A few suggestions only will be added in this depart

ment.

It is evident to the most superficial observer that a vast amount of time is spent over such studies as grainmar, geography and history in our schools, with but little perceivable result. This is due in great measure to the fact that the manufacture of text-books has become` in America a profitable business in a money point of view, and that, consequently, what text-books shall be used in our schools, both public and private, is decided more by the publishers than by the educators. Hence the graded series of School Geographies, for instance, through some five or six of which the pupil is obliged to wade, one after another, to find in each, only the same matter in sentences of a somewhat greater length. Hence, to go one step farther, the stupefying of so many minds in our schools. Nothing is more deadening to all mental activity than unmeaning repetitions, a fact easily verified by any one who, wakeful through mental disturbance at night, will take the trouble to repeat and re-repeat any meaningless thing. It is the lounging, deadening brain-work of which we have too much, not the active, vivifying brain-work of which we have too little, that does injure the system. The whole healthy tone of the mind is destroyed, and evils, mental and physical, follow in rapid succession.

From the process of text-book manufacturing also spring the endless number of compendiums and abstracts with which our schools are deluged, mental power diluted, and the pockets of the parents unnecessarily taxed for the support of large publishing houses, not for the education of their children.

Another cause of this stupefying process is the rigid

system by which most large schools are conducted, where promotions, from one class to another, can take place, say, once a year, the pupil who, on examination, falls short of the required per cent of correct answers, being forced to review the work of the entire previous year before going on. More elasticity, more fluidity, as it were, is sadly needed in our system of public school education before this evil modified.*

will be to any great extent

It would be a waste of time to say that one ought not to be overworked, were it not that some persons always seem to imply that any intellectual work is over-work. It would seem equally superfluous to say that for intellectual health there ought not to be any surplus energy, for the latter statement seems as axiomatic as the former.

The problem with which educators are chiefly concerned is that of fully employing the energies without overtasking them. If the dividing line between enough and too much could be determined as exactly as the Mississippi River marks the series of lowest points where the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains meets the western slope of the Alleghanies, our work as teachers were easy indeed. Teaching, however, is not the only profession where such unsolved problems exist, for individual cases, and we teachers are thus but a part of a noble army of professional workers, so we take heart of grace, and are not ashamed.

But the fact remains to be considered that the work of school education is, as the result of unavoidable destiny,

*For a full and masterly discussion of this subject, its evils and remedies, I must refer to the report on the St. Louis Public Schools for the year 1871-2, by Wm. T. Harris, Superintendent, p. 80 et seq.

in America, passing very rapidly into the hands of women. We may deplore this, but we cannot prevent it. The last census showed that the number of women teachers in the United States stands already to that of the men as 123,980 to 78,709, and the ratio is daily increasing. There is no other country in the world, then, where it is so all important that the girls should receive a complete education. In one view, this tendency of the times is of great value. The years spent in teaching are often the most valuable training for the work of the mother. No other employment calls for a greater exercise, and hence, a greater development, of the directive power, and of the knowledge of human nature which will enable her well and wisely to direct her children, successfully to grapple with the "servant problem," and to sweep a large circle of details within the compass of generalized rules. She has learned what industry means, not, as was said by a Christian writer of the thirteenth century, only "to pray to God, to love man, to knit and to sew." She has not "everlastingly something in her hand, though no one profits by her labor, and she is reduced to look for her sole reward in civil speeches made for useless gifts, or insincere praise of household ornaments that are in everybody's way," covers, and covers for covers, and covers for covers of covers.

Many women "are busy, very busy; they have hardly time to do this thing, because they really wish, or ought to do that, but with all their driving, their energy is entirely dissipated, and nothing comes from their countless labors," and I ask, in the words of a Russian woman, “Is it not a great loss to the economy of society when such an amount of strength is wasted and leaves behind it no good work?"

But many persons continually pursue self-contradictory ends, simply for the reason that their education has been so narrow and limited that they are not able to see these ends as self-contradictory.

Indeed, there are other disabilities than the physical for the duty of a mother. "The want of self-control that comes of an objectless life, the uninquiring habit of frivolous employment, disable her from fulfilling this duty, and to remain a child does not give the ability to educate children." The power of independent thinking, without which there can be no judgment, and which alone frees the soul, the real mother must have, and our girls should be most carefully educated into it.

*

Which course, then, will be best to fit the average child for her future work in the active world, a course of private lessons, or the life of the school, which is in itself a miniature world, where she learns to measure her own acquirements and character by those of others, and is educated into the knowledge that individual caprice cannot be allowed as a rule of conduct? And is there any country in the world whose citizens need to learn a respect for law more than in America?

As to the branches which girls have the ability successfully to pursue, the question is no longer an open one. The experiments at Oberlin, Antioch, the Northwestern University, Michigan University, Vassar and many other institutions, not to go out of our own country, are sufficiently positive and conclusive to convince the most. incredulous. If the question be as to the branches

* Mary Taylor, First Duty of Women, p. 93, Emily Faithfull, London, 1870.

+ Extracts from the last two Reports of the President of Michigan University on this point will be found in the Appendix.

which she ought to pursue, that is also to some extent settled. The courses of study which are laid down for students in European and American universities, represent simply the condensed judgment of centuries of experience and induction as to the means by which the human intellect may be most surely strengthened and developed. They are the results of long generalization, and are founded deep on a knowledge of the human mind. Shall we venture to depart from the old ways, and to decry the customs handed down to us from the ages gone by? Do we not know that the wisdom of twenty centuries, as to the best means for developing the human mind, is greater than the knowledge of one? Since we are "heirs of all the ages," why throw away our inheritance?

In one word, our girls should be so educated intellectually that there will no longer be any internal barriers to their progress, and when this is done they will find that the external barriers, against which they fret themselves, have disappeared. When Britomart had fairly conquered and bound with his own chains the enchanter within the castle, she found, as she passed out, that the castle walls, the iron doors and the fire which had barred her entrance had no longer any existence. We can yet afford to learn lessons of wisdom from the prophetic "woman's poet" of the sixteenth century.

Whether our school girls and college girls will be injured physically, mentally or morally, by granting to the boy and man students, in our high schools and universities, the advantage of fellow-workers of the other sex, is a question which, though practically settled to a large extent by experience, ought not perhaps to be passed over here in