ter, who became the first Superintendent of Public Schools as Secre, tary of State in 1834. This office was made independent in 1857. County Superintendence were first organized in 1854, and the first State Normal School in 1857. The State Teachers' Association was organized in 1852; the first School Journal was published in 1836, and the Pennsylvania School Journal in 1852; the first Teachers' Institute was held in 1849, and the attendance has increased from 3,704 teachers in 1866 to 11,890 in 1871.

The following items from the Report of the Superintendent (J. P. Wickersham) for 1872, illustrate the magnitude of the operations of the system of common schools: the total expenditure was $8,345,072; this sum supported 15,999 schools in 2,029 cities and towns; paid 18,368 teachers, for 834,313 pupils, in buildings which with their grounds and equipments have an estimated value of $18,689,624; and employed in the district management and county superintendence, 13,541 persons.

To the above expenditures for common schools in cities, villages and rural districts should be added $475,245 paid to thirty seven institutions (existing asylums mainly under religious denominations), for the support and instruction of 3,527 soldiers' orphans, which has already cost the State $3,467,543; $54,000 for the instruction of the mute, $70,000 for the instruction of the blind; $28,000 for training feeble minded children; $10,000 for friendless children; $71,900 for juvenile offenders; $11,500 for Lincoln University; $25,00 to the University of Pennsylvania.

The following outline of the system of common schools in operation in 1872 is taken from the Report of the Superintendent: (1) Districts and District Officers. -Each township, borough, and city is made by law a school district. The districts thus formed are the only ones except a small number of what are called 'independent districts,' with a single school, formed out of parts of adjacent counties, otherwise badly accommodated with schools. Outside of cities and boroughs, the school districts have fiom one to thirty schools, the average number being about seven. The power of levying and collecting taxes, building and furnishing school-l ouses, employing and paying teachers, selecting text-books, and managing the schools generally, is vested in a board of six directors, two of whom are elected annually at the regular local elections. The courts have power to remove directors for the non-performance of duty, and the State Superintendent can refuse to pay a district, its quota of the annual State appropriation, if its directors do not keep the schools open according to law.'

(2,) Superintendents for Towns, Cities, and Counties.-The directors of a district are authorized by law to appoint and pay a District Superintendent, and to require the Teachers in their employ to hold a District Institute. Each board is compelled to make an annual report to the State Superintendent through the agency of the proper County Superintendent, who must approve it, accompanied by a sworn statement to the effect that the schools of the district have been kept open and in operation according to law, and specifically declaring that no teacher has been employed during the year who did not hold a valid certificate, and that the accounts of the district have been legally settled.

Failing to make such a statement works a forfeiture of the State appropriation.

The school directors of each county, and of each city and borough having over 7,000 inhabitants, as may choose to do so, meet in convention trennially, at the call of the State Superintendent, to elect a superintendent and fix his salary. The directors fix the salary of the office absolutely, but they are limited in their choice of a person to fill it. to persons having certain scholastic and professional qualifications, of the sufficiency of which the State Superintendent is to judg: before he issues the commission. The State Superintendent pays the salaries of the County Superintendents and fills all vacancies.

The duties of the superintendents of counties, cities, and boroughs are to examine and certificate teachers, visit schools, give instruction to the teachers, hold institutes, and supervise generally the shool interests intrusted to their care. They make monthly and annual reports to the School Department. (3.) Teachers and their Certificates.-No person can be employed to teach in a common school who does not hold a legal certificate in one of the forms which are granted as follows:

A provisional certificate, which is a mere license to begin to teach. It is good only in the county wh re issu d, and for a single year. A scale of figures from one to five is used in filling up this certificate, to denote degrees of proficien y in the several branches.

A professional certifi ate, which is a license to teach in the county where issued for the terin of the Superintendent granting it, and for one year thereafter It is granted to any good teacher who can pass an examination in ortography, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, history of the United States, and the theory of teaching.

A permanent certificate, which is granted by this department to teachers holding professio..a certificates, whose application therefor is indorsed by the proper superintendent, the proper board or boards of directors, and by a county committee of teachers elected by ballot for this pu pose at the Teachers' Institute. This certificate is good permanently in the county where issued, and for one year in any other county.

A State certificate, which is issued to teachers who pass an examination, in a prescribed course, before the Board of Examiners of the State Norinal Schools. This certificate is permanently good in any part of the State.

