"Our system of public elementary instruction is eclectic, and is, to a
considerable extent, derived from four sources. The conclusions at
which the present head of the department arrived during his
observations and investigations of 1845, were, firstly: That the
machinery, or law part of the system, in the State of New York, was
the best upon the whole, appearing, however, defective in the
intricacy of some of its details, in the absence of an efficient
provision for the visitation and inspection of schools, the
examination of teachers, religious instruction, and uniform text-books
for the schools. Secondly. That the principle of supporting schools in