most needed, viz., bringing the outside world, which is a joy, into the school, which the child feels a sorrow, and simply teaching him to name and classify those things which are his daily companions. If scientific terms were first given, they would be no harder than the common ones usually employed. Every child, rightly taught, at the age of twelve or fourteen, might know the correct names of the flowers of his neighborhood, and be able to describe with considerable accuracy their roots, leaves, stems, and blossoms. What a vocabulary would then be his? What nice observation would have been cultivated and excellent judg ment in the application of terms! His esthetic nature would be developed. Then the feeling of companionship with everything that grows, will expand the life; into it will flow, through many channels, streams from fountains unknown before. Voices will be heard whose teachings will always be pure and inspiring. Grace will be taught by swinging elm and floating thistle-down; hardihood alike by oak and brave trailing arbutus, which, with flushed cheek, dares to bud and blossom in the very face of snow banks. The jolly dandelion will laugh away his care, and the music of pure trees make his ear quick to the tone of sadness. Forever surrounded by things conquered and things to be conquered, the good spirits of hope and desire will be alive in his breast. He will be built up in those things which constitute strength and refinement. What is there that should hinder any teacher from making this coming autumn a new one to his school, causing the children's hearts to warm and glow as the fingers of frost and time touch the leaves, changing them from glory to glory? This may be your last term; let it be the best. If your first, make it good by striving to bring the child's heart close to nature. Have you little knowledge of botany? Buy a book that has many cuts. Learn all you can of some one thing-say leaves or fruits. Leaves are good for first lessons. Don't wait till you know leaves as well as the multiplication-table, before you begin to teach them. When you are sure you know their parts, make the children know them. As soon as you, by comparing leaves with the cuts, are able to name the more common forms, begin to feel confidence that you can teach this to a child. You can go faster than your class. They need scores of examples and several lessons on the some point, with the variations nature is sure to furnish. It will be delightful to feel yourself a learner with the children, and if they only know that you are glad to talk with trees and flowers, they will be glad too after a time. Even if you make a mistake now and then, as beginners will, no one will be greatly harmed. And how much more noble to make one blunder in reaching twelve conclusions, than to make no blunder and no effort to reach the truth. We will suppose a young teacher is to talk of leaves to a class, the ages of which are from eight to ten. What is the right thing to do? Procure hosts of leaves of all varieties,-supply each pupil with several. Ask all to find a part of a leaf; call on one little fellow to step before his mates and show the part he has selected; request all to find the same. Give name; as, blade. Write the word plainly on the blackboard, and have it pronounced several times. Blades of other leaves found by pupils. In the same manner, the midrib, veins, stipules, and petioles are formed and named. The parts of the blade-apex, margin, and base-could then be discussed. This would be sufficient for one lesson. The review should be written in part, thus, fixing terms and orthography, but brisk oral reviews should never be banished. On the slates, the work would stand thus: The Lilac leaf has a blade, petiole, midrib, veins, veinlets, no stipules. The blade has apex, margin, and base. The Poppy leaf has a blade, midrib, veins, no petiole, no stipules. The Clover leaf has blades, midribs, veins, petiole, and stipules. Several lessons of this kind could be given. The adjectives implying stipules or their absence, petioles or none, should be given after a time, thus: stipulate, extipulate; petiolate and sessile. While constantly reviewing parts, the positions of leaves on stems, could be observed, giving rise to terms opposite and alternate; when these are found, they should be used in the written descriptions. The form of leaf, color, peculiarities of apex, base, surface, and margin, the place of growth, kind, as simple or compound, would each require many lessons. A whole term in an intermediate school, could be spent thus profitably. At its close, the pupils would be able to give thorough schedules or descriptions of leaves that would be technical in their character. These could have many forms. The following is one: From time to time the schedules may be changed to suit the growing wants of the class, and the pupils themselves will learn to adapt them to the case in hand. Finally, there should be descriptions of leaves without headings for the various features. Children will do this easily, for soon the leaf will suggest all the points to be discussed. Thus : The Lilac leaf is simple, cauline, opposite, pinnately veined, extipulate, cordate, dark green, acuminate, margin entire, base cordate or subcordate, glabrous, length 2 to 4 inches.. No teacher would be willing to acknowledge that so much of Botany as is here indicated, could not be mastered in one term. During the next, roots, stems, and buds could be studied. Thus, term by term, the whole subject might be conquered. How many dull, blind, dumb boys and girls might be made acute, wide-awake, ready-tongued by this training. If once the doors of the mind were opened wide enough for so much of plants to go in, other things also would soon bear the blossoms company, and so widen the way of ingress. Teachers, won't you try it? P. S. A Primary Botany, containing graded lessons, schedules, etc., has been or is soon to be issued by Appleton & Co. AMONG the happiest days of our childhood were those devoted to the study of Botany. Pure sunshine rests upon the memory of those rambles in the fields and woods, in which we made acquaintance with many a floral gem before unknown.