ARITHMETIC.—No. III.

BY M. D. LEGGETT.

[Continued from page 46]

      ACCORDING to a promise made in our last, we will now invite the reader's attention to the time of commencing, and the mode of teaching Mental Arithmetic, together with general views of mental development.

     Fearing that some of our kind patrons may accuse us of theorizing, we may be permitted here to state, that in this series of articles, we in­tend only to pen down the results of our own experience and observa­tions in teaching this subject. 

     To all other departments of study in the school-room, we think that Mental Arithmetic should sustain the relation of antecedent. Every child should commence this study as soon as he comes to school, let his age or mental capacity be what it may. Our experience has shown this to be not only philosophical, but very practical. 

     The human mind from the time it is first initiated into the world, is the mind of a student. As soon as we can ascertain its existence, we can detect its advancement in knowledge. No one makes exertion to teach it; but every sound, every motion, and every object communicates a lesson. Who has not been astonished by the rapidity with which a child advances in his acquisition of learning. During the brief time of two or three years he has learned to love, and to appreciate affection ; to walk, to listen to, and understand conversation; and more than all, to talk—to use and understand some thousands of words. Every new object that presents itself to the mind, excites his curiosity and awakens his enquiry. He associates objects together, and compares them; he judges of their value by their quantity, or number, or power to amuse. How common it is to see the little urchin merchants, long before they can count the fingers on one hand, compare article with article, exchange and traffic with each other. In short, their understanding and judgment are ever on the alert; and they find no enjoyment when there is no use for these faculties. 

     This is the condition of the child when he enters school. Now what can be more irrational, what more cruel, what more in direct opposition to the plainest dictates of reason and common sense, than to present to that child as the first and only thing to be learned for three or four months-that lifeless queen of anomalies, the English Alphabet, with its accompanying sing-song of ab, ib, ob, &c? This is an exercise in which the understanding and judgment can act no part, and therefore one destitute of intellectual enjoyment. To the repetition of our letters and abs, which have, of themselves, no meaning, the mind of a child cannot be confined for any considerable length of time. An attempt to thus confine the mind will not only prove futile, but of positive injury; for it will establish upon the child a habit of mental wandering, which after discipline can never overcome. It almost always begets in the mind a hatred to books and study, which will be a living and acting barrier in the way of obtaining an education. 

     After a child has been thus drilled for a short time, he is no longer the same lively, enquiring being that he was before: he has been metamorphosed into a stupid dolt. He can witness distress with hardly an emotion: he can look upon the world of knowledge without having excited a single enquiring thought. When he was his own teacher, assisted only by nature, we wondered at the rapidity with which he advanced in learn­ing; but now, our wonder is equally excited by his sluggishness and stupidity. What has produced the change? Has it been by a change in the nature of the child, or by the misdirection of those who have had charge of him? Is it because passing from infancy to childhood is passing from light to darkness, or because the child's keepers have now shut out from his view the light of nature, and the objects it everywhere reveals? Is it because he no longer has power of his own which he might use, even better than before, or because now others feel for him, and see for him, and hear for him, and think for him, instead of permitting him still to follow nature's path, where he may feel, see, hear, and think for himself? 

     The Teachers, who adhere to this irrational method of instructing, appear to have mistaken their calling. They seem to think that the reason of the child's wanting a teacher arises from a loss of that self-directing, self-acquiring power, which has been sufficient during his infancy; while the fact is, that power remains the same, except that it is stronger and riper, and his want of a teacher is owing to a difference in the kind of study, and not to a change in the child's disposition or ca­pacity; and the teaching he receives should be only such as is adapted to a being who has so far taught himself, and thereby cherished, not destroyed, the power of a self-learner. 

     To thus teach a child, and thus develope its mental energies, by means of the English Alphabet, requires more genius than falls to the lot of most pedagogues. Mental Arithmetic we deem admirably calculated for this kind of mental developement. We do not claim that the alphabet should remain unlearned, but let it be mixed with something capable of furnishing mental aliment, and not starve the mind to derth on the husks of ideas. The child may commence his alphabet within a few days from the time he enters school, but let him begin, with Mental Arithmetic, or something else that will address itself to the understanding. 

     But how shall we teach Mental Arithmetic to children so young? Certainly not by use of books or slate. The first thing to be done is to teach them to count, if it should so happen that their mothers so far forgot their duties as to neglect to give this instruction at home. Second, let every Teacher furnish himself with a "Juvenile Arithmetical Apparatus," con­sisting of two boxes and a gill of beans. 

