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They are to collect all facts, diffuse all knowledge, and stimulate all inquiry, which have a bearing on social welfare. It has long since been shown that the man of science, who confines himself to a specialty; who does not, at the very least, conquer the underlying principles of other branches of scientific inquiry,— is necessarily misled, and can not avoid frequent mistakes. To have any perception of the perspective of his subject, he must see it in its relation to other subjects. Something like this is true of those who investigate the necessities of society. If they associate themselves together, they have the advantage of each other's knowledge; they do not misunderstand their own relative positions; and they insure an economy of time, labor, and money.

We would offer the widest hospitality to individual convictions, and to untried theories, provided only that such convictions and theories are the fruit of a serious purpose and an industrious life. To entertain the vagaries of the indolent would be at once undignified and unprofitable.

THE FOUR DEPARTMENTS.

1. Under the Department of Education will come every thing relating to the interests of Public Schools, Universities, and Colleges; to Reformatory, Adult, and Evening Schools; to Instruction in the Useful Arts; to Systems of Apprenticeship; to Lyceums, Pulpits, and the formation of Societies for the purposes of Public Instruction. In this department will be debated also all questions relating to Classical, Linguistic, and Scientific Studies, in their proportion to what is called an English Education; and the bearing of the publication of National and Patriotic Memorials upon Popular Culture.

2. Upon the Department relating to Public Health a very large proportion of the popular interest will naturally be fixed. All Sanitary and Hygienic matters will come before it; and what the Sanitary Commission has learned in the last four years will be made available, through its action to the people at large. The subjects of Epidemics, of the origin and Spread of Cholera, Yellow-Fever, and Eruptive Diseases, will be legitimately discussed here. It will consider all questions of Increase of Population, Vaccination, Ventilation of Public and Private Buildings, Drainage, Houses for the Poor, the Management of Cemeteries, Public Baths, Parks and Public Gardens, Places of Recreation, the Management of Hospitals and Insane Asylums, the Adulteration of Food and Drugs, all questions relating to the Duration of Human Life, Sanitary Regulations for the Army and Navy, and all matters of popular interest connected with medical science. We shall look to our ablest physicians and surgeons for contribu tions to this department.

3. Under the head of Social Economy, we shall consider Pauperism actual rather than legal, and the relation and the responsibilities of the gifted and educated classes towards the weak, the witless, and the ignorant. We shall endeavor to make useful inquiries into the causes of Human Failure, and the Duties devolving upon Human Success. We shall consider the Hours of Labor; the Relation of Employers and Employed; the Employment of Women, by itself considered: the Relation of Idleness to Female Crime; Prostitution and Intemperance; Workhouses; Public Libraries and Museums; Savings Banks and Dispensaries. Here, too, will be discussed National Debt; the subjects of Tariff and Taxation; the Habits of Trade; the Quality of our Manufactures; the Control of Markets; the Monopolies in the Sale of Food, or the Production of articles of common use; the Value of Gold; and all questions connected with the Currency.

4. In the Department of Jurisprudence, we aim to consider, first, the absolute Science of Right; and, second, the Amendment of Laws. This department should be the final resort of the other three; for when the laws of Education, of Public Health, and of Social Economy, are fully ascertained, the law of the land should recognize and define them all. Under this head will be considered all questions of the justice, the expediency, and the results, of existing statutes; including their administration and interpretation, and especially their bearing on Suffrage, Property, Privilege, Debt, Crime, and Pauperism. Here, then, will come up he vexed questions of Prison Discipline and Capital Punishment."

The Second General Meeting was held in the Hall of the Lowell Institute, on the 27th and 28th of December, 1865-the President, William B. Rogers, LL.D., in the Chair. From the record of the

previous meeting, read by the Recording Secretary, Mr. W. F. Sanborn, it appears that the officers are as follows:

President.

Professor William B. Rogers, LL. D.,..1 Temple Place, Boston.

Vice-Presidents.

