The American Journal of Education

edible onions; textile fibres derived from herbaceous stalks; woods, leaves serving for food and forage; flowers, fruits. The enumeration of all these affords an opportunity of instilling, by observation of common objects, all the most useful notions relative to the anatomy of plants, the composition of their tissues, and the laws which determine the relative disposition of their diverse organs, or of the parts of these.

In the course of geology, the particular tract of land in which the school is situated should be studied. The pupils should learn to distinguish the formations that surround them, to recognize the order of superposition and the differences of stratification in the different beds, the nature of the fossils found in them, and the deductions which may be drawn from these. Finally, during the excursions to which the study of this branch gives rise, the pupils should be practiced in collecting for themselves minerals of well defined character, in taking notes, and in making sketches of the arrangement of the rocks and the beds which they examine. Such personal observations enable them, in the following years, to understand by means of specimens, or of drawings, that which may be told them about countries and geological districts which they may not have an opportunity of examining directly.

COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS.

Practical Exercises.-Explain that commerce is but a succession of exchanges: first merchandise for merchandise, in the beginning of societies, subsequently merchandise for money; peace and prosperity engender credit; sales to be paid in a given term; the accounts of each person then consists of what he owes, and of what is owing to him; meaning of the words debtor and creditor; active and passive; necessity of taking note of the sums to be received, and of the payments to be effected; what is understood by debiting and crediting; balance of accounts; balance to the debit, &c.

Synoptical table of the principal operations of commerce, buying and selling, forwarding merchandise, paying and receiving, to subscribe, to take, to negotiate, &c.

An invoice, what it is, what is understood by the sum total, sale at so much per cent., remission of so much per cent., brutto weight, net weight, tare, show models of current accounts, of bills of exchange, and drafts to order; explain the meaning of the word drawer, drawee, indorsement, indorser, due date, mean date of payment.

The object of this elementary course is to teach the pupils to make some of the calculations which occur in commerce, and to write invoices, accounts of sales, bills of invoice, &c., in a word, to make them acquainted with all those details which constitute bookkeeping, properly so called. The professor should satisfy himself by numerous questionings, that all his explanations have been well understood; he should make the pupils practice a great deal by simulating simple operations, copying models of invoices, of drafts to order, of cheques, &c., he should also exact that the calculations and the writing should be executed very neatly and elegantly, and in consequence, that before any model is copied, all the results should be verified.

CALIGRAPHY AND DRAWING.

Continuation of the principles and practice, English handwriting, running

hand.

In the classes for linear drawing the notions of lines and surfaces, imparted in the course of the preceding year, should be recapitulated. Ordinary curves and conical curves should be drawn on the blackboard and explained. The exercises on paper should consist of mosaics, iron railings, balustrades, &c. Dull gray tints and black tints spread over the drawings should continue to be practiced, as the preparation for the coloring of solid bodies.

The imitative drawing should comprise architectural ornaments, and the human face. When the pupils are to copy an ornament or a face, a model in relief, of the same size as the drawing they have to execute, should be placed in the room, in order that they may constantly carry their eyes from the board to the model, and from the model to the board, so as clearly to understand what they are about. The models of graphic exercises on paper are inclosed in frames under glass, placed in front of each pupil so as to oblige the latter to draw them without taking any measurements on the model, and merely in accordance with the dimensions indicated in the text relating to each drawing.

This branch of instruction is one of those in which the greatest latitude is left to the teacher, as the lessons ought to be given with reference to the particular industry of the province. The programmes of the course of drawing, and the choice of models, are therefore left to the decision of the members of the Council of Improvement, who alone can have a sound judgment on the

matter.

GYMNASTICS.

Rhythmic movements, a little more sustained than the first series, and accompanied from time to time by a short and easy song, alternate movements with arms and legs accompanied by singing, jumping preceded by a run, jumping from a height not exceeding one metre thirty centimetres, exercises with dumb-bells on horizontal ladders or on oscillating lathes (perches oscillantes), &c.

SINGING.

Each lesson should open with exercises in solfaing. The master should sing out short musical phrases which the pupils should endeavor to reproduce. These phrases should never go beyond the extent of an octave. Towards the middle of the lesson the singing should be suspended for some minutes, during which the principles should be explained.

The musical tone, scale of tones, degrees, intervals, gamut, octave, means of representing tones by signs, notes, compass, the C clef, intonation, duration, time, simple time, ., 4, breve, semibreve, minim, equivalent rests.

The lesson should conclude with a song sung in unison, and two-part choruses.

EXAMINATION PRELIMINARY TO ADVANCEMENT.

At the end of the first school year the pupils are subjected to an examination in all the subjects included in the courses which they have just finished, in order to prove that they are competent to take part in and profit by, those which are about to commence. The judgment of the examining professors, together with the reasons on which it is founded, is entered in minutes signed by them, and transmitted to the rector. The pupils are placed according to merit. In making out this list the work of the whole year is taken into account; the list of the places held by each pupil during each week are consequently taken into consideration, and a triple value is even attributed to the number

representing the places held during the year taken altogether, in comparison with that attached to the standing taken during the examination at the end of the course.

