Mill School.―This school has remained in charge of the same teachers as last year. The average attendance has been about the same.

It has been hoped that arrangements would be made by the authorities of the Wamsutta and Potomska mills, by which the children in their employ might enter the school each three months in classes. By so entering, they would be able to study with more system, and the efficiency of the school would be greatly increased.

The difficulties in the way are great, owing in part to the fluctuating nature of the mill population, and in part to the unwillingness of many of the parents to dispense with the money which their children can earn by continued labor.

The Mill School is based on no class distinctions, but on the simple and evident fact that a child who attends school but a few weeks in each year cannot receive the kind of instruction which he needs in a graded school. If it were as well for such children to enter a graded school, then the Mill School might be discontinued; but years of careful observation convince us that such is not the case.

Drawing.-Instruction in this branch of education is now obligatory upon the school committees of the towns and cities of our Commonwealth. Difficulties attended the work at its beginning, because all concerned in it were inexperienced. Three years of persevering effort have removed many of the former difficulties, and we believe that the art department of public education is assuming its proper place in the system.

The best possible results need not be expected until a race of teachers has been raised up composed of persons who have been drilled in this, as in all other prescribed studies, through their entire school course. When this time arrives, drawing will be as readily taught as writing, and the services of a special teacher will be needed only in the higher grades, and perhaps not in them.

Of the intensely practical importance of art-education, aside from its æsthetic bearings, there can be no question. There is not a business or profession, from that of the men who till the soil, or of those who plough the main, to that of men who govern nations, or of those who lead in the van of scientific discovery, in which great advantages are not derived from being able to express one's plans and conceptions by appropriate drawings. And who does not envy the skilled artist the power which enables him to portray scenes of beauty or mental pictures in a language which all men understand, and in such a way that he who runs may read, and that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein.

Art in our schools should not be mere copying from books; but, needful as this is in the beginning, the constant aim should be to enable pupils to represent familiar objects about them, and to express

their own thoughts with the pencil as readily as they learn to express them with the pen or by spoken language.

Truancy. It is believed that there has never been less truancy than during the past year. All cases reported by the teachers have received prompt attention. Great credit is due to the teachers, who have been faithful in their endeavors to secure regular attendance.

Parents sometimes complain that the school requirements as to regular and prompt attendance are somewhat severe; but those who consider will not fail to be convinced that such requirements, strictly enforced, are essential to the efficiency of our schools. Such, indeed, is the importance of this subject, that exaggeration is well-nigh impossible.

Cases of deliberate truancy are comparatively few. The most frequent cases of difficulty are those in which the parents do not realize the value of education, and so allow their children to absent themselves for trivial causes. Judicious conference with such parents is an important part of the duty of the officers having this matter in charge, and there are few parents who will not coöperate with an officer in securing the prompt attendance of their children when the necessity of it is properly laid before them.

Truancy prevails mostly in the lower grades of the Grammar and the higher grades of the Primary departments, including boys from ten to fourteen years of age, and who belong, in most cases, to families in which home government is not the best. Children who are well trained at home seldom need school discipline of any kind.

The committee have hoped that before this time a suitable county school for the accommodation of truants would have been established; but no movement in that direction, so far as we are informed, has been made during the past year.

It is highly necessary that boys who have no one to care for them at home should be placed where they shall be treated, neither as paupers nor as criminals, but as unfortunates who need the fostering care of the civil authorities, that they may be trained to habits of industry and virtue.

Chairman.-B. S. BATCHELOR.

Nowhere in the land, I venture to say, is there a corps of teachers, taken as a whole, more studious and laborious than our own. And the results are so marked,—a teacher's studious self-culture, indefinitely multiplying her intellectual resources, so directly and manifestly enriches her instructions,—that the contrast of condition between the school room of such a teacher and that of one whose lack of interest or of intellectual energy has prevented such culture, tells the whole story without the need of words.

Culture in Teachers.-Is it impertinent and tyrannous to expect such culture on the part of our teachers? I am led to believe that the school - authorities of New Bedford are sharply criticised by one and another of those whom they employ, on the ground that they are exacting more than it is customary in other places to exact; more than they have a moral right to exact. There are those who seem to make the work of the teachers in those localities in which the old-fashioned mechanical text-book routine fills up the measure of requirement the standard of what is reasonable and just. But looking at the subject from the side of the scholars' interests, which is rightfully the most prominent point of sight,-for surely a teacher's fitness is to be measured most of all by her opportunities of working to the advantage of her scholars, is anything demanded of New Bedford teachers that is prejudicial to those interests? anything, indeed, that is not instinct with the central vitalities of intellectual development and growth? And even though we give prominence to the teacher's personal relations to the question, is there anything in those relations to alter the conditions of the problem? Is it not a prerequisite in connection with the appointment of every teacher who enters our service, that she shall have completed the High School course of study, or its equivalent? And what does that mean? Does it mean that the attention which is paid in that school to science and the belles-lettres by those who propose to become teachers, is merely an arbitrary preparative, that will have exhausted its usefulness when it has helped one to a school? So, from various indications, it might readily be supposed. When, for instance, a candidate is to be approved, in view of a position in a Grammar School, the general supposition seems to be that she will be examined in only "the common branches," meaning those elementary studies which are the leading branches taught in a Grammar School. I have known examiners under such circumstances, and that repeatedly, to oppose the suggestion that the candidate should be subjected to trial upon a broader range of studies than that to which her instruction would be technically confined, as not only superfluous, but illiberal and unjust. But-candidly expressing my own judgment on the merits of the case -should a candidate for such service be before me, with whose antecedents I was unacquainted, so that I should feel it important to subject her to a searching examination, I should be earnest, above all things else, to test her knowledge of those studies which transcend the ordinary limits of Grammar School instruction. If she knew no more than is embraced in the popular idea of such limits, I would not approbate her, no matter how proficient she might so far be. For she would inevitably teach at a loss. She should have had intercourse with studies which would have provided her with a far more comprehensive stock of ideas and facts,-studies which imply a range of mental

