ren of such tender years; and the summer term is best because the confinement in a school room with open doors and windows, is less irksome and dangerous to them, and because the absence of the larger pupils, permits the school to be adapted more nearly to their wants. So, also, the absence of these younger children from the winter school, allows the older classes to be taught with less interruption and greater success. This would have the effect to grade the school, to some extent; the summer school including pupils of the Primary and Intermediate grades, while the winter school would embrace only the Intermediate and Grammar School grades.

The above branches of study distributed through the ten years, extending from five to fifteen years of age, will give the following studies to each year. If a pupil enters at an advanced age, he may get over the course more rapidly; but ordinarily no study should be begun earlier than the age here indicated. Some pupils will, however, progress faster than others.

FIRST YEAR.--Summer Term only.

STUDIES.--Morals, Language (Talking and Reading), Object Lessons, Drawing, Singing, and Physical Training.

Morals are to be taught by explaining and enforcing habits of neatness, order, obedience and politeness; and by short stories illustrating and stimulating the virtues of honesty, truthfulness and kindness to playmates, animals, &c. These lessons may be given as a general lesson to the entire school each morning, or may be given to the class as a supplement to the reading lesson.

Oral Language, or Talking, will be taught partly by the object lessons. The organs of speech should also be drilled on the elementary sounds, and by careful recitations of verses and maxims, singly and in concert.

Reading, or written language, will be best taught by the word-method. The alphabet aad spelling need not, in this case, be taught this year. The reading may be confined to Webb's, or some other primary cards, and to the first third of the primary reader. Two lessons each day.

Object Lessons to train the perceptive powers (senses) and to teach the knowledge of common things. These lessons may include lessons on,

Forms, em racing lines, straight, curved, parallel, perpendicular, vertical, oblique and horizontal; angles, right, acute and obtuse; and plain surfaces, triangles and the square. The object used may be a string, a straight stick

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broken, pieces of paper cut into triangles, &c., and marks on the blackboard, &c., &c.

Colors, the most common colors, as red, yellow, blue, green, &c., taught with any colored objects.

Miscellaneous objects, as the visible parts of the human body, their parts aud uses, articles of dress and furn.ture, their parts, forms, colors and uses may be noticed and named.

In giving these lessons, three cautions are needed: 1st, to make each lesson lively and short, not exceeding ten minutes; 2d, to introduce but one or two new ideas and words in each lesson; and 3d. to make each new idea and word perfectly famil ar by setting the pupil to find and name the same thing, as a line or angle, in other ol jects both in the school-room and outside.

Number. The pupils may be taught to count to sixty or eighty, always counting objects, as the fingers, the children in the school, the glass in the windows, &, or the k rnels picked from an ear of corn.

Two object lessons may be given feach day, occupying not more than ten minutes each.

Drawing-Young pupils should be provided with slates, or permitted to use the blackboard when not needed by the older classes; and should learn to print easy words from their read ng lessons, and make the lines, angles, &c., learned in the lessons on form.

Singing of school songs will be taught at once to the entire school. Phys ical exerci es also with the school.

SI COND YEAR.--Summer Term only.

STUDIES -- Morals, Language (Reading through Fir-t Reader). Object Lessons (on Forms, Colors, Numbers, Size, and familiar objects), Orthography, Drawing, Singing, &c.

The lessons on Forms may embrace all regular (figures of four or more sides, also those bounded by curved lines. Those on Colors may give tho primary and secondary colors with their tints and shades. In Numbers, counting to 10 by ones and by twos. forward and back; and simple additions and subtractions. Lessons on Size-the inch foot, yard and rod taught by use of actual measures, and used by pupils in measuring school room, play-grounds, & '.

The powers of the letters of the alphabet may be taught and words spelled phonetically, i. e., by sounds of the letters composing them.

THIRD YEAR.--Summer Term only.

STUDIES of the second year continued. The Reading may complete the Second Reader, and, if the pupil goes to the winter school, may enter the Third Reader. Spelling by sounds continued, and by writing the letters begun.

The o'ject lessons should be extended to weights and measures, to be taught as far as practicalle, with actual weights, &c., till the several tables of long,

square, solid, cloth, liquid, and dry measures are thoroughly understood and memorized. The lessons on Form should now extend to the sphere, cone, cylinder, &c., and the lessons in Numbers to the first half of the multiplication table. The properties of matter, primary and secondary, may be learned and the lessous ou animals and plants be made more systematic and full.

PEMARK.--The instruction of these first three years, which constitute the primary period of education, should be mainly oral, and should have for its chief ends, to increase the children's stock of words and simple ideas, and to give them the power of continued attention. Too much anxiety should not be felt to get them forward in reading, and no attempts should be made to set them at the work of learning text books of any science. If simple story books be furnished the pupils for reading at home their progress will be greatly promoted.

FOURTH YEAR.

The pupils now attend school during both winter and summer terms, and now begins the severe study of books.

