FALL SESSION FOR TEACHERS. A Teachers' Session is held in the Normal Building every autumn, commencing on the second Monday of October, and' continuing four weeks. This session furnishes to primary school teachers throughout the State an opportunity to review the common branches, and to receive such professional instruction as will prepare them for teaching the winter schools. Each member pays one dollar entrance fee. THE EXPERIMENTAL DEPARTMENT. The Board of Education, in establishing the Model or Experimental School, had in view two prominent objects, viz: to give to advanced classes in the Normal School, practice in actual teaching, and to furnish a course of study preparatory to the regular course. To attain the first object, each student in every E class is required to take charge of one daily recitation throughout an entire term, under a system of careful supervision and weekly reports. It is found that teachers who have been disciplined by several years training in the Normal department, are well qualified for the work of instruction in the Model School. The greater number of classes, however, are instructed by thorough and competent teachers, who are regularly employed for the purpose, or by members of the Normal School Faculty. It will be readily seen that pupils who expect to enter the Normal School, will enjoy an obvious advantage over others, in pursuing their preparatory studies in this department, where instruction is made entirely harmonious with that received in the regular Normal course. The course of study in the Model School embraces Object Lessons, (Color and Form;) Elementary Sounds by Object Lessons; Drawing preparatory to learning the Alphabet; Alphabet by Drawing Lessons; Mathematical Forms; Reading; Penmanship; Natural Philosophy, (Swift's First Lessons ;) Elementary Philosophy; Object Lessons in Botany; Primary Arithmetic; Elementary Geometry, (Hill's ;) Philoso phy, (Swift's Second Part ;) Local Geography by outline maps and Map Drawing; Descriptive Geography; Vocal Music; Arithmetic; English Grammar; Botany, (Gray's "How Plants Grow.") Members of this department incur no obligations to become teachers. The government of this department is under the immediate charge of the Principal, subject to the general supervision of the Principal of the Normal School. All applicants for admission to this department should be under sixteen years of age. Tuition, two dollars for the summer term, and three for the winter term. Terms and vacations are the same as in the Normal School proper. The number in attendance is limited to fifty. DISTRICT LIBRARY BOOKS. The contract for the supply of library books, made in the autumn of 1861 with E. Burnham Smith, of Detroit, was for the period of two years, and no changes in the list of books have been made the past year. Owing, doubtless, to the distracted condition of the country, the purchases of books have been lighter than in former years. The Board would urge again upon the Legislature the importance of making some more certain and sufficient provision for the support of these libraries. As valuable and necessary auxiliaries of the schools, the claims of the district libraries to a public support rest on precisely the same grounds as the claims of the schools themselves. The soundest public policy requires, at least, that each district shall be permitted to decide for itself what proportion of its two-mill tax shall be apportioned as a library fund. The decision of this question by viva voce vote at the annual township elections has been found not only inconvenient, but often grossly unjust to the districts whose rights and wishes have often been sacrificed by the votes of the few men who chanced to be about the polls when the question has been taken. A change in the law is demanded alike by the rights of the districts and the interests of education. |