The session was suspended at twelve, and recommenced at half-past two. The provincial inspector notified the teachers that they must keep school all the year; and it would become his duty to take rigorous measures with those who should not fulfill this obligation. In reply to M. Deltombe, who said that sometimes there were no scholars, he said that he could not admit that there was a total want of scholars, that such a case was impossible.

M. Masson explained his method of teaching the catechism. He uses the simultaneous and individual methods, with explanations from time to time.

The ecclesiastical cantonal inspector, M. Brohez, said that these explanations should be prepared under the direction of the priest. He also directed the attention of the teachers to the pronunciation of the catechism and of the prayers.

An exercise followed in teaching French, and another in grammar, the latter being a method of distinguishing between the verbal adjective and the present participle, illustrated upon the board.

Cantonal inspector Dubois gave instructions in agriculture and gardening, and recommended the teachers to communicate such instruction to their pupils.

The provincial inspector stated a curious fact with regard to transplanting the beet. It has two rows of roots, always pointing to the east and west, which in transplanting must be set in the same direction, otherwise the growth of the plant is much retarded.

Inspector Dubois informed the meeting that the next conference would take place October 19, 1848, and that the subjects for discussion would be methods of teaching arithmetic, and the first three centuries of Belgian history.

NORMAL SCHOOLS,

The inspection, management, and instruction of the State normal schools, the normal departments annexed to the higher primary schools, and the episcopal normal schools, are substantially alike in the three classes of institutions.

All candidates for entrance are examined by a "jury," composed partly of government inspectors and partly of the instructors. The courses of study occupy three years. The pupils are usually required to board and lodge upon the school premises. The regular graduates have the first right of examination for vacant situations as public teachers; and government, besides the assistance given to the normal schools by erecting buildings and bearing part of the current expenses, appropriates about $12,500 annually in sums usually of about $40 each, to the assistance of a number of the more meritorious pupils.

Schools of application are annexed to all the normal schools, being the primary schools of the neighborhood. The following account of the government normal school at Lierre will give a fair general representation of these schools.

NORMAL SCHOOL AT LIERRE.

Candidates for admission to the normal school at Lierre, are first examined by the provincial inspectors of primary instruction, who are charged in particular to see that none are admitted who are inflicted with any deformity or infirmity incompatible with the occupation of teaching. If suitable, they are then examined by a committee or "jury" of two inspectors and three of the faculty of the school, in reading, writing, religion, and morals, the grammar of their own and of the French language, the four fundamental rules of arithmetic, the legal system of weights and measures, the elements of geography, particularly of Belgian geography, and the principal facts of Belgian history.

The course of study at Lierre, occupying three years, embraces the following subjects, viz: religion and morals; sacred and church history; reading, writing, and book-keeping; grammar and composition; geography and history, especially of Belgium; arithmetic, and its business applications; elements of theoretical geometry, and of mapping, land measuring, and leveling; elementary algebra; portions of the natural sciences applicable to every-day life; agriculture and horticulture, grafting and pruning; theory of education, pedagogy and methodology; hygiene, as applicable to children and schools; elements of constitutional law; knowledge of the constitution and laws of Belgium, and of the most usual forms under them, church and school laws; singing and plain chant, playing the organ, harmony and accompaniment; drawing, linear, ornamenal, and architectural. During the third year of the course, the pupils are required to teach the different classes in the schools of application or practice annexed to the normal schools, under the direction of the professors of pedagogy and methodology.

The instructors are a director and sub-director, who are ecclesiastics, nine professors, an adjunct professor, and a gardener-demonstrator; the full complement of pupils being 150.

The pupils board and lodge within the institution, and the entire apportionment of their time, occupations, and recreations, is under the control of the school authorities. The whole establishment is under the hygienie supervision of a physician, who directs any measures necessary for the health of the inmates.

There is a library of educational works, which receives a copy of every work published by government, or by its assistance, and some philosophical and chemical apparatus, maps, and models for drawing.

The entire expense of the school at Lierre, for 1848, was $6,943.22, of which $5,395.33 was paid for salaries.

There is an examination at graduation, according to the result of which three grades of diplomas are given. At present (1848) all the graduates of the normal schools are employed in teaching. The government continues the bounty above mentioned, for three years after graduation, to such recipients of it as do not find their salaries, as public teachers, sufficient for their support.

FEMALE NORMAL EDUCATION.

There are fifteen religious establishments and boarding-schools for females designated by government, to a certain number of pupils in which a bounty is paid similar to that given to male normal pupils. These institutions are under government inspection, and the beneficiaries in them are employed as public teachers after their graduation. The course of study is substantially similar to that of the normal schools for males, some studies, as geometry, agriculture, horticulture, and constitutional law, being omitted, and needlework and the application of drawing to the cutting and fitting of dresses being added.

HOLLAND.

THE first impulse to improved primary instruction in Holland was given by some benevolent citizens of Groningen, who, in 1784, founded the "Society for the Public Good." They were encouraged and supported by the government, in their efforts to prepare school books, train schoolmasters, and excite attention to the state of schools. In 1806 the various edicts and regulations, published from time to time, were digested into a law, by M. Van der Ende, and were generalized for the guidance of the country at large. The French invasion curtailed the means applied to education; still the Dutch system was, as early as 1812, thought worthy of a special inquiry by Commissioners deputed from the University of Paris, at the head of which was M. Cuvier, who reported with no small admiration respecting it. On the restoration of peace in 1814, the first care of the king was directed to the state of public education, which by the law of that year was restored to the footing of 1806. Every province was divided into educational districts, and a school' inspector was appointed to each district. A provincial School Commission was named from among the leading inhabitants of each province to co-operate with the inspectors, and a sum was charged on the budget for the educational outlay, from which the traveling expenses of the commissioners were to be defrayed.