I. Rev. Thomas Hill, D.D,.
II. Charles E. Buckingham,.
III. Hon. George S. Boutwell,.
IV. Francis Lieber, LL.D.,

...Cambridge, Mass.

.911 Washington Street, Boston.
.Groton, Mass.

..48 East 34th Street, New York.

Directors.

I. Rev. Erastus O. Haven, D.D.,....Ann Arbor, Mich.

II. Mrs. Mary Eliot Parkman, .
III. David A. Wells, Esq.,..
IV. Hon. Emory Washburn,.

109 Boylston Street, Boston. ..Custom House, New York. .Cambridge, Mass.

V. Mrs. Caroline Healey Dall, ......70 Warren Avenue, Boston.

General Secretaries.

Samuel Eliot, LL.D., Cor. Secretary,..30 Chestnut Street, Boston.
F. B. Sanborn, Esq, Rec. Secretary,..12 State House Boston.

I. Hon. Joseph White,.

II. J. C. White, M.D..

III. Hon. George Walker, .

Special Secretaries.

Williamstown, Mass. ..10 Park Place, Boston. ..Springfield, Mass.

IV. Professor Theodore W. Dwight,.. Columbia College, New York.

Treasurer.

I. James J. Higginson, Esq.,..... .40 State Street, Boston.

The Honorary Members, residing in America, were the following:-Dr. E. Sayre, New York; Samuel B. Ruggles, Esq., New York; Henry Barnard, LL. D., Hartford; A. Bronson Alcott, Esq., Concord; Rev. Frederic N. Knapp, Yonkers, N. Y.; Prof. Daniel Wilson, Toronto, C. W.; Edward A. Meredith, Esq., Quebec. C. E.; Rev. Philip Carpenter, Montreal, C. E.; Henry C. Carey, Esq., Philadelphia; Charles L. Brace, N. Y.

Addresses and Papers were received by the President on "The Objects of the Social Science Association;" by Dr. Hill, President of Harvard College, on the "Problems of Education," by Mrs. Dall, on a 66 Library devoted to Social Science;" by Dr. A. B. Palmer, of the State University of Michigan, on "Sanitary Education;" by Henry C. Carey, on "Our National Resources;" by F. B. Sanborn, on "Prison Discipline in Europe and America;" by Dr. I. Ray, Superintendent of the Butler Hospital for the Insane, "The Isolation of the Insane," with the project of a Law for the Regulation of Insane Asylums and Hospitals; by W. P. Atkinson, on "The English Civil Service Examinations;" by Charles L. Brace, on Sanitary Legislation of England;" by Dr. Edward Jarvis, on "The Duration of Human Life."

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The Normal Schools of Prussia, in their general aims, and special studies and methods, were very materially modified by the "Regulativ" of the Minister of Public Instruction, issued in October, 1854, the substance of which we give below, in a very compressed form, from Rev. M. Pattison's Report in 1860.

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1. SCHOOL MANAGEMENT.-No systematic pädagogik, not even in a popular form, is to be taught in the seminary, but in its place shall be taught art of school management, for not more than two hours per week. This course may contain, in the first year, a simple picture of the Christian school in its first origin, and in its relation to family, church and state; the most important names among the schoolmen since the Reformation may be pointed out, and their influence in forming the elementary school exhibited.

In the second year, the objects and the arrangement of the elementary school may be explained; the proper principles of Christian instruction and discipline expounded.

In the third year, the pupils may be taught their duties as hereafter servants of the state and church,-the means of improving themselves after they leave the seminary,--but the greater part of their time this year will be taken up with preparing for the lessons in the practicing school, and in endeavoring to gain a clear hold of the experiences they make in the same. The separate instruction of each teacher in the seminary is the only introduction which can be given to a good method, where this separate instruction is based on the principle of teaching in the seminary the same matter and in the same form as is required in the elementary school itself. Method, therefore, will no longer be taught as a separate branch, and as a part of "school management,' (schulkunde,) will be only so far introduced that the connection between the various parts of elementary teaching may be explained, and the relation in which each part stands to the objects of the school and to the education it is designed to give.

