ticles in the January number are, Guarantee of Order and Republican Government in the State; Ideas in Nature overlooked by Dr. Tyndall, by Dr. McCosh; Vienna and the Centennial; The University System in Italy. No other magazine in the country equals it for profundity. Price $5 per annum. THE January number of the Nursery is already on our table. It is superb. No other paper for the little folks, approaches it. John L. Shorey, 36 Bromfield street, Boston, is the publisher. GAMES AND HOME AMUSEMENTS. A great variety of these are described in a catalogue sent out by Milton Bradley & Co., Springfield, Massachusetts. LOCAL. VICK'S FLORAL GUIDE for 1875.- Published Quarterly.-January number just issued, and contains over 100 pages, 500 engravings, descriptions of more than 500 of our best flowers and vegetables, with directions for culture, colored plate, etc. The most useful and elegant book of the world. Only 25 cents for the year. Published in English and German. Address, JAMES VICK, Rochester, N. Y. BOWEN, STEWART & Co., 161 W. Washington street, keeps the largest stock of books in the State. Teachers visiting the city will always find what books they want at this place, and the proprietors always take special pains to make them welcome. Any book ordered by mail will be sent promptly. Their stock of holiday books is very large and very file. Teachers attending the State Association are cordially invited to call and examine for themselves. IGHER" is an adjective of the comparative degree, and has no fixed meaning. Its real significance can only be inferred from the word to which it stands related. As applied to education, it must be technically defined, or it will fail to suggest a theme of sufficiently exact boundaries to admit of discussion. From the moment when a child enters his first school until he graduates, in his own estimation, the finished scholar, from the highest university, each successive grade in advance is, to him, a mountain summit which shuts out from view the still higher peaks beyond. Each one is higher only with reference to what has been passed. Some scornfully protest that American scholarship is still so far down in the valleys that we have as yet reached nothing worthy the name of "higher education." The scattering efforts of our schools of all grades, to teach something of everything, to cover the ground of all sciences, languages, theories and beliefs, is held up to derision and stigmatized as utterly disastrous both to true mental development, and even to the acquirement of any valuable information. A radical difference, no doubt, exists between the theories of education current in this country and those which prevail in the *Read before the Indiana State Teachers' Association, Dec. 31, 1874. old world. No American professor could possibly be imagined to die lamenting that he had not confined himself to the dative case. The most reckless caricaturist would not be betrayed into so extravagant a presumption. We owe, be it confessed, much to the patient and single-minded plodders of the other continent for the results of their profound investigations into the natural sciences, and especially in the line of philology, history and literature. Whether, however, this difference in the style of scholarship is a reproach to us as well as a credit to them, is a question which may give us pause. We have something in this country which, at least, we call higher education. Its definite limits, on the one side, are marked by the entrance upon so-called high school studies. On the other side it has no well-defined boundaries, but may, in a general way, be regarded as including the high school or academic course and the college. These institutions correspond in scope with the secondary schools of Germany. Their general purpose is, not to fit a person specifically for any occupation in life, but to develop the manhood there is in him, and to conduct him up to a position from which he can, with wide-reaching vision, look out upon the world. While a properly arranged course of study is upon an inclined plane mounting upward, and not a series of abrupt steps, there may be a line drawn, I think, at the entrance to the high school which shall mark a new era in methods of mental and moral discipline. It is an event something analogous to the old Roman custom of investing a lad of a certain age with the toga virilis. The youth who passes this line, thenceforth assumes new relations to those about him. He steps into a new and well recognized position entitling him to a new sort of consideration from his associates and the world at large; and the consciousness of this, by reaction, inspires in him new impulses, and brings into play new, or hitherto latent, powers. It is the passage from childhood into youth, into an incipient manhood and womanhood, This period of life is marked, usually, by some striking physical changes which are coördinate with important mental and moral crises. The character, in a normal condition, enters upon a period of more rapid growth. Self control, or rather self assertion, begins to manifest itself as a direct outgrowth of a new condition of mental development. The judgment begins to lead the sensibilities, The soul, with all its various manifestations, is but an integer. From its inception through all its phases of growth it can acquire no new faculty. Any just system of education will recognize this fundamental truth, and will, from the outset, supply proper culture for every power. From the first, there needs must be discipline for the perceptive faculties, for the memory and reflective powers, for the judgment and for the will. And yet, while all these faculties are developed and grow together, a great relative change will be realized. The leadership will be transferred. Faculties which at first are primary, become secondary, and vice versa. The most apparent and rapid phase of this change is during those years when childhood and youth is growing into manhood, as the sun seems to move with accelerated speed along the horizon at the vernal and autumnal equinox, and as the ripening grain turns to golden yellow almost while you are gazing upon it. It is at this ripening time, if ever, that pupils are ready to enter upon the higher education. The whole theory and practice of high school teaching and discipline must be based upon the presumption that we are no longer dealing with mere children. The devices which have hitherto been resorted to for the securing of good order and attention to study, lose their propriety if not their virtue. Compulsion must, in a great measure, cease. Not that there is to be abrogation of law. Law and system must be of the strictest quality, but at the same time approximately, at least, self-enforcing and self-regulating. The purpose of the higher education is to fit men and women, who possess natural gifts, for the so-called higher (i. e. the more intellectual) walks of life. These must ever be a small minority of mankind, and the world will be the gainer rather than loser if the opportunities are limited to those who possess worthy qualities of intellect and character, and qualities which promise to develop into fitness for leadership of opinion, whether upon a large or a small scale. In all such characters, the better motives are predominant. The higher education of no person in whom these better principles do not so prevail as, under proper influence, to restrain and control, will be a paying investment either to himself or to the world at |
