STATE OF MINNESOTA,
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION,

ST. PAUL, Oct. 9, 1876.

C. N. Hewitt, M. D., Secretary of the State Board of Health:

SIR At the last meeting of our State Teachers' Association, Hon. H. B. Wilson, Supt. J. W. Hancock and Prof. O. Whitman were appointed a committee to instruct the Superintendent of Public Instruction to ask our State Board of Health to issue for distribution through his office, a series of tracts, the design of which shall be the improvement of the sanitary condition of our schools. It is with great pleasure that I communicate this request. Such an effort is much needed.

Permit me to suggest that you discuss in unscientific, plain terms, such topics as follows:

The causes of impure air in school-rooms.

The rapidity with which air becomes impure.

The effect of such air upon health and mental operations. Methods of heating and ventilation in the construction of new school houses.

How stoves should be arranged in houses already built.

Expedients for ventilation in school rooms where no provision was made in their original construction.

How seats should be arranged to secure health and comfort, especially for small children.

The arrangement of windows with reference to a supply of light, neither excessive nor deficient.

Proper positions in sitting and standing, with special reference to the lungs and the preservation of the eyes.

Means of securing pure water for use in the schools.

Sanitary and moral importance of out houses, kept in good condition.

The necessity of suitable play grounds, and in buildings for graded schools, of a room for exercise in winter and in stormy weather.

With specific matters like these, your wisdom and experience will enable you to combine such general facts of physiology as you may deem important to the hygiene of the school room and of the family.

Herewith I send you some data concerning the number and condition of our school houses. If you desire anything further, you can propose a series of questions, and I will distribute them and

obtain such answers from teachers as I can. If you can proceed on the data given, and your general knowledge of the subject, it may hasten the desired work.

I pledge you, sir, that whatever articles you may furnish, and send to this office, shall be thoroughly distributed through our county superintendents of schools, into every district of the state. If you respond favorably, I will advertise the matter by inserting this correspondence in my forth coming annual report.

Very respectfully yours,

D. BURT, Supt. Pub. Inst.

MINNESOTA STATE BOARD OF HEALTH,
SECRETARY'S OFFICE,

RED WING, MINN., Oct. 19, 1876.

To Hon. D. Burt, Supt. Pub. Instruction, St. Paul:

SIR: I am in receipt of your letter of the 9th inst., communicating "the request of the State Teachers' Association that the "State Board of Health issue for distribution, through the office "of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, a series of "tracts, the design of which shall be the improvement of the san"itary condition of our schools.

I am instructed by the State Board of Health to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and to express their satisfaction that the necessity for such work has received a clear and practical expression by the Association and in your communication.

The Board assumes with pleasure the duty of preparing such tracts.

In view of the nearness of the winter, the Board direct that the first paper discuss the means best adapted to secure proper ventilation and warming in the common school buildings already in use, with a brief statement of the principles involved. The time is so brief that we have determined to base the paper upon such a statement of the existing facts, as we derive from the data in your office; from yourself, your predecessor in office, Hon. H. B. Wilson, and such others as we are able to consult. The details of further papers will include the subjects you propose, and such others as experience or study may suggest.

I am, very respectfully, yours,

CHARLES N. HEWITT, Secretary State Board of Health.

RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

This subject does not need discussion, yet I refer to it lest silence be misunderstood. It is being generally conceded that state schools, supported by popular taxation and designed for all, can distinctively teach neither Judaism, Christianity, nor atheism. They are not to be Lutheran, Calvinistic, nor Arminian. They must not espouse orthodoxy, heterodoxy, nor any doxy. Our state schools must restrict themselves to the teaching of the virtues, personal and social, that are essential to the welfare of the state, and sanctioned by conscience in general. There is such a moral code to which we all assent. Among its elements are truthfulness, honesty, justice, reverence for rightful authority, obedience to parents, gratitude, kindness, and purity. Sentiments like these can be inculcated in our public schools by such teachers as we ought to have, without necessarily reading them from any book to give them authority. The incidents of any school room afford a competent teacher abundant opportunities for an indirect inculcation, without set lectures or lessons. This moral code, sanctioned in every human heart, and unquestioned by all, should be recognized in our state schools and skillfully incorporated into their intellectua culture, as necessary to the best type of citizenship. But legislation is evidently not the agency to restrain our schools from the religious sphere of churches and parental teaching. Restrictive legislation on this subject is sure to be misunderstood and abused. Some will regard it as hostile to religion, while others will use it to break down our state schools, under the charge that legislation has made them godless. It was illustrated in a legislature not long since, that legislators claiming affinity with no religious creeds, could not agree in their definitions of a religious hymn, nor in their views respecting the religious character of the selections for reading in our school books. After an amusing discussion and failure to come to any agreement, it became evident that our legislatures will do well to let this subject alone. The people in the districts, restrained by the growing public sentiment on the subject, will take care of it. If the patrons and supporters of the public schools in a city are unanimous in tolerating the custom of having the children in the lower departments spend ten or fifteen minutes in the morning in reciting verses from the Psalms, and repeating or chanting the Lord's prayer, it should not seem to be the province of any legislature to decide that they must desist. If the school board of any other city see that there are supporters and patrons of the schools decidedly opposed to such opening exercises,

