1712

160

Early is July, upon an invitation by this Board, Professors
Newell and Leakin visited this County for the purpose of
holding a Teachers' Institute. Although the Institute was
held during vacation, when many of the teachers were absent,
seeking relaxation, and at a season of intensely hot weather,
the attendance of the teachers, which was purely voluntary,
was large, and consisted of our most zealous and competent
men and women. As the purposes of these meetings were
not clearly understood, and the manner of conducting them
entirely understood, to both the people and teachers, some
were disposed to regard them as mere novelties of a new sys-
tem, designed to cajole them into an appropriation; others
looked upon them as stated opportunities for visionary pro-
fessors to give air to their theories of education, or their
methods of instruction, or it may be, to introduce a new
series of Text-Books in which they had a pecuniary inter-
est; and yet others expected long homilies on pedagogical
methods, morals and manners, or magnificats with the
finest rhetorical modulations in praise of education, or
eulogies upon Cadmus, that apostle of letters to Greece,
or upon Galileo, that martyr of science, or those fathers and
doctors of more modern times Pestalozzi, Doctor Arnold,
Horace Mann, or some other .saint of our school hagiogra-
phy—all interesting, but futile subjects. Upon assembling,
however, it was soon learned that the proceedings were to be
of the most practical character, and discussions in which all
were to engage were to take the place of long and learned
disquisitions. The Institute was opened daily with prayer
by one of the clergy of our town, and by the reading, after-
wards, of a short pertinent extract, by one the teachers. The
subject of the day was then introduced by the Professors, such
as the best method of teaching children to spell, to read or to
write, or the porper use and the abuse of Text-Books ;
the value of oral teaching; the use of the black-board ;
school discipline, school offences and school punishments;
school organization, with reference to classification, and the
time to be devoted to the hearing of lessons. The teachers
were called upon to give their views and state their own.
plans; and alter the subject had been very thoroughly dis-
cussed, the Professor gave his own summing up, and laid
down what he deemed to be the law, or rule of conduct.
These discussions are always earnest and animated, and I
feel sure that many teachers who were present were pleas-
urably surprised to find that what they had themselves been
doing met the approbation of those who were their elders in
the profession, and had made all systems their study. Their
discussions also showed that we had men and women capable
of thinking for themselves, ingenious in expedients and plant
and able in the execution of them—any thing else than the
traditional routine teachers. They showed too that the beat