SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.

It is with no little pleasure that the Superintendent of Public Instruction is able to report another year of great progress and improvement in Michigan schools. The financial stringency and the continued low price of agricultural and mining products, has had a tendency in some localities to curtail the amounts appropriated for educational purposes; but the loyal manner and commendable spirit with which almost all of our communities have maintained the schools, is a just cause for increased pride in our State. The lack of remunerative employment and the rigid enforcement of our new and very effective compulsory school law, has caused a fine increase in the number of pupils enrolled. The teachers have given much more study to the science of teaching. Better methods are constantly coming into use. A spirit of improvement and an enthusiastic love for the work is more apparent. Ideals are placed higher, both by teachers and patrons. More careful academic preparation is made by candidates for teaching, and the means for self-culture and improvement are used far more than formerly. Machine methods are giving place to more intelligent and progressive ways.

This optimistic view does not come from a mere study of statistics in an office, or from an occasional visit to a few favored localities or to special kinds of schools. It comes rather from a general averaging of observations extending throughout the year, in nearly every part of our great State. Your Superintendent has visited country, city, and village schools by the hundreds. He has met with thousands of teachers in more than half the counties of the State. He has attended institutes, associations, fairs, school exbibits, flag raisings, school picnics, rallies and the like by the score. He has conversed with many of our school officers on the educational interests of their districts. In short, he has tried to ascertain the condition and trend of school matters by personal observation.

REGULARITY OF ATTENDANCE IN RURAL SCHOOLS.

The more careful and intelligent supervision of the rural schools by county commissioners, the more perfect classification and grading of rural pupils, the improvement in the quality of teachers, the educational revival brought on by school rallies, district associations, school exhibits, patrons and teachers' associations, have improved the regularity of attendance in our rural schools to a surprising degree. The eighth grade diplomas and promotion exercises have encouraged pupils to persevere in

their work, and to strive for more regularity in attendance and more thorough, accurate work. Perhaps the improvement of farms and the surplus of labor may account for some of the increased attendance and greater regularity; but it is doubtless true that the classification and promotion of pupile have shown both child and parent the folly of detention from school for trivial reasons, such as picking up chips, making soap or sugar, butchering, and visiting. While the statistics show but a slight per cent of gain, it means much in the number of pupils and days of attendance; better still, it shows that the tide is running in the right direction.

DISTRICT LIBRARIES.

Among the most valuable adjuncts to a good school is the library, and it is with much pleasure that an increase in the number of district libraries is reported, an increase of 50 per cent over last year. Great care should

be taken in the selection of the books. No novice should have a voice in so important a matter. Let teachers and district officers feel free to consult the list sent out by the department, when the purchase of a library is contemplated. The books chosen should be those which are especially helpful to pupils in their school work, volumes that supplement the history, geography, and literature lessons being first obtained. Let the county school commissioner keep close watch over the matter, and do all possible to prevent the squandering of library money for a worthless or positively injurious set of books. Commissioner Winston of Clinton county is trying an experiment of circulating the district libraries throughout the township; that is, after the district has read the library, say for four months, it is exchanged with another district and another aet of books secured. The experiment will be watched with great interest. Some of our sister states, by appropriating $10 from the State Treasury to each district that contributes a like amount for a library, encourage and greatly stimulate the formation of libraries. Is it hoping too much to look forward to the time when Michigan shall be equally liberal?

DECORATION OF SCHOOL GROUNDS AND BUILDINGS.

What a pleasure one feels as he comes to a school ground neatly kept, well shaded with trees and beautified with flowers! Too frequently it is true that the bleakest, barrenest, most desolate spot in the district is the one where the girls and boys are being educated.

Of late years Arbor Day has been made the occasion to clean up the grounds, set out trees, and otherwise ornament school premises. This day has been of value not only in direct results, but in cultivating a care for trees and a taste for the proper ornamentation of grounds. Prof. Taft of the Agricultural College has been doing some excellent missionary work in this direction by a free distribution of flower seeds to the first ten schools of each county whose teacher applied for the seeds and promised to plant and care for them. Several hundred availed themselves of this opportunity, and most encouraging reports have already been received.

