cannot but be beneficial. Without parading either their denominational preferences or their piety, they will show, as George Herbert expresses it, that— "Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, Makes that and th' action fine." teachers of our Public Schools. Not that they often take orders, or study law, or medicine so that, having raised their social position, they may remain teachers; but that, however they may really like teaching, they find that a teacher is too often treated The following announcement was recently with contempt by the shopkeeper, the clerk, met with in an English paper: "Ethics for the mechanic, the farmer, and sometimes by Undenominational Schools.' One of the the day labourer, while the lawyer, the docoldest and most eminent of German educator and the minister are looked on with tionists, a pupil of the great educational comparative respect. Mr. Hope says on philosopher, Herbart, has just published this subject: "I am not very bitter over 'Ethics for Undenominational Schools.' The work will no doubt attract the attention of both legislators and educationists in England, as it has already done on the continent. The editor of the School Board Chronicle and a German scholar are engaged upon an English adaptation of the book." There can scarcely be any well-grounded objection in principle to the teaching of ethics in public schools, provided the distinction be properly observed between ethics and dogmatics. When the grounds of moral obligation are dealt with, the odium theologicum will be very apt to make its appearance. The Germans are expert in solving gordian knots; whether the German philosopher Herbart will succeed in this instance time will show. this grievance of our social position. I complain because my profession complains. but, personally, I have no great sympathy with those thin-skinned dominies who invoke Mrs. Grundy with alternate upbraidings and entreaties, demanding and beseeching her to make them gentlemen in the most select sense of the word. I have no very good will towards this divinity of the genteel world, and object to recognizing the principle that she can issue letters patent to this effect. The fact is that among dominies, as among men of all other professions, there are some who never could be made gentlemen by any ordinance of Mrs. Grundy, and some who never could be, or could be thought to be, except by fools and vulgar persons, anything else." "While I am on this topic" he further observes, "I wish to say a word upon a notable scheme which certain philosophers have propounded for improving the social position of our profes The teachers in our Public Schools next deserve our attention. Referring to the report of the Royal Commissioners, President Quain remarks that much complaint was made before the Commissioners of the wantsion. To this end all dominies are to band of efficient teachers in schools. Here the public are not without fault. The social position conceded to the schoolmaster is not proportioned to the importance of his office. His rank is so low that he feels himself in a measure compelled to take orders as a clergyman. With them he acquires the position in society allowed to a profession the duties of which he does not perform. What is thus said with regard to the teachers of the higher and middle class schools in Britain, will in some degree apply to the themselves together into a sort of union, and to stamp themselves with a hall mark of their own approbation, which, by a law luckily not yet obtained, it will be penal to counterfeit. If I understand the scheme aright, all present dominies of influence are to be bribed into concert by being stamped gratis, while all young dominies of the present and unfledged dominies of the future are to earn this stamp by undergoing an examination into their acquirements. I doubt much if this plan will exalt us more highly in the public esteem; but I doubt more if it will fulfil the other end of its advocates, in shutting for the future the gates of the profession against all but good and fit men." Mr. Hope then points out, what, in his judgment, is "the real cause of the low estimation in which dominies are held." "We are apt," he says, "to value a thing not by the cost of its production so much as by the price we pay for it. If people were to pay their dominies better, I am certain they would think more highly of them." It may also be considered if not as certain, yet as highly probable, that if the people in Ontario were to pay their dominies better, a much larger proportion than at present of the most capable male teachers would remain in the profession to the great benefit of the public and not to their own disadvantage. The highest salary paid to a male teacher in a city in the year 1870, was $1,000 (in Toronto the highest was $750), and in a county $600. The average salary of male teachers was in a city $597; in a county, $260. And yet a young man of good faculties and a fair education, who is willing and even desires to consider teaching as his business or profession for life, is sometimes censured as making it a mere temporary convenience or stepping-stone, because, with the choice of a career yet before him, he does not prefer six or seven hundred dollars a year, with the contempt of his equals and inferiors, to the possibility of emancipation from such a condition and the prospect of equitable remuneration for his labour and skill. There are able and worthy men in the teaching groove who cannot get out of it, whose wisdom and duty it is to make the best of it for others and for themselves, and who deserve for their work's sake no little respect and consideration. But not until the rewards of teaching are more commensurate with its labours and responsibilities can it be expected that many teachers worthy of the name will expend in it their youth, their manhood and their wiser