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sion has its own separate lessons in the diiSferent branches, with 

 an occasional excjeption in the case of oral spelling and object 

 lessoDs. Thus in a session of two and one-half hours of actual 

 work, we have counted in the primary schools and in the 

 country schools as many as fourteen distinct exercises — a 

 number reduced to seven in the grammar schools ; but there 

 is always one-half at least of the pupils that remain unem- 

 ployed, while the others receive their lessons or go through 

 their "recitation," as it is called in the United States. This 

 everlasting coming and going of study and of recitation gives 

 rise to a perpetual movement in the class-room. 



Moreover, as monitors are never employed, it comes to pass 

 that a very limited period of time can be given to the lessons, 

 and even this time is diminished by the frequent changes of 

 place, for generally, in recitation, the pupils leave their seats 

 and arrange themselves standing, along the class-room wall, 

 and then return to their seats during the fifteen minutes or 

 half hour of "study," their place in the meantime being taken 

 by others. In many a time-table we have seen lessons in 

 reading, arithmetic and history reduced to ten and even to 

 five minutes, and, in like manner, general lessons in botany 

 and physiology cut down to five minutes in the first grade of 

 a grammar school. 



What is to be expected from such a procedure? It is in 

 vain that the best arranged programmes are put into the hands 

 of teachers, or that the most valuable pedagogic directions are 

 laid down for their guidance — their intelligence and their devo- 

 tion must both be foiled by the vices of such a system. 



The time-tables — rarer, by the way, than any other docu- 

 ments — appear to us the weak part in the organization of 

 American schools. There is nothing to indicate that most 

 important matter, to wit, the work of those divisions which 

 the teacher has not immediately in hand. The pupils are 

 "studying," they told us, but what are they studying? Undi- 

 rected and un watched, we have our fears as to this "studying." 

 *0f course, there must be a great abuse of copying work, that 

 mechanical task so justly proscribed in France; and worse 

 still, it cannot be possible, owing to the lack of time, to develop 

 the reasoning and observing powers of the children. Instruc- 



