Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1876 — Method of Teaching in Sweden. [ARTICLE]

Method of Teaching in Sweden.

Spine very excellent methods of teaching the common branches are shown in the Swedish schoolhouse. For beginners in geography, for instance, there is a blackboard upon which is paintod an outline of Sweden—simply the coast-line and the rivers being depicted. In place of towns there are only little iron pins fastened into the board at the point where these towns should be located. Accompanying the board is a little box, containing a large number of oblong blocks, each half an inch in length. Upon one side of the block is printed the naifie of some town. On the opposite side of the block is a small hole, fitting exactly the pins on the blackboard. The pupil is required to select a block from the box and place it on a pin which should rightly locate the town printed on its lace. Any one will aee how greatly this simple apparatus relieves the tedium ot study. The pupil finds in it not a dry and difficult task, but an interesting recreation anft ammiejrent • *

In map#, I noticed one set which are worth especial mention. The first, by means of different colorings, showed the location of high and low lands in Sweden. The second showed by the same means the various elevations of the country; the third, the water-masses; the fourth, the river systems; the fifth, the comparative fertility of different parts of the country; the sixth, the density of population; the seventh, the political divisions; the eighth, the post-roads and railroads. These maps are furnished te every school at Government expense. Among other features that I observed was a series of etflored prints, illustrative of the manners of life in the different provinces. These, however, were rather used as adornments for the walls than as a special" study. An arrangement for purifying the air in the school-room was to be seen in the shape of a brass box about one foot square, containing pine-tar. A specimen of the stove in general use isexhibited. It stands twelve, feet high and contains three fennels, ther heat passing up one, down another, and finally up the third in the. middle. Dr. C. J. Meijerberg, Principal of the Stockholm Primary Schools and Swedish Commissioner to the Exposition, told me that, in his thirty-five years of experience in teaching, he had found that the hardest part of arithmetic for a child to understand was the counting from one to ten. Of course, the pupil can master the mechanical process in a short time; but to understand the relations of one number with another—why six should be greater than three, or why nine should follow eight—that was what he was troubled worst to explain 1 In order to facilitate the matter, he had made a contrivance which is here on exhibition. It consists of a board on edge, with rows of holes running across. Beginning at the right hand, there are ten small holes, representing the first ten numbers. At the left of these are ten more holes, of larger size, to representthe tens; and still further on are ten for the hundreds. Accompanying this apparatus are bundles of splinters, each bundle containing one, or two, or three splinters, all the way up to ten. The pupil is required to express ,123, for example. He puts a single splinter in the right-hand hole of the hundred place, a two package in the second hole of the tens, and a three package in the third hole of the units. This involves a double process: first, selecting the right number of splinters; and, second, putting them in the proper position. Of course, the whole affair is of the simplest construction, and is only designed as an exercise of the mind. —Philadelphia Cor. Chicago Tribune.