ogy, Composition and Book-keeping from the legal list of topics of instruction in the public schools, has often been cited as sufficient inducement, in order to supply the deficiencies of the public schools, for the establishment and support of a multitude of private and select schools that, by diverting from the public schools the interest and the patronage of influential men, have much obstructed and retarded the improvement of the appliances and agencies of popular education.

Again, it is often alleged, in derogation of the character of our public schools, that the different branches are taught in such a lifeless and ineffectual manner, and with such remote reference to the realization of any immediate and practical benefit therefrom, that many a child spends the whole of his school life in the diligent and apparently successful pursuit of the so-called common branches and yet his Geography gives him little knowledge of his own country or of the world at large, that is beneficial in the way of expansion or improvement; his English Grammar gives him no ability to write or speak his native tongue, that is of actual service to him; and having mastered the arithmetical text-book, he remains as before incompetent to understand, without further instruction, or take part in the most common business operations.

There can be little doubt that if all the common and graded schools were required to give instruction in Book-keeping and Physical Geography and in Composition, much more of practical benefit would result from their efforts. And if by a change of law all the public schools, of every grade, were required, whenever the District so order by vote, to furnish adequate instruction in Vocal Music, Physiology and Drawing, the chief ground manifested for the preference of private and select schools would be taken away.

It may be remarked also, in regard to the topics last named, that properly used they may be made to exert a powerful influence upon our schools, in a direction where such influence is very greatly needed.

Whatever agency can be brought to bear upon the schools of the State, that will have a tendency to elevate, purify and refine the character of the children who attend them, must in the opinion of those who are best acquainted with the tendencies of school life, be of inestimable value. Many of the evil traits of character exhibited by school children, result as frequently from the utter neglect of teachers and parents to induce good habits of thought and to inspire with pure and noble feelings, as they do from the natural proclivities to wrong and vicious courses of which all careless and unruly children are suspected. But let Physical Geography throw an attractive hue over the study of Geography as commonly pursued, by turning the attention of children towards the ingenuity,

the majesty and the exquisitely beautiful adaptation, exhibited in the co-operating agencies of the winds and waters, the mountains and valleys; the rocks and the deserts, and in the varieties of animal and vegetable life, and you gain a power to speak to the souls that have never before been roused, that can be made almost to transform the very natures of those brought under such influences. How many careless and idle and vicious boys grow up into useless, harsh and vicious men from being neglected in early years in regard to a right cultivation of the heart as well as the head.

The future of the adult depends vastly more upon the tastes that are fostered or neglected in early years; and many a man is hard and harsh, and with no susceptibility to the refining and softening agencies of life, simply because the finer and softer capabilities of his nature have been allowed to slumber through all the days of his boyhood.

The cultivation and developement in early life of those capacities and tastes, that will in their very developement as well directly promote individual and general happiness as they will guard against the more common sources of unhappiness, by giving a capacity to secure the highest pleasure in the quiet pursuits and enjoyments of the home circle, is a subject of the highest conceivable importance.

Why not then, in the common school, let Music and Drawing be allowed a fair chance to contend with roughness, coarseness and profanity in obtaining a permanent and formative power over the characters of the children of our State?

It is a fortunate thing, that if, as is so often said, we are all the creatures of habit, the statement is as true of good habits as it is. of bad ones. Many a hard boy loves to indulge in vulgar and profane language and to lounge his days and nights away in all accessible idling places, because no one ever taught him otherwise. A boy who loves to sing will be less likely to swear, and one who can find a true and quiet pleasure in the exercise of his natural appreciation of the beautiful in nature and art by developing his faculty for drawing in his own quiet and pleasant home will waste little time in the streets or the groceries.

I most earnestly hope that a modification of our laws will enable the schools to enlist all the power that Music and Drawing, and other similar agencies, may have in softening and purifying the character of the pupils in our schools..

MODIFICATIONS OF LAW RECOMMENDED.

I recommend that the influence of your Honorable Board be exerted to procure the following changes of law:

1st. That the Board of Education be legally empowered, in their discretion,, from time to time to accept propositions from the Trustees of existing Academies, similar to the proposition of the Trustees of the Orange County Grammar School, embodied in the present Report, by which the gratuitous use of their school property may be secured for the State for a term of not less than five years, and that such schools shall be adopted as State Normal Schools and to grant licenses to teach in the schools of the State for five years or more to those who shall graduate from such schools, providing that the number of schools thus selected shall not exceed six, and providing also that the special licences thus granted shall be liable to revocation by the Board for the same causes assigned in the general laws for the revocation of ordinary certificates to teachers.

2d. That Physical Geography, Literary Composition, and Bookkeeping be added to the topics specified in the general law, in which instruction shall be required in all the common schools.

3d. That Vocal Music, Physiology and Drawing be taught in all the public schools of every grade, whenever the Prudential Committee, or the District by vote, shall so direct.

4th. That the Board of Education be empowered and directed to revise the existing authorized list of school books, and to make and publish an authorized list of text-books to be used in all the public schools, in giving instruction in all the branches of study required by law in the schools, such list to be made under the same provisions which governed in making the existing list, and to be of binding force for ten years from the time of its publication.

5th. That so much of the public money as is now by law distributed in proportion to the average daily attendance of the scholars, be distributed in proportion to the aggregate attendance.

6th. That any town, at a town meeting legally warned for that purpose, may by a majority vote direct the abolition of all the school districts therein, and establish a method of disposition of existing school property.

7th. That all Prudential Committees of Districts, except in Union Districts, shall consist of three persons, to be elected at the next annual school meeting for one, two, or three years respectively, and thererfter, one member of such committee to be elected annually and to hold office for three years.

8th. That the law be so amended that no District shall receive any share of the public money, unless there shall, during the year next preceding the distribution thereof, have been kept in such District a school for the term of four months sustained by other moneys than those which may have been drawn from the town treasury.

And now I trust I may be allowed, in closing this report, to express an earnest hope that the present educational year, already marked by the complete organization of the State Agricultural College, aud the State Reform School, under the most favorable auspices, may, by necessary legislation and your action, become still more memorable as the year in which a judicious, economical and adequate system of State Normal Instruction shall have been inaugurated.

Respectfully submitted,

J. S. ADAMS, Secretary.