PERU.

Drawing. Drawing has been introduced into some of our schools with marked success. Nothing gives more pleasure to children, even when quite young, than to "make pictures." The natural impulse to childhood to imitate visible objects should be recognized as worthy of development. If the child's first steps in learning are made so attractive that he desires to be taught more, and commences to feel steadily the thirst for knowledge; if he acquires habits of industry and method, and comes to notice, investigate and compare the things he sees about him, and to honor that which is fair and good, then a foundation has been laid. We wish to see all our little children in every school supplied with a greater variety of employment. We see no good reason why children may not learn to draw as soon as to write. The two processes require a similar exercise of the hand and a similar use of the eye, and for this reason may be taught together.

Superintendent.-J. H. GEER.

PITTSFIELD.

Drawing. The superintendent does not feel called upon to repeat what he has said in former reports touching the subject of drawing. The time has passed in which it is necessary to argue as to the importance of instruction in drawing, in connection with our Public School system. The best thinkers among our business men are thoroughly convinced that if Massachusetts is to retain her foremost position as a manufacturing State, more attention must be paid to the application of art and science to the leading interests of her manufacturers. If this is true of the State, of no town is it more true than of Pittsfield. This is the only town in the Commonwealth having more than ten thousand inhabitants, which has refused to comply with the law (Acts of 1870, chap. 248, sect. 2), in not making "provision for giving free instruction in industrial or mechanical drawing to persons over fifteen years of age either in day or evening schools, under the direction of the school committee." To what extent the public lessons of disobedience to law are to be taught the people, by voting to ignore and violate a legal requirement of the State, is not for the school committee to decide; this responsibility rests wholly with the town.

Every mechanic should remember that the skilful mechanic alone is sure of permanent work. The financial panic has proved this. In the dullest times, the manufacturer must not lose he cannot afford to lose

-the skilful artisan; the artisan who can take his pencil and show the plan of his work before he has commenced its execution. Besides, some sort of technical training for every young woman, that she may be able to push off into the stream and paddle her own canoe, instead of waiting passively on the bank for the coming man to sail down and invite her to sail with him, accords with the convictions of most people, however slow they may be to make the practical application.

With these, and his long-cherished and oft-repeated convictions of the utility of mechanical drawing, the superintendent continues to urge the establishment, as required by law, of an Industrial Drawing School, sanguine of great and beneficial results, and certain that it would become an important auxiliary to the highest interests of the town.

Evening Schools.-Three schools have been kept through the winter, for the benefit of persons who may not have enjoyed the advantages of an early education. For obvious reasons, pupils under fifteen years of age have not, with only a few exceptions, been admitted to these schools. Persons under fifteen, employed in constant labor through the day, need their evenings for rest and recreation, rather than for study in the school-room. Besides, other provisions are made, at the public expense, for children under fifteen, and they are required by law to attend day-schools. Experience teaches that the admission of pupils less than fifteen hinders older persons from attending, and thus the danger will be to defeat the purpose for which evening schools were established. The superintendent would suggest that there be smaller schools, and only those allowed to enter who are willing and anxious to learn. In order that the expense of the evening schools may be diminished, I would hereafter so grade the pupils and arrange school-rooms that all persons over fifteen years of age, who really desire to learn and receive the benefits of the schools, should be suitably accommodated. I think that those who seek amusement, and wish to spend their evenings in such schools as mere pastime, will be sure to find there, in future, nothing congenial or sympathetic. Where a hundred or more young persons, accustomed to work during the day, collect in one large room, it is difficult to obtain good order, and unless this is gained the instruction is mostly lost. Whatever of opposition, and however great the drawbacks may have been in establishing and supporting these evening schools, the experiment, begun four years ago, has, I am happy to say, proved quite successful. Justice demands. that all the outlying manufacturing villages of the town should receive their share of the benefits of evening schools. To this end, such schools ought to be organized and taught in their immediate neighborhoods. Should the town decide to support these schools another season, I wish there might be one established at Barkerville.

To those of our citizens who still oppose and are prejudiced against taking a kindly interest in the work of furnishing such morsels of education as are given in the evening schools to those who are asking' for the same at our hands, and who have been deprived by misfortune of the common educational privileges of childhood, I would respectfully request that they visit these schools at their leisure, and see and judge for themselves as to the merits of this system of evening school education.

Superintendent.-JOHN M. BREWster.

STOCKBRIDGE.