The governments of the towns and provinces were charged with the cost of maintaining the schools, for which they provide in their local budgets. Teachers were classified into four ranks, according to their qualifi cations and acquirements, and received their appointments from Government. A sum was also destined for the encouragement of associations of teachers, who were to meet to confer on school management, to visit each other's schools, and to study in common the duties incumbent on their profession.

The best known methods of instruction were sought and tried, and a catalogue of the best school books was prepared and published in the course of the year 1814.

In 1825, a prize was offered by the " Society for the Public Good," for the best essay on the advantages and disadvantages of the monitorial system, and the simultaneous or class system of instruction. The prize was awarded to a dissertation by M. Visser, Inspector of Primary Schools in Fries-land. In this essay, the system of monitorial instruction is analyzed,

and proved to be unsound on every point which bears upon education in the best sense of that term. This essay was published and widely distributed by the society, and contributed to form and strengthen the opinion which prevails in Holland, against the method of mutual instruction.

In 1816 the Normal School at Haarlem was established, to supply a deficiency which was felt for the training of teachers, through the influence of M. Van der Ende, who is esteemed the father of education in Holland. A similar institution had previously been commenced on a small scale at Groningen, by the Society of Public Good. Up to the establishment of the Normal School at Groningen, teachers had been trained in Holland, by serving a sort of apprenticeship from the age of 14 to 16 or 18, as assistants in the larger schools, during the day, and receiving a course of special instruction, for one hour every evening. This, as far as it goes, is a cheap and excellent mode of professional training. But the experience of fifteen years satisfied her statesmen and educators, that this was not sufficient. It made good schoolmasters, but not inquiring and creative teachers. It produced rather routine than intelligent teaching, and arrested the progress of improvement, by perpetuating only the methods of those schools in which the young teachers had been practiced as assistants. To obviate this tendency, and to give to teachers a broader and firmer basis of attainments and principles, Normal Schools were established. The two modes are now continued together,* and in connection with the stimulus of the severe examination through which all teachers must pass, and of the direct and constant inspection to which all scholars are subjected, they have made the elementary schools of Holland inferior to none other in Europe. President Bache, in his Report on Education in Europe, pronounces them superior to those of the same class in any of the European states.

The attendance of children is not made compulsory on parents, but, what is equivalent to such an enactment, it is provided by law, that outdoor relief shall not be administered to any family, where children are allowed to run wild in the streets, or grow up as vagrants, or are employed in any factory without a previous elementary training.

The schools are not made free to parents by governmental contribution or local taxation, although both of these modes of supporting schools are resorted to. The schools are in the first place made good, by providing for the employment of only well-qualified teachers, and then the schools, thus made good, are open to all parents without exception or distinction, and all are required to pay a tuition fee, which the government provides shall not be large in any case. The result is universal education throughout Holland. In Haarlem, with a population of 21,000 in 1840, there was not a child of ten years of age, and of sound intellect, who could not both read and write, and this is true throughout Holland, according to the testimony of intelligent travelers, and is borne out by the following official table, (page 608,) as to the school attendance in 1846.

* See page 844.

The superiority of public elementary instruction in Holland, is attributed, by her own educators, and by intelligent foreigners, who have visited her schools in the rural districts, as well as in the large towns, to that system of special inspection, combined with specific and enforced preparation of all candidates for the office of teacher, and subsequent gradation of rank and pay, according to character and skill, which has now been in operation nearly half a century, ever since the first school law of the Batavian Republic, in 1806, drawn up by that wise statesman, M. Van der Palm. The following extracts will give at once this testimony, and an intelligent account of the system of inspection.

Baron Cuvier, in his "Report to the French Government on the establishment of Public Instruction in Holland,” in 1811, after speaking with special commendation of the system of inspection, remarks:

"The government is authorized to grant to each province a certain sum to meet the compensation, and the expenses of travel, and meeting of the inspectors. The mode of choosing them is excellent; they are taken from clergymen, or laymen of education, who have signalized themselves by their interest in the education of children, and skill in the local management of schools; from the teachers who have distinguished themselves in their vocation; and in the large towns, from the professors of the Universities and higher grade of schools."

Mr. W. E. Hickson, now Principal of the Mechanics Institute in Liverpool, in an "Account of the Dutch and German Schools," published in 1840, remarks:

"In Holland, education is, on the whole, more faithfully carried out than in most of the German States, and we may add that, notwithstanding the numerous Normal Schools of Prussia, (institutions in which Holland, although possessing two, is still deficient,) the Dutch schoolmasters are decidedly superior to the Prussian, and the schools of primary instruction consequently in a more efficient state. This superiority we attribute entirely to a better system of inspection. In Prussia, the inspectors of schools are neither sufficiently numerous, nor are their powers sufficiently extensive. Mr. Streiz, the inspector for the province of Posen, confessed to us the impossibility of personally visiting every one of the 1,635 schools in his district, and admitted that he was obliged, in his returns, to depend to a great extent upon the reports of local school committees. In Holland, inspection is the basis upon which the whole fabric of popular instruction rests.

The constitution of the Board is well worthy of attention; there can be no judges of the qualifications of teachers equal to those whose daily employment consists in visiting schools, and comparing the merits of different plans of instruction. But the power given to the inspector does not end here: by virtue of his office he is a member of every local board, and when vacant situations in schools are to be filled up, a new examination is instituted before him into the merits of the different candidates. It is upon his motion that the appointment is made, and upon his report to the higher authorities a master is suspended or dismissed for misconduct. Through his influence children of more than ordinary capacity in the schools he visits, are transferred, as pupils, to the Normal Schools, in order to be trained for masters; and through his active agency all improved plans or methods of instruction are diffused throughout the various institutions of the country."