Dictation.

Where did your cousins buy their new cloaks? At Mr. Smith's, I think, and they buy their sugar there too.

There were ten chances for errors in spelling, and five each in capitals and punctuation. The exercise was written upon papers by all classes from Third Reader grade upward to the highest in the schools, all but two pupils being over nine years of age. The two classes of pupils were formed by placing together all the papers written by pupils from nine to twelve years of age for the younger, and all written by pupils above twelve years of age for the older. The average age of the younger class is ten and one-half years, of the older thirteen and one-half years.

Though the results do not actually include the work of all the schools or of all the class of towns under consideration, they include a number sufficient to be taken as fairly representing the average. The following are the results in general, and in the particulars of spelling, capitals, and punctuation :

Taking all the schools, the percentage of correct answers

was as follows:

For older class (average age, 13 years)

For younger class (average age, 10 years)

Both classes (average age, 12 years)

Total

Taking all the schools of any town, the highest percent

Taking any single school, including both classes, the

highest percentage correct was .

The lowest percentage correct was

24 40 3

The results of this exercise in particulars show that the pupils do not learn to spell by writing the words they will want to use

in writing; that they have a limited knowledge of the use of capital letters; and that most are extremely negligent, if not wholly untrained, in the use of marks of punctuation.

Spelling. Of the spelling it may be said that it would have been better had the words been spelt orally. This seems a poor satisfaction, since no demand is made upon anybody to spell words in this way. Full half the errors were made in spelling the words where, buy, their, there, and too. And these common words are those which the teacher does not think to give out in oral spelling, especially to older pupils. A word in the possessive case is seldom assigned to be spelt orally; yet more than ninety per cent of all the pupils failed in the spelling of "Smith's" in the above sentence. Far too much attention is given to oral, and far too little to written, spelling, in all grades of the schools.

The name of the teacher, which was required to be written upon each paper, was often misspelt. One pupil eleven years old, in, as his paper showed, a "grammer scool," wrote: "Whair did your cusons by thary new clower to mister smiths I think and thay bort thair suger thair to." The twelve pupils in one school spelt the word "grammar" in six different ways: four, "grammar;" three, "grammer;" two, "gramer;" and one each "granmar," "gramma," and "grama."

Capitals. In the use of capitals, since the exercise was so generally commenced with a capital, especially by the older class, it is probable that the second sentence would also have been, except as all punctuation was so generally omitted. Many pupils, older and younger, wrote "mister," some "misster," for "Mr.; but the most striking error, and it was very common, was the use of a small i for the pronoun

" I."

Punctuation. The largest percentage of errors, however, was in the punctuation of the exercise. The commas needed to set off "I think" were used by only one in fifty of the pupils; these were the exceptional ones, whose papers otherwise indicated careful training. The omission of the interrogation-point was universal in many schools; so was that of the period in the abbreviation "Mr." The only mark which would lead one to infer that any attention is given to punctuation in a majority of the schools was the period at the end of the exercise. About half the pupils had this. In very few indeed was the punctuation entirely correct: in many there was none whatever.

From the general result the inference must be that the pupils have but little practice in sentence-writing. The appearance of the papers indicates that in no school visited is there enough of this work done, that in but few is it a regular and frequent exercise, and that in nearly all it is only an occasional and formal one, and then is rarely or never attempted with pupils below the Third Reader grade.

There are very

To some extent language-lessons are taking the place of the drill in grammar formerly attempted with young pupils. In few schools that I observed has it yet resulted in the familiar and easy use of good English, which all our children ought to be taught certainly before the study of grammar is begun. Penmanship. The penmanship in the schools visited has, in general, one excellence, the writing can be read; the other requisites of a good handwriting are wanting. carefully written, and neatly kept, writing-books. some finely executed specimens in some schools. is much too largely confined to the copy-books and these fine specimens; there are few easy writers. In some of the schools where the copy-books were very fair, the pupils spent ten or fifteen minutes in writing upon the papers their name and age, with the names of the town and teacher. In but few schools did even the older pupils combine elegance with despatch in their written exercises.

