destitution of moral principle, by which its youth have been corrupted. To prevent this let every teacher be the embodiment of truth. Let it constitute the great ruling principle of his life. Let it inspire his words and rule his actions. With such a character the teacher is prepared to undertake and to accomplish the highest moral culture. As he moves along among his pupils, streams of living influence flow out from him, as streams from a never-failing fountain. Every step he takes touches some spring of human action and gives it a right direction. Every word of wisdom that falls from his lips, appeals to some higher principle of human nature and leaves its impress for good. He is no automaton. He breathes the vital air of heaven and his very soul thrills with the higher life to which he would lead each member of his flock. With him character is everything-position nothing. And as the Master is finally to draw all men to him by the power of his own matchless character, so the teacher is to attract the hearts of the young to virtue, and purity, and goodness, and truth, by the power of his blameless life. I would have the teacher give but few rules. I have seen a pamphlet filled with by-laws give a College Faculty more trouble in their execution, than the framers ever conceived. A multiplicity of laws will invite evasion and produce insubordination. They become temptations to wrong and incentives to sin. But one general rule is all that is necessary. Do right. Let the teacher place himself at once in sympathy with his pupils. He has the same love for truth. He will do right himself and they must imitate his example. A few details will of course be added to this one ruling principle, and then there will be, there can be no evasion. With the teacher there should be no intermeddling either from parents or trustees. It is very sad to the hope of the school when such interference weakens the authority or lessens the influence of the conscientious teacher. Trustees must employ only such men as have their entire confidence and then give up all into their hands. For a teacher to have to submit to a code of laws prepared by others without experience in teaching and with notions of government wild and fanciful, is at once humiliating to him and destructive to the best moral influence. No, the teacher must be supreme among his subjects. He must be both the Legislative and Executive power. His will enlightened by reason and sanctified by grace must be the great controlling power while his judgment and conscience must make such demands upon his pupils as their good may require.

When discipline is required and punishment must be inflicted it must be done with a steady and firm but gentle hand. In rare instances it may be attended to before the school. In most instances even a reproof should be administered privately. The culprit should be called to a private room and there with all the influence of truth, gentleness, patience, and firmness, let the fault be corrected and the offender saved. Alone with a teacher whose character is respected, whose confidence he desires to enjoy, and whose feelings he would not wound on any account, an offending scholar can not remain perverse for any length of time. He must yield to an influence which at such a time is almost omnipotent. He must sink overwhelmed with shame, overcome by a sense of guilt, filled with remorse, and sincerely penitent for the wrong committed. Then is the time to

kindle an aspiration and arouse a purpose at once noble, sincere, and firm. Then is the time too to forgive and to forget. A constant recurrence to an offence which has been corrected and forgiven will blunt the feelings, quench the rising desire, and repress the nascent aspiration. It will do away with all the good effects of the private interview and will tend to demoralize the school. In moral training the child must be taught at a very early period to seek perfection of character. He must be taught to shun temptation, to avoid evil company, and to fight bravely against all the influences and associations which could lead him to sin. He must be made to feel that a high character is of priceless worth, and that it must be secured at whatever cost. With this training comes all other high culture. The moral powers cultivated and purified and it follows as a matter of course that no other right or refining culture will be neglected. It is then important to the state and to the church, to the individual and to society. It will elevate our standard of morality, give us a sense of our dignity at home, and will increase our glory abroad. It will ennoble our manhood, refine and purify our womanhood, increase the happiness of home, give greater purity to our social intercourse, and add countless years to the life of the nation. It will promote justice, widen benevolence, lessen the probabilities of war and mitigate its horrors. Crime will be diminished and virtue will add to her own votaries by the thousands. Ignorance will be enlightened, the vicious reformed, and the lost saved. Its importance cannot be over-estimated and the means of its accomplishment cannot be too diligently sought after. It embraces the thoughts of the intellect, the feelings of the heart, and the determinations of the will. It includes soul and body. It demands the entire subjugation of both to truth, justice, and GoD. It cannot be satisfied until every appetite is subdued and every principle made pure. Beginning with infancy, moral culture goes on forever. Begun by the mother and continued by the faithful teacher it will not be complete until, for countless ages it has been carried on by the operation of the Spirit of Holiness and Love. To this great object the moral training of our race-the entire remedial system lends its holiest influence, and upon it God has bestowed the profoundest wisdom and the tenderest love. The dispensations of Divine Providence are working to this end, and the church has no other mission than its accomplishment. The teacher then-the humblest in our infant schools-is a coworker with God. His mission is sublime, his duties high, and if faithfully performed will lead him to a glorious destiny. If by the attainment of a character such as I have endeavored to describe, he shall wield an influence which shall close the heart to vice and open it to virtue, which shall lessen human misery and vastly increase the amount of human happiness, which shall raise education to a higher moral standard and lift up man to a higher plane of thought, feeling, and action, he will have accomplished a destiny the sublimest attainable by man.