     If our readers will pardon the improper length of this article, and get their apparatus on hand, we will show the use of it in our next.

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For the Free School Clarion

THE BLACK SCHOOL LAW OF OHIO

DALTON TEACHERS' MEETING 

     AT a recent meeting of the Dalton Ohio Teachers' Association, the following, among other sensible resolutions were offered and unani­mously adopted :

      "Resolved, That we will use our utmost efforts to direct public attention to our Common Schools, and to the necessity of so improving them as to make them what they should be—the best schools. 

     Resolved, That the immutable principles of justice demand that the advantages of our Common Schools should be shared alike by all the children and youth of the State, and that the exclusion of any part of the rising generation from the benefits arising thence, is unwise, impolitic and unjust. 

     Resolved, That as the only way to better the social, moral and mental condition of the colored man is to educate him, the doors of Common Schools should no longer be shut against the children of colored parents." 

     While a most unmanly prejudice, warmed and encouraged by a most odious law, has kept the doors of our public and private schools locked against the children of the twenty thousand black and mulatto citizens of our State, a still small voice like the above, conies to the aching ear of humanity, like words of promise and good cheer to the faint heart of the desponding and weary. 

     Though we believe the statute which excludes colored children front the benefits of the public schools is the offspring of legislative stupidity, rather than of wickedness, yet we will venture to affirm that Pandemonium in the darkest councils of her palmiest days, could have sent forth no edict more potent than it, to blast the hopes of the unfortunate, to sink the lowly to still lower depths, or to push the degraded down to a deeper degradation. 

     From the Farewell Address of Washington down to the leanest of the last Fourth of July Orations, it has been proclaimed that "The education of the whole people is the only sure bulwark of our free institutions." This fact, though often mouthed by senseless demagogues and vaporing politicians, in whose vocabulary it .has no value beyond the rhetoric of its enunciation, is a most true one. 

     The 20,000 colored persons of our State, are, beyond a-doubt, a part of the people of the State—their value, as citizens, must be, as in the case of the whites, determined by their intelligence. To deny education to these, then, is to withhold from them the means of becoming useful members of the Commonwealth, and constitutes a social and political solecism which would disgrace the civil Polity of the Fee-Jee Islanders. 

     In their lowest development and greatest verdancy, our Legislators have been wont to make large show of their patriotism, but in what a questionable shape does the Amor Patriae of the General Assembly of the State of Ohio come to us, through the statutes of last winter, where, as if in mockery of the complainings that arose against a law t at for years had denied instruction to colored children, an "Act, Amenda­tory," is recorded, of whose poor and worthless body the following g section is the mean and wicked soul: 

     "Sec. 4th. And be it Further Enacted, That in every city, incorporated town or village, seat of justice, or organized township in State, containing a less number than twenty black or colored children, desirous of attending school, it shall be the duty of the directors of any school district organized for the education of white children, to admit said black or colored children upon the said terms, and they shall be entitled to the same benefits as they would be if they were white, under the acts to which this is an amendment: Provided, no written objection be filed with, the directors, signed by any person having a child in such school, or by any legal voter of such district." 

     If any "Act " could equal in wanton cruelty and utter selfishness of purpose the one to which the above belongs, it would be one of which the g following section, or something very like it, would be the life :— "And be it Farther Enacted, That in every place and neighborhood throughout this State, containing a dozen and a half, or a less number, of black or colored children desirous of breathing the fresh air and enjoying the sun-light, it shall be the duty of the proper authorities of such place or neighborhood to permit said black or colored children to respire the said air and to enjoy the said light of the sun upon the same terms and in the same manner as they would if they were white, under an Act of the Creator, to which this is an amendment: Provided, no objection be lodged with said authorities by any white person having a white child engaged in respiration or receiving day-light, or by any adult breather or recipient of sun-shine of said place or neighborhood." 

     We submit, whether that Philanthropy which delights to keep human souls in the darkness of ignorance, may not as well, and without suffering in its reputation for amiability, engage in dooming the bodies of men to perpetual midnight, on account of their complexion solely? But a recent repeal of a part of the " Black Laws," and the consequent restoration of the colored man to some of the rights of a citizen, inspires us with a hope that the reign of Beelzebub in our State councils will soon cease, and that Heaven and our Common Schools will so incline the hearts of our legislators to goodness and their heads to wisdom, that ere long they will wipe from the statute book the whole of this foul record of an outrageous wrong, inflicted by the strong upon the weak.

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