It will be seen that these assaulting parties are as hostile to each other as to the schools and school systems themselves, the only bond of union consisting in the fact that each trooper levels his lance against some one point of the common school line, while no two of them agree in assailing precisely the same point. They are all specialists and hobbyists, and hence their strictures are without much force or significance in the estimation of persons of thoughtful and well-balanced minds.

OTHER ALLIES.

The elements of opposition coalesce in divers other forms, under the power of various affinities, motives and purposes, prominent among which are those of an illiberal, unintelligent and selfish character. Thus, the hard and miserly join hands to break down a system which extorts taxes from their broad acres and hoarded wealth; the childless unite in objecting to assist in educating the children of others; those who schooled their children under the old regime, would like to know why their present neighbors should not also pay their own tuition bills; those who have grown rich and great without any education to speak of, do not see why their children and their neighbors' children should not be left to do the same; some are not able to reconcile the doctrine of free schools by State law, with their notions of personal liberty, free government and the declaration of independence; others, of aristocratic pretensions, affect to question the wisdom and to deny the obligation of educating the masses, alleging that even if labor and learning are not incompatible, ignorance is at least the normal and happier condition of the laboring classes; nor are there wanting those who flatly deny that intelligence promotes virtue and thrift, and lessens profligacy and crime, and who therefore denounce public schools in the name of religion and political economy. These, and many other classes and affiliations of persons, added to a species of moral wasps to be found in the social atmosphere of nearly every community, whose nature it seems to be to buzz and sting, keep up a very lively skirmishing along the outposts of the common school army, never permitting the sentinels to sleep at their posts. And it is well.

A VERY DIFFERENT MATTER.

But the public schools are arraigned by men who belong to none of these classes of theorists, abstractionists, misers, aristocrats and chronic fault-finders; by men who are actuated by none but the worthiest motives, and who have no personal or selfish ends to subserve. There are allegations of inefficiency and failure which, if true, affect not merely the form but the substance of the school system. Au army may be inVol. II-19

different to the driving in of its distant outposts, but an assault in force upon its intrenched camp, is another matter. A tree may be marred by too free or careless a lopping off of its outer branches, but when the axe is laid at the root, its life is imperilled. I have been at considerable pains to gather up what is alleged about the schools, and the result has suggested the foregoing illustrations-they are not inappropriate. The public schools do stand arraigned at the bar of public opinion, upon charges of a very serious nature, preferred by persons whose opinions and statements are entitled to thoughtful consideration. It is therefore proposed, in the interest of free schools, upon whose character so much depends, and in the spirit of candor and truth, to examine some of these witnesses, to note the nature and essence of their testimony, and consider the indictment founded thereon. I give the substance, not always the language, of the numerous communications received. Even where the language is re-cast, the exact meaning of the writers is carefully preserved.

SOME TESTIMONY.

From a Farmer." I am a farmer. My son is now eighteen years of age. He began to attend the district school at the age of six, and has attended two terms, or six months, in each year, from that time until now. He is a boy of good health and of at least average mental abilities, and has never been considered less studious than his school-fellows and classmates. His teachers have been as competent as the average of those employed in country districts. His time in school has been spent, exclusively, upon the seven rudimentary branches taught in the common district schools, spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar and the history of the United States. He is nevertheless a poor speller, reader and writer; knows little of arithmetic or grammar, except the rules, and has only, a smattering of geography and history. I found out these things by asking him questions, and setting him to do things for me. I take an agricultural paper, and one evening I asked John, (my son's name,) to take pen and paper and write for me a short article for the newspaper, on the Culture of Corn, about which I thought I had some ideas worth communicating. I sat in my easy chair and dictated what I had to say, and John wrote it down. When the article was finished, I told John to put my initials to it, and send it to the office of the paper. Two weeks afterward, when the paper came, I looked for my article, but found instead, the following editorial note:

"If our correspondent 'B. J. T.' knew one-tenth part as much about orthography, punctuation, paragraphing and the use of capital letters, as he does about corn culture,' his article would have been gladly inserted. His ignorance of those matters, so important to editors and printers, seems as remarkable as his knowledge of the subject treated of. We

advise him to write again, and get some intelligent school-boy to copy his article for him, before sending it to us!"

My reflections on reading this gentle hint, must be left to the imagination. Was not my John an "intelligent school-boy?" I would look further into the matter. I asked him to point out Salt Lake City on the map. He did so. By what name are the inhabitants of that city known? He could not tell. Is there anything peculiar in their religious notions and social customs? Not that he knew of. How much sooner does the sun rise in Boston than in San Francisco? He did not know. Why should it rise any sooner? He could not say. Though only a farmer, I am fond of Shakspeare, and asked John to read me a scene from King Lear. It could not be called reading, and, in much pain, I soon desired him to stop. How many different sounds are there in the word eight? Fice, of course. Did the colonies, prior to the Revolution, all have the same form of government? Yes. What was it called? Colonial gov ernment. How many different kinds of national government have we had since the Revolution? Two, democratic and republican. John, said I, to-day I sold a load of hay, weighing 1750 lbs. and received pay for it, at the rate of $16 50 per ton; how much money did I get? He took his slate and went to work, while I read a fresh copy of the Times. In an hour I had finished the paper, but John had not finished his sum. He said there were so many fractions in it, and he couldn't find a rule that would fit exactly. The next evening I told John that I had a little sum in practical farming for him to do: I rented forty acres of land to Mr. Jones, he to put it in corn and allow me one-third of the crop for the use of the land. Jones raised 2400 bushels, the total cost of which, when cribbed, was $355. What did Jones' corn cost him per bushel in the crib; what was the cost of the whole crop per acre, and per bushel, and if I sell my share at fifty cents per bushel, how much shall I get per acre as rent? John labored on it most of the evening, but did not get correct answers to all of the questions. I then gave him all of the items of cost and profit, and desired him to open an account with that 40 acre lot, in due form, and prepare a correct balance-sheet of the same. did not know what I meant.

