AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY.

FEBRUARY, 1866.

THE NEW EDUCATIONAL CAMPAIGN.

THE departments are being well organized and officered. The com

missariat was never before so rich in material for illustration, both graphic and pictorial. The parade drills of teachers' institutes evince everywhere the most praiseworthy discipline; those grand reviews, the Conventions, are the pride of the army, and the delight of all spectators; and that signal-corps, the educational press, is repeating all along the lines:

"We'll flag by day, and fire by night,

To lead the way, and guide the fight."

All right-all sure-all onward! only let not the rank and file become demoralized. "Heroism is uncompromised duty." It is the hardest thing in life to be faithful in little things, and in a low place. But upon just such faithfulness depends the issue of the war against ignorance, stupidity, and superstition. It is not enough to show our colors, and handle our arms, and polish our equipments. We must fight!

Not long since, the highest arithmetic class in a fashionable school was assigned to a new teacher. The class was beginning Evolution. A patient explanation by the teacher was rewarded by the languid assertion, "I don't understand it at all." This encouraging remark was repeated day after day, and not by one only, till the teacher determined, considering what was the subject in hand, to go to the root of the matter, and discover where and what was the radical defect. She said: "Young ladies, I have a square room. I do not know its size; but I am told that I must get nine yards of carpeting, a yard wide, for it. What must be the length of the room?" The young ladies used their slates and pencils, turned the subject over in their minds, and one after another raised their hands. Six answers were given in the following order, by different members of the class: "Three feet; three yards; two and a quarter yards; four and a half yards; nine yards; and eighty-one yards." Those young ladies live in carpeted houses, and somebody has to pay their bills.

Great is arithmetic, and greater is its profit! In A. T. Stewart's retail house, there is a small counter, where young boys sell common materials for dress linings, etc. The other day, one of these boys was measuring and marking remnants of silesia and hollands, when his next neighbor exclaimed, putting his finger on a label: "." "What do you mean? No woman will know what that is." Presently, a lady appeared, and spying the disputed fraction, asked hesitatingly: "That is nearly a yard, isn't it?" This lady's question was a solitary fact. The boy's statement was the result of an inductive process, having for its basis a class of facts. How is it at the South? How much studying has been done there during the last five years? The old systems of instruction in boardingschools and by family governess have been suspended, and in many sections it will not be easy to supply the means for restoring them. Now is the time to establish a school in every neighborhood. The field for this educational campaign widens in every direction, North as well as SouthEast as well as West. The rubbish of prejudice must be cleared away. New systems must be organized; new schools must be established, and improvements on old modes of instruction must be devised.

USE THE BLACKBOARD.

BLACKBOARDS are fashionable. Every one praises them, and

every school has them; but how often do they not serve chiefly to darken the walls, to cast a gloom upon the school, instead of light upon the understanding of the scholars. No teacher now dares question their utility; but how many teachers prove their utility by daily use? To how many are they a constant necessity, not an occasional convenience? What a contrast there is between the master ensconced behind an open book, prosing over the words of another, and the live teacher, full of his subject, relying upon his own resources, and rousing his class by the power of blackboard illustration! With the one is dull monotony; with the other, the earnest face-the skillful hand-the hasty diagram in isometrical perspective-the suggestive outline which the mind must fill upthe witty invention which leaves no grade of ability beyond its reach.

Every teacher ought to be compelled to teach something without a textbook, for his own sake-for the sake of his own habits of instruction. Nothing else will keep him from becoming a passive hearer of recitations -the very opposite of the earnest teacher.

SCRATCHES AND DAUBS.

KEEP the first daub and the first scratch from these walls, and they

will always be unblemished!" So said a teacher when his pupils assembled in a new school-room. They seemed to think that some mysterious principle had been enunciated; and though we were unable to perceive wonderful wisdom in the assertion, being unable to imagine how the second blemish could appear before the first, yet we forgave the flatness of the truism in consideration of the shrewdness that prompted it. For the moral influences resulting from the appearance of the school-room are usually not fully estimated. The truth is, that all things by which we are surrounded have a definite, unalterable character, a capability of developing those feelings of the human heart which in reality are forming and exercising our tastes. There are no objects in nature or in art by which we are not thus influenced. The walls of our sitting-rooms, the curtains at our windows, the trees in our door-yards, the snow upon our pavements, all these affect, ay, form our tastes and predilections, as constantly, as inevitably as do books, papers, and paintings. And we are also incessantly exercising our taste with reference to these various objects. We are always making comparisons, observing contrasts, deploring defects, or contemplating the pleasing features of all objects by which we are surrounded. No object is so vast, no object so insignificant as to be unable thus to influence us. The household goods which promote our comfort, the wares of trade and commerce that administer to our luxury or gratify our pride, the distant line of hills, the neighboring street, the faces of familiar friends, or the countenances of those whom we meet once never to see again, all these are constantly forming and exercising, and by exercising are constantly fixing our partialities and antipathies.

These facts-which are almost as obvious as the truism we citedbecome important when we consider how peculiarly they apply to the impressionable minds of children. That was sound doctrine which Professor North inculcated at the last meeting of the New York State Teachers' Association: "The moral and æsthetic influences of a neat and cheerful school-house are well worth securing. Ideas are like chameleons : they imbibe and retain the color of the objects they are associated with. In some school-houses, learning is a dingy, musty, loathsome commodity : Grammar suggests headache, drowsiness, and tortured spines; Arithmetic is a counting of long dreary hours of bondage to a hated task; and Geography recalls a low ceiling, indecent with charcoal scrawls. In other

school-rooms, like those which adorn many of our cities, knowledge is radiant with delightful hues-'a thing of beauty and a joy forever.' When the pursuit of learning is connected with pleasant apartments and smiling faces, it is elevated to a delight: it is degraded to a drudgery, with surroundings that create discomfort."

Let teachers consider not only that the "first scratch" on the schoolroom walls will be followed by scratches ad libitum,—the "first daub" by daubs ad nauseam,—but that any blemish in the school-house or its furniture must tend to vitiate the tastes and mar the moral nature of all beneath its roof.

MAPS WANTED.

AS long ago as the time of Solomon, of the making of many books there

was no end; and in these days of Coltons and Lloyds there is no end to the making of maps. Still, our schools and the public are to a great extent unsupplied with these homely but effective teachers, and we fear that the want will long be experienced. One of the religious journals, in its desire for some means of delineating the moral changes in heathen lands, makes some statements respecting the utility of maps, which apply with great force to the necessities engendered by changes rapidly recurring on our own soil. Our country is so rapidly becoming settledexplorations are extending so widely, and new territories and states appear so frequently, that the best maps soon become unreliable. We need, therefore, a good convenient atlas, which can be issued in a new corrected edition every two or three years, at a cost which would enable all to be provided with each revised edition. A quarter of a century has elapsed since the appearance of Morse's Geography, consisting of numerous maps, with letter-press on the following page. This, we are told, gave rise to the present custom of putting the maps and the reading-matter of school geographies into the same volume. "Morse's book was remarkable for its excellence and cheapness. By a process of his own invention, called cerography, he was enabled to make very distinct and legible maps, and yet the whole book was sold for half a dollar." As nothing has been heard concerning the cerographic process for several years, it is inferred that difficulties have arisen in the art, so serious as to forbid its further use. Some similar mode of map-making is now especially needed-some mode which will provide, not for the professional and learned man merely, but for the masses of the people and the students of our schools.

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.