they will have sense enough to instruct their teachers on the subject, without the interference of the state. So in our districts generally. The public desire to preserve the harmony of the schools and to make them acceptable to as many as possible, will lead to the waiving of anything distinctively religious, to which persons entitled to object, shall make any decided objection. Such has been the result wherever complaints have arisen. The tendency in this direction is so positive, that the matter will regulate itself without any legislative interference.

SPECIAL SCHOOL LEGISLATION.

It is respectfully suggested that such legislation is generally an injury to our school system. Frequently it costs the violation of some principle that ought to stand intact. Of attempts at such legislation that were squelched last winter, I will mention the following: A party that had appealed in vain to county commissioners to be set off to another district, persuaded the member of the legislature from his locality to draft a bill on the subject. To have entertained that bill, would have been to take from county commissioners an official duty which they are more competent to discharge than any legislature. Another bill was prepared, asking that a man owning a farm on which he did not live, might, in view of such ownership, be permitted to sign petitions and remonstrances respecting changes in the boundries of the district containing said farm. To have passed this bill, would have given non-resident speculators in land, power to get their property set out of districts in which it is likely to be taxed for building school houses. So it is with most special bills. They are Trojan horses; and if we let them into our school code, we soon find that their wooden sides are pregnant with mischief.

It is also a violation of legislative principles, to allow opponents in the minority to carry their point by asking the passage of a special bill that will let them escape the requirement of a general measure which they cannot defeat. For instance, when a legisla ture refuses to repeal the law authorizing county commissioners to appoint county superintendents of schools, and the prominent advocates of such repeal, after they are beaten, get up a bill letting out the few counties in which they are interested, there seems to be no reason why they should be gratified. The majority deciding against what is asked in the special bill, by their adherence to the existing law, are under no obligation to listen to the plea, we ask as a special favor for ourselves or our constituents, that a certain

county be excepted. Such exceptions are contrary to the principle of the general law, and they ought not to be allowed. If we admit one to be made, where shall we stop? Every member in the legislature may ask that his district be let out as a special favor, and thus a law, just passed as a general measure, may be broken down and limited and rendered narrower in application than the exceptions secured by special and privileged legislation. It is earnestly hoped that our school code will not be tampered with and tinkered in this manner. It is already a mass of ill-joined patchwork, and let us rather aim at unity by general legislation, when changes ought to be made.

SCHOOL LEGISLATION THE COMING WINTER.

It is not my purpose to urge your Honorable body to reconstruct our district system, and to make the arrangements for supervision and for local support that have been set forth in this report as desirable. It is not best to arrange these details until our school system is placed on a stronger and more equitable financial basis. They will then follow in a natural order. I have discussed them to prepare the public mind for such improvements as soon as the great radical weakness of our state schools can be remedied. This weakness, as I have shown, is the want of a state tax with a proper rate and an equitable plan of disbursement. This is the only measure of moment that I will recomment for immediate legislation. I respectfully but urgently ask your educational committees to secure the passage of a bill with the following provisions:

That, instead of our present misnamed tax of one mill, returned on property paying it, a proper state school tax of one mill and a half be levied upon the taxable property of the state. This asks for a half mill more than the present tax, because the schools lost last year more than $60,000, by the reduction of the rate from two mills to one. We need the rate proposed to help our schools as much as they were helped before the new tax law took effect.

That this tax be assessed, collected and paid into the state treasury in the same manner as other state taxes.

That the Superintendent of Public Instruction apportion onehalf the income of this tax to counties upon scholars, as the current school fund is apportioned.

That he apportion the other half to counties on their population, as shown by the last census, state or national.

That county auditors apportion to scholars, the half received by