character as those used in general examinations for grade transfer, and covered the ground gone over by the pupils from the beginning of the school year up to February 1. The papers were sent to the office of the Superintendent immediately after the close of the examination. Those of the District Schools were examined and their relative values fixed by a committee consisting of the Principals of the Intermediate Schools; and a committee of District Principals performed the same duty respecting the Intermediate papers, the Superintendent of Penmanship lending valuable aid to both committees. Of course time did not permit the committees to fix the value of each paper submitted to them, but enough of the papers of each class in the several grades were examined to fully satisfy these committees as to which were the best classes. In making up their decision the general appearance as well as correctness of the papers was taken into consideration. After the class was selected, no paper, however poor, was left out, except in the special branches of drawing and penmanship. In these two subjects selections were made.

In addition to drawing and penmanship Grades A and B were examined in problems, principles of arithmetic, grammar, geography, United States history, and English composition. Grade C was examined in the same subjects, excepting principles of arithmetic and United States history, but with the addition of physics. In the District Schools, Grades D and E were examined in penmanship, drawing, arithmetic, grammar, geography, object lessons, and composition. Grade F was examined in the same subjects, except geography and composition.

No special examination of the High Schools was had, but papers for the Exposition were selected from those prepared in the regular Semiannual Examination. Selections only were sent, on account of the great length of the papers in many of the subjects, which precluded the sending the work of a whole class. Even within the very rigid limitations adopted, there were enough papers taken to fill four good sized volumes.

In addition to the examination in English, an examination of the same grades of Intermediate and District Schools was had in German. This examination consisted in translations from German into English, and from English into German, and in German composition. The papers filled three volumes, and were taken from full classes, as in the English examination.

There were sent in all seven volumes of drawings, four volumes of penmanship; and in the general subjects, four volumes of High School papers, six volumes of Intermediate, and three of District papers. Be

sides these there were the three volumes in German already mentioned, making a total of twenty-seven volumes. The binding of these volumes was in full Russia, and done by Wilson, Hinkle & Co. No finer work of the kind was ever done in Cincinnati.

The books were on exhibition at the Board rooms one day before being shipped for New York, and were examined by a large number of our best citizens.

In the same box with the books were also sent a copy of the Annual Report of the Schools and an Educational Chart. The Chart gives all the leading statistics of the schools, also their grading, and the course of study for each grade. It was the joint work of Messrs. Forbriger and Burnett. It is needless to say the work was done in such a manner as to reflect the highest credit on both these gentlemen.

I am of the opinion that the Educational Department of the World's Exposition can not but be productive of much general good, by diffusing among all civilized nations more correct and definite knowledge respecting the organizations of the various school systems in countries most advanced in education, as well as of the actual workings of those organizations. The experiences of a thousand communities differing in their intellectual status, in their customs, and in the amount of wealth they possess, will be collected together and become common property. From these experiences no people, however happily situated, will be found too wise to learn.

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION.

Cincinnati was among the first of the cities of the country to adopt those methods of instruction which have been variously termed the "New Methods," the "Development Methods," or the "Natural Methods." Since then her school authorities have never doubted as to the superiority of these methods over the old. That there still lingers in our schools an unreasoning adherence to the traditional methods, with their dull, mechanical routine, is too true; but as the years go by they are losing their hold more and more, and our teachers are growing into nobler ideals of their work, and are forming truer conceptions of the relative values of the branches taught and of the methods of teaching them.

The time has arrived in our schools when, as it seems to me, we may point out some of the errors into which an oral course of instruction with object lessons as a part of it, is likely to run, without danger of mistaking the criticism for hostility to the course.

One error is the attempt to adhere to the oral course too long. The

object method, from the very nature of things, dispenses largely with the use of books, and relies on oral instruction almost exclusively. Now, in the primary grades of schools-that is, in the first three or four years of the child's school life, this method of teaching can not be too highly estimated. It is in these grades that the pupil needs and must receive the energizing influence which comes from contact with a living teacher, and which comes not from contact with dead books. Thus, through the tangible and easily understood things of the natural world, the child is gradually led, without violence, into the artificial world of books. Again, in the period of university education, is the oral method, which is not there a method of training, but takes on the form of the lecture, particularly appropriate. The student there has already learned to handle books and draw sustenance from them, and needs not the inspiration gained in the primary school from the material world as interpreted by the teacher, but that grander moral inspiration that comes from contact with a full and powerful living mind when engaged in the discussions of questions which call into activity all its highest powers.

