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evils peculiar to our times. Moral training should enter more into the educational fabric. Teachers should feel deeply their moral responsibility. Parents should aid them in their work, and encourage them to prosecute it as of prime importance. While all sectarianism should be. shut out of the schools, the Bible in all its moral and religious authority should reign there. "A sound and scriptural moral culture must attend the cultivation of the intellect, if we would see the beneficent results expected from education. The Bible at last brought home to the heart with power, is the hope of freedom and social progress in every land."

School Committee.-A. W. CHAFFIN, J. W. PUTNAM, JAMEs Fletcher, I. H. PUTNAM, B. F. HUTCHINSON, F. H. PUTNAM, C. P. PRESTON, ISRAEL W. ANDREWS.

GROVELAND.

We say to

Teachers should not scold or deal habitually in menace. teachers, indicate as clearly and emphatically as you may your fixed purposes, upon the matter of penalties, as upon other matters. But every loose threat enfeebles your authority, demoralizes the school; and a chronic habit of threatening would counteract and neutralize the most splendid gifts with which an instructor was ever endowed. Say what you mean to do, when that meaning has become quite clear to your own mind; then quietly, firmly proceed to keep your word.

Every man who has been called to the vocation of a scholar knows the value, we should rather say the invaluableness, of pure air. Experience has taught him that the attempt to study vigorously in a corrupted atmosphere, is both self-defeating and ruinous. Soon the face is flushed, the head full and throbbing, the whole system pervaded by a vague, gnawing disquiet. The physiologist accounts for these distressing sensations. He knows that the whole frame, under such circumstances, is suffering the effects of a subtle poison-poison; and nothing is required but more of the same effect to produce immediate death. Now remember that each pair of healthy lungs taint about one gallon of air per minute and then think of fifty pupils in one of those pent-up school rooms pumping out fifty gallons per minute of air now unfit for use, and requiring fifty gallons of fresh atmosphere in their place. Remember that so far as this demand is not met, the blood begins to be vitiated. Remember that from the excitement of brain which study induces, an unusual share of this vicious blood is thrown to the head, encouraging every disease that can arise from disordered nerves. And in view of such facts does not the necessity of spacious and well ventilated school

rooms become apparent. One member of the Committee went during the year under the review, to visit one of the schools in the fourth district, and upon opening the door, involuntarily stepped back and suppressed his breath. The air was actually fetid. A half hour spent in it gave him an intolerable headache, and spoiled that day. Money could not purchase his permission for a child of his to be pent up and driven to study in such an atmosphere. How many head and nervous disorders originate in such rooms we have no statistics to show, but they must be many. Then by sitting long in such rooms, the ability is lost to resist cold, and coughs; catarrhs and consumptions follow.

The effect of foul air upon the discipline of the school, the progress in study, cannot be overrated, and will surely be immensely underrated by all who have bestowed upon the subject no especial attention. A scholar enters such a school-room with the most fervent purpose to practice a manly diligence. But soon after bending to his book there is an unaccountable blur upon his brain; he summons his resolution, and tries to study, but the more he tries the harder it is to try; a nameless uneasiness lays hold upon him, a vague aching weariness steals into every limb and muscle; at last he surrenders at discretion to circumstances, and tries to obtain relief by getting up some interesting frolic or quarrel with his neighbor. It is well if this experience long repeated does not at length beget in him a disgust for his books, for school, for all connected therewith. And in this connection the writer cannot forbear quoting a sentence from that report of his colleague, to which allusion has been made. Says that gentleman, "The pain and uneasiness which a child experiences from an uncomfortable situation in school, he will very probably associate with his books and studies, or with the instructor and regulations of the school." He does not recognize the sources of his disquiet and dissatisfaction; he only knows that his studies are tiresome, that the school is unpleasing, that the explanations of the teacher, or text-book, seem obscure. Little accustomed to self-inspection, he does not know that he is irritated at the very moment when every fibre of his frame is quivering with irritability. Many a boy who at school acquires the reputation of being restless, indocile and mischievous, is simply more susceptible than most to influences that tease and exasperate the nervous system. Nor must it be forgotten that these sources of languor, irritability and displeasure affect the teacher no less than the pupils. And though their effects may there be overruled by a judgment of larger scope and a will of firmer poise, yet they at least divert to the effort at self-control, a portion of that energy which might otherwise be expended in the instruction and animation of the children.

School Committee.-DAVID A. WASSON, GARDNER B. PERRY.

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IPSWICH.