I was shown The practice

The children are not much habituated to writing till they reach their ninth year. The first three or four years, perhaps the most important years for learning the forms of letters, are thus, so far as this branch of study is concerned, thrown away. In several schools there were children eight or nine years old who could not write their own names.

With the increased practice now had by many of the classes in written exercises, we may hope for more practical results in the future.

Geography.

The following is the list of exercises prepared

as tests in geography:

1. Draw a map of Massachusetts, locate and name four principal rivers (not branches). Locate Boston, Springfield, New Bedford, Nantucket, and your own town. Indicate with a cross the place of the highest land in the

State.

2. Name three leading industrial pursuits of the State of Massachusetts; giving first that which you think produces the most wealth.

3. Where in the United States can we obtain coal? iron? copper? gold? silver? lead ?

4. Name three large gulfs or bays on the coast of the United States, and with each an important river that flows into it.

5. Name the zone through which the equator passes, and give its width in degrees.

6. Name the highest mountains in Europe; also three rivers that rise in or near them, and tell into what body of water each river flows.

Some of the teachers, on seeing the questions, doubted the ability of their pupils to answer creditably these questions; in such cases, as the time spent in most schools was too short to examine in all the studies, the arithmetic or language work was given instead.

The examination in geography was taken by the grammar and high schools of several towns, and by classes of grammar grade in a number of mixed schools. The highest rank of any school was fifty-four per cent. The comparatively poor results -for such they seem can be accounted for in part by the fact that but few of the schools ever, and most never, have written exercises in geography. Probably this was the first test of the kind ever applied to many of the pupils; again, in many schools map-drawing is not a common exercise: in one of the larger towns I found no one in which it was practised. In none was the map of Massachusetts drawn with a fair degree of accuracy: in general it had a rectangular form, but in some instances the shorter dimensions were from east to west. The answers to the second, third, and fourth exercises were quite satisfactory. The greatest inaccuracies occurred in answering the first and fifth.

The results indicate a want of accurate knowledge of geography, and the absence of the best methods of acquiring the knowledge. In a few schools the recitations were topical, and from maps drawn by the pupils for the purpose of recitation. In none of the lower grades did I find any systematic instruction in form, position, distance, direction, etc., which are preliminary to the study of geography.

Arithmetic. The arithmetic was assigned to pupils of two grades, - to those from nine to twelve years old, which constituted the younger class; and to those twelve years old and upwards, which constituted the older class. The average age of the younger was ten and one-half years, and of the older fourteen and one-half years.

The tests submitted to the younger class were an example in column addition, consisting of eight items, each having three orders of units, some simple combinations, as 9 and 8, 35 less 7, etc., also the following problem :

A boy spent 9 cents for a whistle, 8 cents for a top, and then had money enough left to buy 2 bunches of fire-crackers at 4 cents a bunch: how much money had he at first?

For these young pupils the exercises were dictated, and then written upon the board, so that every opportunity was given for writing the numbers correctly. Taking all the classes, the percentages of correct answers ranged from sixteen to eighty-four. The results, even the poorest, did not surprise me they might those who have not applied similar tests. Something is to be allowed for the form in which the pupils are required to express their knowledge: these tests required them to express it in writing; the results in combinations would have been considerably higher if the answers had been oral. Of course the column addition was in the customary form, and in this the rank was low. In this, as in other branches, the pupils did not readily take the sense of what was dictated. The teaching of arithmetic in this grade is not sufficiently directed to things required for the higher grades of work, and for practical life. The list of problems submitted to the older pupils was as follows:

1. Find the average age of twelve persons whose ages are as follows:

2. If it requires 804 men working 12 days to build a road, how many men would it require working 9 days to do the same?

3. How many cups of coffee, each containing of a gill, in one gallon of coffee?

4. What interest should be paid on a note of $287.50 from May 15 to the 9th of the following June, the rate being 5 %?

5. How many inches on both sides of a slate 1 foot long and 6 inches wide?

6. Find the cost at 90 cents per square yard of a concrete walk on the front and side of a corner lot of land, the front of the lot being 8 rods long and the side 10 rods, the walk being outside of these measurements and 9 feet wide.