application, discipline and culture, that, out of the rich treasures of intelligence it has stored up in productive order in her mind, can furnish abundance of leaves and flowers to make lovely and attractive the bare, homely growths of the elementary field; abundance of apt illustrations to enrich and make effective all foundation truths and facts; and through hints and suggestions reaching out beyond the meagre limits of ordinary elementary study, to communicate conceptions of the illimitable vastness and variety of the universe of knowledge, that will stimulate an unappeasable curiosity in many a nascent mind, put genius on the track of its possibilities, and produce results in development and culture that would elsewhere never occur. It is the influence of such culture that our American elementary schools need above all things beside, to give them proper character, power and effect. They will prove meagre in performance and stinted in achievement so long as the acquirements supposed to be necessary for their teachers shall be limited to the text-book matter of the " common branches," which constitute the chief part of their curriculum. Like a dwelling denuded of its furniture and adornings are these branches likely to be to the scholar, as he plods along, when all the advantage he can receive from his teacher is the assistance rendered possible because she has passed over the same ground before him. The dwelling may be complete in itself, its floors may be laid to sustain the feet, its windows glazed to admit the light, its roof secure to avert the storm; yet its naked apartments send back a feeling of desolation. The carpets are needed,-the chairs, the tables, the pictures, the books, the utensils, to suggest those home delights, those seasons of rest and comfort, those gratifications of taste, those satisfactions of affection, which make up an alluring picture. So the "common branches" taught in our schools form, in some regards, the framework of all possible culture. But if some charm of those ulterior possibilities be not reflected back on them, by way of suggestion and illustration, out of the resources of those who have enjoyed such culture, due attention may be grudgingly bestowed on them by the scholar, and repulsive associations throw off the youthful mind from intellectual pursuits that might have been pleasurably attracted, and confirmed in scholarly characteristics and endeavors.

Such is the value that I attach to a broad and generous culture in our teachers, in reference to the beaten track of instruction alone.

A word now respecting that range of instruction which is independent of text-books, and on which, for special reasons, we set much store, is that prejudicial to the scholars' interests, or outside of a teacher's duty? The object and oral lessons for the Primary grades, that are intended to stimulate the observing faculties to habitual and interested activity, and to lay the foundations of such a knowledge of

language as will best prepare for subsequent masteries,-are they not admirable elements of instruction, and may not the teachers justly be required to conduct them so that their usefulness shall be vindicated and their office fulfilled? The oral lessons of the Grammar department, designed to carry forward the recognized purposes of the same range of instruction in the Primary Schools through more advanced stages of progress, and, furthermore, while providing stores of useful knowledge, to interlink the work of the school-room with the activities of the busy world,-can our educational provisions be more wisely adapted to their aims, and can any aims be truer to the great comprehensive objects of instruction? Should not the teachers undertake these lessons, therefore, with that certainty of success which fresh and generous culture on their own part alone can secure.

It may be objected that the compensation of female teachers is so meagre and insufficient as to make a demand upon them for such culture a gross imposition. There should be some sort of equilibrium between the amount of pay and the quality and quantity of the work performed.

This is specious reasoning, and from one point of sight it is perfectly sound. But in every other light it is utterly untenable.

It is sound in this regard, that the fact it alleges is true. All candid persons are ready to confess that female teachers in general are greatly underpaid. Could you, gentlemen, through a reasonable exercise of your official prerogative in this matter, duplicate the salaries of our own female teachers, I feel sure you would do so with delighted alacrity.

But human nature is such in its frailty and selfishness, that the law of supply and demand in almost all the concerns of life, however unequally and oppressively it may bear, is found to be as inexorable as it is omnipotent. Especially is this true in connection with public affairs, where those who seem to be possessed of absolute control are really only the agents of the community, and are held responsible to public opinion. They must not venture to set this dominating law at defiance, even in behalf of abstract right and justice, else a popular reaction, while it hurls them from authority, will very likely make the condition of things which they sought to rectify more unjust and oppressive than before.

Such is the position of school authorities, among others, in this democratic land of ours. The compensation they give their teachers is inevitably regulated, to a large extent, not by their personal convictions of desert and justice, but by the law of demand and supply. They may be satisfied that a woman's work, when accomplished as ably and successfully as the same work is accomplished by a man, is worth as much as may be given to the man. But, for reasons that