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our keenly sensitive nerves, every throb the best evidence of unfitness.

I do not

of an aching head, will cost some inno- say that all suffer equally from this source; cent urchin an unmerited word or look, nor do I say that, in its full extent, it is or, it may be, blow of reproof. This is a an absolute necessity; but I do say, that severe trial, and all the more severe be- he who knows nothing of it is far from cause we fail to trace it to its proper being the perfect teacher he fancies imsource. Every attempt at correcting it self to be. The dullness of the pupil but increases its power, for we will not is an easy hobby to ride, and under ome admit that our nerves are unruly pupils. circumstances, is made to bear more than The confinement of the school-room and its just burden. We are apt to fail to the anxiety of the true teacher, but in- trace to its proper source, this trial, and creases his unfitness for his work and adds instead of setting ourselves resolute y to to his trials. Do not understand me as work to guard against it, we are co' tent saying that these must be so. I am now with allowing the poor pupil to bear the speaking of facts as they are. There is effects of our indolence and incompetenno ill but has its remedy. Of the reme- cy. dy hereafter.

This trial is severe, and the more so because we are unwilling to acknowledge This trial is often heightened by a con- that, to a great extent, it lies at our own scious inability to instruct. He who door, and may be removed by our own never feels any doubt in regard to his ca- exertions. The remedy I will leave for pacity may well doubt his fitness. The the present.

teacher who has at heart the improve- The work of discipline is the teacher's ment of his pupils will often, very often, most trying work. It involves the quesfin dhis mental incapacity a source of tion of right and wrong, a knowledge of bitter trial. To labor for days and weeks the moral character of each pupil and an and perceive no progress in some pupils, understanding of his previous moral must awaken in the teacher the feeling training. The course of discipline suited that in all respects he is not competent to to one, fails entirely in the case of an othhis task--that there are minds whose pe- er. "The sun which melts the wax hardculiar bias he cannot comprehend, whose ens the clay." "What is one man's moving springs he cannot find. How poison is another man's cure." The often, after his best endeavors, does he wind which drives one vessel into a safe find himself completely unsuccessful. harbor may drive another upon shoals Have you not, fellow teacher, borne away and breakers. There is no panacea for from a recitation, a heavy load, as you moral irregularities. There have been have received in reply to your best illus- those who have laid down certain rules trations a long drawn yawn or a vacant of discipline, but these rules have been stare? Have you not felt like sinking found in many cases useless, or if followed under the burden of misapplied or mis- strictly have wrought as much harm as construed explanations? And with this good. One child needs all gentlenesshas not sometimes arisen the thought, "I another but little. To know just how am not fit to teach?" If not, then are each may be treated is a task of no small you happily exempt from one of the most magnitude. To add to this trial comes bitter of the teacher's trials; but allow in the fact, that upon the discipline of me to say, this very exemption is but the school depends, to a greater or less

degree, the future well being of the pu- in which it is. An education which pil, both for time and eternity. We have would be liberal in Patagonia would be to do with an immortal soul. Just in contemptible in Wisconsin. We are to proportion as we realize the nature of bring our pupils up to the full measure our work, will be our sense of moral ina- of the standard of men, well informed bility and the trial consequent upon it. and well trained in principles of thought In our schools we find characters of all and action for that life in which they are grades, from the most impressible to the to move. As representatives of the State most hardened. We find the lively and and of the parent, it is our duty to exerthe gay, the lonely and sad, the cheerful cise a caution respecting principles which and ever smiling the sullen and morose; are still controverted among the men of the lovely and affectionate-the repulsive the community in which we act. But the and soulless; the simple and artless-same representative relation requires us the hypocritical and deceptive; the obe- to instill with special care the principles dient and trust-worthy-the willful and which are established in our civilization. false-hearted. With such a variety of Our English civilization is charactercharacter, is it to be wondered at that ized by two principles-which are oneteachers find in their management much namely, freedom and truth. Liberty is cause for anxiety-much, and bitter, the state, and truth is the law of a true trial? English mind. These, we say, are one. Such are some of your trials, fellow- Truth is the root, and liberty is the tree, teachers. These spring entirely from neither can live without the other. Truth within yourselves. Conscious inability is first and from it must spring liberty. -whether physical, mental, or moral-Our own liberty has grown out of the is a source of trial. Is it any the less so honest truth of English hearts-from when it exists without our conscious- Alfred to Washington. When truth dies ness? or, when we attribute the effects freedom dies. No one educated in the to other than the true cause? Must we sentiments with which the English lanlabor under its weight, year after year, guage is alive, needs any demonstration of or is there some remedy? There is the proposition that a false man is a slave. remedy.

