subjects of great practical utility are comparatively neglected. This, I believe, is a grave defect in our American elementary schools. As one of the means of remedying this evil, it seems to me desirable that the educational authority of each State should prepare and issue, with the indorsement of its sanction, such a programme as I have suggested, containing a scheme of instruction irrespective of text-books. This scheme should consist of two parts, the one adapted to the wants and capabilities of ungraded district-schools and the other to the conditions of graded city- or village-schools. I do not take extreme ground against the use of textbooks. In teaching most branches, text-books are a convenience, if not a necessity. especially in the case of teachers of ordinary qualifications. But text-books, as they exist, afford no adequate substitute for a rational scheme of instruction.

If the State-authorities should put forth programmes as here proposed, they would

at once be compared and criticised in the light of whatever pedagogical experience and pedagogical science we possess, and thus we should arrive at the soundest judgment on this important matter.

It is the appropriate business of educators to adapt educational institutions and means to the wants of the time and place in which they exist. New demands must be met by new provisions, while requirements that have become useless or obsolete should be abolished or modified. Our fathers had no such educational problem as this to deal with. In the earlier history of the common school it was taken for granted that its function was to teach reading, writing, and the rudiments of arithmetic, and nothing more. In fact, reading and writing were the only branches prescribed for common schools in the original act for their establishment in the Massachustts colony. Our fathers were fortunate that they did not have to master spelling after the modern fashion, else they could not have found time to subdue the wilderness. And when, something less than a century ago, the course of study in the common schools of Boston was enlarged by the introduction of “spelling, accenting, English grammar, and composition," it was feared by some that these new language-studies would occupy the time which ought to be devoted to more practically useful branches, and so the committee were petitioned to allow the boys to devote the whole of their last year of schooling to writing and arithmetic.

All this has been changed. The provinces of the old learning have been greatly extended and vast annexations have been made by modern discovery, "and it is not extravagant to say that the amount of knowledge appropriate to civilization which now exists in the world is more than double, and in many cases more than tenfold, what it was about half a century ago." This enormous increase of knowledge, in connection with the corresponding increase. in the demands of modern civilization, for the practical use of knowledge, in supplying the wants, overcoming the difficulties, and multiplying the elegances of life, has resulted in the overloading of the curriculums of study in all classes of educational institutions. When Edward Everett entered Harvard College, two years were deemed amply sufficient for preparation; now six years are scarcely adequate for the task. Much has been gained and much more remains to be achieved by improved methods and appliances of teaching, but the powers of the human intellect for the acquisition of knowledge are stationary, and the limits of those powers cannot be transcended with impunity.

POPULAR COMPLAINTS AGAINST COMMON SCHOOLS.

Our common schools are complained of, on the one hand, because they send out their pupils with so little practical knowledge, and, on the other, because the brains of the children are overworked and the foundations of their health sapped by the excessive application required by the multiplicity of the studies. No doubt, broadly speaking, there is too much ground for both these apparently contradictory complaints, although they do not both equally apply in the case of the same school or the same local system. Not forgetting that the chief remedy for educational imperfections is to be sought in the improvement of the qualifications of teachers, I cannot help thinking that the evils referred to might be greatly diminished and the education imparted in our common schools greatly advanced, both in respect to quantity and quality, if school-authorities generally could be induced to prepare a plan of instruction adapted to the capacities and wants of the pupils, in which should be included all the branches properly belonging to elementary schools and from which should be rigidly excluded all unessential details, and which should, at the same time, limit the requirements in each study to a moderate and reasonable standard. I would emphasize the importance of the limitation of standards rather than the limitation of subjects, for I believe that common schools are not so much overloaded by the number of the branches taught as by the extravagant requirements in respect to the individual branches and wrong methods of teaching.