EASY THINGS TO DRAW. By D. R. Augsburg, B. P., Director of Drawing in the Keystone State Normal School, Kutztown, Pa. Paper. Pp. 75. Price,

30 cents.

In these seventy-five square pages are over two hundred outline drawings suitable for object lessons, lessons in drawing, and busy work. With its aid any teacher with even very small skill in drawing can put upon the board pictures which will serve to help the scholars and to encourage the teacher in her own drawing. The instructions which the book contains will give all the help necessary.

PAMPHLETS AND REPORTS. Inaugural Address of Thomas N. Hart, Mayor of Boston, to the City Council.- Special Catalogue of New and Revised Educational Works. A Ministry of Education in the South. By Rev. A. D. Mayo. Registration Report to the Legislature of Massachusetts.

THE MONTHLIES AND QUARTERLIES.

The Magazines and Reviews for the new year are particularly full of excellent matter. The Century is as ever very fine. The chapters upon the Assassination of Lincoln are remarkably well written, the portion describing the scene in the box at the theatre being an exceptionally strong piece of descriptive English, and gives a very vivid impression of the great tragedy. · — In Harper's is begun a series of papers upon "Jamaica, New and Old," by the well-known artist, Howard Pyle. "The Russian Army," "Two Phases of American Art,"land" St. Andrews," beside some excellent stories and poems, complete a fine number of this old standby.· The article upon "Water-storage in the West," by Walter G. Bates in the January Scribner's, is calculated to give a new thought to those who have not seen the great dams, reservoirs, and canals which are used for holding back, storing and distributing water to the orchards and vineyards of Califor nia and among the growing crops of that and other states. The other articles are valuable and timely. - - Julian Hawthorne has two contributions in this month's Lippincott's. The complete novel “ Millicent and Rosalind," is an interesting story, and one which admirers of the author will enjoy. His editing of Nathaniel Hawthorne's" Elixir of Life" is the next article, and is perhaps of the most real value of any in the maga zine. "Kinks in the Skein," by Burdett, Nye and Knox is funny, and Amelie Rives' poem, "Blue Water-Lilies," is characteristic of the author. In the old Atlantic Monthly is begun the story entitled "Sidney," by Mrs. Deland, author of "John Ward, Preacher"; the other serials progress satisfactorily, and the complete articles maintain the usual high standard of this prince of fine literature.— In the Popular Science Monthly of particular interest to educators is Benjamin Reece's article on "Public Schools as affecting Vice and Crime." -"In Circe's Toils," is the title of the complete novel in Belford's. Andersonville and other War Prisons," by Jefferson Davis and an" Autobiography" of the same Jefferson Davis are characteristic of their author. "A Duel" between Gladstone and Blaine, with the former the champion of Free Trade and the latter that of Protection, is the most interesting and valuable thing in this month's North American Review. — Lend a Hand is as usual replete with helps for those who wish to help others. —— An appreciative article entitled "William Cullen Bryant in History" is the first and leading article in the Magazine of American History. "Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mrs. Stowe "in the same magazine will also find many readers. The Quiver is a most excellent number this month. The Quarterly Journal of Economics has three particularly interesting and timely articles. Their titles are "The Rise of American Cities," "The Prohibition of Railway Pools," and "The Theory of Interest." The Pratt Institute Record comes to us with much information about this great educational institution. The Revue Pedagogique and L' Instituteur are two excellent educational periodicals published in Paris. Book Chat is ever filled with matter interesting to those who read books. The Forum has an article on "Democracy in England," one on "Prehistoric Man in America," and another entitled Magnetism and Hypnotism.". La Petite Revue will be found to be excellent for sight reading for advanced classes in French.

EDUCATION,

DEVOTED TO THE SCIENCE, ART, PHILOSOPHY, AND

LITERATURE OF EDUCATION.

VOL. X.

MARCH, 1890.

No. 7.

PREPARATION FOR CITIZENSHIP IN MICHIGAN.

THE

BY STUART MACKIBBIN, M. A.,

Superintendent of Schools, Petoskey, Mich.

HE youth of Michigan are, in its schools, prepared for citizenship in two ways. Directly, by the instruction they receive in the divisions, powers, and limits of government, the rights, duties, and obligations, of citizens, and the various other subjects which go to make up the so-called study of Civil Government. This instruction is of two kinds, viz.: the formal, or textbook course, and the oral course, given either incidentally, in connection with geography or United States history, or as a separate study in the higher grammar grades. Incidentally, in the inculcation of those habits of obedience and respect to authority, incidental to any well-governed school, but particularly in those cities and villages in which our Compulsory Attendance Law is enforced, where truancy and insubordination are made crimes, and as such punished by the state.

