The school property is only in fair condition. Many of the houses are in need of repair and others to be replaced with new ones. A small number of the schoolrooms are without sufficient blackboards, charts and other helps that the teacher needs. These things are gradually being supplied. Four new houses were built and two were enlarged during the past year.

TALBOT COUNTY.-Alexander Chaplain, Examiner. The statistical part of our report of the Public Schools of Talbot County for the year ending July 31st, 1899, exhibits an increased enrollment in both the white and colored schools. This is gratifying, though in a few districts the schools are overcrowded. Additional accommodations in new buildings and enlarged school houses at the beginning of the scholastic year, still leaves, however, two or three points without sufficient room for the steadily increasing school population. At these points the enrollment of pupils is too large for one teacher to handle with any degree of efficiency, and suggests graded schools with. additional rooms and additional teachers.

As a body our teachers worked during the year with uniform industry, zeal and efficiency, and they fairly earned the grateful thanks of school officials, patrons and pupils. The sympathetic and responsive spirit of the teachers made the work and instruction at the meetings of the Teachers' Association and Teachers' Institute both effective and enjoyable.

HIGH SCHOOLS AND GRADED SCHOOLS.

There is a growing sentiment among progressive school men that the public schools of the United States ought to be distinctively American. And among our educators there are now two high school parties: The one advocating the contrivance of, a purely American system of free development; the other contending for a complete co-ordination of the high school and the college. Members of the party of free development claim that the best equipment for life is the legitimate aim of the high school, and that preparation for college should be confined to a separate and, if possible in large cities or towns, distinct department. Many large cities and towns have compromised between the two high school parties and have given pupils the choice between two or more courses. In these large cities and towns the party of co-ordination with the college has, of course, ceased to claim the high schools as properly belonging to the class of schools called in America preparatory schools, where they would exclude, except as incidental subjects, the branches of study not traditionally required, or likely to be required as a basis for college work.

Popularly, we think only of a literary training in the public schools. But logically, pupils are entitled to musical, artistic and manual and industrial education. They are entitled to be trained from the very beginning for life's work and life's joys.

The older view of education is exclusively intellectual, or as consisting merely in the increase of knowledge, for the individual. But the growing tendency, along the line of the American idea of free development for the high school and the large graded schools, is to substitute society for the individual as the educational unit. The social estimate of education is based upon the contribution which it makes to the social efficiency of the individual, the additional value which it gives him as a member and servant of the social body. To society it does not matter what the individual knows, but only what the individual does and what the individual is. The courses in the high school and the large graded schools, according to the view of the party of free development, should infuse into the public school a practical element, effecting closer connection between it and life.

Because for the majority of the people, especially for the people without property, the public school is so little a preparation for life and action, are so many of the parents without anything more than a passive interest in it.

The step taken by the University of West Virginia not only of accepting all graduates of good high schools, but also of conferring the highest degree without any knowledge of either Greek or Latin, meets with the highest approval, we trust, of all advanced and advancing educators. The advocates of free development for the American high school confidently look forward to a time when all the colleges will accept all graduates of good high schools.

THE KINDERGARTEN.

As economic conditions press more and more heavily upon us, it is sad but true that pupils drop out of school earlier. Statistics show that pupils remain in school but very few years, few of them more than five or six years. Half of them drop out of school on reaching the age of eleven, a third of them on reaching the age of ten.

To meet the present condition with reference to the growing tendency to drop out of school in the fifth year grade and the sixth year grade, it will be necessary for the State to reach down lower, as to age for pupils, and to organically unite the kindergarten to the public school system, and to make manual training and self-activity the center of education around which all other school exercises shall be systematically grouped.

Kindergarten methods are the grandest revelation for all teachers who are not blinded by presumptuous ignorance, to see what had hitherto been revealed only to the few whose free minds had swept beyond the range of fettered thought. They

are the "open door" to the introduction of the pupil from school to life and action; and it is with pleasurable pride that we announce the purpose of our School Board to introduce, if not estopped by present legislative enactment, at least kindergarten methods into the schools of our county, both white and colored. For our colored schools this is more important, if possible, than for our white schools, and for them we would particularly emphasize the "open door" to life and action through manual and industrial instruction.

COLORED SCHOOLS.

We have been active in building large and properly equipped school houses for colored children, and school facilities for them now fairly meet their needs, except at one or two points. Their teachers are gradually improving both in scholarship and teaching ability, and the frequent meetings of their Teachers' Assocition gives us opportunities for developing the training class work begun in the Normal Institute, which was held for five days just preceding the opening of their schools for the present scholastic year on the 11th day of September.

The Teachers' Institute for Colored Teachers was conducted upon the plan of the "Summer School," with teachers' training classes, emphasizing the work of instruction in how to teach reading and other branches of study. The lecture plan was discarded, except one lecture given by me each day in the general session. Indeed, my inclination is towards the belief that the lecture plan, unless the teachers are provided with thoughtfully prepared syllabi that are pedagogically and psychologically sound in matter and arrangement, is the worst possible plan of teaching anybody, and must prove a fruitless means of educational improvement for our teachers and the unification of the schools of the State in matters of method and management.

