In drawing, the Commissioner's assistant, Dr. L. R. Klemm, notes the absence of a central controlling power. He calls attention again and again to the inaccuracy of the work observed by him both in the colored and in the white schools. The Commissioner is disposed to explain the defects in drawing by the too early neglect of exercises in drawing from the flat. Drawing has an alphabet which must be learned first before one can spell with it. Place a pupil before an object and tell him to draw it and he will not know what lines to use for this purpose unless he has learned by drawing from good drawings what lines produce the appearances desired. What raw pupil would know how to represent a cylinder or a sphere-what parts to shade and what parts to leave entirely blank-before he has learned this lesson by studying and reproducing good drawings given him?

After the alphabet of representing form is learned by copying a progressive series of drawing lessons the pupil should certainly be set at drawing from models.

With regard to the special branches, such as drawing, sewing, manual training, cooking, physical culture, and natural science, much allowance must be made for the fact that they are new and teachers have not yet had time to develop a series of graded steps by which to teach them to classes. The old branches-reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and grammar-have been taught for five hundred years, more or less, and have been reduced to what may be called a "pedagogical form;" that is, to such a series of steps and half steps that the weakest pupils may be brought over the course by the use of sufficiently minute steps of progress.

COOKING.

It certainly is an important matter that every girl, rich or poor should know cookery as a science and as an art. If poor, she will at once put her knowledge to practical use at home or use her art to acquire a livelihood. If rich, she will not be at the mercy of wretched cooks, but will understand how to correct evils by a word here and there. The pupils in the cooking schools are taught important matters as to fuel and fire and its effects on different articles by boiling, roasting, etc. The chemical composition of the several articles of food is also taught.

MANUAL TRAINING.

In all of the schools of woodworking visited it was found that the lessons with the plane were a failure in the respect that the child had to learn a use of that tool that he must get rid of as a bad habit if he ever would become a skillful workman. The child's arm is too weak to learn how to use a plane correctly. He pares with it and jumps it over the middle of his board, cutting away at both ends. The bench for the children is too high for the youngest.

But the boys all seemed to have a great relish for their work and to get much good from the manual-training school. Indeed, with the exception of the experiments at planing all the work is hopeful, especially that with the turning lathe for wood and iron and with the shaping of iron at the forge.

A criticism suggested itself in the matter of working drawing, which ought to have been all made or at least copied by the pupils in order to fix clearly the ideals in their minds before trying to give shape to wood or iron. The manual-training school is an important instrumentality in reaching the population that comes from the slums of cities. Aside

from any practical skill that the boy may acquire, he certainly acquires a knowledge of the structure of machinery, and he is to live in an age of machinery in which his vocation is likely to be the control and management of a machine. The boy from the manual training school can make a machine and can repair one that is disabled; he is fitted to take up and succeed in any industry that requires skill in machinery.

The suggestion already made to the effect that the regular teachers should gradually acquire the art of teaching most of their special branches may be repeated here as the foremost thought which occurs to one investigating the schools of the District of Columbia. If the special teachers reduce their branch of instruction to a pedagogical form and teach it to the regular teachers, the cost of these new and valuable adjuncts to instruction will continually grow less.

The schedule of salaries adopted in Washington must always bear some relation to the salaries paid men and women in the several Departments. When an ordinary copyist gets $900 a year, it can not be expected that a learned and skillful teacher can be obtained for $500. Many of the best clerks in the Government employ have been teachers. In order to avoid mistakes in the location of new buildings, it is useful to have a block report once in two years. The principal of each school reports to the superintendent at the close of the year the num ber of children attending his school from each city block in his district. These reports when transferred to a large block map, letting each five pupils be represented by a stroke of the pen in the space representing the block, give a shaded map showing where the school population resides, and indicate the localities best adapted for new schools.

According to the report of the trustees the average number of pupils enrolled to a room is as follows:

These figures must be reduced to 81 per cent of their value to show the actual number of sittings that have to be provided for in the sev eral grades.

CONCLUSION.

In conclusion it must be stated that all of the defects pointed out except the one in regard to intervals between grades or classes seem to be temporary and in process of remedy. All systems of schools that have any degree of vigor in their organization sway from side to side, or from extreme to extreme like other pendulum movements of reform in human society. A too great neglect of information studies and a too close adherence to reading, writing, and arithmetic lead to a strong accentuation of the other side, that of science, industrial training, and physical culture. If these again are pushed to extremes the pendulum swings back again. It does not appear that the schools of the District are at present in any dangerous neighborhood to an extreme, although, as has been intimated, the new branches of the course of study are not

yet fully advanced to a good pedagogical form, so that they can be taught in progressive lessons of sufficiently small compass to insure smooth progress on the part of the pupils not gifted for the work.

The great staple branches of the elementary school-reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, and history-have not suffered materially by the introduction of the new branches, while on the other hand much has been gained in rendering the school system able to cope with the great problems of city growth, namely, the increase of the population of the slums, where crime and pauperism collect and breed.

There is one more need which ought to be supplied in order to cope with the city problem to the best advantage. There should be a kindergarten system in close connection with the primary schools.

It should receive children at the age of 4 years and train them into habits of neatness, cleanliness, politeness, gentle manners, and build a basis of self-respect at an epoch before the hardening process of city life sets in.

There are two classes benefited most by the kindergarten, the very poor and the rich. The child of poverty is made prematurely old by being obliged to shift for himself in the midst of selfishness and want. The child of the rich is born with unusual directive power inherited from his parents, who have risen to wealth by more than ordinary exertion. Being left to the care of nurses and governesses the precocious child learns to rule those set over him, and by the time he has grown to school age he is a spoiled child, and later on he squanders the money inherited in riotous living and goes to an early grave. The most precious children, gifted with the largest directive power, are lost to society and produce as much injury to the community as the criminals of the slum. The old system of education does not reach the spoiled child of the rich or gather in the children of the slum at a sufficiently early age to cure them. Hence the kindergarten commends itself as an important member of a system of city schools.

An historical table furnished by the trustees of the District gives an exhibit of the comparative statistics of the schools for the past thirteen years, and is here appended for convenient reference.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

W. T. HARRIS,

Commissioner

Whole enrollment of pupils in white and colored schools, the number of teachers employed, the cost of tuition, and the amount expended for rent and sites and buildings for each year since the year 1880.