THE following article, by WM. F. PHELPS, is a continuation of the subject on the last page of the Student for December. The programme here presented is given only to illustrate the system which should be adopted in the division of time for the various recitations of the dif ferent classes, that each study may receive its due attention, and not to be copied by teachers. Each teacher must form a programme for himself, adapted to his own school.

It will be seen from the following programme of the Experimental Department of the New York State Normal School, that only a portion of the classes are engaged in recitations at one time, and it is expected that those classes which are not reciting will be preparing for their next recitations by study. Hence the classes marked B, D, and C, in this programme, may be studying arithmetic, and A class grammar, while the classes E, F, G, and H are spelling and reading. When the classes A, B, C, and D are reciting, E, F, G, and H may be studying their spelling lessons, and so on, alternating from recitation to study. Ed.

and are organized into eight separate classes, besides the Indian class, although there are, perhaps, but three or four grades of scholarship. The division into eight classes was made to avoid too large classes.

The number of recitations during the day is thirty-two, besides a writing exercise and two recesses. The school is instructed by four teachers for five hours daily, so that there are four recitations progressing at one time, giving to each teacher eight recitations or exercises per day, besides the supervision of the writing. As our sessions are five hours in length, we may have ten half hours for the eight classes of each instructor. But we must deduct twenty minutes for the morning chapel exercises, thirty minutes for the writing, and ten minutes each for two recesses, making in all seventy minutes, or one hour and ten minutes, to be subtracted from five hours, leaving three hours and fifty minutes for actual recitations. Now this will give us seven half hours and twenty minutes over, for the eight classes of each teacher. But as is readily seen, by inspecting the above programme, the younger classes in some of their exercises are tasked but twenty-five minutes at a time. This occurs in two instances, which gives us ten minutes to make up our eighth half hour, thus allowing the amount of time requi. site for the proper training of all the pupils.

It is believed that no more than one half hour should be devoted at a time to the exercises of a class in our primary schools; indeed, for the younger pupils, from twenty to twenty-five minutes will be found to be as long as the attention can be arrested, and this is certainly as long as their powers can be taxed without injury to health, both of body and mind.

The grade of the classes in the above scheme will be understood by referring to the letter-name standing opposite to each; thus the most advanced class is the A, and the next B, etc. The A class, in addition to the studies named on the programme, is pursuing the subject of physiology, having completed intellectual arithmetic, and for the present dispensed with reading, as have the B, C, and D classes. The Indian students are pursuing, besides the studies named above, intellectual arithmetic, spelling and defining, and reading.

We think that the above "programme" will, in the main, be found to accord with the principles laid down in our preliminary essay, and if it shall afford to the young and inexperienced teacher one ray of light upon the important subject of school organization, we shall feel amply repaid for the labor of preparing this imperfect article. No teacher, of course, can think of blindly copying such a scheme; but, on the contrary, he must study well the circumstances in which he is placed, and in framing this great chart of his daily labors, must adapt it to those circumstances, and to those alone.

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T seems to be thought by many, that the design of education is the communication of knowledge to passive mind, to be laid up for use in the storehouse of memory. But as well might all the products of agriculture and the mechanic arts be laid up for future use by the young agriculturist and mechanic. It is the acquisition of vigor and skill for a future productive industry, which constitutes a proper physical training; and it is vigor and dexterity of mind in the acquisition and application of knowledge, which constitute the object of mental training.

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Elementary principles must be ascertained. No man can understand any science, or any thing, who can not lay his hand on the elementary principles, and by the light of these trace out the relations and dependencies of the whole. These are the keys of knowledge, to which all the sciences open their arcana, and without which they remain inexorably shut to all manner of demand and solicitation.

Without this knowledge of first principles, a man will behold truth always in isolated fragments, and be surrounded by a wilderness of light. Such knowledge is like a mass of disordered mechanism; confusion worse confounded, and utterly incapable of use; a maze, overwhelming and inextricable.

There must be precision of thought. The mind can not be thoroughly exercised without it; and nothing worthy of the name of knowledge can otherwise be gained. There are many who go round a subject, and pass between its parts, and verily think they understand it, who, when called upon for an accurate description, can only hesitate and stammer amid the glimmering of their undefined moonbeams of knowledge.