For the Journal of Education.

a

In our language, the word expressing the meanest condition is slave, and that

TRUTHFULNESS AS A BRANCH OF for the meanest character is liar. And

EDUCATION.

OUR business as teachers is to commu

we may remark in passing, that the thorough nobleness of the English lan

nicate to our pupils those acquisitions, guage, that is, of the mind which speaks accomplishments and principles which through that language appears in this,

will fit them to take their places as honorable and good members of the community. We are to bring them up to the civilization of the present time, and so prepare them to work in advancing that civilization. The scope of such education must depend upon the community

that while the noble opposite of liar is true-man, the opposite of slave is not master, but free-man-thus showing that

the honest truth avowed in the Declaration of Independence is the soul of our love of liberty.

We are to educate, then, in the prin

ciples of our State, in truth and freedom; watchfulness-a work not only involving but first and most in truth, because truth the earnest exhortation of a soul and is the life of freedom. We are strong mind full of truth and the love of truth, enough now to fear no danger to free- but a patient day-by-day carefulness in dom except from our own loss of truth. discerning and repelling the approach of But whenever evil man comes to have a temptation from those under our charge. distrust of his neighbor, founded on his The angels that guarded Eden were not own consciousness of insincerity, popu- sufficient to keep the father of lies from lar liberty becomes, of course, impossible, the first human souls, and our charge is for mutual confidence is its only bond. like theirs. For where else on earth is a We are then to secure the future well- garden planted by God if not where these being of the free commonwealth by cul- souls, newly from His hand, are gathered tivating truth of character in those who in their early training for immortality? are soon to compose that commonwealth. Of such a garden, a teacher is made the That there is a great and urgent need of guardian as well as the cultivator. And such culture, in order to counteract a ten-when we view our office in this light it dency to falsehood in public matters, is becomes noble and sacred. We are perthe most glaring fact upon the present mitted, and if we are permitted, we are

surface of affairs.

required to attempt this high and true and we ought never to be satisfied with culture of the minds committed to us→→ our work in the case of any pupil unless we have done what we could to make him

The first lesson in truthfulness is suggested by this English language which is all the while educating us all in the convictions of the great and true men, and generations which have developed the thoroughly true; nor with our success, tongue. Let a child get the English idea unless we have been able to send him of the word lie fixed in his mind with all forth prepared to be a true man in exthat intensity of meaning which the loath-pression, in mind and in heart.

ing of centuries and of millions has crowd- This enlarged, this liberal education in ed into it. So let him learn to speak the truthfulness as we may call it, is the truth. And when he learns to hate, and more needed in our schools because there to despise, and to shudder at a lie as is so little hope that coming life will supworse than leprosy or plague spot, let ply the lack of it. If a boy should come him learn that searching application of into manhood without learning to flee the principle, which is the next advance from the character of the liar, he soon to be made in the public conscience. For finds that the judgment of the community telling a lie is certainly no less mean than overwhelms it with a flood of infamy; the world pronounces it. But the same so that if the falsehood were all, we pest is to be exterminated from all the might trust the purifying influence of the life of man, and if we can teach the ge- social atmosphere to cast out falsehood. neration to come to abhor all the lies that But at this point our moral civilization are done and all that are expressed by has met a countervailing influence, against silence, we shall have made a clear and which it has hardly held its own for great advance toward the perfection of centuries.

human civilization.

This loathing of a lie has been an It must be a work of pains-taking and English trait from of old. It was no an

achronism of Shakspeare to make Harry of such intense practical activity should Hotspur saypreserve an ambiguous character. We "O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the must have one or the other of the two greatnesses possible for such a character, either cunning or truth. Which shall it

devil."

Or Cardinal Wolsey

"Let all the ends thou aimest at be thy be? The answer is with the educators country's, thy God's and truth's."

of the people.
Beloit.

J. E.

[For the Journal of Education.] PEDAGOGIC PEDANTRY.

But that same stout heart, which, when the nation was growing, beat high and strong in its honor of truth--has gone out into practical life, and has felt, in the old country and especially here in the new, the temptation of power and opportunity. Shrewdness and success have Disseminating knowledge to gratify come to be worshiped as gods of the land, vanity; mouthing erudition; instead of and the setting up of their images in the telling what you know, telling what you temple which belongs to truth has been have learned, are forms of Pedantry.working a peculiar demoralization. Men The character of it depends on its localihave learned to leave this exterior detes-ty. In college, where there is so much tation of the lie still standing in our learning and so little business, pedantry civilization, and exercised their ingenuity is a pest. In the world, where it is just to invent a million artifices of smooth- the other way, much business and little faced deception under it; and for all learning, pedantry ought to be a virtue. these has been proposed the prize of fortune, and even of fame, for smartness.

