"I. With such an arrangement, how are promotions possible without destroying the classification of the school? Here is a most difficult question. If a difference of one year only existed between the grades, or if pupils were admitted to the school only once in two years, it could be easily answered. No trouble is found in promoting from the first to the second grade; but it is observed that when they pass from the second to the third grade, they must combine with pupils who have already done one year's work on that part of the course allotted to the third grade. This, of course, where everything has been efficiently done, works detriment to the school. Were it not that the logical and psychological orders, stated above, must be followed on passing to the third grade, they could commence fourth year work, and the following year do third year work, and again the two divisions would combine at the beginning of the fifth year. With this arrangement the class that enters the school in the odd years would progress evenly and symmetrically through the entire course, while the class that enters on the even years would work half the time with the class which is a year ahead, and the other half the time with a class a year behind its true standing. This is out of the question, and the close and rigid gradation here spoken of is impossible. The most practical way seems to be to make the gradation loose, to allow the bright, strong ones to pass on to a higher grade, while the dull, weak ones fall back where an opportunity is given to make up lost work. Some difficulty is experienced here, owing to a difference of advancement; but it is hardly to be expected that the pupils of any grade will be of the same degree of scholarship. "II. When new pupils present themselves, how shall they be classified? Three things should be taken into consideration--age, ability, scholarship. Other things being equal, such a pupil should be placed among those of his age. If ability is good and scholarship somewhat less, he should be still placed there, allowing that with his good ability he will soon 'catch up' with those of his own age. In deciding upon scholarship, reading should be made the basis for classifying primary pupils, while arithmetic is a more satisfactory basis for classifying advanced pupils. It is always best to place a boy of good ability among his superiors than among his inferiors. Care should be taken, however, not to class him so high as to make a change necessary.

"III. Whose duty is it to classify, and is this duty imperative? Manifestly the pupil is not prepared to choose his studies or classify himself. He sees the school from below, not from above. He looks upon the school as an end in itself, and is not expected to know what constitutes the best and most rapid progress. Neither can his parents decide the question of his classification; for if they do, decisions will conflict and again classification is impossible. Certainly it is the duty of the teacher, acting under the direction and supervision of the county superintendent. This is an imperative duty upon the teacher, one that he should discharge without fear or favor. 'Where does the pupil belong?' is the question, and his 'duty to the child, to the parent, to himself and to his profession, demands a correct classification.' It is my opinion that, in the first place, teachers do not sufficiently understand the principles of gradation to act with confidence and decision; in the second place, they do not understand it to be one of their sacred duties; and in the third place, they fear the opposition of parents. The unpopularity which a teacher is likely to incur by assigning the pupils to the classes where they really belong, acts as a powerful barrier against the gradation of our schools. This is its negative phase; its positive phase, though not so generally practiced, is another great evil. Teachers will curry favor with parents and seek popularity by classifying pupils too high. Such work has been appropriately termed 'demagogic pedagogy,' and has been characterized as a base, unprofessional trick. A great duty devolves upon the superintendent in properly directing the work of his teachers in this respect; also in visiting his schools the work of classification should be carefully inspected.

"IV. Uniform text-books are necessary. This is absolutely essential, in order to prevent the multiplication of classes. The means of accomplishing this are in the hands of the county board, and should be exercised with great care.

"V. The necessity of a suitable programme. It is not the purpose here to state what the programme should be-to decide whether arithmetic or reading should come first in the day, but to determine some of its characteristics and show its value in sustaining a graded system of schools. The programme should state a time for each exercise of the school; thus none will be omitted, none forgotten, and irregularity in this respect is avoided. It should also state the length of time for each exercise; thus none will usurp the time of the other; none will be slighted. A properly arranged programme is absolutely essential in securing these two results; and though they may seem little things, their violation has a powerful tendency to disintegrate and disorganize. A lack of method and system here rapidly spreads until it infests every thread and fibre of school work.

"Having arranged a course of study and decided upon the classification of the school the promotions naturally follow. These have already been incidentally noticed under the head of Classification of Schools,' but a few points are deserving of special mention. Any perfect scheme of promotion necessitates

"I. A standard which must be reached.

"II. An accurate, just, and uniform method of determining the standing of pupils. "III. A permanent record of this standing for the use of school officers and succeeding teachers.

"IV. A system of graduation.

