years, such license to be renewed, on examination and proof of success, for successive periods of three years.

Already thirty-three high schools have assumed work of this kind, and 682 pupils have been instructed in the art of teaching. The Normal School, without disturbing its status, could be profitably employed in specialties, such as instruction in the art of teaching, drawing and the kindergarten culture.

The commissioner strongly urges the necessity of adopting a more thorough supervision, and also a standard or grade of attainment, without which a teacher could not obtain or retain authority to teach, as a means of stimulating teachers to higher achievements. In this matter of competent supervision the

laws of Michigan are defective, inasmuch as the 900 township superintendents are but little better qualified than the persons they inspect. Nothing was so clearly shown by the exhibit at Philadelphia as the supreme importance of skillful supervision.

The province of Canada furnishes an instructive example of the manner in which a wise supervision may raise the condition of the entire school system of the country. Questions employed in the examination of teachers are prepared by the central board of examiners, for simultaneous use throughout the province. These questions, accompanied by minute instructions, are transmitted in a sealed envelope to every inspector, and are opened only at the moment when the examination begins. Candidates whose papers have a prescribed value receive a license; those who fail must either abandon the business of teaching or make the needed preparation for its duties. The effect is to establish a uniform standard of qualification throughout the several grades of schools, which may be gradually and uniformly raised. There is no escape from the rigor of this inquest, and teachers are obliged to use the means which the law provides for their education and training. The result has been extraordinary progress in all departments of the public school system, the schools having become provided with a better class of teachers.

The commissioner closes his report on Michigan education with the following summary of conclusions: I. The University, the head of the system, in its general organization and in its actual administration, is worthy of admiration. In its literary department and its professional and technological schools it offers unexcelled advantages for general and special culture. Its principal chairs are occupied by industrious and eminent scholars; and the general influence which is exerted on the lower schools of the system is wholesome in the extreme. II. The city and village graded schools, usually culminating in a high school, which constitutes the middle element of the system, are generously supported

by the public, are admirably organized and taught, and together form a characteristic and most valuable feature of our public school system. They enjoy the advantages of systematic and enlightened supervision, and, in general, their affairs are administered with prudent economy. These schools exhibit all the elements of a normal growth, and if their progress be not checked by unforeseen misfortunes, they will become a most beneficent agency for the general culture of our people. III. Our country schools are suffering for the want of intelligent and efficient supervision. The funds for their support are ample, and the houses for their accommodation are in general comfortable and often elegant. Many of these schools are weakened by the withdrawal of their better pupils to village or city schools; and the average grade of teaching is low. Many of our graded schools were formed by the union of several district schools; and this concentration of numbers, resources and interests, in connection with the classification of pupils thus made possible, has given these organiza tions their peculiar efficiency and strength. There is no reason, in the nature of things, why the schools of each township might not be thus united, graded, compactly organized, and made subject to efficient supervision. IV. Supplementary to our school system proper are our charitable schools for the unfortunate of almost every class-the destitute, the insane, the blind, the deaf and dumb. Like a good parent, the State is a benefactor to all her children without discrimination, to male and female, to rich and poor, to the fortunate and the unfortunate. V. In the main, the organization of our system of public instruction is sound. Its faults are chiefly faults of administration, which can be cured by simple means, whenever we are willing to confess that a system which has been so generally and in many respects so justly lauded, has some real imperfections. VI. There is need of giving an eminently practical direction to our popular education-not practical in the sense of teaching handicrafts, trades and professions, but in that of communicating the knowledge which is of immediate and constant use in the practical affairs of life. The literary and scientific elements in education should be pursued in their just proportions; and to effect this symmetry something must be taken from the first and something added to the second. VII. Our system of normal instruction is inadequate because, in fact, it makes no provision for the cultivation of educational science, and furnishes only meager facilities for that lower degree of professional training which gives fitness for subordinate positions.

MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOL.

The Marshall schools made no special exhibit at the Centennial beyond their printed catalogue and cut of the high school building. The cut is given

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IV. MICHIGAN STATE INSTITUTIONS.

T would be difficult to define clearly the line where human institutions cease to be educational and become something else, but the necessity of classification compels a division and grouping of subjects in this part of this volume. In the method here adopted, the propriety of having those things that are strictly State institutions appear in proximity, is recognized. Hence the last preceding chapter is devoted to the State educational system proper, and this one to "Michigan State Institutions," in which education is more or less blended with beneficent, reformatory or restrictive measures as affecting particular classes of persons.