-WOOD. School Officers' Department. OFFICE OF OHIO EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY, HON. W. D. HENKLE, State Commissioner of Common Schools : DEAR SIR: I take pleasure in tendering to you the use of the pages of this journal as a medium of official communication with the school officers and teachers of the State. Please accept the assurance of its hearty coöperation with the School Department in the great work of vitalizing and improving our common-school system. Very respectfully yours, E. E. WHITE. E. E. WHITE, COLUMBUS, OHIO, August 23, 1869. Dear Sir: Your kind offer of the pages of the Educational Monthly as a medium of communication between the School Department and school officers and teachers, is accepted. It is eminently proper that the State School Commissioner and the Ohio Teachers' Association should adopt the same periodical as their official organ. It is gratifying to our State pride to know that the Monthly has a larger circulation than any other State educational journal in the Union, not receiving State support, and I hope the list of subscribers will be greatly increased by the efforts of county examiners, teachers, and teachers' institutes. W. D. HENKLE. IN connection with the above correspondence, we wish to state that we have revived the "School Officers' Department" as a permanent feature of the MONTHLY. We have taken this step relying upon Commissioner Henkle for such contributions as will render it of special value to school officers, and we know that we shall not be disappointed. Nor will such assistance depend on the MONTHLY's becoming the organ of the School Department on all questions of school policy. Mr. Henkle knows the necessity of independence in journalism, and, moreover, he is a believer in free discussion. The fact that the Cleveland convention did not wrap up the new Commissioner in "coöperative” committees, is evidence that the School Department, the State Teachers' Association, and the Educational Monthly are again to resume their true position as independent and coördinate agencies, neither attempting to "run" the others, and all working harmoniously together for the attainment of a common end. Editorial Department. "is In a late number of the Galaxy, Richard Grant White renews the old attack of grammarians upon such expressions as is being done, is being built, etc. Starting with to be and to exist as synonyms and carefully analyzing being done", he concludes that it means simply exists existing done. “To say, therefore," says he, "that a thing is being done is not only to say (in re. spect of the last two participles) that a process is going on and is finished, at the same time, but (in respect of the whole phrase) that it exists existing finished; which is no more or other than to say that it exists finished, is finished, is done, which is exactly what those who use the phrase do not mean." Notwithstanding the "palpable, monstrous, and ridiculous absurdity" involved in this combination, it has obtained respectable usage, and defies the scoutings of grammarians. The participles being built express conjointly an idea which is not found by combining their separate meanings. The army is conquering, the army is being conquered, and the army is conquered, express each a different idea, and the meaning of each is clear and unambiguous. -Ir is always gratifying to see one's views sustained by experience, and, especially, if their expression has cost something. We have a case in point. Some six years ago we visited the public schools of Springfield and Dayton, and seeing, as we believed, the necessity of more efficient supervision, we expressed this opinion with frankness and candor. We also stated that the suc cess of the schools of each city would be promoted by placing them under the direction of an experienced and capable superintendent. This brought us under the displeasure of the opponents of the supervision system, and we were held up to public condemnation as a sort of school slanderer. But conscious that we had spoken in the interest of education, we were willing to submit our case to the jury of time and experience. What is the result? One year ago Springfield created the office of school superintendent, and called to it the Rev. J. F. Reinmund, of Lancaster, a ripe and experienced educator. His first year's work has silenced opposition. And now Dayton wheels into line, calling to the charge of her schools, A. M. Gow, of Evansville, Ind.—one of the most energetic and capable superintendents in the West. The City of Washington, D. C., also sees the "better way", and places her schools under the direction of Zalmon Richards, a veteran educator of national reputation. We like these movements, and we feel bold to reassert the opinion, that both economy and efficiency require that every system of graded schools be placed under the direction of one mind, able to grasp its aims and principles and supervise its details. |