The following tables are based partly on the report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for 1887, the latest at hand at the time of preparing this article, but largely on circulars of inquiry, examination of catalogues and courses of study, and other private sources of information.

A graded school means simply one organized under the Graded School law; it may be, and in many cases is in fact, the most ungraded of schools. In the state reports, high school means all above the eighth year or grade. The total high school enroll

ment in the state is 14,896. That this is considerably above the true high school enrollment, we believe. For a school with total enrollment of two hundred and fifty to claim one hundred and six in high school, with no foreign attendance whatever, is absurd. Yet there are many schools reporting from twenty to fortyfive per cent. of their enrollment in the high school. In many schools it is the custom to put everything above a true sixth grade, into the "big room" and call it the "High School," and this is what makes the apparent enrollment in this department larger than the real.

Although the per cent. of graded schools in which instruction is given in Civil Government is much larger than the per cent. of ungraded, yet in the latter the per cent. of scholars studying to total enrollment is over four times greater, and the number of scholars studying nearly five and one-half times greater. (See table A.) This is a bad showing for the graded schools, but the

figures are based on the number studying Civil Government from a textbook, which, in the ungraded schools, is about the only means of instruction. In all but twenty-three of the graded schools, a textbook is used only in the high schools, which enroll less than eight per cent. of the graded school enrollment, and this, it must be remembered, includes the enrollment of so-called high schools, as well as those which are high schools in fact as well as in name. In the schools having such departments, Civil Government, as a systematic study, is taught as a branch of advanced education, while in 56 per cent. of the 417 graded schools reporting, enrolling 54 per cent. of the enrollment in these schools, there is oral instruction in Civil Government in the grammar grades.

Although in the ungraded schools, Civil Government is taught in less than fifty per cent. of the schools, yet when we consider that in the last few years this per cent. has nearly doubled, the number in which it is now taught is encouraging, if not flattering. In the ungraded schools, the pupils have fully as good if not a better opportunity of studying Civil Government systematically, than in the graded. Of the former, which this year teach Civil Government, not a half, and probably not a third taught it last year, and fully as many will not offer the study next year. In rural districts Civil Government is considered almost as essential a part of a boy's education as arithmetic, and of a girl's education, if she intends to teach; but it is looked upon as a study which can be begun and finished in a single winter term, and it does not matter when it is done, so it is done. In a country school enrolling thirty to fifty scholars, not more than two or three at any one time will desire to pursue this study, or be prepared to do so, often there will be none, and in the smaller districts candidates for this study are very rare. A class in Civil Government in a district school is a luxury, and cannot be formed, economically, whenever two or three desire it. Its formation is postponed from term to term, till finally there is in that school a class of scholars for whom this winter is to be the last. A Civil Government class is imperative. This finishing class, as well as those who will be likely to desire to pursue the study during the next year or two, are bunched into one class, and consequently there will be no need of such a class until, in the course of time, the same conditions again exist.

In these classes, as a rule, are used textbooks dealing only with the federal government, and during the winter the scholars wrestle with questions of national jurisprudence, learn to repeat the preamble verbatim, that the President must be thirty-five years of age, that Congress has power to grant letters of marque and reprisal, and much other useful and valuable information. Yet, notwithstanding this unpromising training, the country youth is, especially in questions pertaining to local government, much better informed than his city cousin. In no place is so deep, or, on the whole, so intelligent an interest taken in local politics, as among the farmers. Every one is a taxpayer; he attends the "town meeting," and his boys go with him; for, by unwritten law, "town meeting day" is a holiday for the farmer youth. They see public business done and hear it discussed; they listen to the fireside and neighborhood discussions, and have their boyish controversies among themselves, and are intelligent partisans before they are voters. As a result of this training, the farmer is in local matters the most independent, and in national matters the most partisan of voters. He never gets beyond the town meeting or the County Board of Supervisors. Only some question. which he can see directly affects him, like railroad transportation, ever arouses him, and then it is merely a spasm. In the cities it is very different. There are no great popular assemblies like the town meeting in which public business is done and the people meet on the level. If there were, it is doubtful if the masses, because of the loss of time and consequent loss of wages, would attend them. City government is purely, too purely, representative; in its executive branch autocratic. Questions of business absorb popular attention. Many of the populace are not taxpayers, and too often are in a state of opposition to the taxpaying class, while the latter very often find that the time which an active participation in city affairs would require, devoted to their business, will yield a larger return than any saving in taxes which they could produce. Thus it happens, that while as a rule the affairs of country townships are honestly, economically, even parsimoniously administered, cities are controlled by rings and cliques. Extravagance, waste, and jobbery continue, till the condition becomes unbearable, when there is an uprising, the old rings are broken, new ones are formed, a hungrier swarm replaces the old, and so the world goes on.