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,

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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 satised 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 sufliciently 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."

M. Cousin, in a Report to the minister of Public Instruction in France, in 1836, "on the state of Education in Holland," while giving a preference to the school law of Prussia, in its provision for Normal Schools, and the classification of public schools, and especially for the support of the higher class of primary schools, assigns the palm to Holland, in the matter of school inspection.

"The provincial boards of primary instruction, with their great and various powers, constitute, in my mind, the chief superiority of the Dutch over the Prussian law. They resemble the Schul-collegium, which forms a part of every provincial consistory in Prussia; but they are far better, for the Schul-collegium is not composed of inspectors. It sends out some of its members to inspect as occasion requires, but inspection is not its function. It judges from written documents, and not from ocular proof, and is generally obliged to rely upon the sole testimony of the member sent to inspect; whereas in Holland, the board, being both inspectors and judges of inspections. are on the one hand better judges, in consequence of the experience they have acquired in a constant routine of inspection; and, on the other hand, they are better inspectors, by what they learn at the board, when acting as judges and governors, a combination eminently practical, and uniting what is almost every where separated.

Every inspector resides in his own district, and he is bound to inspect every school at least twice a year, and he has jurisdiction over the primary schools of every grade within the district. Without his approval no one can either be a public or a private teacher; and no public or private teacher can retain his situation, or be promoted, or receive any gratuity; for no commissioner has any power in his absence, and he is either the chairman or the influential member of all meetings that are held. He is thus at the head of the whole of the primary instruction in his particular district. He is required to repair three times a year to the chief town of the province, to meet the other district inspectors of the province, and a conference is held, the governor of the province presiding, which lasts for a fortnight or three weeks, during which time each inspector reads a report upon the state of his district, and brings before the meeting all such questions as belong to them. As each province has its own particular code of regulations for its primary schools, founded upon the law and its general regulations, the provincial board examines whether all the proceedings of the several inspectors have been conformable to that particular code; they look to the strict and uniform execution of the code; they pass such measures as belong to them to originate, and they draw up the annual report which is to be presented to the central administration, and submit such amendments as appear to them necessary or useful, and of which the central administration is constituted the judge. Under the Minister of the Interior there is a high functionary, the Inspector-general of Primary Instruction; and from time to time a general meeting is summoned by the government, to be held at the Hague, to which each provincial board sends a deputy; and thus, from the Inspector-general of the Hague, down to the local inspector of the smallest district, the whole of the primary instruction is under the direction of inspectors. Each inspector has charge of his own district, each provincial board has charge of its province; and the general meeting, which may be called the assembly of the states-general of primary instruction, has charge of the whole kingdom. All these authorities are, in their several degrees, analogous in their nature; for all are public functionaries, all are paid and responsible officers. The district-inspector is responsible to the provincial Board of Commissioners; and they are responsible to the Inspector-general and the Minister of the Interior. In this learned and very simple hierarchy the powers of every member are clearly defined and limited."

Mr. George Nicholls, in a Report on the condition of the Laboring Poor in Holland and Belgium," to the Poor Law Commissioners of England, in 1838, remarks:

"The measures adopted in Holland to promote the education of all classes,