90

THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE

neglect of this branch that I have noticed. I have observed,
too, that teachers occasionally attempt to give out a lesson
in dictation while hearing a class read, the result being that
both operations are badly performed.

In four of our schools the reading is so exceptionally good
as to call for special commendation. I refer to the 1st
Division of Hardy-street Girls\' School, to the Richmond Girls\'
and Boys\' Schools, and to the 1st Division of the Motueka
School. On the other hand, the reading at Stoke, to which
I made unfavorable reference in my last report, is positively
worse than it was before, the number of scholars who can, by
any stretch of indulgence, be classed as good, having dwindled
down from twenty to seven. Waimea West Village School
ranks equally low in this respect, the falling off in the number
of good readers, from sixteen to seven, being relatively greater
than even at Stoke. At Waimea West (North Division
School) the children read fluently enough, but bawl out the
lesson in a manner that is very distressing to the hearer, and
I should imagine, not less so the readers themselves. The
children of the 2nd Division of Hardy-street School have run
into the opposite extreme, and read in so low a tone that much
of the lesson is quite inaudible. Where a fault of this kind is
so long standing in a school, much time and patience will be
required to remedy it. This has been done, nevertheless,
most thoroughly, both at Upper and Lower Wakefield Schools,
where the habit of reading indistinctly was at one time so
deeply rooted as to appear almost incurable. I have remarked
with pleasure that poetry is more generally read than it was
formerly, and that the practice of committing verse to memory,
strongly recommended in my last report, is gaining ground.

Writing is, on the whole, better taught than reading. In
only two schools, Ranzau and Waimea West Village, is the
penmanship so unmistakably bad as to require special mention.
In the former school there are but four, in the latter two good
writers. The greatest improvement in this respect, during the
year, has been effected at Lower Wakefield, and at Richmond
Boys\' School, the writing at the latter school especially, which was
notoriously careless before the appointment of the present master,
being now fully equal to that of our most advanced schools. It
is worth noting that the two schools where writing is taught
almost entirely by means of copy-books set by the masters, Lower
Wakefield and Waimea West (North Division) continue to excel in
penmanship, because this is mainly due, doubtless, in both
instances, to superior teaching capacity.

The more advanced scholars might practice writing without
copies more than they do, with advantage, as writing exclusively
in imitation of an engraved model has a tendency to cramp the
hand-writing, and will be found, I fear, in after life, to be
somewhat like learning to swim with corks.

I am glad to see that making out bills is now a common
exercise. Formerly, parents who had kept their children at
school, frequent at great inconvenience, until they were
thirteen or fourteen, complained, and not without reason, that
on leaving school the pupils could not draw up the simplest
account in a presentable fashion. Many parents, in the more
remote districts, especially, being still unable to supply the
educational deficiencies of their children, to whom, on the
contrary, they frequently look for help, it is all the more
desirable that the arts of making out an account intelligibly,
well of writing and properly directing a letter, should be
carefully taught in the first class, at least, of every provincial
school, the chances being that these things, if not learnt at
school, will not be learnt at all.

Arithmetic, at one time the weakest, is now the strongest
point in most of our schools. For several years I have had
the pleasure of recording a steady advance in this branch, and
I again find, at the close of the educational year, an increase of
a third in number of the scholars who can work questions of
Practice—a fair addition to those who have
some knowledge of Vulgar and Decimal Fractions, and of
considerable accession to the numbers in the column for
compound rules. Collectively speaking, and the intelligent use of
the blackboard have almost superseded the old-fashioned
system of teaching arithmetic mechanically by the book alone,
of which I had to complain so frequently in former reports.
In several of the more elementary schools, indeed, books on
arithmetic are being dispensed with altogether, or are used
merely as text-books.

The 1st Division of Bridge-street Boys\' School still retains
its old superiority in this branch, the mental arithmetic made
remarkably good. Among the schools that have made the
greatest progress in arithmetic during the past year, Hampden-
street, Haven-road, and St. Mary\'s Boys Schools deserve special
notice. In these three schools, arithmetic is most intelligently
and carefully taught.