"Only those pupils should be allowed to pass whose work has been good, and a high degree of excellence should be required. Teachers and school officers fail, many times, by lowering the standard of scholarship. Thus pupils come to believe that accuracy is not desirable, and that hard work and faithful effort are not essential to success. Seventy-five per cent. at least should be the minimum in any branch. A higher standard would be still preferable. This standard should be determined by the county board." "That the standing of pupils should be made up from both the class work and examination will hardly admit of question. Baldwin, in his 'Art of School Management,' recommends that the class-standing be multiplied by 4 and the result added to the grade received on examination, and that this sum be divided by 5 in determining the standing of any pupil. This method seems eminently just. But while teachers differ so widely in their methods of grading, and while such a difference exists between the questions used by one teacher and those of another, uniformity is not so easily secured, and pupils of one school advance more rapidly in the grades than those of another. The difficulty here again grows out of the impossibility of close supervision. Two plans for unifying the work may be suggested:

"1. The township plan, in which the work of preparing questions for examinations, grading manuscripts, and controlling promotions is in the hands of a township principal, who in turn works under the supervision of the county superintendent.

2. The county plan, in which the superintendent prepares the questions for each school at least twice a year, and collecting the manuscripts, grades them himself. This entails an almost endless amount of work on the superintendent, but it has been successfully accomplished, I understand, in at least one county of the State. Either method if taken would greatly aid in establishing the fixed policy necessary to gradation.

"The status of a school being once determined for a given month it should become a matter of permanent record, so that school officers and succeeding teachers may have something to assist them in maintaining the gradation of the school. Each teacher should be supplied with a grade-book, with definite instructions as to its use, where the standing of a pupil, made up as suggested above, should be recorded monthly and in permanent form. At the close of the year a summary of these monthly standings should be made and the averages given. This average standing should reach the standard already adopted by the county board before a promotion takes place. Where a township principal is employed, as stated above, he should have a record of the name, classification, and standing of every pupil of the township. Where no such principal is employed the county superintendent should have a similar record made from the monthly reports of his teachers. These records should be summarized and published for annual distribution to teachers and parents.

"Graduation is the last step in promotion, and is essential. No greater impetus has ever been given to the work of the district schools than that which has attended the introduction of this feature. It, like Janus of old, looks both ways, forward, backwardbackward over the entire school course, and necessitates efficiency at every point. It is destined to work a revolution in that it strengthens the work all along the line. It secures better instruction, better gradation, closer supervision. It looks forward to the high school, to which its diploma is a ticket of admission. It thus unites the district school and the high school, and as it marks a degree of success, is a powerful incentive to good.

To recapitulate: The essentials to gradation are course of study, classification, promotion.

"The coarse should state the work in detail, should divide it into parts and allot a definite time to each, and should arrange these parts in their logical and psychological orders. The course for the district schools should be more definitely outlined than that for towns and cities. The amount of work that can be done in a given time depends mainly upon length of term, efficiency of teacher, and regularity of pupils. The logical and psychological orders are the same, and are the inherent relations of the mind and the thing studied.

"Only five grades are practical. Classification should be loose; new pupils classified according to age, ability, scholarship. It is the duty of the teacher and the superintendent to classify. Uniformity in text-books is necessary; programmes are essential. "Any scheme of promotion includes standard, test of scholarship, permanent record, system of graduation."

What the ungraded school demands.-Superintendent Raab, of Illinois, in speaking of the qualities demanded of the teachers of ungraded schools, remarks: "Every one can

see that to instruct 30 to 40 pupils of such various attainments as the difference in the ages between 6 and 21 years conditions is a difficult task, and that the teacher must possess a high degree of self-denial and energy to do this work well. He must occupy silently three or more divisions while he instructs one. In order to make this silent occupation of use to the pupils, how carefully must the exercises be selected, how well prepared beforehand, and how much time does their control and criticism consume? How must the teachers continually study the means of doing the work most thoroughly in the shortest possible time? It is self-evident. The ungraded school demands the most skilful and thorough teacher and educator.

"The communities with ungraded schools are mostly far removed from larger towns and cities. Their inhabitants belong mostly to the less wealthy and cultivated. Not rarely there is a lack of intellectual incitement and aesthetic refinement so essential for a young person to feel and imitate. Frequently the few refined are too far removed socially from the majority to encourage intercourse between them. A teacher who is to work in such a community has great difficulties to overcome socially. His education may predispose him for the intercourse with the few cultured families, but he is rarely in such pecuniary situation as to mingle with them freely, socially, and familiarly. For the sake of his efficiency he can not withdraw from the society of the majority. Much tact and a strong character are necessary to do the right thing under all circumstances; to displease neither the one nor the other. The teacher of an ungraded school must not only be a thorough teacher and educator, he must at the same time be a man of wisdom and of character.

"But what kind of a teacher do we find in many ungraded schools? Young people just dismissed from the same kind of school. What is the cause of this? Because this class of school is considered the proper one for the beginners and it is the most poorly paid. When the latter have instructed in such a school for some time they either strive for a village school or they abandon the work of teaching altogether and other tyros take their place.

