11. Treatment of object-teaching.

12. Some examples of conversation.

The second part is to be the reader for the use of pupils.

The work is by a pupil of Denzel, but is distinguished by its extraordinary simplicity from the one to be noticed next, by Wrage. Not merely skill in the catechetical treatment of material constitutes the good teacher (and from pages 82 to 90 we find masterly conversations), but also his command of the material. But only he has command over his material who understands how to select it in reference to the nature of childhood; and from this author we learn to know his conceptions of a teacher, and a better could not be wished for; "the enemy of all shams, all flunkery; the friend of simplicity, of sound discretion—in short, one who really knows the nature of childhood."

Of this loving absorption into the nature of childhood, the material for reading and the inculcation of principles in the infant is eloquent testimony. It is a preparatory book for the teacher in behalf of object-teaching, and a copious reader for the lower classes. The problem of how object-teaching can stand in the closest connection with the reader, and yet be independently progressive, is here solved in the happiest manner. What the teacher has hitherto observed and described, the children read after him, and thus reach two things: progress in understanding what they read, reading and repeating with feeling, and comprehension of what they have heard.

13. Object-teaching in the People's School; or, Observing, Thinking, Speaking, and Writing, as the Foundation for Physical Studies, for Style, and Grammar. By J. H. FUHR and J. H. ORTMANN. In four double sheets. Four sheets of Object-teaching, interspersed with Sentences, Fables, and Stories, in Prose and Poetry, arranged according to the Four Seasons. Bound in with the Object-teaching, four sheets of Exercises, in all Styles, for all Classes, after the Preparatory Class in Grammar. Second enlarged and improved Edition. Dillenburg, 1873.

According to this author, observation is the element and foundation of all knowledge; and object-teaching, pursued according to its aim, is the only instruction that can be materially and formally truly preparatory and fundamental for the collected instruction of the people's schools, which can rest only upon the firm ground of observation. Object-teaching must strive for correct observation and attention, clear conceptions, correct expression of thoughts, acquisition of useful knowledge of practical things, and cultivation of feeling. A full supply of poetic material serves for the latter purpose and point of connection.

Contents: In twenty conversations are, first, preparatory exercises offered to the teacher, which aim at exciting the feelings of the child, so that it may be confiding and animated. Then the children are led on according to the principle, from the near to the remote, by the following circles of observation School, house and yard, garden, meadow, field and wood. In order to give the best possible intuitive foundation for physical science, the animals in the family and yard are described, so that they are understood to be representatives, or types of the one, two and four-hoofed

:

Then

animals, the beasts of prey, the insect-eaters, the rodents, the fowls, doves, swimming-birds, swamp-birds, singing-birds, and birds of prey. follows the contemplation of trees, shrubs, and herbs.

The second part may be regarded as a complete course of natural history, and used with much benefit.

The second part of

The third sheet is peculiarly of Object-teaching. this treats of the premonitions of Spring in the plant world. Walk in the garden, and naming of the things found in it. Plants; growth; (as specialties, the snowdrops, the garden violets, daisies.) Then follows a premonition of Spring in the animal world (field-larks, stork, cuckoo, the white wagtail). Then the Spring itself; (the usher of Spring is the common primrose.) At last, the fruit-garden (gooseberries, currant-bushes, cherry-trees, and damson-trees). In every lesson, the cultivation of the senses, of language, and of feeling is aimed at. By interspersed speeches, sentences, riddles, fables, tales, in prose and verse, the instruction contains the right nourishment for the understanding, the heart, and the life. A little volume is soon to follow this part, which will contain the rest of the material, so far as concerns the domain of natural history and physics, (mineralogy, domestic economy, and natural science.) The catechetical treatment of many of the lessons, lend, by their numerous suggestions, a peculiar value to the whole work. As to the rest, the author is of the opinion that the material offered in the school should not be used in a slavish manner, as it lies before the view. These materials offer much for the teacher, because they will excite him to studies and contemplations in Nature herself.

Of the first three parts of this splendid work, only the two first lie before us upon object-teaching, and the first of the exercises in style; a definite judgment of it is, therefore, not yet possible. The splendid fullness of the useful material surprises the reader, and he feels delighted with perceiving that he has to do with two teachers, who give nothing but what they have proved by long practice. Every lesson seems to be given as if the talk had been held in the class. The arrangement of the exercises in style are appropriate, so far as we have been able to look them over. If we dared to make one criticism (snap our fingers at the authors), it would be this: It seems as if by the parallel contents of the exercises in observation and style, a certain monotony would be unavoidable in the later propositions. The pupil will rarely go farther in this field than to descriptions and stories. Pictures overtax his powers. The real mine from whence he will draw his compositions, outside of the nature that forms his surroundings, is human life, fable, parable, proverbs, universal history, and, above all, literature, with its incomparable riches. But we trust to the pedagogic skill of the authors, that they will avoid monotony, and that they will draw from their excellent material with proper judgment. The whole work is so important, by the wealth of its contents and the abundance of its methodical directions, that every teacher ought to be acquainted with it. We are still so poor in proper apparatus for objectteaching, that we are glad to mention a book that has already found a place for itself in the world's literature.

14. Fifty Fables for Children. In Pictures. By OTTO SPEKTER. Gotha: Fr. Perthes.

Object Teaching and Instructions in Composition, and Pictures as an Aid to these. By SCHUMACHER, Seminary Teacher at Brühl, and Cupper's Head Teacher at the Deaf-mute Institution at Brühl. Third unaltered edition. Bohn, 1874.

An aid is here offered to teachers, which will remind them in many respects of what is already known. The line of the leaves corresponds to the earlier tablets of pictures by Wilke; some of them have nearly the same contents. But they surpass Wilke's pictures in naturalness of representation; some of them make almost an artistic impression. They are too small for class instruction, and in this respect are decidedly inferior to Strübing's pictures.