(4, Stat: Normal Schools.-The State is divided into twelve Normal School districts. To uine of these the State has appropriated $15,000 each tow.rds the erection of buildings for Normal School purposes. The balance of the money required for their erection either has been or must be raised by local contributions The buildings when erected do not belong to the State, but to the sto kholders or contributors, who, however, can not dispose of them to use them for any other purpose, without the consent of the State authorities. The State has appropriated considerable money to the several schools for the purchase of apparatus. No school can be recognized as a State Normal School until it has been found by the State au horities to conform to the requirements of law, and, when recognized, its charges, course of study, and disciplinary regulations must be approved by the State Superintendent. The State furnishes diplomas for all graduates of Normal Schools, and the State Superintendent is chairman of the board that conducts the examination of the graduating classes. The State pays each student, who is attending a Normal School for the purpose of becoming a teacher, fifty cents a week towards his expenses, a id gives him a gratuity of fifty dollars at graduation. All appropriations to State Normal Schools are paid by the State Superintendent. A diploma of the first degree, given at a State Normal School, exempts the holder from examination in any part of the State for a term of two years after graduation: but at the expiration of that time he must either submit to an examination, or present to the Board of Examiners of the Normal School where he graduated, an application for a diploma of the second degree, indorsed by the board or boards of directors for whom he has taught, and by the proper superintendent. This, if grant d, makes him a teacher for life.

(5.) Stit Shool Dpartment.-This department consists of the State Superintendent, who is appointed by the Governor, with the consent of the Senate, and holds his office for three years, and appoints his subordinate officers,

which consisted in 1871 of a deputy superintendent, two inspectors of Soldiers' Orphan Schools, four clerks, and a messenger. The work of the School Department, with respect to the several educational agencies, is briefly as follows:

With respect to Teachers:-It prepares and furnishes certificates for all the eighteen thousand teachers, and grants directly certificates to such of them as have reached the higher grades of the profession.

With respect to S hool Directors and Comptrollers:-It gives advice and instruction concerning their duties to the thirteen thousand school directors and comptrollers, furnishes them blanks, receives and tabulates their reports, reviews their accounts, judges whether they have kept their schools open according to law, and if so, pays them the State appropriation for their respective districts. With respect to County Superintendents : —It calls conventions for the election of County Superintendents in the several counties, receives the returns and judges of their legality, commissions the persons elected, removes the disqualified, pays their salaries, provides blanks for recording and tabulating their work, and receives and publishes their reports.

With respect to City and Borough Sup rintendents:-It holds about the same relation to the City and Borough Superintendents as it does to County Superintendents, except in the matter of the direct payment of salaries.

With respect to Teachers' Institutes:-It furn.shes the Teachers' Institutesone being held in each county-with blanks for reports; receives, tabulates, and publishes the same, and assist in their management.

With respect to State Normal Schools:-It investigates the claims of Normal Schools to State recognition, executes all legal forms necessary to their becoming State institutions, examines and approves their courses of study, their gov. ernmental regulations and their charges to students. visits them, appoints the times of examining their graduating classes, and assists at the examinations; furnishes diplomas for their graduates, receives and publishes their reports, and pays them their State appropriations.

With respect to the Soldiers' Orphan Schools:-It has almost complete control of the forty different institutions in which soldiers' orphans (3 600) are maintained and instructed; the accommodations, the persons employed, the food, clothing, instruction, and discipline of the children being subject to the direction of the State Superintendent.

With respect to Colges and Academies:-It receives, tabulates, and publishes all reports made by colleges and academies, as required by law.

Besides all this, the department makes an annual report to the legislature, containing full information concerning the condition of the system of public instruction in the State, and proposing plans for its improvement; to give advice appertaining to their school interests to every citizen who asks it, and to decide all questions relating to those interests, without expense to the parties. presenting them.

To carry out, with the necessary system, the multiplied details of this immense work, the department prepares and issues, to the different school agencies and officers throughout the State, some thirty-five kinds of blankbooks and forms, and is compelled to use twenty-five kinds of blank-books in which to keep its own records. Its correspondence reaches full fifteen thousand letters per annum.