"These young people enter upon their duties and find themselves before a gigantic task. Hardly any one of them has ever seen a school properly conducted; some will perhaps remember one thing or another from their childhood experience.

"Many a one would find it a difficult task to instruct one division properly and to gain its attention and interest, and now he is called upon to employ four or more divisions at the same time. If he loses all hope and grows dispirited is it to be wondered at? It is a wonder if he does not lose courage and succeeds in creating order and fresh life out of chaos."

"As a rule there is little enthusiasm among the teachers of ungraded schools. How can there be any as long as the teachers do not know or even feel what great opportunities for doing good to their fellow men are put into their hands. Instead of creating fresh life and vigor they consider their work a drudgery from which to flee as soon as there is a chance seems natural. They know no better. No one has ever opened to them the portals of science or pointed out the blessings which may be conferred upon a community by conscientious, thorough work in ungraded schools.

"School directors having charge of ungraded schools should never employ teachers who have not at least served an apprenticeship of several years in a graded school under the supervision of a competent principal or superintendent. The salaries of teachers in ungraded schools should, of course, be much better than those of subordinate teachers in graded schools. Teachers who have successfully taught in ungraded schools will form the best material from which to select principals and superintendents for village and city graded schools, because they are familiar with all the details of the entire course from the primary grade to the high school.

"A public school teacher, especially the teacher of an ungraded school, who successfully leads the young to the high aims of intellectual and moral culture, is certainly one of the most useful servants of the State; hence the community should do everything in its power to retain the greatest possible number of such men in the profession and to secure to them satisfactory and respected positions."

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Grading country schools.-Superintendent Cornell, of Colorado: "Our country schools cannot be made as thorough and efficient as they should be until a definite course of study is adopted and the pupils classified. *If the country schools are graded the work must be accomplished largely through the efforts of the county superintendents. They must see that the teachers properly classify the pupils of such schools, and keep proper records of such classification. From these records the teacher should make monthly reports to the county superintendent, which shall show the progress of the school. The mere adoption of a course of study by a school board will avail but little unless some system is inaugurated for having it carried out and made permanent. It is not expected that any one course of study can be adopted in detail in every school. County superintendents must determine what course is best suited to the schools of their coun

ties. Yet, if possible, it will be better to follow one general outline of work in every county."

A system of grading proposed for Kansas.-The subject of grading the common schools of Kansas has been recommended by Superintendent Lawhead to the consideration of the Legislature of that State. The objects to be sought and some of the advantages that would result he enumerates as follows: (1) An ultimate reduction in the number of classes, consequently more time could be given to each class. (2) More systematic work could be done, hence each pupil taught by example the necessity and practical benefit of system in everything-a very important element. (3) Each pupil would realize that bis advancement would depend upon the thoroughness with which he performed his work, therefore he would be stimulated to do everything in the best manner possible." Organization of ungraded schools.—Hon. John W. Dickinson, secretary of Massachusetts board of education: "A serious hindrance to successful work in ungraded schools is a large number of classes. A large number of classes seems to make necessary many exercises during each daily session. Where there are many different class exercises in the day but little time can be given to each, and with but little time for an exercise, not much good teaching can be done.

"Just as good teaching can be done in an ungraded school as in a school that is graded, and it can be done in the same time and in the same way.

"It seems desirable, therefore, that an earnest effort should be made by the committees and teachers having these schools in charge to make the number of daily exercises small enough to make good teaching possible.

"This may be accomplished in the following way:

"First. By uniting as far as practicable the classes in each subject.

"The course of study [for ungraded schools in Massachusetts] is laid out for eight years of school attendance, but there are few schools in which all these grades of work are represented at one time.

"By the use of supplementary reading matter, and by the topical method in other subjects, classes representing different grades may be brought together.

Second. By alternating the recitations of the older pupils in certain subjects. Thus the recitations in geography and history may occur on alternate days; so may physiology and grammar; writing and drawing may alternate. The reading exercises of the higher classes may alternate with each other.

Third. By frequent and regular substitution of written for oral recitations in most of the subjects. This will leave the teachers free for other classes, and the written papers can be examined out of school. Such exercises are of great value to the pupils themselves.

"A written programme should be prepared as soon as possible after the beginning of the term. This should contain the order of exercises for each day of the week, and should indicate the time at which each exercise should begin and end. It should be placed where it can be read by the pupils, that they may be guided in their study. If rigidly followed by the teacher it will train the pupils to habits of promptness and punctuality."

VI.-EDUCATION.