The above-mentioned little treatise contains much that is good upon the treatment of picture tablets; it is particularly to be observed that the authors' aim continuously at the education of the child, to coöperation in the instruction, and to his development in freedom and self-reliance; they are both enemies to all wooden examinations and catechising. On the other side we must be careful to warn the teachers not to trust too much to their capability, of being able to begin something with the pictures by a sudden leap in reference to the material, without sufficient preparation. In the little labyrinth of these intuitions, and of the appropriate forms of speech, there is no course possible without a guiding thread, but only aimless wandering.

The following hints cover the chief contents of this treatise:

1. The aim of instruction does not require that the pictures should be handled as a series.

2. Every picture contains a series of single scenes, which are united again in a determined point of view in another picture comprising the whole. When a picture is used for the first time, let it lie near, so that the glance of the child, without dwelling long upon the details, may first sweep over the whole. To this natural want of the child let the teacher attend, and turn later to the description of the single groups, which are separated from each other in the picture.

3. To keep to one picture until all the groups have been treated, is hardly necessary to be suggested. In general, it will be well, when the teacher has become wearied, to put the object-teaching, with reference to the material, and with intervals of other instruction, in the closest possible connection with the daily life and its occurrences, with the seasons and their appropriate phenomena and occupations.

4. It is necessary that the teacher, before beginning upon his lesson, should determine for himself what picture and what group he will use, that he may thoroughly investigate the picture (and as far as possible from the children's standpoint), and bring to his own mind and make clear to his own consciousness the outer and inner connection of the details represented, what is determined at the moment of going on by the picture, what was probably the action preceding, and what will follow it.

5. There will be no objection to the teachers noticing his previous study

of the picture in the closest connection with their conception of it, in conversation with the children; but he must be cautious not to make it a hindrance to the conversation.

6. In the conversation, the teacher should at first keep himself in the background as much as possible. He suggests the subject, sets the talk in motion, and leaves it to the children (?) to carry it on, guides their attention to new points of view, deepens or generalizes the comprehension of the thing. Errors of fact or logic he corrects or leaves to their correction; errors of language he must treat forbearingly, and never go so far with this as to turn the children's attention from the thing to the form.

7. With respect to the development of High German, it will speedily make itself manifest, if the teacher unites the pupils of the first and those of the second school year in the conversations upon the pictures. For the second class, a useful lesson in writing might be taken from it, after the conclusion of the conversation.

8. It is to be recommended generally, that the teacher at the close of the conversation shall make a repetition of what has been said in reference to the things lying about, and the little digressions that have taken place, and make it in such a manner that he now will say more himself, while the children listen silently, or follow, and merely take part by answering questions that may arise.

15. Instruction in Language in the Elementary School. A Guide for Teachers, by H. R. RUEGG, Professor in University. Berne, 1872.

This work is designed for a guide for instruction in language in elementary classes. There are the three first-school classes, according to the plan of the Berne schools. The author gives that direction to object-teaching which makes its difficulties lie rather in the cultivation of the senses than in language. Instruction in language is not with him dead, abstract exercise in thinking, but the greatest possible and most living conversations with it, and practice in it. In the lower class only the intuitive thinking and thinking intuition is considered, and everything must be kept at a distance which would lead to empty abstractions. So the elementary teaching of language is at the same time instruction in things, and all instruction in things at that stage is instruction in language also. There is also a stage of the progress in which the two are intimately connected; by which a root, as it were, is formed, out of which at a later stage, both subjects of instruction grow as independent stems. This intimate connection and interpenetration of both sides is Object-teaching.

The little work contains the first instruction in Reading and Writing; Object-teaching, and Exercises in Grammar; everything in the most intimate connection possible, although we could have wished it different, perhaps, in the arrangement of the Grammatical Exercises. The whole is an ingenious, wise work, and deserves a wide spread on account of the principles brought into use and applied.

RAMUS AND HIS EDUCATIONAL LABORS.

MEMOIR.

PETER RAMUS (Pierre la Ramee), whose life and labors present a summary view of the educational condition and reforms of the sixteenth century in France, was born in 1515, in an obscure village in Vermandois. His was descended from a noble family in Liege, which was driven away from Burgundy in the troubled reign of Charles the Bold. His grandfather was reduced to great poverty, and to manual labor, as was also his father, and when a boy, the future teacher and author was a pig-watcher. But in this stern school of poverty and early labor he acquired that resolute purpose which overcame ordinary weaknesses and defied the most formidable hindrances. On the death of his father, when quite a lad, he hurried to Paris, where he was kindly received by an uncle, a carpenter by trade, who gave him shelter, purchased a few books, and sympathized in his purpose to become a scholar. When these slender resources failed, he entered the domestic service of a master regent, who lived in the College of Navarre, one of the most renowned institutions of the University. By day he performed such labors as were assigned, hearing portions of the lectures by stealth, and by night read and meditated on what he had heard. In the course of eight or ten years he worked his way through the long and winding course which led to the degree of master-and at the age of twenty, he defended with such fertile resources of argument and rhetoric his bold thesis-assailing the soundness of the whole Aristotelian philosophy, against all comers, for an entire day, as to obtain his degree amid a storm of applause. To enable him to pay the fees exacted by the University, his mother and uncle united their slender means the former parting with articles of house-keeping, and the latter alienating a portion of his little field for this purpose-a sacrifice which the poor scholar made every effort immediately to restore, and ever after remembered his family with gratitude. He at once exercised his privilege as master by teaching logic and belles-letters in the College of Mans, and soon afterwards of Ave-Maria, and gathered quite a crowd of listeners.