Under the head Education nothing more is necessary to be taught to the elementary teacher than to bring together and explain the texts in Holy Scripture which touch on the subject; the doctrine of sin, of man's need of a Saviour, of the law of Divine Redemption and Sanctification, is a pädagogik which requires little elucidation from the sciences of human nature.

Under the head School Education the principles of discipline and teaching should be more minutely gone into, but these lessons should be given in strict connection with the experience obtained by the scholar in the practicing school. 2. RELIGION. The religious instruction hitherto given in many seminaries, under the title of "Christian Doctrine," is henceforth to be termed in the lesson table "Catechism." Its object is to provide a direction and a firm footing for the individual religious confession of the pupil, through a clear and profound understanding of God's Word, upon the basis of the evangelical doctrines, teaching them through this understanding to know themselves, and their relation to the divine scheme for Salvation, and so laying the only true foundation for their whole Christian life.

As this instruction is not one which the teacher has himself to reproduce in the course of his teaching in the elementary school, it is therefore not subject to the same limitations in all respects as the other portions of the seminary course, which do occur again in the elementary school. Immediately, however, the religious instruction received in the seminary ought to exert a powerful influence on the whole mental life of the teacher; and it is therefore of great importance that sure and abiding results of a Christian confession, conformable with the dogmatic conceptions of the church, should be attempted. The basis of this instruction must be of course the symbolical books of the Evangelical church, i. e., the smaller catechism of Luther, or the Heidelberg catechism.

The exposition necessary for the understanding this catechism will no longer be left to the individual seminary teacher; a manual must be employed for the purpose, which shall contain all that is necessary for a schoolmaster to know. By the advice of the Evangelical church council, we hereby order that the

"Barmen Catechism" be exclusively used in the Evangelical seminaries, and that the teacher be restricted to seeing that the pupils understand the same, and make it their own, without himself adding anything further to its substance.

It is further requisite that the schoolmaster cherish a warm and lively sympathy with the church life of the present. To this end some knowledge of the past is requisite, but no regular chronological course of church history can be given in the seminary. It shall suffice that the pupils learn the most important facts and names in the method of biographical groups, especial reference being had to the Apostolical period, to the Reformation, the present period, and the extension of the church by missionary enterprise, that the future schoolmaster may be thus qualified for a free and disinterested action in the fields both of the foreign and inner mission, the succor of the poor and the forsaken, and other charitable objects. This is an object which can not be attained so much by lessons as by lending appropriate books, or reading passages out of them, by introducing the pupils to practical participation in the various mission enterprises. It would be desirable that the seminaries, as such, should be enrolled as members of the mission unions.

The next point to be attended to in the religious instruction in the seminary is, to bring this instruction, much more than hitherto, into immediate relation to the religious instruction to be given in the elementary school. To this purpose there is required a clear understanding of the duty of the elementary school in respect of the religious instruction it is called upon to give.

First, must be firmly established that systematic treatment of Christian doctrine, whether in the way of explanation of catechism, or independent expounding of dogmas or Scripture texts, is not the province of the elementary teacher, but of the clergyman. The catechism lesson in the school is only a lesson preparatory to the confirmation preparation to be given by the pastor, and must be restricted to bringing the catechism in its verbal and material meaning before the understanding, and inculcating it in the memory of the children.

Secondly, Scripture History must be treated as the field in which the elementary school has to solve the problem of founding and extending the Christian life of the youth committed to its charge. It must be pre-supposed that this instruction aims neither at moral applications nor at abstract dogmatic inferences, but at leading the children to the sure apprehension and the inward and faithful appropriation of the facts of God's treatment of His chosen people and of the whole human race, and thence to deduce for them the eternal ideas of the most important divine and human things. In this view, the whole course of the Biblical history must be gone through with the seminarist, who shall thus be brought to an immediate and intuitional knowledge of the fundamental ideas and truths, by living in and through each step and each personal relation of the religious life under the leading of God's Word.

