The home discipline of many a family is discoverable in the child at school.

Remember, too, the teacher has before him pupils differing as surely in disposition and traits of character, as in dress or features. In the seats, before him, sit the orderly and well governed at home to whom a frown is a whipping and a whipping-disgrace; and the turbulent and rebellious against the social economy of the school. What wonder, that the teacher occasionally uses injudicious methods of enforcing authority, until a wider experience shall teach him the best methods.

I do not hesitate to state, as the result of both experience and observation, that those are the best governed schools, where the appeal is constantly made to the pupil's sense of justice, love of right, obligations of duty, in a word, to the better, rather than the baser elements of our common nature.

There is much philosophical truth in the quaint Persian proverb, "a gentle hand leads the elephant himself by a hair," and we have all known teachers who like the school mistress of Douglas Jerrold, "preferred one slip of olive, to a whole grove of birch!"-M. T. BROWN.

OBJECT TEACHING-GRADUATED LESSONS.

ONE of the prominent mistakes made in teaching is the neglect to recognize the difference between the state of a child's mind at the age of four or five years, and that of one at the age of eight or ten years. It is chiefly owing to this error in elementary education that the course pursued in primary schools is so ill-suited to the condition of the pupils. There is not only a wide difference in the subjects adapted to children of five and eight years, but there should be a corresponding difference observed in the manner of presenting them. But instead of these distinctions, we observe not only the same subjects, but the same processes employed in teaching children of four and five years of age, as those used for children of eight and ten years. And the chief

process is that of presenting words to the child to be remembered; it does little else than to exercise the memory, and that too in its lamest capacity, inasmuch as the meaning of the words thus presented is seldom understood. The principal aim of the teacher appears to be, in the ordinary course here alluded to, to teach the child to spell and read-if the naming of letters and the monotonous repetition of words as commonly heard in the school-room, can be called spelling or reading.

Spelling and reading are made the exclusive pursuits of the pupils during the first years of school life, as if nothing else could be done towards educating the child; and the same course is also pursued during the later years spent in school, as if all knowledge must be obtained from reading books, and spelling words.

Memory is almost the only faculty of the child's mind that receives any attention, or development. Little or no attention is paid to giving the pupils habits of accurate observation, and clear conceptions of whatever comes before their minds, or towards developing the imagination--that faculty by which the mind clothes its conceptions in sensible drapery, and combines them into new forms, thus giving greater vividness to our conceptions-that faculty of so much service in the attainment of success in life, which "lights up the whole horizon of thought, as the sunrise, flashing along the mountain tops, lights up the world." And still less attention is paid to the proper development of reason and the exercise of the judgment.

Possibly those teachers who pursue this course may entertain a vague idea that somehow a continued exercise of memory with words merely will ultimately bring about all the desired mental developments. As well might they suppose that all the muscles of the body would become amply developed by continually exercising a single arm, leaving all the other limbs in a state of rest.

Now it is a well known fact that during the period prior to five years of age the child does little more, intellectually, than to exercise its senses upon the objects about it; or in

other words, to use its perceptive faculties in learning their form, number, color, size, weight, position, &c. During this period the child is almost entirely occupied with the present. Observe it in the street, in the field, in the shop, and about the house! How intently it looks, and listens, and wonders; and how earnestly it desires to handle everything around it! The child observes constantly; such is its instinct or nature. By this process the development of the senses goes on rapidly, so that by the time when the child comes to begin its school education it has acquired considerable skill in the exercise of its senses, and also obtained much knowledge of things through its exercise.

Now, the object of the teacher, as she receives the child into the school, should be to continue the work which nature has so well begun in developing the senses, with a view to increasing their acuteness and powers, and to giving habits of accurate and minute observation; also to exercise its perceptive faculties upon the various properties and qualities of things so that they may furnish materials for thought. This latter object may be called the chief end of school education; yet the former can not be lost sight of without seriously retarding, or perhaps defeating the latter.

There is much that the child should observe which it can not, without training. The child may notice shape, size, color, number and position, yet if it be untrained in habits of observation it does not obtain a definite idea of either the shape, number, size, &c. If its sight be not trained to observe colors, it will not only not distinguish them accurately, but lose much of that enjoyment which is derived from the beauty that color gives to objects. It may indeed hear musical sounds, but if its sense of hearing be untrained, it can not distinguish one melody from another, nor a wrong tone from a correct one. It is utter fallacy to suppose that development of the senses come by mere growth of the bodily frame.

Nature clearly indicates the course to be pursued in carrying forward, by systematic training, what she so wisely begins before the teacher assumes the direction of the child's

development. The chief business of the child, before five years of age, is with things. The teacher should commence her training with things, and proceed gradually to their representations, pictures and symbols. Discipline and development are the first objects to be kept in view by the teacher, not of one but of all the faculties of the mind in their natural order. The senses need first to be trained to acuteness, and the mind to habits of accurate observation and clear conceptions, as a foundation for the development of the imagination and reason.

Since memory alone does not cultivate observation, nor develop the various powers of the mind, we readily perceive the necessity of pursuing some other course in the schoolroom, than that which deals almost exclusively with memory.

Since habits of accurate observation need to be cultivated, as a means of increasing the store of facts gained through the exercise of the perceptive faculties, as the materials with which the imagination subsequently deals, the first exercises of the school-room should conform to nature's plan of development.

Since all knowledge is derived from things, and words are but the representatives of that knowledge, the first presentation of words should be distinctly made as the representatives of things.

True object teaching seeks to adapt the school education to the natural order of the child's mental development-to follow out and carry forward what nature begins before the child enters school. It not only presents different subjects. during the different stages of development, but presents them in a different manner from the subjects and manner of those teachers who deal chiefly with the memory. Object teaching trains the children to habits of accurate thought; it teaches them how to think. It not only renders them quicker and clearer in their conceptions, but it exercises the memory naturally, thus giving it greater breadth and power than that course which leads it to remember words merely.

We will endeavor to indicate the kind of lessons, and the manner of presenting them, which are appropriate for the

commencement of school training, by the following sketch of an object lesson on

A KNIFE.

Children, can you tell me what I hold in my hand? "A knife." Who will touch some part of this knife? [A pupil touches the blade.] What do we call the part which she touched? "The blade." Each of you may now touch the

blade.

Now the one who would like to touch some other part may hold up a hand. John, you may touch another part. What do we call that part which John touched? "The handle." Who will point out some other part of the knife? Ella-[She touches the rivets.] What part did Ella touch? "The rivets." How many rivets can you see in this knife? Each pupil may now point to a rivet.

Who will point to some other part of the knife? Edward. What part did Edward touch? "The back."

Who will now touch some other part of the handle? What did William touch? "The side." How many sides. has the knife-handle? "Two sides." What other parts has the handle? Jane, "The back." Martha, "The front." Lucy, "The ends."

Who will touch the parts of the blade? Henry, you may touch them, and Emma may tell their names. "The edge, the back, the sides, the point."

Now Susan may take this knife and stand in front of the class and point out and repeat the names of the parts of the blade. Commence by saying "The blade has an... Let the class repeat this together.

James may now take the knife, stand before the class, and point to and tell the names of the parts of the handle. "The handle has sides, edges, ends, rivets and a back." Now all may repeat the parts of the handle together.

For what is the knife used? What is the use of the handle? What is the use of the blade? Suppose the blade had no handle, would it be of as much use as it is now? What kind of a knife is this?