Mr. Philbrick, Superintendent of Public Schools in Boston, has taught
and trained a class of fifty primary-school pupils with a degree of
success which fully sustains the statement of the average waste in
schools generally. Twenty-two lessons of a half-hour each were given;
and in this brief period of time the class, with a few exceptions, were
so well advanced that they could write the alphabet in capital and
script hand, give the elementary sounds of the letters, produce and name
the Arabic characters and the common geometrical figures found upon
Holbrook"s slates. I saw a girl, five and a half years of age, write the
alphabet without delay in script hand, in a manner that would have been
creditable to a pupil in a grammar school.