He

Finding that my poor boy had very little to show for his twelve years of delving in the seven elementary common school branches; that he was a poor reader and a worse writer and speller; that he knew nothing of punctuation, and could not, with the matter furnished him, prepare a few pages of manuscript well enough to save them from the editorial wastebasket; that his stock of history and geography was meagre in the extreme, while his knowledge of arithmetic, beyond the verbiage of the text-book, was unequal to simple ordinary business transactions connected with his father's farm-I thought that perhaps he had made up in general knowledge what he lacked in these respects, and continued my inquiries accordingly.

His reading books contained pieces from eminent orators, statesmen and patriots; had his teachers told him anything of their biography, characters and services-of the occasions and circumstances under which their speeches and addresses were delivered? He said they had not. He had read descriptions of many lands and scenes, curious stories of beasts and birds, of insects and fishes; every day, all these years, he had walked over the earth with its many kinds and qualities of soils, its wintry wonders of frost and ice, its vernal freshness and beauty, the summer splendors of its trees and flowers, and the autumnal glories of its pictured woods and ripened fruits; he had heard the wild scream of the tempest, the Æolian murmurs of the zephyr, the deep bass of the thunder-had watched the sheen and sparkle of the stars of night, the brightening flash of coming day, and the gorgeous skies of sunset -he had lived and moved and had his being amid these omnipresent wonders of the material world; had his teachers sought to interpret them to him, to awaken his interest in them and to bring him into loving relations with nature, with the objective, the visible and tangible-had they in any way sought to redeem the dryness and littleness of words and books by showing their relations to the freshness and greatness of ideas and things-had they bidden him watch the curious growths and processes going on about him all the time, the perpetual marvels of plant-life and of animated beings, and to move about with every sense awake and alert, eager to note the lessons and revelations coming up from every ereature and thing that God has made? "Why, no," said he; "they heard me recite what was in the books." Of course, I pursued, but did they not do more than that; did they not supplement, and enrich the daily lessons of the books by information, facts and illustrations drawn from their own reading, observation and experience, so as to whet your appetite for general knowledge; did they not tell you again and again that the few studies of the district school were chiefly valuable as necessary instruments for future acquisitions, that you might through them become intelligent, well-informed, useful and happy? They had not done any of these things, John said,

A day or two after this conversation, I took a walk with my son, through the gardens, stock-yards, fields and woods, resolved to bring this painful inquiry to a conclusion, and bitterly reproaching myself for having so long taken it for granted that all was well. Of the ground beneath our feet, he only knew that it was a portion of the earth's surface; of the gardens, he knew that vegetables grew in one, and flowers in the other; he knew the names of the various domestic animals, but he did not know which of a cow's jaws was destitute of front teeth, nor, when she rose from the ground, which end of her got up first; the grain in two adjoining fields was six inches high, one wheat, the other oats he could not distinguish them; all he could say of the meadows

was, that they contained grass; of forest trees, he could tell the names of but few, while of their respective characteristics and values, for fuel, lumber, etc., he was ignorant. But the worst of it all was that the boy's senses seemed inactive, his perceptions blunted and his mind stupified, by the habit, all these years, of studying mere words instead of things also, and of regarding school-work as something separate and apart from the out-door world, having but a vague and unimportant relation to everyday life. Thenceforward I tried to arouse the child's dormant senses and faculties, and to show him what great things God had done for his education; to give him a fresh baptism into the spirit of Nature and the world of realities, from which, alas! his schooling had seemed to separate him."

From a Laborer.-"I am a laborer. My daughter is fifteen years of age. She has attended the district school since her sixth year. I have waited for the time when she could read the paper to me when I returned home from my labor in the evening, and when she could keep my little accounts and write an occasional letter, and assist her mother in the care and instruction of the younger children, and contribute generally to the attractiveness and decorum of my humble home. In this hope we have contrived to get along without her services in the household, for more than half the time for nine years. But the close of each successive school year has found her about where she was at its commencementno perceptible advance, no marked improvement in spelling, reading or writing. She has gone over the same ground so often that she now seems to put forth no mental effort at all, her mind seems to be losing all grasp and power, and she moves along in a listless mechanical way, in the same old ruts, with no seeming power or even inclination to get out of them. Her school books lost all their freshness and interest years ago, since which time she has really made no progress in learning that I can see; we cannot see that she knows more than she did three or four years ago. Her teachers seem to have no power to re-awaken her interest in her old books, or to devise any new methods of enlisting her attention.

Before she started to school, she was a bright eager child, watching and questioning me about many things, while at my work; full of wonderment and intelligent curiosity to learn the names and uses of what she saw, and adding daily to her little stores of knowledge. In this respect she does not seem like the same child now. Her eagerness to learn about flowers and plants, about trees and animals, and the many other things of out-door life which once had such a charm for her, is gone. She seems to think that there is no teacher but the schoolmaster, no place to study in but the school-house, and nothing to be learned but what is in books. Even of her text-books, she knows little save their words; it is surprising what few ideas she gains from them. She seems