VOL. II. NO. IV.-FEB. 1851.

Why is this? It is because they have acquired no definite knowledge of the subjects they have studied. They understand all subjects in general and none in particular; and for the purposes of exact knowledge adapted to use, might as well have been star-gazing through a dim telescope in a foggy night.

Every thing is what it is, exactly, and not merely almost; and for purposes of science or use, a hair's breadth discrepancy is as fatal as the discrepancy of a mile. Who could raise a building where every mortice and tenon only almost fitted-or construct a useful almanac, when his calculations were almost, but not altogether exact?

It is this precision of knowledge which it is necessary to acquire; and without it, not only are the blessings of an education lost, but the multiplied evils of undisciplined minds-indefinite conceptions and fallacious reasonings, and the bewilderment of a declamatory flippancy of specious words are poured out upon society with an overflowing flood, sweeping away the landmarks of truth and principle, and covering the surface with brush, and leaves, and gravel.

No wonder that skepticism is rife, which proclaims knowledge to be unattainable, and all things doubtful. What other result could be expected from minds reared without first principles, and reasoning without precision of conception, in respect either to words, thoughts, or things?

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The art of independent investigation is of primary importance. The student should be accustomed to explore every subject, to analyze and take it apart, ascertain and define its elementary principles, and all its dependencies and relations, and label the whole with letters of fire, and put it together again; then he will under

stand it, then he will never forget it, and then, everywhere and instanter, it will be ready for use.

Now this can never be accomplished by lectures and oral instruction, from the simple consideration that the act of receiving knowledge, and the act of acquiring it by personal efforts, are entirely different in respect to mental exertion and thorough attainment.

In the one case, the mind is passive, and records upon the tablets of memory only a few fragments of what is said, soon to be effaced, and recovered only by recurring to imperfect notes; while in the other, the mind's best energies are employed in unlocking and dissecting the subject, and the mind's own eyesight in inspecting it, and there results the mind's accurate and imperishable knowledge of it.

I do not mean that lectures are useless, or to be dispensed with; but they are to be only the important aids of original investigation. The young adventurer must have some stock in trade to begin with, some raw material for his mind to work upon; and on some plain subjects perhaps he has it. Let him experiment then first on the most familiar subject. Let him reconnoiter his own mind, and ascertain how much and what he knows, exactly, on the subject, and put it down in definite memoranda; and if they are the elementary points, it will be easy by their light to follow out their relations and dependencies, from center to circumference; and if they are remote inferences and relations, it will be easy to follow them up till they disclose the elementary principle of which they are the satellites.

When this has been done, and all that his own ingenuity can disclose is found out, he may consult authors, and enlarge and connect his views by their aid. When called to investigate subjects which are beyond the sphere of his incipient knowledge, conversation and lectures may open the door of the temple, and put in the hand of the young adventurer the golden thread which may lead him out of darkness into open day.

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Mind which has opened the fountains of knowledge will thirst and drink, and thirst and drink forever. It is discipline

which doubles its capacity, its economy of time, its energy of application, the amount of its acquisition, and the duration and amount of its active usefulness.

Few minds uninitiated in the habit of investigation pass, without faltering, the meridian of life, or move on after it, but in the commonplace repetition of commonplace ideas; while to minds exercised by use to analyze and decompose and reconstruct the elementary order of things, the work is ever interesting, ever new, and the product ever fresh, original, and bright as the luminaries of heaven.

The results of such training will be eloquence in the pulpit, eloquence at the bar, and eloquence in the halls of legislation, such as none can sleep under nor resist, and whose victories, when achieved, will, like the battle of Trafalgar, leave the world in a blaze. *

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Popular, powerful, efficacious elocution is the result of the best order of mind, with all sorts of the best training. There must be mental vigor, precision of thought, a comprehensive knowledge of men and things, condensation, taste, beauty, and power; and then a subject, and an object, and a soul on fire, in high and arduous effort to accomplish an end.

What produced the immortal eloquence of Demosthenes? A mind which Heaven created; the culture of it by his own efforts; the stimulus of it by a popular government, and the provocations of Philip

of Macedon.