Grammar, which, as at present taught in our schools usually
means nothing more than the ability to pick to pieces the parts
of speech in a short sentence with tolerable accuracy, and, in
some instances, to give the mood and tense of a verb, does
not now assume the prominence that it formerly did in our
annual returns—a prominence quite disproportionate to
the importance of the subject itself, or to the results
attained. The teaching of this branch is now confined, in
most cases, to the first class in a school; and the text-book
most commonly used—Cornwell\'s Grammar—though an exceed-
ingly simple, contains quite as much as it is necessary for
young children to learn, or, in other words, as they
are at all likely to retain. I have observed that text-book
there the vicious plan of giving a class bad grammar to correct
is still retained. I regard this as only degree less mischievous
than the old exploded system of giving children examples of
false spelling to correct, by which the eye of the learner was
systematically misled. The time thus wasted would be infinitely
better employed in setting a class to give short account of the
day\'s lesson, in the best English at their command, to be
subsequently corrected by the teacher. Thus, with a few
technical lessons on grammar, would go further towards
enabling the scholars to express themselves in decent English
than the learning by heart of a hundred rules from Lindley
Murray or his successors—rules that almost invariably fail to
help the young grammarian when the time comes for applying
them.

Geography.—I have every reason to be satisfied with the
way in which this branch is now taught in most of our schools.
In two or three instances, I have observed a tendency to enter
too much into detail, so as to burden the learner\'s memory with
the names of obscure and unimportant places; but as a rule,
our teachers, very properly, confine themselves to the broad
outlines of geography; and I have taken care both that the
books on this subject supplied to the schools should be of a very
elementary character, and that no school should be without a
good set of maps. In order to arrive at a rough estimate of the
comparative proficiency of the different schools in geography, I
have this year asked the first class in each school, by circular,
the course of a traveller from Calcutta to London, via Suez.
The replies that I received, in nearly every instance, showed
that the children had a tolerably clear idea of the relative
bearing of the different countries, seas, &c. But the object of
that their knowledge was not confused, as was formerly too
frequently the case, is Europe only. Map-drawing might be
more generally practised than it is; the cost of map-paper being
the only objection that I have heard urged—a very poor one since
this exercise, I take it, is not so much to cultivate the art of
drawing, or to produce aelty picture, as to train the eye to
form correct estimates of the relative size and bearings of the
countries represented. A comparatively small sketch on a slate
would be sufficient for this purpose. The art of drawing an
outline map from memory is also well worth cultivating, as I
have seen boys, after a little practice, come surprisingly near to
the true outline of a country, without looking at a map.

History.—It has become a question among the writers of the
day, not only to what extent history should be taught in
primary undenominational schools, but whether history should
be taught in such schools at all. And it must be acknowledged
that grave objections lie against any plan of teaching this subject
which avowedly aims at conciliating all denominations. The
school history that can give such an account of the times of the
Tudors as will reconcile the conflicting pretensions of Romanist
and Protestant, without omitting the most important and
interesting events of those days—most tedious of all—is not in
the record worth printing at all—is yet unwritten; and must,
I fear, from the condition of the problem, for ever remain so.
Two illustrations of the difficulty of treating this subject
without giving offence, either of error, omission, or of treatment,
are perhaps sufficient, and the writer of Little Arthur\'s History
of a-England, which, though less written, is, next to Scott\'s Tales
that I have seen) attempts to dispose and taking child\'s history
part of history, by attempts to dispose of several hundred years
while Milton, or a similar arrangement of cautiousness that goes
far towards neutralising the effect of all or other his otherwise
excellent history, needs among other things to be taught—
of eleven or twelve years of age, all mention of the trial of
seven Bishops. This may be judicious, but it is hardly history.
I am inclined to think, however, that after making ample
allowance for unavoidable shortcomings, a in the difficulty that
children of eleven or twelve should learn something of the
outlines of English history at least; that they should be put
in possession of the more salient points, such the succession of
sovereigns, the civil wars and revolutions; and that they
should be furnished with a few pegs, in the shape of dates, to
hang an ample clothing of facts upon; even if their historical
reading in after life should be confined to the pages of Scott
and Bulwer. The excellent, now common in our
schools, of giving a class a short but connected narrative to
write; the simple school history in use lends itself more readily than
any other kind of reading.