Neat and pretty surroundings, however, only give promise of what may be found in the house. How delightful it is for the visitor to find a school room with clean floor, freshly kalsomined or papered walls,, a

polished stove and pipe, well kept apparatus, well used library, and fine pictures upon the walls, among them pictures of Washington or Lincoln; Longfellow or Whittier. A tidy and artistically decorated room is an education in itself. How different the surroundings of such an one from the condition of one visited during the year in a rich and beautiful district whose school had been supported for two years past on the funds derived from the primary money and mill tax. The corner lot was as bare of trees or shrubbery as a cyclone swept hill-top. The little old school house blinked forth from its decayed old clapboards like a relic from No-Man's Land. The desks were of the old fashioned box style, and carved by the jack knife manual training classes of forty years. The rusty old stove tottered to its fall on three legs and a broken brick. A crooked poker propped up the stove door; and the rickety stove pipe, as guiltless of blacking as it was guilty of smoking, in snake fence contortions zigzagged its hazardous way to the chimney hole just clearing the heads of the big boys. It is safe to say that on the smoke besmeared and dust begrimed wall were the shadowgraphs of every lath, studding, joist, post, or other timber in the skeleton of the old hulk. No kalsomine or wall paper, no whitewash or water, had touched that wall for twenty years. Not a picture nor curtain, no dictionary, map, globe, chart, or library was on hand to aid in the education of the thirty boys and girls from those thriving and beautiful country homes. Would that this condition of affairs had been due to the poverty of the district! But no such kindly excuse could hold; it was due solely to thoughtless indifference, blighting stinginess, or supreme selfishness, perhaps to a combination of these causes. A ride of two miles brought to view the school house of a sparsely settled and much smaller district. Its people were taxing themselves heavily to maintain a good school. The house was small and old fashioned, but was closely acquainted with paint. The yard was decorated with shade trees, the house surmounted by a floating flag. The ceiling of the room was low, but it and the walls were white and clean. Curtains shaded the windows, and modern seats fitted the anatomy of happy pupils. Pictures of Lincoln and Longfellow under the folds of small flags, lent inspiration. The stove, pipe, and even the poker, were polished to a turn. Dictionary, maps, and library, were on hand ready for use. Can any one for a mo. ment doubt which of these two houses presented the better conditions for the education of our future citizens? These are but types. Happily there are more districts with the liberal spirit of the latter than of the narrow, illiberal kind. That there is even one of the first kind described, is cause for renewed effort on the part of good citizens to spread the gospel of a better educational sentiment.

TOWNSHIP AND DISTRICT RALLIES.

In every instance where the county school commissioner has organized local teachers' meetings in townships or districts, the result has been eminently satisfactory. Teachers and patrons have met to discuss educational matters of common interest, with a better understanding as the result; they then work harmoniously in the education of the child. Some districts have been entirely revolutionized. Latent school interest has been aroused, the teacher has been cheered, the pupils have felt the encouragement, and the educational dollars have been made more effective.

COUNTY ASSOCIATIONS.

Every well conducted county association is a source of power to the teaching force. By means of these organizations during the year many experienced educators have been brought in contact with the teachers who, thus inspired and encouraged, have found the work of the year much more pleasant and profitable. Then, too, the mutual help derived from meetings with zealous fellow workers, is of no inconsiderable worth in up-building the profession of teaching.

TEACHERS' INSTITUTES.

During the past year there have been held eighty teachers' institutes in seventy-four different counties. The attendance upon these institutes has increased very greatly within the past few years, the enrollment for the current year being 638 more than that reported for any previous year.

As a rule, institute workers have seemed to put more of life and enthusiasm into the work. Practical, helpful suggestions are given, true ideals are held forth, and broader and better insight into the true work of the teacher is given.

The inspiration institutes spoken of in our last report, have grown in popularity and seem to meet the demands of populous districts and of counties where it is felt that academic instruction and details of method are not so much needed as revival of spirit and grasp of principles. By means of these institutes many of our teachers are introduced to some of the greatest educators of our country, and a great stimulus has come from their magnetic influence.

CHILD STUDY.

Our State committee on child study work has prepared a very helpful and suggestive manual, which is published in this report and has also been issued in pamphlet form for teachers and those especially interested in this important and just now most prominent educational topic. The work in this State has been of a very practical and helpful kind. The mothers' meetings have aided in the solution of many very knotty problems. The examination of the temperament and the physical faculties of pupils, has resulted in helping many a child who has been heretofore hampered with defective sight or hearing, all unknown to pupil, parent, or teacher. The teacher who takes up the study has a greater sympathy, a kindlier spirit, and even more intelligent method in training the individual pupil. Many teachers are now at work on this subject, and the study of psychology has changed from the mechanical conning of abstruse terms to the interesting study of the mind, as found in a laboratory so filled with charming specimens.

COMPULSORY SCHOOL LAW.

Probably the most helpful bit of school legislation for some years past is the compulsory school law enacted by the legislature of '95. Its workings have most gloriously fulfilled the predictions of its supporters, and in most part it has been enforced with good sense and sufficent leniency. It has had the effect of bringing into school thousands of children who