84

the list of those who show some acquaintance
with vulgar and decimal fractions.

One apparent fallacy in the Returns has
long puzzled me. I refer to the column
giving the number of children 12 years old
and upwards as 357, whereas, last year, there
were only 216. From this it would naturally
be inferred that the children now generally
remain longer at school than formerly. Yet
my own observation and the frequent com-
plaints of teachers that the elder scholars
are being removed from school at an earlier
age than in past years, convinced me that
there was something that did not appear on
the face of the statistics. The solution of
the difficulty is this, that the attendance of
the elder scholars is becoming almost nominal
in too many of our schools. They appear at
school just sufficiently often to keep their
names on the quarterly returns, but not
regularly enough for any real progress. To
test this beyond a doubt, I have compared
the quarterly attendance of children of
different ages, at several schools, and
found that the average attendance of the
elder scholars was in each case far lower
than that of the beginners, the discrepancy
amounting, in some instances, to as much as
25 percent. Independently of this, no one
who has been in the habit of visiting our
schools for the last three or four years can
fail to be struck with the extreme youth-
fulness of the scholars who now compose our
most advanced classes. This tendency, if
suffered to continue unnoticed and unchecked,
must ultimately restrict the usefulness of our
Provincial schools to a deplorable extent. If
the sole result of our present better systems of
teaching, and improved appliances be that of
enabling a given number of children to
acquire the arts of reading, writing, and
arithmetic at an earlier age than formerly,
in order that their services may the sooner
be available for the shop or the plough, I
fear that little will have been gained. Yet
the cause of national education. My own
experience has taught me to place the
smallest possible reliance on any attempts at
education that cease much before the age
apparently contemplated as a maximum by
the framers of our Education Act,—14 years.
Let anyone who doubts this take the trouble
to examine two or three children who have
been tolerably well taught up to the age of,
say, 10 or 11, but who have left school for
several years, and have not been subjected
to exceptionally favorable home influences
since. It will be found, I suspect, that the
comparatively short interval that has elapsed
will have gone so far towards obliterating
the recollection of what has been learnt at so
tender an age, as to leave but little hope of
the permanence of what remains.

I am aware that complaints of the very
early age at which children usually leave the
national schools of England form a promi-
nent feature in most inspectors\' reports. But
there is really little analogy between an Eng-
lish national school and one of our provin-
cial schools. Except in very backward or
thinly-peopled districts, schools of a higher
class, and, in many cases, free or aided
schools, are now-a-days within the reach of
all but the very poorest portion of the com-
munity in England. In our own province
(if the town be excepted,) there is hardly a
school of any description to enter into com-
petition with the public schools, of which it
may broadly be said that the vast majority of
the children of all classes receive their educa-
tion there, and there is only. This circum-
stance alone should entitle us to look for a
far higher average of attendance, and a longer
period allotted to school life, throughout the
province, than could well be expected from the
children of the needy peasantry and artisans
of England, from whose ranks the national
schools are chiefly recruited. Enough has been
said of the former shortcomings of many of
our teachers, by way of extenuating the neg-
ligence of parents. The teaching power
throughout the province has been largely in-
creased of late years, and it is high time, as
it seems to me, that the parents, as a body,
did their part more effectually.

Two years have now elapsed since I ex-
posed the weak points in our schools in de-
tail, and without reserve. Since then, many
changes have taken place, due in part to re-
signations, and transfers, and in part to other
causes.

The more pleasing task now devolves upon
me of showing how these changes have been
on the whole, vastly for the benefit of the
cause of provincial education. Where I still
think that a reformation is required, I shall
not fail to speak out, in the hope that, ere
long, the employment of a really incompetent
teacher may become a thing of the past in
our provincial schools.

Town Boys\' School, 1st division: Mr.
SMITH, Master.—When I last had occasion
to make reference to this school, it had fallen
from long continued mismanagement far
below the level of several of our country
schools in point of discipline and attainment.
The present master, who spares no pains to
improve his school, has certainly gone far to-
wards effecting a reform in both of these
respects. The boys are orderly, they read