Those pupils who do not answer satisfactorily during the examination, are allowed to subject themselves to a new examination at the recommencement of the classes, but if they fail a second time they must, in their own interest as well as in that of the studies, recommence the course of the preceding year.

At the end of each year devoted to special instruction. similar examinations and similar classification of the pupils shall take place.

SECOND YEAR.

SUBJECTS OF INSTRUCTION.

4 hours weekly.

French-first principles of style and composition....
Modern languages..

History of France, and leading facts in modern history up to 1789.. 4
Geography of France, agricultural, industrial, commercial, and ad-
ministrative....

Mathematics-commercial arithmetic. conclusion of geometry. 5
Physics-general properties, liquids, heat, electricity..
Chemistry-Metalloids and alkaline meta's...

Natural history-zoology (birds, reptiles, fishes, insects), geology..
Accounts exercises preparatory to bookkeeping...

Caligraphy..

Drawing

Gymnastics.

Singing..

Total number of lessons....

FRENCH.

.....

First principles of Style and Composition.—However simple a subject may be, there will always be a certain art in combining the various parts of which it is composed, so as to make it tell, and this art is useful to all, to the public orator or functionary, as well as to the simplest artisan. A common business letter ought to be clear, methodical, and accurate; in order to impart these three qualities to it, the writer must think over his subject, must place the dif ferent parts in suitable order, and must choose the expressions which most accurately convey his meaning. A regular course of rhetoric would, therefore, not be out of place towards the end of the complete programme of the special schools, but the age of the pupils will not allow of the dry rules of the syllogism and the forms under which it is disguised being explained to them, nor of the various figures of speech being described to them, which besides, nature herself teaches even to those men who are the least practiced in the art of speaking. In the lessons to be given in style, the method indicated for teaching the grammatical rules should be followed; that is to say, the pupils should be made to read a great deal, and during these readings the principal rules of style and composition should be incidentally deducted, and during the greater part of the year the task imposed should be to reproduce the test which has been read and commented upon during the lesson. In this manner the pupils will be supplied with a fund of ideas necessary for speaking and for writing, and which they can not as yet be expected to have acquired for themselves, because such a fund is the result of experience, of observation, of memory, and of reflection.

The professor should explain, by means of numerous short examples, the qualities which every sentence in general should possess, lucidity, precision, and correctness. He should point out summarily the various kinds of style,

STUDIES AND CONDUCT.

WE shall devote most of this Number to a series of articles on Studies and Conduct-in continuation of similar articles begun several years since, with a view of issuing the whole in a volume to be entitled Student Life, with the following

PREFACE.

THE Letters, Essays, and Thoughts, embraced in this Volume, on the aims and methods of education, the relative value of sciences, and the right ordering of life, were actually addressed by men eminent in literature and affairs, to young persons in whose well-being and well-doing they were deeply interested. They were first issued in the chapter or article form in which they here appear, in successive numbers of the American Journal of Education, to give variety, and the personal application of principles, to the more elaborate expositions of national systems and institutions to which that periodical was devoted. Although these chapters do not cover the whole field of youthful culture, or all the aids, motives, and dangers of a scholarly and public career, and include a few sheaves only from the golden harvest of recent American didactic and pedagogical literature, they constitute a convenient and valuable manual of Student Life. The light which they shed, like that which Virtue cast on the diverging paths of Hercules, neither leads to bewilder or dazzles to blind, and the advice which they drop is kindred to that which Wisdom of old uttereth in the street,

APPLES OF GOLD-THE WORDS OF THE WISE.

HENRY BARNARD,

Editor of American Journal of Education.

HARTFORD, Conn., 1872.

Note to Special Edition.

The Contents of the Volume on Studies and Conduct as announced, end with page 416. The pages which follow in this edition, devoted to selections from recent English publications on the relative value of classical and scientific studies in a liberal education, belong properly to the Second Series of Papers in English Pedagogy-Education, the School and the Teacher in English Literature.

STUDIES AND CONDUCT.-Letters, Essays, and Thoughts on the Prin-

ciples of Education, the Relative Value of Studies, and the Conduct of

Life, by Men Eminent in Literature and Affairs. Republished from

Barnard's American Journal of Education. 416 pages. $2.50.

CONTENTS.

II. THOUGHTS ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE..

BISHOP HALL-BISHOP TAYLOR-DR. FULLER-DR. Barrow.

PAGER

PART I.-EDUCATION-ITS NATURE, SCHOOLS, AND OBJECTS..... 9-64

PART II.-STUDIES AND CONDUCT...

I. LETTERS BY MEN EMINENT IN PUBLIC LIFE

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