if less vigor ous age. To be expected to live in the selfdenying spirit of missionaries and martyrs, and yet to be treated as objects of vulgar pity mixed with vulgar scorn, is a little too much for average human nature to contemplate with complacency, and desire with intensity of longing. Hence the few intelligent, well educated, able young men who long continue public school teachers in Ontario. Female teachers, on the whole, seem to occupy a rather better position than their male fellow labourers. Their average salary in cities, in 1870, was $231, while some received (in Toronto) $425, and in counties, $187. But while there are among them some wives and mothers, they are for the most part single persons who are not yet deaf to the flattering tale of hope especially on one interesting subject. A large number of them consequently leave the teaching profession, year after year, to enter on the more congenial sphere of married life. It may be presumed that whatever little pecuniary expenditure their special instruction and training may in any instances have cost, the province is amply repaid by the superior intelligence with which they enter on the discharge of their various domestic duties. In the year 1854 the legislature provided for a Teachers' Superannuation Fund-contributions to which were optional until after the passing of the School Act of 1871, and still remain so, so far as female teachers are concerned. But the new school law renders it imperative on every male teacher to contribute four dollars annually to this fund, and requires that one-half of that sum be deducted semi-annually from his salary by his city or county inspector. It seems to have been thought that trustees would increase the salaries of teachers to the extent of this subscription and in order to its payment. If they have done so it has hitherto been on the principle of not letting the left hand know what the right hand doeth. A teacher's salary should always be cuss. ley," that much may be said on both sides,” provided too much red tape and humiliating detail be not brought into exercise in the management and administration of the fund. One other consideration may be suggested regarding the claim to respect of which teachers are conscious, and the deficient acknowledgment of that claim, of which they often complain. Teachers, as well as persons of every profession, rank and condition of society should remember that respectability is, after all, a personal attribute-a truth which, in our day, is receiv ing abundant illustration among the most elevated official personages, such as sovereigns and presidents, and, through all classes and conditions, down to the humblest constable and the lowliest chimneysweep. A degree of respect pertains to every office: but its occupant can either magnify that office by his becoming demeanour, or subject it to contempt by the impropriety of his conduct. No office, however exalted or however humble, can change a fool into a wise man, a rogue into an honest man, or an ill-mannered bear, however crammed with knowledge, into a truly respectable teacher. sufficient to allow of his insuring his life for the benefit of his family, if not to enable him to purchase an annuity for himself in his declining years, or to make other equally beneficial investments; but probably there are very few public school teachers in Ontario, who, although they may have early entered on their profession and have conducted themselves prudently and economically for many years, have been able to accomplish these objects. The more minute pros and cons of the Provinvincial Teachers' Superannuation Fund are for teachers themselves to consider and disThe compulsory character, however, of their contributions to it appears particularly repugnant to many of them who feel that the demand to "stand and deliver," as they deem it, is scarcely rendered palatable by the assurance that this inevitable depletion is all for their good. They like, they say, to have a voice in the disposition of their little surplus, and to exercise thought, discretion and will on such a subject. They do not appreciate the precedent, to which they are sometimes referred, of eccesiastical organizations which require their clerical members to contribute with a view to their own superannuation or the support of their surviving relatives. Such organizations, they argue, are more or less directly of a representative character; and what they do of this nature is done by them in their representative capacity. The precedents set in the civil service of Britain and of the Dominion are somewhat more in point, and, if wisely and kindly followed, may prove not a little beneficial. vision has been made for the return of onehalf of the amount of his payments to any teacher on his leaving the profession; and, on the decease of a teacher, his wife or other legal representative is entitled to receive back the full amount he has paid in, with interest at the rate of seven per cent. With regard to this whole matter, we may perhaps conclude with Sir Roger de Cover-ure are alike inexcusable. Before such par Pro Something, perhaps, should be said about the discipline of our Public Schools. On the general subject of school discipline, so much has been spoken and written in modern days from Cowper's "Tirocinium" down to Horace Mann's rhetorical lecture on punishments, and Mr. Hope's excellent chapter on "Lion," that every one seems to know all about it, except, perhaps, those who are charged with its administration. As the faultless management of bachelors' wives and the equally judicious treatment of old maids' children is unquestionable, so the school discipline of every age and of every variety of character and home training is considered by many parents, and especially by those who cannot rule their own households, as a matter in which excess and fail ents are too eloquent