Literary Notices.

The Atlantic Monthly has made an inquiry of ten thousand teachers and superintendents of public schools concerning the actual status of teachers and the schools in every part of the Union. The replies from the best informed men in the work in every state give at firsthand information that contains much encouragement, but much discouragement also. The excessive size of classes, the instability of great masses of teachers, the insecurity of their positions, in some communities the petty political and religious interference-these "confessions" are startling and shocking. A general summary of the results of this interesting inquiry by Professor G. Stanley Hall will appear in The Atlantic Monthly for March.

The effect produced by the large number of facts presented is the feeling that it is high time the public again seriously consider the subject of the public school work. There is need of a higher degree of efficiency in teachers in many states, but there is still greater need of a keener appreciation on the part of the public of the teachers' work and the difficulties under which they labor. In general it may be said that every community has the kind of public schools that it deserves to have.

This sweeping inquiry and the facts brought out by it are likely to turn attention afresh to the subject, and it is a subject that should be taken up afresh at very frequent intervals.