1st Term. STUDIES.-Morals, Thinking, Object Lessons, Reading, (3d Reader), Orthography, Mental Arithmetic, Singing, Penmanship and Drawing.

The lessons in morals now should seek to make the pupils understand the foundation of moral obligations, the various classes of human rights and duties, and the spheres and use of the several virtues.

The object lessons may now be given with direct reference to the coming studies of Natural Philosophy, Physiology, Geography, &c., giving the simple elementary ideas and terms used in these sciences.

The training in thinking in the primary years was confined mainly to the perceptive faculties; the pupil must be now drilled to the study of books,to the conception and conquest of ideas presented in words rather than in things. This constitutes the art of "learning lessons from books."

The mental arithmetic may extend through the first half of the book, (Stod. dard's Intellectual) with miscellaneous oral exercises; one lesson each day. Writing and Drawing in alternate lessons, one lesson each day.

2d Term. STUDIES-Same as 1st term; Mental Arithmetic completed.

FIFTH YEAR.

1st Term. STUDIES.-Morals, Reading (Fourth Reader), Orthography, Arithmetic (through fundamental rules and Reduction), Singing, Writing, and Drawing.

2d Term. STUDIES-Same as 1st term. fractions.

Arithmetic through vulgar

The reading of this year should be alternated with thorough elocutionary drills in inflections, emphasis and expression; and should be made a constant drill in thinking, by requiring the pupil to catch at a single reading the sense of the piece and give it in his own language.

SIXTH YEAR.

1st Term. STUDIES.-Reading (Fourth Reader), Orthography, Arithmetio, (Decimal Fractions) Natural Philosophy, Writing and Singing.

Natural Philosophy. If the earlier studies and instructions of the course have been thoroughly mastered, this study will be pursued with great facility and interest.

2d Term. STUDIES of preceding term continued; Philosophy completed.

1st Term.

SEVENTH YEAR.

STUDIES.-Reading, Orthography, Arithmetic (completed)

Physiology, Writing and Drawing.

Physiology, first half of book completed.

2nd Term. STUDIES of previous term; Arithmetic reviewed; Physiology completed.

EIGHTH YEAR.—Winter Term only.

STUDIES -Applications of Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography (Mathemat ical and Physical), and Writing.

Arithmetic may be continued into higher text books, or as a useful application of arithmetic and writing combined; Book Keeping may be substituted.

NINTH YEAR.-Winter Term only.

STUDIES.-Book Keeping continued; Grammar; Geography, local with map drawing; History of U. S., which may also be used as a reading lesson.

TENTH YEAR.—Winter Term only.

STUDIES.-Grammar, Geography, History, and reviews of previous studies. REMARK.-It will be observed that the book studies in this course are deferred to a much later age than that at which they are usually commenced. Experience has demonstrated nothing more conclusively than the inutility, and even positive harm, of putting children too early to the study of books. As an ordinary rule, book study should not commence before nine or ten years of age. It will. doubtless, happen that some pupils will attend school beyond the age of 15 years, the contemplated end of the course. In case these pupils have already fully mastered the course as above laid out, they may be permitted to advance to other studies, as Algebra, Geometry, Natural History, &c., if the teacher's time permits.

REMARK. If all the classes are present, the above course will give 20 recitations a day in the summer term. and 23 in the winter tern; but it will rarely happen that classes representing all the successive years will at once belong to the school. If, however, these classes are all present, a reduction of the number of recitations may be made by combining the reading and spelling classes of the 5th, 6th and 7th years, and alternating some of the studies on successive days.

Doubtless experience will suggest some modifications in this course to adapt it to schools of less length of annual terms, and perhaps, also, to meet the wants of pupils whose circumstances will permit them to pursue only a part of the branches named. But the importance of the general principles involved in the course, cannot be controverted; and it is confidently believed that the course itself, will, in the main, be found applicable to a majority of our schools.

But whatever be thought of the foregoing course, it is beyond dispute that the highest success of our schools imperatively demands the adoption of some settled plan of instruction; and I cannot too earnestly urge this subject upon the attention of the school officers. Now our schools are left to the varying caprices of the successive teachers, or, worse still, to the childish whims of the pupils. Each teacher makes that study prominent which he chances to be most fond of, or best able to teach; and examples are not wanting in which all other studies have been sacrificed to the teacher's enthusiastic love of arithmetic. The half completed studies of one term are superseded by the new studies of the next, and the schools are kept in a state of revolution as hostile to all true progress, as it is to common sense. No regular order or necessary connections of the several branches are known, and the natural adaptation of studies to the successive ages of the pupils is scarcely dreamed of.

It is, therefore, earnestly recommended that each District Board shall formally adopt some regular course of studies, and cause a fairly written copy of the same to be posted in the school house, for the guidance of teachers and pupils. Such a course would act as a constant suggestion, and would stimulate both teachers and pupils to a more earnest and more orderly work. It would be both a guide to inexperienced parents, in the education of their children, and a standard by which to try the real value and progress of the school.

A vast additional advantage would be gained, if the adoption of a settled course of studies should lead also to the adop