in their denunciation of the inefficiency of school discipline, they might be advantageously reminded of the Chinese method of promoting discipline at An English resident at a Chinese port was often grievously annoyed by the boisterous conduct of the younger members of a native family whose dwelling was adjacent to his own. Repeated remonstrances with the head of the household having proved ineffectual, he, at length, applied for redress to the mandarin of the district. The father of the young hopefuls was sent for by the mandarin, and personally received in his presence a very instructive illustration of the utility of physical punishment in certain difficult cases. He returned to his home; a protracted season of juvenile weeping and wailing immediately followed in that house; the dropped reins of domestic government were gathered up by paterfamilias, and the English resident underwent no more annoyance from his neighbour's offspring. Among the pupils in our schools there are not a few who come from homes which are almost as disorderly as was that of the Englishman's Chinese neighbour, but which, fortunately, or unfortunately, cannot be rectified after the same method. The parents of such children seem to expect that the teacher is to accomplish a task which they have never begun, that of subduing, regulating, educating in morals and manners their untamed and uninstructed progeny. And, as if it is not enough to devolve on teachers the responsible care of their children during school hours, they sometimes wish them to become the dispensers of parental wrath on account of home offences. No teacher who respects himself will submit, by compliance with such a desire, to degrade himself and to render school attendance needlessly odious to his pupils. Slaves have been sent by their owners, on this continent and elsewhere, to some special place in order to their flagellation; but no teacher should become a whipping machine at the caprice of a lazy or unfaithful parent. When children that, on the whole, corporal punishment, as a means of school discipline, is rather discountenanced than encouraged in Ontario. The limits of this paper will not admit of a discussion on the cane, the taws, and the birch, as apt instruments for the correction of juvenile offences, and even, as they have been used, for the promotion of juvenile learning. The practice of the grave and learned George Buchanan on the person of James the 6th of Scotland and 1st of England; the well-known method of the famous Dr. Busby for stimulating in his Westminster scholars the acquisition, if not the love, of knowledge; the dictum of Dr. Samuel Johnson concerning the boy who, neglecting his task to-day is therefore flogged, and will, perform the task to-morrow; the admirable chapter of the book about Dominies already referred to, in which Mr. Hope expresses his suspicion that the boasted relinquishment of corporal punishment sometimes means the adoption of other pains and penalties more cruel and humiliating; with many other such facts and considerations, at once occur as suggestive of the wisdom of thinking twice before we speak once in utter condemnation of corporal punishment judiciously administered. into the arena of controversy the well-known language of the Bible, so often quoted on this subject; but it may not be inappropriate to refer to the instance in which the late Prince Consort taught not only by word of mouth, but also by wholesome pain and penalty, the heir of the crown of Great Britain, who when, placed in his childhood under tutors and governors, defied his teacher and was whipped as he deserved to be, by his "truly kind and judicious parent." Perhaps temporary suspension from school privileges, in cases of marked and repeated insubordination, is among the best means of punishment resorted to in the Public Schools of Ontario, as it is especially adapted to call the attention of parents to the misconduct of their children, and to induce them to cooperate with teachers in reducing them to order and obedience. Schools of England, Scotland, the United In closing this paper, while not forgetting that comparisons are sometimes invidious, it may not be amiss to remark that if any comparison of the Public Schools of Ontario with any other similar system of schools can be considered proper, it will be as between our schools and the Common Schools of the United States. On this subject Dr. Fraser (Bishop of Manchester), who was in 1865 We may well surrender to the contempt one of the Assistant Commissioners apand detestation of mankind, and of woman-pointed by the Queen to enquire into the kind too, much of what was written a few years ago in successive numbers of the "Englishwoman's Magazine" in favour of the "Birch in the Boudoir," so ably and deservedly satirized in the "Saturday Review." But never let us succumb to the stupid doctrine of the sacredness of the person as applied to those who are still in the earlier stages of pupilage; lest we even seem to sanction such atrocious murders as have been committed on faithful teachers in the United States by their vindictive pupils or their pupils' relatives, not on account of alleged severity so much as because of the fact that personal chastisement had been administered. It is not always well to drag "The Schools that I saw at work were the City Schools of Toronto, those of Ottawa, and one or two Village Schools. They were characterized by a remarkable similarity of system, and the differences observable be tween them were differences of degree rather than of kind; and as I had abundant opportunities of ascertaining the opinions of persons thoroughly conversant with the system, both theoretically and practically, and have besides carefully read the extracts from the reports of Local Superintendents, published in the report of the Chief Superintendent, I doubt whether a larger induction |