The Sixth Institute convened at Lincoln Hall, May 4-7, 1869. Addresses were delivered as follows:

State Supt. Fitzgerald: "Educational Condition." Prof. John Le Conte: "Nebula Hypothesis." Geo. W. Simonton: "True Education." John Swett: "Arithmetic."

The subject of "Text-Books" was discussed and reported upon.

8. SEVENTH AND EIGHTH INSTITUTES.

The Seventh State Institute met in San Francisco, Sept. 13-16, 1870. Addresses and lectures were given by Supt. Fitzgerald; Prof. E. S. Carr, on "Air," and "Industrial Education;" Mr. Marks, on "Mathematics." J. P. Garlick: Ungraded Schools." Miss Dolliver: A Poem. Dr. Schellhouse: "Grammar." Miss Fowler: "Defects in Education." Dr. Luckey: "State Normal School." Prof. Joseph Le Conte: "Universal Law of Cyclical Movement."

The Eighth and last Institute met in San Francisco, Nov. 7-10, 1871. Supt. Fitzgerald delivered an annual address. Lectures were given as follows:

Dr. Schellhouse: "The Art of Teaching." Dr. Logan: "School Ventilation and Hygiene." Dr. Gibbons: "Hygiene of Dress." Miss Dolliver: "Cobwebs and Brooms." Dr. E. S. Carr: "The Educational Work of Sarmiento."

The discussions were, in general, on unimportant topics. This was the last of the State Institutes, the Legislature of 1872 having cut off the annual appropriation of $250 for

expenses.

9. STATE ASSOCIATION.

The State Board of Education called, by resolution, a convention of teachers at San Jose, June, 1875, but the attendance was small.

A State Teachers' Association was organized, but the proceedings were of no special consequence.

II. INSTITUTE ADDRESSES.

1. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.*

Mr. President and Teachers: During the past few weeks the world has been watching the sudden, and to the unobservant eye, almost miraculous transfer of power and prestige from one of the great leading European States to another. A quiet, home-loving practical people have suddenly developed a vast amount of latent force, which it puzzles us to name. Is it brains versus bullets, science versus sentiment, that awaits the arbitrament of war, or a territorial question only? Somehow or other, ideas and education have gone up in the scale as they never did before in any ten weeks of human history.

We are all foolish enough to fix our eyes upon the two central figures of the strife; but neither Teuton fox nor Gallic wolf have had very much to do with the results which so astonish and appal the world.

If Prussia, so far victorious, has been busy rearing a nation of soldiers, she has done it openly, in the face of the world. She has made every soldier a fortification by the completeness of an educational system which makes the most of whatever a man is born with. That system is on exhibition, not only of its value for defense, but its moral power, its temperance and self-control. Whatever the final political result may be, it is certain that not one Prussian who has fallen has felt himself a tool or a dupe, played upon by superior cunning and selfishness.

There is not a soldier of that grand army who has had less than ten years' schooling (most of them have had from fifteen to eighteen years); their bodies have been as carefully trained as their minds, and by teachers who make this their life business.

What would you expect from a country that has an army of three million children at school, whether they wish to go or not and whether their parents wish them to go or not, and for a Government that provides for this largely by devoting to it the heaviest outlay of its resources?

Would you expect Prussia to be beaten, when you know that until the year 1831, France had made no provision for the instruction of her millions, had no public elementary schools when Guizot sent Victor Cousin to study the school system of Prussia, with a view to its adoption?

Power is cumulative, and although Napoleon III has nobly fostered education and science, he started at a disadvantage. Poor, beleagured Paris trembles to-day in greater terror of the ignorant and

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* Abstract of a lecture before the State Teachers' Institute, September, 1870, by Ezra S. Carr, M.D.

therefore brutalized rabble, shut in to watch and wait with her her deliverance or her doom, than the foe outside her gates.

I confess I am anxious that our own Government should keep on the best of terms with those Germans. I should dread a tyranny like that of Wurtemburg, which permits no child to learn a trade, enter any occupation, or receive any pay for any service whatsoever, until he has answered the demands of the school law. Imagine the consternation which the sudden enforcement of such a regulation would cause in America, in low and in high places! As an offset to this terror, imagine what it would be for you, teachers, to be enrolled among the "high mightinesses," to be ranked and considered as the most valuable civil servitors of the State, with honorable compensation and just promotions for your terms of service, and a comfortable pension when you are old.

Do not think I am praising overmuch, and covertly keeping back a part of the truth. Germany has outdone the world in education, and we have outdone Germany in just one respect! We have discovered and put in practice a great natural law of education, viz., that women are better teachers than men. And they only need the higher education from which they have been so long excluded to make their superiority manifest.

The educational creed of Prussia does not take long in the reading. Article one declares the sacred right of every individual to the best means of development.

Article two, the value to the State, to her wealth, power and civilization, of universal education.

Article three declares the realization of this impossible without the agency of a great profession, acting concertedly, wisely and zealously together, and that the members of this profession must be made to feel their position honorable, secure and independent.

Unless you are dissenters, I ask you to listen patiently to something I have to say about industrial education, for your help is very much needed in creating a desire for it.

