ricts more than nine tenths of the schools are
taught but three months during the year.

[63] This improvement well illustrates the advantages resulting to the
state from the able and faithful supervision of her public schools. A
correspondent of the Baltimore American speaks of the Annual Report of
DR. ROBERT BRECKENRIDGE, Superintendent of Public Instruction, to the
General Assembly of Kentucky, as follows: "It is the most important
document which has been submitted to that body during the present
session, and reflects great credit upon the energy, fidelity, and
comprehensive aims of the superintendent in the discharge of his high
duties. It is now but two years since Dr. Breckenridge was appointed to
the office, and the great service he has rendered to the cause of
popular education in the state is strikingly exhibited in the contrast
between the present condition of the common schools, and that in which
he found them when he received his appointment from the Board of
Education."

We have as yet only considered the great destitution of schools of _any
kind_, in which the moiety of the children that attend school at all
receive instruction, and the fact that very many of these are kept open
but three months during the year.[64] The inadequacy of existing
provisions for the proper education of the rising generation will be
more strikingly apparent when we consider the incompetency of, I may
perhaps safely say, the majority of persons who are put in charge of the
public schools of the country. It is readily conceded that, in those
states where education has received most attention, there are many
teachers who are thoroughly furnished unto all good works. But it is far
otherwise with the majority of teachers even in the more favored states.
The testimony of Governor Campbell already quoted, will apply to the
teachers of many other states. After speaking of the large number of
children in Virginia that "are growing up in ignorance for want of
schools within convenient distances," he remarks, that "of those at
school, many derive little or no instruction, owing to the incapacity of
the teachers, as well as to their culpable negligence and inattention."

[64] Even in Massachusetts the average length of time the schools of the
state continue is less than eight months, and the average continuance in
several of the counties is only five months. The average attendance upon
the schools