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MANAGEMENT IN A COUNTRY DISTRICT SCHOOL.

In the management and discipline of a school, it is of vast importance that the pupils be kept busy. The higher objects and aims of a real practical life should be kept constantly in view. Future usefulness is a practical idea, and leads to the best results. The slumbering energies of the mind may be aroused by awakening an interest. Interest will stand on tip-toe when curiosity is created. Here the teacher has perfect control of the school, but confidence has not yet been secured. În gratifying curiosity, be careful of disappointment, and all will be well.

A practical education is, by far, the best. Close observation in everyday life leads to this. Inquiry and observation are encouraged by visiting with the pupils the telegraph office, the printing office, the book bindery, mills and factories of all kinds, the foundry and machine shops. Attention should be called to the points of interest, and the working of machinery explained, together with the practical utility and importance of each particular avocation, their mutual dependance upon each other, and their general influence upon society. Such visits give the pupil a much better idea of the manner in which the various departments of business conducted, and of the operation of the machinery, than all the apparatus that can be found.

Excursions to the fields and woods, to the hill-sides and deep valleys, afford an excellent opportunity for observing and studying nature in her various departments. The pupils should be encouraged to collect and preserve specimens of the different varieties of plants-every variety of minerals, from the most common clay to the gem, specimens of rocks and mineralized animal and vegetable remains. They will soon learn that an abundance of shells, in a fossil or petrified state, are found in limestone; of vegetables, in sandstone, slate, clay, etc., and numerous bones, and even whole skeletons of quadrupeds, birds, amphibious animals, fishes, and also insects, occur in rocks of various descriptions.

The formation of cabinets, herbaria and aquaria should be encouraged in every school. An aquarium in a school-room is a source of neverending interest. It opens a new department in nature hitherto but little studied. Nature always rewards her closest students with the most signal success. The most important discoveries have been made by men whose early lives were spent in a close observance of nature. In this way, the teacher will easily discover the taste and aptitude of his pupils. Let them be encouraged in that department in which the God of nature has designed them to work. It is solemnly believed that ninety-nine hundredths of all the difficulties incident to the home circle and the school room arise from the persistent efforts of parents and teachers to force children to disregard nature's teaching. It is not the province of the educator to make mind, nor to pervert or distort it, but to lead it out, to develop it by timely assistance. Independent, individual thought, study and exertion develops that originality of mind which boldly leaves the old beaten paths of science and fearlessly strikes out into new and unexplored fields, to reap the rich rewards in store. Mental impressions in early life are hard to obliterHow important, then, that the susceptible mind be thoroughly

ate.

imbued with the love of order, right and justice; with respect for equity, good government and rightful_authority.

Above all things, the school room should be made pleasant, kept neat, and preserved without spot, mark or blemish upon its walls, furniture or surroundings. The teacher should always be cheerful, affable and kind, sympathizing with his pupils in trouble, rejoicing in their prosperity, and encouraging the exercise of their more noble faculties. "Kind words can never die " is an axiom that should never be forgotten. It is easier, by far, to lead a friend than to drive a foe. So it is with children; it is easier to govern them in love and friendship than by severity and harshness. When the teacher succeeds in controlling himself he will find little or no difficulty in managing his school. He that would govern well must first learn to govern self.-Report of Hon. H. D. McKarty, State Superintendent of Kansas.

A PROGRAMME FOR RECITATIONS.

1. By the programme of studies upon the board, and the clock upon the wall, the pupils should always know the coming exercises.

2. Call pupils to recitation benches by the simple commands: Rise! Pass! At the first, the pupils will rise to their feei; at the second, they will pass to their places, the nearest to the recitation benches starting first, or in some other established order.

3. Each member of the class should have a fixed place on the recitation seat, so that there may be no excuse for crowding for the "best" seat.

4. Test the general condition of the class, discovering the backward ones and the difficult points, with a view to encouraging the former and dissipating the latter.

5. Review briefly points of last lesson.

6. Make distinctly the few points of this lesson. 7. Recapitulate by individual or concert exercise. 8. Preliminary drill upon next lesson.

