AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INSTRUCTION.

FIFTY-THIRD ANNUAL MEETING,

JULY 11TH TO THE 14TH, 1882.

JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS.

THE FIFTY-THIRD ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INSTRUCTION began its sessions in the Methodist Episcopal Church at Saratoga Springs, N. Y., on Tuesday morning, July 11, 1882. The president, William A. Mowry, PH. D., of Providence, R. I., called to order at 9.40 o'clock, and the Rev. George W. Brown, pastor of the church in which the exercises were held, read selections of Scripture and offered prayer.

Robert F. Milligan, Esq., president of the Village of Saratoga, made the following address of welcome :

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: It is with pleasure that I, in behalf of the people of Saratoga Springs, extend to you the courtesies of our village, and bid you welcome. Taking into consideration the nature and character of your assembly, I consider that it is eminently proper that all farther words of welcome should be addressed to you by the president of our Board of Education, whom I now take pleasure in introducing to you.

REMARKS OF HON. JOHN FOLEY.

MR. PRESIDENT: It is with great diffidence that I respond to your request to address a few words of welcome to these distinguished bodies of assembled educators. I recognize the honor, and the duty, as both belonging to you. I undertake the one and accept the other, not as my own, but at your command. I also, sir, recognize another honor, -one in which you share, and one in which every citizen of our village shares alike, viz. that of the union in time and place of these two organizations, so widely known, so widely honored, and so deeply and widely influential in the work of educating the youth of our land. It is a peculiar honor that the American Institute of Instruction, which has chosen its place of meeting so very few times outside of New England,the place of its birth and vigorous activity for more than half a century,-should select our home as the place of two of those meetings. It is a rare honor, too, that the National Teachers' Association should select this same time and place in which to celebrate its majority, or twenty-first anniversary. I know, sir, that you will join with me in the earnest wish that the promise of its youth may more than blossom, as it passes on into its years of manhood.

But I had almost forgotten that I bear a message to the guests here before us. Officers and members of the American Institute and National Educational Association: While we desire to extend to you our kindest greetings, we would not be true to the interests with which we are all so intimately associated if we omitted the expression of a few thoughts which now weigh upon us. The Honorable George William Curtis, in a late oration, which some of you heard, not only asserts that educated men are the leaders in history, but virtually declares that they are the makers of history. He sustains his assertions by a long list of names honored in history, from Roger Williams to those concerned in the making and adopting of our glorious national Constitution. If, then, the educated men are the leaders, do not those who educate hold, and have they not always held, the destinies of our country in their hands? Doubtless you, as educators,

and yet more as leaders of educators, will in these important deliberations weigh well the mighty possibilities and great issues bound up in your work. Permit me to suggest, as worthy of a place in your discussions, the question, "What are educators to do with and for the incessant stream of immigration flowing into this country, largely illiterate and superstitious, and wholly ignorant of the nature of our institutions?" Are the means in your hands adequate to the great want and can you take the boy born in a foreign land, or of foreign parentage, and educate him to be the leader described by Mr. Curtis? If so, our land will long continue to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Ladies and gentlemen, representing nearly every state in the Union, I bid you welcome, in the name of our citizens,— welcome to our hearts, our homes, our village; its walks, its drives, and all that is pleasant and agreeable within it and about us. We add the wish that the draughts from the healing fountains placed here by the bountiful Giver, may unite with the feasts of reason to be served in this room, to inspire and strengthen you. Enjoy it all, and use it all, and push bravely on in the great work committed to your hands.

The president of the Institute then made the following response:

RESPONSE OF PRESIDENT MOWRY.

MR. PRESIDENT OF THE VILLAGE, AND MR. PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF SARATOGA: On behalf of this convention, representing these two great bodies, and more especially in my own capacity as representative of the American Institute of Instruction, I thank you for these kind words of welcome. It is very gratifying to us to have the opportunity to come here to this beautiful town to hold our convention in so pleasant a place, with such great advantages, with such excellent opportunities, with such wonderful care over us. It is a great privilege for us to come to a place where the people are so accustomed to entertain strangers, and entertain them in such an excellent and elegant manner.

I shall have but few words to say at this time. The arrangements are such for this joint convention that the spe

cial programme for to-day has been made by the American Institute of Instruction, and for to-morrow by the National Educational Association. I take pleasure in presenting to you the president of the National Educational Association, Dr. Gustavus J. Orr, the Superintendent of Public Schools of the State of Georgia.

ADDRESS OF President ORR.

MR. PRESIDENT OF THE VILLAGE, AND MR. PRESIDENT of the BoarD OF EDUCATION OF SARATOGA: We have felt, gentlemen, ever since our arrival, that we were welcome. We have seen words of welcome written on every face, beaming from every countenance. Even inanimate things have bid us welcome,—your elegant homes, beautifully embowered amid the trees, your beautiful parks, your health-giving waters, your home-like hotels,-all these things have said to us from the beginning that we were heartily welcome. It was fitting, however, sir, that you should have expressed this welcome in words, and it is proper that we should reply. The gentleman appointed to represent the National Educational Association in replying to these words of welcome is absent to-day, but I have the pleasure of presenting a substitute for myself. This duty would have fallen upon me, but I have put it upon one who can discharge it much more satisfactorily: I have the pleasure of presenting to you Dr. J. H. Carlisle, of South Carolina.

ADDRESS OF DR. CARLISLE.

MR. PRESIDENT AND Ladies and GenTLEMEN: We, the teachers of many cities and states of the Union, thankfully accept these courtesies, in the simplicity and hearty sincerity in which they have been offered. It is really an era in the history of these two bodies when they get together thus for the first time; and, perhaps there was a propriety, of which Dr. Orr little thought, in calling a teacher from South Carolina to discharge this duty; for, when a young teacher, struggling with all the disadvantages of ignorance, and the painful limitations of inexperience, I sent afar off to New Eng

land to get all the volumes they had printed of addresses before the American Institute. They are still valuable works in my library. They have made me somewhat familiar with some of the men whom I hope to greet personally to-day. It is an era in the life of every individual teacher who is to be here. Our profession, friends, let us confess before the public to-day, is not usually a social one. Indeed, you might almost say, that teachers, like other carnivorous, flesh-bruising animals, generally go alone; occasionally in pairs you may see them, but hardly ever are they gregarious. But within the last few years they have found the strength that lies in communion-in looking into a human eye, grasping a human hand. We have come here to study life, human nature, each other, and the duties of the school-room. Dr. Orr will excuse me if I state that some time ago, a man living in the northern part of his native State of Georgia, a farmer, whose life had been somewhat circumscribed, concluded he would go to Atlanta for a market, instead of into the neighboring market town. He went; he came back, and was the oracle of the neighborhood for a while, and to one who consulted him about the matter he said: "Friend, I tell you if this world stretches as far to the north as it does down towards Atlanta, where I have been, it is a bigger world than I thought it was.' Friends, I think it likely that the world in which you and I have to do our part is much larger than you and I, who have been teaching geography all our lives, have ever conceived. It is well to learn, as I have learned, that a mere dot on the map represents a town, and that a crooked line that you taught your boys and girls to draw and call a river is a river. If there is any man of you, in middle life, who has never been South or West, I heartily sympathize with you because of your sadly neglected education; I am in a condition to do it, for hardly forty-eight hours have passed since, for the first time in my life, my foot pressed the soil of the Middle States of this Union, as we were taught to call them,- New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Fix your eyes upon a map, and see where is the middle point. It is a movable point; and if our growing aspirations are developed much farther and I don't know where I would stop them

we