With all the expenditures by the State and municipalities, and with all the activity and coöperation of school officers and the people, the statistics of adult illiteracy and non-attendance of children of school age are truly formidable and alarming. The national census of 1870, returns 131,728 persons, ten years and over, who can not read, and 222,536 who can not write, and of the latter, 126,803 are natives. The Superintendent in his report for 1872, remarks: 'It is to be feared that the number of illiterates, both of youth (31,512 between the ages of 10 and 21 years) and those of mature age (190,829), is much below the actual number.

RHODE ISLAND.

Rhode Island was first settled in 1631, and in 1790 had a popu ulation of 69,122, which in 1870 had increased to 217,353, with an area of 1,306 square miles, and $213,570,350 taxable property.

Under the settled policy of its founders during the colonial period of its history, the people tolerated no legislative interference with religious belief or practice, or with the education of children, which, like religion, was considered strictly a parental and individual duty. In some towns, donations in lands were made by individuals for the support of Free Schools-the endowed grammar schools of England. Soon after the adoption of the federal constitution, the subject of public schools was agitated in the pulpits; and in 1798 a committee of the Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers appointed a committee to inquire into the most desirable method for the establishment of free schools.' On the recommendation of this committee, a memorial and petition drawn up by John Howland, of Providence, was presented to the General Assembly, and in 1800 'an Act to establish Free Schools' was passed, but which met with violent opposition, and was repealed in 1803, before any town but Providence had acted on its provisions. That town was excepted in the repeal. In 1825 the town of Newport was authorized to raise money by tax for the support of a free school, and to apply to it the avails of certain lands which had been bequeathed to the town for this purpose.

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In 1828, after many years of agitation 'an act to establish public schools' was passed, by which all money paid into the general treasury by managers of lotteries or their agents, by auctioneers for duties accruing to the State, &c.,' was set apart for the exclusive purpose of keeping public schools. Each town was empowered to raise money by tax not exceeding in any one year twice the amount received from the State (which was by law not to exceed $10,000 in any one year), 'provided special notice was inserted in the warrant for the town meeting that such a tax would be acted on,' and such towns could appoint a school committee to manage the schools set up under this act. The town of Providence was authorized by special law to assess and collect any amount of tax for free schools, and in 1836 took the necessary steps to put the public schools on a basis of organization, and with an outfit of school-houses, and material appliances, and with a superintendent (Nathan Bishop, the first city superintendent of public schools in the United States), and a corps of well qualified teachers for each

grade of school from the primary to the high (for both sexes), which in five years placed its system of public instruction in advance of all other cities in the country.

Under this act (of 1828), supplemented by special acts from year to year to enable a few districts to build school-houses by tax, and a revision of the law in 1839, by which the annual State appropriation was increased to $25,000, and the power of the towns to raise money by tax was extended to double the sum received from the State, and by six acts 'in addition to and amendinents thereof' down to 1843, feeble and altogether unsatisfactory beginnings were made to establish public schools. In 1843, Wilkins Updike, a member of the House from South Kingston, introduced a bill for a public act (drawn up by Henry Barnard of Connecticut), 'for ascertaining the condition of the public schools in this State, and for the improvement and better management thereof.' The bill simply provided for the appointment of an agent ‘to visit and examine the public schools, the qualifications of teachers, and their mode of instruction, and the actual condition and efficiency of the schools and popular education generally, and make report to the legislature, with such plan as his observations and experience may suggest.' The bill was explained by Mr. Updike, and in the evening before a convention of the two houses, by Mr. Barnard, who had then just returned from a tour of observation and pioneer work into every State in the Union, and on the following morning it be came a law without a dissenting voice; and before Mr. Barnard could leave the town the governor had issued a commission appointing him to the office created by the act. The position was at once respectfully and firmly declined; but on the urgent solicitation of Mr. Updike, Hon. E. R. Potter, Dr. Wayland, Mr. Kingsbury, and public men of both political parties (and the State was widely and bitterly divided by the Dorr War' and the two constitutions), Mr. Barnard reconsidered his decision, and on the 5th of December entered on his work of school inspection and educational conference and agitation in Rhode Island. A citizen of another State, in a State proverbially jealous of any interference from abroad in her domestic institutions, and constitutionally opposed to all State interference in matters which belong to the towns, and going among men and into families boastful of their individual liberty to do as they pleased in matters of religion and education, and suspicious of all college learnt men,' the agent needed all the coöperation solicited by Governor Fenner in announcing his appointment to the people of Rhode Island.