STATE PUBLIC SCHOOL FOR DEPENDENT CHILDREN.

The State Public School, at Coldwater, exhibited a quarto volume containing a lithographic view of the buildings; ten photographic views, exteriors and interiors; plan of cottages; plan of grounds; outline plan of all the buildings; annual reports of the boards of control for 1874-5; and a well written manuscript entitled, "The Michigan State Public School for Dependent Children, Its Plans, Aims and History," prepared for the Centennial Exhibition at the request of the State Board of Centennial Managers, by Hon. C. D. Randall, of Coldwater, and of which the sketch which follows is an abridgment. Mr. Randall was the author, in the Michigan Senate of 1871, of the law establishing the State Public School, is Secretary, Treasurer, and a member of the Board of Control of that institution, and Vice-President of the National Prison Reform Congress. There was also exhibited a manuscript entitled, "An Account of the Operations of the State Public School since its Organization, together with Class Examinations, Blanks, etc.," by Lyman P. Alden, Superintendent. A medal and diploma was deservedly awarded for the collective exhibit, giving, as it does, a complete and comprehensive view of this noble charitable institution.

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HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH.

The Michigan State Public School for Dependent Children has a twofold character: First, It a temporary educational home for the children of the poor, to which poverty alone grants admission. Second, It is a merciful agency to restore a child that has lost its natural home to a family home and to society. In its character first named, it is a branch of the educational department of the State-purely a school-making all its reports to the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

By means of this school, the Michigan educational system is so far perfected that all healthy, dependent children of sound mind may be educated, beginning in this as dependents and completing the course in our University, the entire system being based on free education. By the two characteristics named, this is the only government institution of the kind existing in any country. It is established and maintained entirely by the State for dependent children, who, without it, would have no home excepting such as private charity or the county poor-house might provide.

There were two motives leading to its establishment, and they were: First, to benefit these children. Second, to benefit the State. The children are to be benefited by removing them from the streets and county-houses to good homes, where they would be under moral and educational influences. The State to be benefited by preventing the increase of pauperism and crime, by cutting off their most fruitful sources, thus purifying society and reducing the burden of taxation. It is not, however, penal or reformatory. No taint of crime, by reason of the manner of its admission, attaches to any inmate, any more than it does to those in our district schools. No ministers of offended law bring children to its doors. In all other government institutions in this country and in Europe for children, crime, on sentence or suspension of sentence, gives admission to all or part of their inmates. But this school has no connection whatever with our penal system. Of course, its influences are preventive, but only in the same manner as are our churches and public schools. Dependency, with physical and mental health and proper age, alone admits. The plan is original with Michigan, and as its operations have attracted so much attention from legislators and scholars in social science at home and abroad, the writer has been requested to make this statement of its plan and aims, and of the causes leading to its establishment, for the purpose of showing the policy of governments maintaining such schools. The facts here given are mainly founded on the public records of this State, and where they are not, then on the personal recollections of the writer, who was connected with the project at its origin in the Michigan Senate, and has been most of the time since then in an official capacity.

This institution is a very natural development of our modern Christian civilization, that operates to unite the humanities and economies. It is the direct outgrowth of a sentiment in society, that has been increasing for many years, in favor of dependent children, which asked of governments, rather than of private charity, the amelioration of their condition. This sentiment has been mainly developed by the discussions of problems in social science by national and international conventions, associations, prison reform congresses, etc., held in this country and in Europe, for the purpose of perfecting systems of prison discipline, and to recommend measures for the better prevention of pauperism and crime. The addresses and papers of those taking part in these discussions have been published and widely circulated, read with interest, and have exerted a powerful influence in all civilized nations, to carry on and perfect the work began by John Howard alone in the last century. These influences have already established a more reformatory treatment of prisoners, and have provided correctional homes for criminal and vagrant children. In this State they have given us a house of correction, an intermediate prison, a reform school, and a rebuilt State prison, under improved management. At the same time, our jails have nearly been vacated as places of punishment, and our county poor-houses are, on the average, much better adapted to their purposes. But more than this, these influences have in this State inaugurated the preventive system embodied in the State Public School, of which our present chief executive said in a late message, it "will accomplish as much if not more real good than any yet founded by the State."

The influences named had early practical effect upon the minds of public men of this State which led to official inquiry. The first official action in this regard, suggesting the propriety and necessity of investigation in matters pertaining to pauperism and crime, was by Governor H. P. Baldwin, who, in the fall of 1868, before assuming the duties of the office to which he had been