CONCLUSION.

Dr. Harris says: "Careful students of the history of education have noticed the fact that its reforms swing from extreme to extreme." There was a time when our schools were conducted somewhat upon the so-called "Pueblo Plan," which has been described by its advocates, in the discussion of individual instruction, as having the pupil "work as an individual, promoted as an individual and graduated as an individual." The element of recitation was almost entirely unknown, except as an occasional perfunctory and mechanical performance. Now the pendulum has swung to the other extreme and many of our schools have degenerated into recitation rooms and the teacher to a machine for hearing recitations.

Instead of teaching, study and current investigation, it is one weary round of recitation from morning to evening. The pupil must study at home, and what teaching is done is performed by the parent.

In the concluding paragraph in my "Manual of the Public Schools of Maryland," for 1896-97, you will find the following: "The Examiner will understand that the recitation is a power wholly in the hands of the teacher, either for good or evil. The weakness or excellence of everything in the spirit, or government, or instruction, or discipline of the school will in some manner manifest and focus itself in the recitation; and, if he desires to uplift and do good for an inferior teacher and hopes. to reform the mischievous practices in the work, the school process must be grasped and scientifically handled at this point."

In

One of the specially weak points in our schools is the make-up of the programme. In grappling with this problem, teachers fail to consider many of the factors that properly enter into this vital point of school management. For the teacher to keep in constant unity with all the grades and classes composing the school is one of the greatest strains to be encountered, and it cannot be even partially accomplished without a systematic programme or time schedule for the movement of the whole. this the most thoughtful care should be expended upon the arrangement of the time-schedule for study and the desk-work period, class reciting being sure of engagement. The instructor who harbors the impression that teaching is hearing the recitation, is almost sure to leave pupils to shift for themselves out of it. But the teacher should exhibit as much skill, and should serve the pupil as efficiently, in providing for study and the deskwork period as in conducting the recitation. What the pupils are to accomplish during the desk-work period should be as definitely placed in the programme as the topic of recitation. The success of the work depends largely upon the preparation of the teacher in setting up for guidance and inspiration the ideal performance for each day. Without this there will be no assured precision of action, and no certainty and force in execution.

The whole purpose of the movement in the school process should be unity. The ideal to be secured in the grade, or grades, during the study and the desk-work period, is the greatest possible stress of attention on the thought or principle to be worked out. This is unity, not primarily of pupils among themselves, but with the teacher; although the teacher may at the time be employed, or conducting a recitation. If the pupils focus their attention on the thought which the teacher has planned for them, unity among themselves will be incidentally secured. But the great and principal reason for the programme of study and desk-work periods is the training of pupils into the power of self-limitation by imposing limits upon them. This gives the teacher the best opportunity for training the pupils to hold continuously to one object of thought-to the power of concentration and continued effort.

WASHINGTON COUNTY.-George C. Pearson, Examiner. In accordance with your request, I hereby offer a supplementary report.

The increase of our school population from year to year demands greater accommodations. Two or more rural school districts unite upon a location convenient to both districts and ask to be consolidated into a graded school, and these two causes, in connection with the results that time brings to all buildings, necessitates the building of new houses, which are constructed so as to give a greater degree of health and comfort to the pupils.

The pupil of the rural school who has passed through the fifth grade can secure a place in the most convenient graded school if he is able to pass its requirements for admission. Many of the children of the county have taken advantage of this opportunity and have increased the number in the higher rooms of the graded school, and thus they have been benefited by longer and better instruction, and the pupils of the rural school belonging to the five grades have a much better chance of improvement than they would if the higher grades remained in the country school, for reasons that are obvious.

The Pollard system of reading has been introduced into the first four grades of the graded schools the present year, but this system has been tried as an experiment for nearly three years in a few schools with much pleasure and success. It has been very gratifying to observe in the experimental school that the pupils who have been under this instruction find it a pleasure to do the work, and do it willingly, and are able to learn words entirely new to them. What a delight it has been to notice the face of a child beam with pleasure when he has, through his unaided efforts, discovered a new word!

In this way the child is taught phonics. It is not the barren way they were taught in years gone by, but by the law of association they learn to associate the sound and the objects (in the form of stencil pictures), which are impressed on the mind when memory is most lasting.

Five new buildings have been erected during the past year, two of which are graded schools. Both of these are the outgrowth of former rural schools and three of them are buildings of one room each. The School Board purchased one of the buildings heretofore rented for school purposes, and in this way. has added the past year six new buildings to the number already built. All of these buildings, save one, have been covered with slate roofs, and have received the improvements that the use of buildings built in past years have demonstrated to be better.

The public schools of the county would be benefited by some better method of supervision and construction of our public roads. Poorly constructed roads make the distances to schoolhouses much greater than if they were elevated and dry. Bad roads and epidemics contribute largely to a decreased average attendance of pupils.