Between the primary school with its oral methods and the university with its lecture system, there lies the great middle ground of the grammar and the high school, and in these two grades of schools are text-books most profitably used. In them is acquired not only the ability to use the faculties of the mind to the best advantage, but a thorough knowledge of how to get information out of books; but, though this great middle ground is the ground where text-books are most profitable, it by no means follows that the methods of the primary schools are to be entirely discontinued. On the contrary, the same habits of close observation with reference to classification and generalization, the same accustomed grasp of the concrete illustration are to be applied to the investigations of the higher schools. The extreme to be avoided is of fussing around among dry facts in a Gradgrind kind of way, until the mind, from long disuse of the wings of of fancy, loses the power for a bold flight into the higher regions of abstract reasoning and speculation. Nothing is so important to the young child in the beginning of its educational career as to feel solid ground beneath its feet at every step. Such a feeling gives confidence, boldness, and certainty. But the time comes when that child shall be called to grapple with thoughts not directly connected with material things-thoughts of the imagination, beautiful, grand, indistinct, and elusive—and yet other thoughts of duty, of immortality, and of God. Such thoughts he can not shut out of his mental world, if he would, and ought not to shut out, if he could. And as he shall grasp these

thoughts firmly and define them sharply, insomuch shall he differ from the uneducated and the ill educated. For the cultured mind not only has the thoughts which are common to the general mind, in their correct and well-defined outlines and in their harmonious relations to each other, but it becomes a seer, having visions of things invisible to to the common sight-visions of things having but a remote connection, at most, with the facts of the external world.

But object teaching may have method, or it may have none. I only appeal to the experience of all intelligent educators who have had an opportunity to observe the object lessons given in our schools by teachers who enter upon them as a disagreeable task set them by their board of education, when I say nothing more fragmentary and unsystematic could be imagined; and nothing could contribute more to stultify the intellect, unless it should be the cramming of words unconnected with ideas, which was so prominent a feature of the ancient regime. The course of presenting to children a mass of detached facts, having no logical relation to each other, is a sort of "No Thoroughfare." They enter upon it expecting to end their journey in some pleasant house of learning, and they come out-uowhere.

There is no principle in education more firmly established than that the several steps in a course of instruction should be connected together in a perfectly logical chain. In other words, the lesson of to-day should not be given as something separate and complete in itself, but as having an intimate connection with the lesson of to-morrow. Yet I will venture to say no principle is so constantly violated by teachers in every grade of schools, and who have adopted the most widely divergent methods of instruction.

But permit me to set forth somewhat more clearly and specifically some of the errors that accompany our methods in object lessons. It seems to me, in the first place, that too much time is often spent upon things that are already quite familiar to the pupil. Every observing teacher knows that children can be forced, however desperate the effort, only up to a certain pitch of excellence in their lessons, and that perfection can not be reached. But all observing teachers have not discovered the cause of this. The cause lies in the constitution of the mind itself. A too frequent presentation of the same thought wearies, and finally disgusts. The child may con over its lesson the second or even the third time with interest, but at the ninth or tenth all interest will have been lost, and all activity of mind, in connection with that lesson, will have ceased. More repetitions could have but one effect-to stultify the intellect. From this constitution of the mind it arises that the child can

concentrate its powers on a lesson only long enough to reach a certain maximum result, and all effort of attention beyond this will add nothing to that result. And just one thought growing out of this: Courses of study may be made too short as well as too long. A six months' course spread over a year will give, from the principle just enunciated, but little higher results, on examination at the end of the year, than would have been attained had the course been finished in six months and the examination made at the end of that period. Nothing is worse than playing at study, and trying to make believe that it is earnest, driving right along to a certain goal.

To take then, for lessons, day after day, a succession of objects not extraordinarily interesting in themselves, which the child constantly meets and is as familiar with as the teacher herself, must soon dull the keen edge of curiosity and become as sapless as the manifold repetition of words without ideas under the old system. Not that familiar objects are to be objected to at all times as a basis for lessons. There are purposes for which they are peculiarly adapted-oral language lessons and composition, for instance. But when they are used, except for the purposes just named, their obvious features should not be dwelt on, but the qualities that lie hidden away from the penetration of the untrained observer should be clearly brought out; and whether the object be a familiar one or otherwise, such an unfolding of hidden qualities will require a special preparation of the lesson on the part of the teacher. What an unenviable position does that teacher occupy, who, without having given a moment's thought to her subject, stands before her class to give an object lesson! In a very few minutes she exhausts herself and her knowledge, and sits down in a blind vacuity of mind pitiable to behold. And there are others, more ingenious, but no better prepared, who prolong the lesson by sudden and widely divergent plunges into the realms of the inane and commonplace, and return thence with little unconsidered trifles of information which could never be of the least possible use or interest to any intelligent creature.

error.

The faulty teaching which fails to connect together the several lessons of a series in a complete logical chain has already been spoken of. Teachers of object lessons are peculiarly liable to fall into this The teacher who takes a piece of chalk for the lesson of to-day, a sponge for that of to-morrow, the human body for a third day, a piece of ice for the fourth, and a school-bag for the fifth, may amuse her pupils and train them to habits of observation after a sort, but the general result will be of comparatively small value. Pupils are learning nothing as they should learn it. No succeeding step is the easier for