114 



Two abuses strike us in the numerous papers on grammar 

 and analysis that came under our eye. 1. The complication of 

 parsing and analysis. In France also we carry written parsing 

 too far, for everywhere routine acts in the same way and trans- 

 forms into a mechanical exercise what, within proper limits, 

 ought to be a valuable intellectual discipline. 2. Subtlety of 

 distinction and complicated terminology. In grammatical in- 

 struction it seems to the Americans that the simplicity of Eng- 

 lish syntax ought to be made up for by a lavish use of scholastic 

 distinctions, which, unfortunately, correspond to nothing in the 

 construction of language. Dictation exercises which occupy 

 so prominent a place in our French schools, are rare in the 

 United States. 



A feature that deserves unreserved praise, and which we 

 found in the better schools in the United States, is the develop- 

 ment of the inventive faculty of the pupil by means of compo- 

 sition-exercises outlined in the most general manner. Even in 

 the primary schools the teachers are beginning to require the 

 pupils to write out an account of what is represented in a 

 picture in the text-book or in a chromo placed before them. 

 This is a capital exercise, and one that we cannot too stronglv 

 recommend for adoption in our French schools. The task con- 

 sists simply in practicing the scholar in observing attentively, 

 in telling what he sees, and in telling this in an orderly manner. 



Geogra'phy has long been a favorite study in American 

 schools. It could not be otherwise in a country that has so 

 many reasons for devoting itself to this science, — the immense 

 extent of its territory, the great diversity in its phyiscal con- 

 ditions, resources and population, the importance of its com- 

 mercial relations with the whole world, not to mention the 

 circumstances of its origin, whence it results that no land is 

 absolutely foreign to it. 



In response to a well understood want, geographical instruc- 

 tion early assumed a methodical form : this form, without being 

 original, has still an American character, something national 

 and sui generis. The old mode of instruction, bristling with 

 repulsive nomenclatures which in nowise spoke to the mind or 

 the imagination, and which merely loaded the memory, is still 

 doubtless found in a multitude of rural schools ; for in speak- 