In conclusion I declare in this presence and under a sense of responsibility rendered oppressive by the importance of the subject and the occasion that in all this great work, the teacher must humbly seek the assistance of Him, who is the fountain of all wisdom, purity, and truth. He must depend for guidance upon the teachings of the blessed Bible, at once the light of our civilization and the only infallible guide of our race.

The President appointed W. A. BELL, of Indiana, J. L. PICKARD, of Illinois, Mrs. KRAUS-BOELTE, of New York, Miss SARAH E. RICHMOND, of Maryland, and Mrs. M. A. STONE, of Connecticut, a committee on the Nomination of Officers.

Adjourned.

Second Day's Proceedings.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1877.

The Department met at 3 P. M. Mr. and Mrs. KRAUS not having reached the Hall, Mrs. C. J. HILDRETH, Supervisor of the Kindergarten Schools of St. Louis, was called upon for some remarks. She complied by presenting some arguments in favor of Kindergarten instruction.

Prof. JOHN KRAUS then read the following paper on

THE KINDERGARTEN (ITS USE AND ABUSE) IN AMERICA. The popular mind has a strange and erroneous idea that the Kindergarten is a school. That it is still but little understood in this country even with some who advocate it and try to explain and write on "What a Kindergarten is," shows the very spoliation of the word, viz:-Kindergartening, Kindergartenism, gardening of Kindergarten, &c. Now it may be that in English almost any simple noun may be used as a verb without any change whatever in its form, and in like manner almost any verb may be used as a noun; nouns used as adjectives and adjectives as nouns ; but gardening of Kindergarten is under any and under all circumstances sheer nonsense. It is hardly necessary to state here that the literal meaning of Kindergarten is children's garden. However: "Garten" in German does not mean the same thing as garden in English. The name Garten in the German language means a place of recreation. It need not be a flower garden. nor need it have trees, shrubs, or grass. If only it is a place of resort where there is amusement, enjoyment, or recreation of a harmless nature, such a place is a garten. Garten in general signifies, according to JACOB GRIMM, circumference, circle, ring. According to others an encompassed, circumscribed space. The comprehension circle, harmonious circle, expresses the name garten. FROEBEL called his institution Kindergarten because he thought it necessary that a garden should be connected with it, and because he wished symbolically to indicate by this name that children resemble the plants of a garden, and should be treated with similar There lies however, at the bottom of FROEBEL'S education a general human idea, as indicated in his first book “Education of Mankind." He named therefore his first Kindergarten, General German Kindergarten, and his intention was to transplant it not only to the other states of Eu

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rope, but also to America. In regard to the latter, I have several letters written by FROEBEL, in 1851 and 1852, in which he repeatedly made propositions and suggestions, how the Kindergarten could and should be introduced into America. The term Kindergarten, of course, is German, and has passed with the thing it signifies into all parts of the Continent, also to England and America. Here and there it may be called Gardini d' Infanzia" in Italy; "Jardin d' Enfants" in France and Belgium; "Infant Garden" in England and America; but in fact, the thing itself is known everywhere under the name "Kindergarten." But nobody speaks about Russian, Prussian, Austrian, Italian, French, and English Kindergarten, applied to Russian, Prussian, Austrian, Italian, French and English wants. Thus it may be seen that persons who label their schools "American Kindergartens," adapted to American wants do it under false pretence in order to make money out of the popularity of the name. One could just as well speak about American Christianity, American Beatitudes, American "Sermon on the Mount," American "Golden Rule," etc., adapted to American wants, as to speak about an American Kindergarten, adapted to American wants.