Every tax-payer has a right, and ought to demand, that the money he pays for any specific purpose should not only be spent economically, but should accomplish, as far as possible, the object for which he pays it. If it is just to compel every man to pay a tax for the education of each child, is it not equally just to compel each child, by constant attendance, to make a proper use of the money so paid? "The law does not take a man's property, or allow it to be taken, without an equivalent rendered." On that principle, may not the tax-payer demand as an equivalent for his tax that the child shall attend school? He has built a school-house, he pays the teacher, his property has been taken; but where is the equivalent? Not in the school-house, if the child does not enter it; not in the power of the teacher to influence the child for good, if the child does not meet the teacher. Has the parent any right to keep the child from school, and thus deny him the advantages which our Public Schools afford?

At the time of abolishing the district system, in 1866, Stockbridge stood among the three hundred and thirty-four towns in the State, in the amount appropriated for each child between five and fifteen years of age, the three hundred and twenty-third; now the sixty-third, an advance of one hundred and ninety-five per cent. And at the time first mentioned she stood among the thirty-one towns in the county, in the amount appropriated to each child, the twenty-seventh; and now she is the first. Who shall say, then, that we have made no progress during the last nine years?

School Committee.-M. WARNER, H. J. CANFIELD.

WINDSOR.

We should be glad to have all of the schools in town commence earlier with their fall or winter terms, thereby securing a larger and more regular attendance, and, as we firmly believe, a greater amount

of education and benefit to the scholar. We think they should commence as early as the 15th of October.

School Committee.-W. A. WINSLOW, E. H. PIERCE, MRS. J. L. WHITE.

NOTE. It is the right and duty of the school committee, and of no one else, to determine when the schools shall commence and close.

.BRISTOL COUNTY.

ACUSHNET.

Your committee are in duty bound to congratulate the inhabitants of the town that we have one school-house that is an ornament to it. We have a commodious and beautiful edifice, pleasantly situated on a high and healthy eminence, commanding a view of a large part of the town. The building committee deserve great praise for the interest and ability displayed in the erection of the building, and at least a vote of thanks for their generosity in giving their time and assistance gratuitously in its erection. The school was opened by a dedicatory service, which was rendered exceedingly interesting by reason of an able and appropriate address by the Rev. William B. Hammond; also Rev. C. E. Walker and others. Your committee entertain the hope that they may enjoy another such season within a twelvemonth. It also affords your committee much pleasure to be able to state that the first school term in the new house has been a perfect success, and has added another proof to the fact, so often reiterated, that a school of sixty scholars is much more interesting and profitable than one of sixteen. There has been a marked improvement in all the branches taught, but the most rapid progress we think has been in reading.

In conclusion we would say, make your school-houses pleasant and attractive, have them occupied by loving, working teachers, and encourage your children to make the wisest use of their advantages, and they will be fitted for the duties of life, and qualified to fill worthy positions in society.

School Committee.-E. R. ASHLEY, B. Y. WARNER, G. P. MORSE.

ATTLEBOROUGH.

The Public Schools in this town, as a whole, we believe, were never better taught than they have been the past year. Not all have been served alike. It would be invidious, however, to make comparisons. The chief part of the work done has been very satisfactory to us. The wonder is that teachers do so well, left, as they are, to work on almost alone, and receiving few expressions of sympathy from the people whose children are their constant care. Teaching is a very different kind of work from mechanical labor. It is not the work of the head and the hands merely. The teacher's soul must be in it or it will not be well done. The expression of hearty sympathy for her in her vexations and trials, and of appreciation of her efforts, will do much to keep alive her best feelings, and to make her efficient in the. work of education.

School Committee.-JOHN WHITEHILL, J. D. PEIRCE, E. D. HALL.

DARTMOUTH.

There is another home influence which we think has a decided and beneficial effect upon the scholar who is so fortunate as to be affected by it, fitting and preparing the soil, as it were, the more readily to receive its after-culture. We mean a home acquaintance with books. Children should have books, such as are fitted to their capacities and wants; and if they are taught by precept and example to find amusement and companionship in them, a love for reading and the acquisition of knowledge become, even in childhood, a controlling habit of their nature. The school is to such, not a place of irksome drudgery, but of pleasant and interesting employment; and how much benefit such derive from their home habits is shown by the more rapid and satisfactory progress made in their studies. We know there are some children who do not need encouragement to promote habits of reading, but there are others who do, and we can but think, if the homes of our scholars were more amply provided with suitable books for them, the apparent results from the expenditure of the school appropriation would be much more readily preceptible.

School Committee.-JOSHUA V. DAVIS, ELBRIDGE L. FAUNCE, JESSE TUCKER.

FALL RIVER.

Free Text-Books.-At the beginning of the summer term, by your direction, all the schools under your charge were supplied with textbooks at the expense of the city. The adoption of this plan involved