The future schoolmaster shall be required to be able to repeat, without book, each Scripture history in the form in which it is taught in the school. He shall be further led to handle each of these histories in detail, and with due reference to the general objects of Scripture teaching, in strict connection with the order of the church's year, so that he may know how to establish a connection of his school with the liturgical life, and make the children conscious participators in the same. From this time forth an indispensable condition of admission into the seminary will be an exact acquaintance with these histories as contained in such manuals of those of Zahn, Preuss, or Otto Schultz, and the ability to recite them by heart.

Here follow specific directions for reading the Bible and the gospels and epistles for the year; for learning texts and hymns. The section concludes thus:

Religious instruction, conducted according to these principles, will form teachers clearly aware of what they have to do, possessing within themselves a sufficient knowledge of the word, doctrine, and life of the Evangelic church; it will open to them the entrance upon a God-fearing life, in which they may find practical experience of the course by which God leads us from sin to justi

fication by faith, which worketh by love. To this end, the whole life in the seminary must be brought under the discipline of the Word and the Spirit; teachers and pupils alike must draw from the fountain of grace, and the community must exhibit a pattern of common Christian life.

3. LANGUAGE. The future teacher is sufficiently qualified to instruct in language and reading in the elementary school, when he knows how to handle rightly the spelling and reading book. The seminaries hitherto have too much neglected to teach a simple method of learning to read. Consequently, years. have been spent in acquiring, perhaps very imperfectly, what might be attained in months, viz., the mechanical power of reading. To qualify the schoolmaster in this branch, neither theoretical instruction nor yet practice in the model school will alone suffice; but it will be necessary to take the seminarist in the lowest class through a course of practical lessons in all the details of teaching to read, which practice must be continued till the right method has been thoroughly mastered by each pupil.

Again, in the use of the reading book, it is not enough to instruct the seminarist generally in the mode of interpreting; each portion and passage of the reading book, authoritatively introduced into the schools of the province, must be gone through in the way in which it has to be by them afterwards treated in the elementary school.

In connection with the reading book the pupils must be introduced to German grammar, keeping in view always, that this is a subject which they will not have to teach again in the school.

This is the reading course for the third class. In the two upper classes the object of this branch of instruction is, starting from the knowledge acquired in the lower class, to introduce the pupil to so much of the contents of the language as is necessary for the level of culture, proper for an elementary teacher, and for life among the people. To acquire a good and correct intonation the best method is, to penetrate the sense of what is read. The ability to read difficult passages well forms a tolerably correct measure for judging the amount of formal education possessed by the seminarist. Wackernagel's reading book may be taken, and a selection of pieces in prose and verse made from it, ascending from the easy to the more difficult, and as to their substance bearing on the arrangement of the other parts of the pupils' course. These passages must be worked over till they are thoroughly understood, and have become the learner's own property. Teacher and pupil have here the fittest opportunity to apply the art of concentration of teaching. Within the limits of these passages must be acquired the power of understanding and using his own language so far as it is requisite for the elementary master, without any theoretical lessons of etymology, prosody, lexicology, &c. The remaining contents of the reading book may be afterwards read in a more cursory way, without, however, neglecting to understand what is read, or to practice the reproduction of that which has been read.

The written exercises for the lower and middle class must be set in connection with the reading lesson; but in the upper class they may consist in independent reproduction of single parts out of other parts of the course, or in consideration of questions which concern the profession of teacher. Here also the pupil should learn the written forms of office and business which he may have afterwards occasion for.

The students of each year must have a course of private reading pointed out to them, of which they shall be called on from time to time to give an account to the teacher. In the choice of books for this purpose, regard must be had, not merely to the student's own culture, but to the influence which he may hereafter exercise, beyond the limits of the school, upon the character and morals of the people. Accordingly, the so-called classical literature (of Germany) must be prohibited from forming any part of this private course, and nothing must be admitted into it but what has a tendency to promote church life.

Here follows a list of permissible books.

4. HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.-Both these branches shall start from a common point; that of our own country. General history is useless in the seminary, and the instruction shall be confined to German history, with especial

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