A man of more account than his trade. Superintendent Hinsdale, of Cleveland, Ohio: "One of the most discouraging things that the teacher encounters is the erroneous views of the nature and objects of education that are so very common. An intelligent manufacturer tells me, for instance, that he is anxious to find out as speedily as possible what trade or profession his son is fitted for by nature, and then to educate him to follow it. He says he can see the sense of a classical education for a minister or a physician, but evidently it would be thrown away on a mechanic or tradesman. No doubt it would be folly to give, or seek to give, a classical education to all mechanics and tradesmen, or even to many of them. But that is not the point. After all the preaching of sweetness and light' we have heard the number of people who can not raise the question of a boy's education above the level of the daily work that he will probably perform is alarmingly large. These people think a man is merely a tool or instrument, and that he should be educated solely for the reason that a chisel or saw should be kept sharp. Now, it scarcely need be said that education should fit men and women for efficiency in work and business. Life has a physical basis; a man can do nothing without his breakfast, and a complete scheme of education must provide for bread-winning. How a boy or girl will be best prepared in school to earn money, and so to win bread, whether by general studies, by special studies, or by a combination of both, I do not now inquire. But I do assert that a man is of more account than his trade. The life is more than meat, and the body than raiment. Man lives not by bread alone; his life consists not of the abundance of the things that he possesses. The human mind is capa

ble of knowledge and of seeking truth for truth's sake; capable of sublimity, faith, reverence, sympathy, and pathos; capable of happiness and joy and love, and to deny it the food that feeds these capacities, to try to appease its hunger with a mere business education, or with the husks of learning, is nothing short of starvation."

VII.-GRADED SCHOOLS.

THE INDIANA SYSTEM OF GRADED SCHOOLS.

The State of Indiana furnishes a typical illustration of the American system of graded schools in its fullest development, in which every child may receive an education at the public expense, beginning with the rudiments of learning and continuing on by successive steps up through the highest grade of the university State Superintendent J. W. Holcombe, in his last published report, gives an account of the system as it has been developed in Indiana, from which the following has been compiled.

What the term "graded school" is understood to mean in Indiana.-State Superintendent G. W. Hoss (1865), in interpreting the provision of the statute regarding graded schools said: "1st. A graded school is a school in which the pupils are placed in different rooms and under different teachers according to advancement. Consequently, the greater the number of rooms and teachers for any given school the more favorable the means for perfect grading. From this it will be seen that a graded school as contemplated in the above section can not exist with less than two teachers. With one the school may be classified but not graded. Trustees will therefore have regard to this element when they put up buildings designed for graded schools. 2d. As to the time when a graded school should be established for any given township, no definite directions can be given. There are too many local elements to admit of any special directions. It is, however, safe to say that whenever there are pupils in the township whose advancement is such that the district schools can not furnish them instruction, at that moment begins the need of a township graded school furnishing instruction of a higher grade. The trustee must, however, be satisfied that the number of such pupils is sufficient to justify the establishment of such a school before providing the same. 3d. As to place, I would suggest that whenever practicable the township graded school should be established in connection with a district school, thus economizing in building, perhaps in teaching, also furnishing the means of a more thorough grading in at least one primary school in the township. It is suggested further that a village, if centrally located, is usually a favorable place for the township school."

"A graded school, it is therefore obvious [Mr. Holcombe says in continuation], may be extended from the smallest township school of two rooms, carrying its course of study no farther than 'the eight branches,' or including but one or two additional branches,' to the highly developed city system, which embraces elementary instruction in the higher mathematics, languages, literature, and science. The graded school develops as the population increases and as the demand for higher instruction grows. The cities, therefore, first established graded schools, and have, as a rule, extended their system in proportion to their size and wealth. All the cities of the State, and most of the towns, maintain graded school systems, terminating in a high school course of from two to four years."

The course of study. The law determining the subjects of instruction in the common schools of the State is as follows: "The common schools of the State shall be taught in the English language; and the trustee shall provide to have taught in them orthography, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, English grammar, physiology, history of the United States, and good behavior, and such other branches of learning and other languages as the advancement of the pupils may require and the trustees from time to time direct. And whenever the parents or guardians of 25 or more children in attendance at any school of a township, town, or city shall so demand, it shall be the duty of the school trustee or trustees of said township, town, or city to procure efficient teachers and introduce the German language, as a branch of study, into such schools; and the tuition in said schools shall be without charge: Provided, Such demand is made before the teacher for said district is employed."

Upon the extent to which the course of study may be carried, James H. Smart, State superintendent (1880), said: "It is fair to assume that the trustees must provide suitable instruction for all the children who may have a right to attend school; that is, they must afford them such instruction as their attainments demand. If a child has mastered all the primary branches, and, being less than twenty-one years of age, still desires to attend school, the trustees must provide suitable instruction for him. It is not reasonable to expect him to spend further time on branches which he has mastered. The fact that the law permits children to attend school till they are twenty-one years of age is presumptive proof that the trustees may be required to furnish such instruction