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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ents attend the common schools of the city. In 

 New York a still larger proportion than in Phila- 

 delphia of the children who would be sent to 

 private schools in England attend the common 

 schools. In Chicago I was assured that most of 

 the professional men and prosperous tradesmen 

 send their children to the common schools. In 

 Boston, with a school population of 5S.636 on 

 the 1st of May, 1876, there were 55,41V enrolled 

 in the city schools, leaving less than 3,000 for 

 private schools and Roman Catholic parochial 

 schools. I happened to say to the superintend- 

 ent that the children in one of the primary and 

 grammar schools which I visited were remark- 

 ably well dressed, and he answered, with a laugh : 

 " Naturally so ; there is not a house within easy 

 reach of that school worth less than $25,000 " 

 — £5,000. In some of the more wretched dis- 

 tricts of New York and Boston, I saw schools in 

 which all the children were extremely poor ; but 

 generally the children of working-men were sit- 

 ting on the same forms with children who be- 

 longed to families that in England would suppose 

 themselves under an obligation to send their 

 children to private schools, at which they would 

 have to pay for each child from £10 to £60 a 

 year if the child was a day-scholar, and from 

 £60 to £150 if the child was a boarder. The 

 presence in the common schools of a large num- 

 ber of children accustomed to the refinements 

 of a pleasant and even luxurious home must 

 have an influence on their less fortunate school- 

 fellows which it is not easy to estimate, and must 

 greatly aid the work of the teacher. 



The methods of instruction interested me 

 greatly. In teaching reading it is very common 

 to use lesson-sheets in which the " otiose " let- 

 ters are printed in very faint ink, and the vary- 

 ing sounds of the vowels indicated by a few 

 simple signs. 1 What is described as the " pho- 

 nic " method of teaching spelling is also in use 

 in many schools, and seemed to be successful. 

 Elementary reading - books are printed in the 

 same way as the sheets. After these books have 

 been used by a child for about a year they are 

 laid aside. I heard a reading-lesson in a class 

 which had been using for about a fortnight a 

 book printed in common type ; they stumbled a 

 little now and then, but not quite as much as I 

 should have expected. I was told that the com- 

 mon type becomes quite familiar and easy to 



1 1 have seen similar sheets in our own elementary 

 schools, but I have the impression that the system is 

 carried out more perfectly iu the American sheets, and 

 that the sheets are more geuerally used. 



them in about a month. In mental arithmetic it 

 is usual to put books of questions in the hands 

 of the scholars, and the teacher calls upon them 

 by name to give the answers. In the lower 

 grades these questions consist of exercises in 

 simple addition — e. g., "Add together 24, 36, 12, 

 1, 9." In the higher grades the questions are 

 complex and difficult. The advantages of this 

 method are obvious : the scholars are not per- 

 plexed by efforts to remember the terms of the 

 question while they are working out the answer, 

 and they can attack questions requiring far 

 more complicated calculations than are custom- 

 ary in classes in which the whole exercise is 

 conducted orally. 



A system of " map-drawing," which seemed 

 to me very ingenious, has been introduced into 

 the Connecticut schools, chiefly, I believe, through 

 the influence of the^ecretary of the State Board 

 of Education, the Hon. B. G. Northrop. The 

 class-rooms in which I saw this exercise con- 

 ducted were paneled all round with blackboards, 

 or rather with a black composition which is gen- 

 erally used instead of the blackboard. Each of 

 the classes numbered between forty and fifty 

 children, and each child worked at a black panel 

 about three feet in height and two feet broad. 

 The children in the first class which I visited 

 were drawing the map of North America. They 

 stood with their faces to the wall, and with a 

 piece of chalk in their right hand and a rubber to 

 wipe out a false stroke in the left. The teacher 

 stood at her desk, and was able to see exactly 

 how each child was woi king. A " formula " had 

 been learned by the children, and when the ex- 

 ercise began, child A said, " Coast of Greenland, 

 Cape Farewell, Davis Strait, Baffin's Bay " — 

 drawing the outline at the same time, and every 

 child in the room was doing the same. Then 

 child B went on : " William Land, Cumberland 

 Island, Hudson Strait, Hudson Bay " — the draw- 

 ing all round the room accompanying the words. 

 Child C then said, : ' Labrador, Newfoundland, 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence ; " and this went on till 

 the coast-line was finished. Then the lines of 

 the rivers were drawn ; then the chief mountain- 

 ranges ; and finally the principal cities were put 

 in ; the " formula " passing from child to child 

 till the map was finished. The drawing was very 

 fairly done. I saw a class of younger children 

 who had just begun this kind of work drawing a 

 map of South America. Before they began the 

 map, the " formula " told them to divide the top 

 of their panel into two parts, then to subdivide 

 these parts, then to divide and subdivide the side 