Your Committee desire not only the literary, but also the moral and religious improvement of the young in our schools. And it has been their aim to promote it. While endeavoring to encourage and animate them in their studies, they have cautioned them carefully to avoid those vices which prevail in the world, especially to avoid profane swearing, that sin, so awful in itself, and so lamentably common at the present day. And it is highly gratifying to them to be assured, that much less language of this kind has been heard among the members of our schools the year past, than in preceding years. And they indulge the hope, that the time. will soon come when no scholar, attached to either of our schools, and no youth in this town, will trifle with the great and holy name of Him, who in awful majesty has said, and still says, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." They hope the time is at hand, when all our children and youth will be bright patterns of every Christian virtue; when, in particular, they will obey their parents, respect the aged, and fear God.

young,

In order to the promotion of morality and religion in connection with knowledge, among the it is desirable that the Bible be more read in our schools. This book contains those truths which are best adapted to promote true virtue and sound piety, while they are entirely free from all that is sectarian. Your Committee accord fully in the opinion expressed at the session of the National Convention of the Friends of Education, held in Philadelphia, in 1850, that "in the common schools, which are, or ought to be open to the instruction of the children of alldenominations, there are many whose religious education is neglected by their parents, and who will grow up in vice and irreligion, unless they receive it from the common school teacher. It seems to us to be the duty of the state to provide for the education of all the children morally, as well as intellectually, and to require all the teachers of youth to train the children up in the knowledge and practice of the principles of virtue and piety. The Bible should be read in all the schools in our land. It should be read as a devotional exercise, and be regarded by teachers and scholars as the text-book of morals and religion. The children should be early impressed with the conviction that it was written by the inspiration of God, and that their lives should be regulated by its precepts." Let select portions of scripture be read daily in our schools, and the best moral effects will follow.

We answer in the

Shall the Bible be banished from our schools? words of one of the most distinguished civilians and orators of our State

"Never―never, so long as a piece of Plymouth rock remains big enough to make a gun flint out of."

The best means that have been or can be devised for spreading knowledge, morality and religion, through our country, is teaching in the common schools those branches of education which are necessary for every man in his intercourse in society, and in the performance of his duty, such as reading, writing, arithmetic, and the principles of morality contained in the Bible.

It is the daily desire of one of your committee of the last year, who has visited the schools of this town more than any other man living, and will be his daily desire during the remnant of his life-and in this desire his brethren cordially concur with him-that all the children connected with our schools may be distinguished by sound learning, and true piety and virtue, and be a great blessing to the community while they live, and transmit a happy influence to future generations.

School Committee.-DAVID T. KIMBALL, JAMES APPLETON, GEORGE R. LORD, J. E. BOMER, JOHN A. NEWMAN.

METHUEN.

And we are to beware, lest in our eagerness to educate our children, we overtask their strength. "It is the vice of the age," says a writer on this subject, "to substitute learning for wisdom; to educate the head, and forget there is a more important education necessary for the heart. The reason is cultivated at an age when nature does not furnish the elements necessary to a successful cultivation of it, and the child is solicited to reflection when it is only capable of sensation and emotion. When the studies of mature years are stuffed into the head of the child, people do not reflect on the anatomical fact, that the brain of an infant is not the brain of a man; that to expect a child's brain to bear with impunity the exertions of a man's, is as irrational as it would be to hazard the same sort of experiments on its muscles. The first years of life should be devoted to the education of the heart, to the formation of principles, rather than to the acquirement of what is termed knowledge. Special attention should be given, both by parents and teachers, to the physical development of the child. Pure air and exercise are indispensable; and wherever they are withheld, the consequences will be certain to extend themselves over the whole future life."

School Committee.-J. C. PHILLIPS, B. F. BRONSON.

NAHANT.

It is the design of the system of public instruction in the common school to furnish the rising generations with the necessary training to enable them to participate in all of the affairs of active life; to discipline and strengthen their minds, and to form in them habits of thought and reflection; to purify and ennoble the fountain of their affections; to cultivate a modest and unassuming deportment, and to assist them to form just ideas of human life in all its relative duties-to God, as their creator, preserver and benefactor, in whose revealed word is found the true lesson of faith, obedience and love; to their parents, as their rightful guardians, whose requirements should secure their unqualified obedience; to their teachers, whose faithful endeavors to promote their welfare and improvement, should receive their grateful acknowledgments and kind considerations; to their country, whether as constituents, or as public servants, meeting every emergency with patriotic and intelligent discrimination, and discharging every trust with fidelity and strict integrity; and to mankind at large, whose just demands upon each individual calls upon them to contribute as they may be able, to the general stock of human happiness and human improvement.

This is education in its proper sense, differing as widely from that which is too often called such, consisting of the mere ability to repeat. certain abstract rules for the solution of book problems, and definitions of terms, which leave but feeble conception in the mind of their true import, as substance differs from the shadow.

It is in proportion only as our schools, or any school, shall secure this great end, that their true degree of usefulness can be ascertained.

The office of instructor to youth, is one of responsibility far beyond any other calling in life, in many respects, and can be successfully filled only by persons of the purest heart and most circumspect life. Upon them in a good degree depends the formation of the character of the men and women of the next generation.

What scope is here for the achievement of the grandest results, whether we consider its present magnitude, or its future duration; for it belongs to the province of the teacher to call into active exercise the latent powers of the young mind, and to fire it with an energy, according to his ability, which will perpetuate itself and become coextensive with the period of mental existence.

To the thoughtful observer of the various phases of the youthful mind of the present generation, the light esteem in which the advice and counsel of those who by experience and observation are entitled to their

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