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Simpson 218

As was my custom whenever I went I asked permission to visit & inspect some of the schools of the place. The Superindent of schools for Cincinnati was so good as to take me over the largest graded school in the city. I've spent in it three hours. There were present about 600 children.The school was divided into six grades. In New York and most other places two of the grades wd have belonged to the Grammar school. I've began at the bottom & worked up to the top. They teach reading, as is generally now done in America, phonetically. This they think as easier method. They are not at all ambitious in their reading books, because they do not aim at conveying knowledge of things through the medium of reading unclear, but content themselves with creating the habit of reading correctly, & with attention to the meaning of what is read, & this is more likely to be secured, if the book consists of little interesting stories, than wd be the case if it contained solid information. What, in the upper grades, they write today, is what they remember of an object unclear given on the previous day. This trains them to remember, to think, & to compose. There is no writing from copies which children generally get through as quickly as they can without any attention or thought. Singing is carefully taught. And so is elementary drawing, particularly in connection with the construction of maps. They begin the study of Geography with the Geography of the school-room - which is the North, the East, the South, & the West side; & then they go on to what is beyond. The Geography of the United States is taught carefully. It often struck me in America