It is thought by many in this country that FROEBEL gives to all children the same materials, prepared beforehand so that they may make use of them; and that he obliges them to draw from these materials determined and foreseen results-However it should be borne in mind that his method aims to give nothing but the material for play; that a real fusion of learning, work, and play is only possible, when the objects, which serve the child in its play, are not ready made, but invite independent mental and bodily action upon them. Ready-made playthings hinder childish activity, and train to laziness and thoughtlessness; and hence are much more injurious than can be expressed. The impulse to activity turns to the destruction of the ready-made things and becomes at last a real spirit of destructiveness. Also mere mechanical work of children, that which is done without exciting the imaginative faculties, is likewise injurious, because thereby the intellect becomes inactive. There is in this country too much of a disposition to make patterns and elaborate material for the Kindergarten; but this is a deviation which annuls FROEBEL's principles. His method is the very opposite. The child receives only simple material, which he can transform, or compose into new forms within the limits of their nature. It cannot too often be repeated, that all those persons who use patterns in the Kindergarten have no claim whatever to be considered as true Kindergartners.

Of course it wants more than mere sight-seeing to do justice to the Kindergartner on the part of those, who write on the subject. Under the head, "A German Kindergarten," Dr. JOHN HURST, after giving a description of how the principal Kindergarten in Bremen is conducted, says: "The children have patterns before them for everything they are to do, and the teacher personally superintends them in each little labor, when every pain is taken to impart as much elementary instruction as possible." In passing I will but mention, that at the time when Dr. HURST visited the Kindergarten in Bremen, it was conducted by Miss GRABAU, a competent and genuine Kindergartner, and a closer observation would have con

vinced him that he has been mistaken. A still greater mistake has been made by Dr. E. SEGUIN, of New York, when he asserts: "The Kindergartner's aim is only to give object lessons." Dr. SEGUIN is a French physician of international reputation for his investigations and experiments in the training of idiots. But from the way in which he describes the Kindergarten it is plain, that he never has seen a genuine Kindergarten. In his opinion "The Kindergartner's aim is only to give object lessons." Now, what does he mean by object lessons? There is a kind of teaching that never fails to produce in the learner an eagerness to know and to do, that is created by interest in the object of teaching alone. But there is no English term to designate this kind of teaching. Object-teaching is not broad enough, and subject-teaching not sufficiently explicit. The German Anschauungs Untericht (intuition-instruction) covers the whole ground, but it has no English equivalent. "Seeing-teaching," its literary translation, may be made with an explanation to express its meaning. Seeingteaching uses words only to place the thing taught, before the mind. The definition, or rule is seen in the process; the conditions of the problem are seen, and the reasoning, the solution is seen. The ideas recalled by words are seen. Seeing in this sense, is not only the sight of the objects, outside of the mind, but the inward mental sight of the subject-object. Seeingteaching involves the clear presentation of every thing taught by the objects themselves, or by means of words and illustrations in the objective method and the method of investigation combined. Thus it will be seen that the German term (Anschauungs Untericht) means a very different thing from Object-Lessons. One of the best authorities on the subject in this country, Mr. E. E. White, stated years ago, that three-fourths of the Object Lessons are mere cramming lessons, and become a means for giving the children facts and information about a variety of things, many of which are superficial, illogical, and heterogeneous. The "American Educational Monthly," in an article on Object Teaching, after speaking on "Model Lessons," fearfully and wonderfully made in violation of every rule of true teaching, not to say every principle of common sense, says "the most vicious teaching that is done at this day, is misnamed 'Object-Teaching." I know very well, that the better part of teachers in this country do not consider and treat so-called object lessons in that way, but properly speaking as lessons on our ideas of objects, (things and their qualities and relations.) But also in this sense, they are out of place in the Kindergarten. After all, the educational possibilities, which Dr. SEGUIN indicates, are entirely in the future. He would relieve the plethora of the school rooms in large cities by sending the children in sections to the gymnasium and the music-room, and to the various parks, gardens, aquariums, and museums of the locality. But we must not forget that it is salutary to remember that the system which revolutionized modern education, began by insisting that mothers should nurse their own infants and give free career to their limbs. In his time ROUSSEAU could hardly have attempted or achieved more than this. Later philosophers have gone further back than

* Compare: Vienna International Exhibition, 1873. Report on Education. By E. SEGUIN, E. D. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1875.