On this new field of California, where we have only begun our work, and where there is only a glimmering apprehension on the part of the public of what this business of education is, and what it is worth, the informing and propelling influence must go out from the body of teachers themselves. Let us get a clear idea of the scope and value of our work, and of the wants of the people; let us, with firm and strong convictions of what is essential to the growth and prosperity of the State, be prepared to meet the most uninformed with some practical, tangible knowledge of the things with which they have to deal, and we shall create a public opinion, a demand for education, that will advance quite as fast as we can keep up with it. Our political system is of such a kind as to require this kind of effort. And our public school system, from the university to the primary school, must be a unit in motive and in method, in this respect.

The question has become one of vital importance to the nation, "How shall we educate our youth so that there shall be more farmers and mechanics in the land, and how shall we raise these pursuits to the rank they deserve in the hierarchy of industries?" It is in

vain to eulogize a calling whose votaries forsake it with every opportunity, and whose children turn from it with disgust. Congress might give every acre of the public domain to found Agricultural Colleges, making them not only free, but giving a bonus of land as a reward for attendance, and still their halls will remain empty, until the relations of agriculture to human welfare and to human nature are understood and carried into practice-until the farmer, out of his sense of privation, loss, failure and onesidedness, shall resolve that his children be as carefully cultured as his fields; that they shall grow up in pleasant homes, and lay up, if not dollars and cents, capital for after-pleasures of thought and memory.

Let us consider for a little wherein this business of agriculture fails to meet the higher demands of human nature; and why, in California, we are looking to the lower classes of foreigners for the permanent tillers of the soil.

The educational world has been aroused within the last few years to find a remedy for the growing aversion of American youth for pursuits most vital to the public welfare. What are the influences tending to the demoralization of young men by leading them to look to speculative enterprises, instead of steady industry, as a means of support? Is it the monotony of country life, or a want of the right kind of education?

How shall we create in this country, as there is in Europe, a higher attachment to the land than springs from a sordid self-interest, and make our paternal acres represent here, as they do in older lands, social standing, intelligence, leisure and culture?

By educating our youth, boys and girls, into a respect for these pursuits, and by multiplying in every possible way the social enjoyments and embellishments of country life.

The disadvantages of agricultural pursuits were clearly stated, and the remedies by which they can be overcome; social and isolated industries and their results were contrasted, and the methods of uniting the abstract and practical sides of industrial education fully presented. In a rapid survey of European progress, we were shown to what the immense recent development of Prussian power is mainly due.

A concise report of what has been done in America by Michigan and other States, what has been done by Congress, and what California will be able to accomplish for industrial education, if her people appreciate in any just degree the value of that system of free. instruction which, from the common school to the university, guarantees to every child the general culture and special training necessary to energize and economize, to lighten and enlighten all labor, until the measure of usefulness shall come to be the measure of greatness.

2. DUTIES OF THE STATE TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS."

At a time like the present, when the nation is one vast camp of instruction for armed men; when argument has ended in the right of appeal to trial by battle; when the one absorbing topic of each successive day is the brief telegram, telling of victories won, or of

hope deferred; when our eyes turn with longing gaze across the Sierras to catch the first breaking of the war clouds which fringe their summits-it might seem, at first thought, that a convention like this, which waives all military and political considerations, and relates only to the peaceful and almost unseen workings of the public schools, would be inopportune, and out of harmony with the spirit of the times.

But when we stop to ponder, and consider the vital relations which public schools hold to our national life; when we consider the agency which they have had in supplying the intelligence and the patriotism of the army; when we begin to feel, amid the terrible realities of war, that the schools have been the nurseries of loyalty, and the lack of them, the right arm of treason; when we begin to fully realize that the trite truism, "The only safety of a Republican Government is in the virtue and intelligence of the people," is no abstraction-there is a deep significance in this meeting, and in all such conventions, as concerning the future stability of the Government, and the integrity, power, glory and unity of the nation. Constitutions and laws may be bequeathed by one generation to its successors; but patriotism, intelligence and morality die with each generation, and involve the necessity of continual culture and education. Public opinion, the sum of the intelligence of the citizens of the nation, constructs and modifies all constitutions, and breathes vitality into all laws by which the people are governed.

Let the public opinion of one generation become demoralized by ignorance, or by passion resulting from ignorance, and any constitution is like gossamer to restrain and bind it.

It is an axiom in education that the great majority of the people can be well educated only by a system of Free Public Schools, supported by law, in which the property of the State is taxed to educate the children of the State.

"The first object of a free people," says Daniel Webster, "is the preservation of their liberty.' In a government where the people are not only in theory the source of all powers, but in actual practice are called upon to administer the laws, it is evident that some degree of education is indispensably necessary to enable them to discharge their duties, maintain and administer the laws, and to retain their constitutional rights. All nations recognize the necessity of educating the governing classes. In a Government like ours, either we must have officers unqualified for their duties, or we must be ruled by an educated and privileged aristocracy, or we must provide a system of public instruction which shall furnish a supply of intelligent citizens capable of discharging their various official trusts with honesty and efficiency.

If left to their own unaided efforts, a great majority of the people will fail through want of means to properly educate their children; another class, with means at command, will fail through want of interest. The people, then, can be educated only by a system of Free Schools, supported by taxation, and controlled directly by the people.

The early settlers of our country recognized this vital principle by providing by law for Free Schools, and by making schools and taxation as inseparably connected as taxation and representation.