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Show THE SCHOOL-BOOK CONVENTION. A convention of school superintendents superintend-ents meets In this clt) on May 31st to select books for the use of the schools throughout the State for the ensuing flv fi The Board of (.Mutation In thla clt) also Is to select books for the city schools foe the same period of time. The work that is thus about to be undertaken Is hardly excelled In Importance Im-portance b) any that la to be done in the State. Largel) upon the selections to bo made will the Btandard of the school work rest, whether It I to he on a basis of up-to-date and correct Information or on ancient data and slip-shod method of pietentlng the studies Tor, let It be kniwn. textbook text-book are about the most ertlng and Inefficient things there are, unless It be other text-books They are faulty In every way In scope In text, In grasp of subject, In quotations. In binding, In print text-book will glaringly mangle a poem nnd give no hint that the poem Is not preaented perfect and entire- it will have one sort of punctuation on mie page and another It rt on mother page in tif iting of the Cilifonu m (jrvtmn it mil omit one of tho great routes of travel, we have I seen one that spoke of all but the over-land over-land route, which had the greatest travel of all, probably equaling all the other put together. It will be a great task to select from the ast list that will be submitted, those that are the least Imperfect. But higher than this, the duty will be to select books that give the best nnd broadest Instruction, that re patrlotlo In tone, pure ln thought and thorough In treatment The Interests of the taxpayers, also, must be considered. We have textbooks text-books now, presumably they were selected se-lected with reasonable care five and ten years ago, and while wa would not suggest adherence to that which Is antiquated, an-tiquated, we do say that changing for the mere sake of changing should not be made. The boohs that deut with subjects on which the census returns have mide changes ln figures should of course carry the latest statistics not only In this country but throughout the world, those geographies should be preferred which present maps on a uniform uni-form scale, the arithmetics that have the least padding, the grammars that abjure grammar, the readers, that give the best literary quallt) , the spellers, that drill most thoroughly In ordinary words and that do not dwell on freaks. Withal, some disinterested person skilled ln the mechanical art of book-making book-making would be of great service to the convention If hi knowledge could be made available It is a heavy and troublesome task that the superintendents superintend-ents have before them, we trust that they will give It their best energies, so thnt tho result of their labors will Inure to the benefit of the pupils nnd to the credit and advantage of the State. |