The pedantry that feeds on classical antiquities and Greek roots, is different It is this tendency to corruption, work. from the pedantry that feeds on spelling The ing in the community, which we wish to books, hard sums and geographies.. counteract, and which must be counter- former, burrowing in the mould of cenacted, by the one influence which is able turies, can but make a show of cast off to counteract it, namely, the influence of wares and literary trumperies, which fail early education. Let a boy learn, while to interest. The latter hawks from house he is a boy, that truth is a thing and not to house the pins and needles of science, a name, and that it has to do with all the knives and forks of table-talk-things human actions. In that, for it comes to so serviceable as to defy derision, and nothing less, let him leave school with a make inattention imprudent. While the clear, sound and intelligent conscience, former pedant may be considered as which will not suffer itself to be imposed a peddler of antiquated notions, the latter upon and hood-winked by those misera- may be considered as a peddler of Yankee ble subterfuges under which men that notions. have neither courage enough to speak or Pedagogic pedantry of this kind dedo the truth, nor hardihood enough for a serves nursing instead of cursing-declear spoken lie, piece together for them- serves a bounty. A man of this kind in selves a life made of motley "shreds and a district is a godsend. The difference patches" of cunning. From such a life between him and an Educational Misas that we are to save our people, for it is sionary, is hard to tell-pretty much in not in the nature of things that a people the eye.

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Knowledge, like religion, is seasonable Holoformes. Bone?-bone for BENE: Precision a little at all times and in all places. They who scratcheth; 't will serve. confine the one to the school-house, confine the other to the church.

Car

After you read this you will feel like joining me in the petition: From pe

us.

D. J. H.

rying the latter into the bar-room or ball- dantry in pedagogues, good Lord deliver room, they brand as Fanaticism; carrying the former into these places, they

brand as Pedantry.

OFFICE OF SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY LANDS.}

Madison, Nov. 5, 1856.

Pedantry, too, has gotten evil to its To the State Sup't Public Instruction: name from keeping bad company. Its SIR:-In pursuance with Chapter 40 of the General Laws of 1856, we herewith report the boon companions are Loquacity and Con- transactions, during the month of October ceit-living in the shadow of two silly last, in relation to the sale of School and Unithings makes it look silly; but an objec-from, as follows: versity Lands, and of the funds arising theretion so insignificant ought to be tied at 1. Funds received from sale of S. once in one corner of the mantle of 2. Interest on Loan & U. Lands Charity. The Pedagogic Pedant is full as much 5. of a desideratum among teachers as the colporter is among evangelists: do not expect to find the highest style of 7. S. & U. Fund on hand pulpit oratory in the latter, so you need 8. Income on hand not expect to find the highest style of

teachership in the former.

4.

3. Penalties on Forfeitures
Fines

as you 6.

Our Pedant takes up arms in defence of Etymology, keeps an argus eye on

$892,66

137.14

674,63

160,65

S. & U. Lands sold, 3,200 acres
To whom sold, see schedule an-
nexed.
Amount Loaned

$2,350

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Orthography, is the unflinching cham- SCHEDULE OF LANDS SOLD DURING THE MONTH

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pion of Grammatical precision. Bad
grammar grates harsher on his ear, and Name of Pur'r. No. Ac's. Sec.
produces deeper catastrophic emotion, E. H. Smith,
A. F. Frary,
than news of a shipwreck. A sort of Anson Blake,
Literary Duenna, to preserve intact the David McKnight,
moods and tenses, he points triumphant-
ly to his watchword—" Eternal vigilance
the price of precision."

Hear Holofernes, the pedantic pedagogue Shakspeare has drawn:

Holofernes. He is too peregrinate, this Armado.
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer
Than the staple of his arguments. I abhor
Such fanatical fantasms; such insociable and point-
devise companions;

Such rackers of Orthography, as to speak dout, fine,
when he should say DOUBT ;

Det, when he should pronounce it DEBT-d-e-b-t-not

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D. R. W. Williams, 40
Daniel McFarland, 120
M. Frary,

W. M. Herster,
John P. Hobart,
John A. Byrne,
John Thompson,
C. Washington,

H. Stunsland,
Peter Winter,
F. Whittaker,

160

160

120

40

120

160

M. G. Frary,

120

N. W. Roth,

160

160

80

160

80

160

160

40

80

160

160

Thomas Hayes,

160

W. T. Hall,

40

Samuel Harris,
L. Frary,
Isaac winter,
A. St. John,
Ruel Noyes,
H. F. Frary,
E. Pratt,

Co. in which

lands are. Portage Co.

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