9. Assign next lesson.

10. Dismiss by the words "Rise!" "Pass!" kindly spoken.-National Normal.

STATE CERTIFICATES.

The State Superintendent of Public Instruction is by law authorized, on due examination in certain specified studies, to grant certifictes to persons passing such examination satisfactorily, authorizing them to teach anywhere in this state, one grade being limited to five years, the other including proficiency in more studies, being good for life. He has recently given certificates to eight applicants-four for life and four for five years. The plan of granting them for a term of years is a commendable one, as it saves competent teachers the trouble of procuring certificates every year, and in every county they may wish to teach in, and might be given for as long as ten years for the highest proficiency; but we cannot see the propriety of giving them for life. Educational matters and systems of teaching are continually changing. Men and women who stand at the head of their profession in early life, and, after a few years, leave the work and become engaged in other duties of

life as to almost forget their former occupation, and pay little attention to educational subjects, generally become totally unfit for teachers, should they desire to take up the profession in after life. The means of procuring a certificate are not attended with so much expense or loss of time that any teacher could not afford to get one at least once in five or ten years.-Waterloo Journal.

SELF-EDUCATION.

We hear a good deal in our day about "self-educated men," just as if there were educated men of any other sort. Now the truth is that every man and every woman who is educated at all, is self-educated of necessity. Teachers and schools and colleges and universities are all very excellent things in their way, but not one or all of them can by any possibility educate a man. They can aid him greatly, no doubt, and facilitate the work of education, but that work is one which the man himself must do, from beginning to end, if it is to be done at all.

The real difference between people who are commonly said to be selfeducated, and those whose educations have been gotten in the regular way, is that the former have done without assistance, or with limited assistance, that which the latter have been aided in doing.

That the schools greatly facilitate the work is unquestionably true, but where these are beyond reach there is no reason whatever why the work may not be done quite as well and quite as thoroughly without them. It will be somewhat more difficult, that is all.

There are two opposite errors commonly made on this subject. The first is that the people whose education has been secured outside of the schools are necessarily less perfectly cultured than those whose advantages have been better. That this is an error is sufficiently seen in the career of one of our leading magazine editors, who quitted school at fen years of age, and yet has made of himself, while yet a young man, a polished writer, both of prose and poetry, an accomplished scholar in all that is highest and best in scholarship, a keen and judicious critic, and an editor certainly without a superior in this country. He has not only made himself a successful man-he has placed himself in the foremost rank in the very fields of labor where ripe scholarship and thorough culture are most essentially necessary. In other words, he has educated himself out of school almost as perfectly as he could have done it in the regular way.

There are many other men who have done the same thing, and while they have doubtless found the task more difficult at times than it would have been in school, they have accomplished it nevertheless. The footfarer finds his journey slower and more wearisome than that of the traveler by rail, but there is no reason why he may not reach the the journey's end for all that.

The second error is that at which Josh Billings hints when he says that "Self-made men are apt to be a little proud of the job." Certainly their admirers nearly always fall into this error, and the mistake is a serious one. Inasmuch as all educated men are self-educated, the performance of the one who has cultured himself out of school is not so marvellous after all. He has done nothing that anybody else of good ordinary capacity might not have done, and his work has not been very

much more difficult than it would have been in school, while in most cases it has not been quite so perfectly performed.

The proper view of the matter appears to be this: if we are to be educated at all, we must educate ourselves, and we can do this more easily, and most cases more perfectly, in school than out. Wherefore we should by all means embrace every opportunity to secure regular instruction. But we may educate ourselves out of school, and if we are denied the advantages of systematic training, we have no reason to despair. To abandon the work of self-cultivation because of this want, is simply a cowardly giving up of good, because it is one which can be secured only by hard work.

Our advice to every young man and woman is, get an education in the regular way if you can, but get an education at any rate; and if you get it without the advantages of the schools, never allow yourself to be so weak as to imagine that you have thereby shown yourself a prodigy of genius or industry.-Hearth and Home.

LIFE.

BY PEN.

Life is a crown beset with jewels rare.
Wouldst weight it, to perceive its value fair?

Pile empires in th' opposing scale, and see
That heaviest still the jeweled crown will be.

But lose in thy career the priceless gem,
That sparkles brightly in the diadem,

Then weigh a single pebble 'gainst that crown,

And see, alas! the other scale go down!

Wouldst know the hidden meaning of this trope?
Life's greatest treasure its jewel Hope.

WANTED-ARTICULATION.

Like that other "excellent thing in woman," a low, sweet voice, it is to be feared that we may soon begin to number among the lost arts the beautiful accoraplishment of a pure, musical, distinct feminine utter

ance.

Few things more ungainly, un-English, or unearthly, can be conceived of, than the drawlings and clippings, the sputterings and mouthings of words, affected by our representative fashionable young lady. Now, many of our young people, supposed to be educated, are, in their own choice dialect, really "ye knouw, doying for sometheen ta douiah.” In their sad heart of poverty and mind, and the dilution of their wits by trashy reading, they are incapable of taking part in a really sprightly or intelligent conversation, and still less of uttering their commonplaces with a clear, finished, unaffected articulation.

It might be a grand thing for our abused mother tongue, as well as for the supply of depleted brains, if these unconscious sufferers could be persuaded into devoting one or two hours of their superabundant leisure each day to the private study of some such books as Mitchell's Manual of Elocution, or Hart's Rhetoric and English literature.

The melancholy fact that these really fascinating works are school books cannot be disguised, but let some reigning belle make the persistent study and practice of "those pewfecla horreed ole conceurns tha stoiyle ye knoiah," and the cajoled imitators of her eccentricity will in a year's time scarcely recognize each other or themselves.

In sober earnest, try it, dear, famishing, idle, fashion-ridden exschool girls, who are still conscious of a waning of self-respect, of fastdying graces and miserably wasting frames, and see if you are not richly rewarded in the stimulation and vitalization of all that is noblest and worthiest in your natures.-The Churchman.

HISTORY OF WORDS FAMILIAR TO THE TEACHER. SCHOOL is derived from the Greek skole, which means leisure. So, literally a school is a place of leisure; so called, formerly, because only persons of leisure could attend these places of instruction.

SCHOLAR comes from school, and signifies a person of leisure-not of idleness. A person of leisure is by no means, necessarily, an idle person. The question is frequently asked, "Is it proper to call children in school scholars?" The Etymology of the word says "it is." The other meaning is a derived one.

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PUPIL is from the Latin pupillus, which means "an orphan;" one who is instructed by some one other than a parent. The word pupil applies properly to children only; while "scholar" is applied to persons at any

age.

TEACH is from the Anglo Saxon taecan, meaning to "show," to direct. TEACHER comes from the same "root," and hence means a shower; (not a showman), one who shows the pupil how to study, how to behave.

INSTRUCTION is compounded of the two Latin words in and struo, and means "to build in."

INSTRUCTOR then means an in-builder; one who builds in the mind. Each child's head is a space of vacant ground upon which the "Instructor" is expected to build a city—each idea or truth constituting a building.

What magnificent cities are being built all over this country.

Book is from the Anglo Saxon boc, which means beech. The bark of the beech tree being smooth, was formerly used to write upon.

SLATE has been traced from the Anglo Saxon scylan, as follows: skalit, sklait, sklate, slate, and literally means to split and shine. Slate rock cleaves readily, and sparkles when first opened.

PAPER is derived from papyrus, a large kind of rush which grows in abundance near the mouth of the Nile, from the bark of which the first paper was made.

The etymological connection between "book" and "tree" is very intimate. As we have seen, the word book comes from the word boc, meaning beech tree. Paper, from which the book is made, is named from the bark of a plant. The Latin word libcr means both book and the inner bark of a tree, showing that at one time the bark was the book. The tree has leaves and the book has leaves.

EDUCATION, from e and duco, signifes "to lead out." Hence to "educate" a child means to draw it out-to develop it-something that can never be done by the " pouring in " process.--Indiana School Journal.

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