946 [No. 46.
THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE.

this head done in small schools will be accepted as evidence
of praiseworthy zeal and efficiency.

12. The Inspector or Inspectors of each district shall make
    an annual return, showing with respect to each public school
    subject to their inspection the number of pupils presented,
    the number present, and the number passed, indicating the
    degree of attention paid to the class-subjects and additional
    subjects respectively, and stating in brief the condition of
    each school as to order and discipline, and as to the manners
    of the pupils. The Inspector shall at the same time make
    a return relating to the same schools and the same pupils,
    showing the total number of pupils presented, and the total
    number present in each of the standard classes, as defined
    in Regulation 4, and the total number passed in each stand-
    ard. If possible, the return shall include a statement of
    the average age of the pupils on passing each standard.

13. The standard syllabus shall not be understood to pre-
    scribe to the teacher the precise order in which the different
    parts of any subject shall be taught, nor to prohibit the
    teacher from giving instruction not prescribed by the syllabus,
    but shall be taken to represent only the attainments of
    which the Inspector may expect full proof at the several
    stages of a pupil's progress; also it is to be understood that
    the examination report and inspection report, taken to-
    gether, and not either of them alone, will express the In-
    spector's full judgment on the character and efficiency of the
    school.

14. The Inspector shall be at liberty to conduct the ex-
    amination of a school in his own way—by written papers, or
    viva voce; by putting all the questions himself, or allowing
    the teacher of a class, or the head of a school or of a depart-
    ment, to put all the questions or some of them; by subject-
    ing each pupil in a class to a separate examination, or by
    putting questions to the several pupils in the class in rota-
    tion, and letting them "take places," or marking the values
    of their individual answers; and so on. In the exercise
    of his judgment in such matters, the Inspector will, of course,
    have regard to the different characters of the several subjects,
    and will remember that methods properly applicable to the
    examination of boys and girls of fourteen may be quite out
    of place in the case of younger children.

15. In the interpretation of the syllabus, Inspectors and
    teachers will be guided by the following statement of its
    design, and of its aims in general and in detail. It is
    designed to regulate the instruction and the examination of
    pupils in primary schools, most of whom are children, and
    the oldest of them in the stage of early youth. When terms
    are used in defining the subjects of primary-school instruc-
    tion that are also used in defining parts of an examination
    for teachers, it is not expected that the children will be able
    to attain to such a mastery of these subjects as it is neces-
    sary for their teachers to have. Questions that would be fair
    in a degree paper might be quite unfair if proposed in the
    same subject to candidates for matriculation; and the
    children of a Third-Standard class may have some useful
    elementary knowledge of matters that, in some aspects, are
    occupying the diligent attention of specialists in modern
    science. The profitable instruction of children and youths is
    naturally limited by their intelligence—childish intelligence
    or youthful intelligence, as the case may be; any teaching
    that does not keep within the limits thus prescribed by
    nature is worse than useless, and examination that does not
    respect these limits is unreasonable. On the other hand, the
    chief end of the instruction imparted in the primary school is
    the exercise and development of the pupil's intelligence, and
    the employment of it in the acquisition of useful knowledge.
    If any part of the syllabus seems to indicate a tendency to
    encourage what is mechanical or superficial at the expense of
    intelligence, it is only because, through some defect in the
    letter, the spirit and the real meaning have not been as
    clearly manifested as they ought to have been.

The subject-matter of all READING lessons, and especially
of passages used as examination tests, must be such as the
pupils under instruction or examination can easily under-
stand, and the Inspector will not be satisfied with any read-
ing that does not convey to his mind the assurance that the
pupil does understand the passage read. Mere utterance of
the printed words will not suffice; there must be such
intonation and emphasis as are required to express the mean-
ing and spirit of the passage: this must be insisted on, even
in the First Standard. Proper emphasis and tone proceed
naturally from a true apprehension of the meaning, and are
not acquired by following arbitrary and artificial rules. A
First-Standard pupil is capable of feeling the simple humour
or the simple pathos of a simple story, and of understanding
the point of it, and his feeling and understanding will affect
his utterance as naturally in reading as in free speech, un-
less he has been educated into a false manner by being fre-
quently set to read unsuitable matter, passing his compre-
hension, and containing nothing to interest him. In the
upper standards the quality of the reading affords one of the
surest means of judging of the intelligence of the pupils and
of the degree of culture to which they have attained. The

good readers will not be those who never read except in class,
but those who have formed the habit of private reading;
who can follow with ease the relations of the parts of a com-
plex sentence, the thread of a simple argument, or the plot
of an interesting story; who know how to employ in their
own spoken and written composition relative sentences and
concessive conjunctions; to whose understanding every turn
of thought and expression appeals with familiar force; and
who, because their thought and feeling respond to every
reasonable demand made upon them by the writer, are able
to make his meaning their own for the time being, and to
make that meaning clear by appropriate tones of voice. Such
readers will be independent of mechanical rules for the
observance of "stops." Their reading will be rhetorical in
the best sense, though not histrionic. They will be more in-
debted to their teacher for the correction of false habits than
for the formation of a correct style, for a correct style con-
sists chiefly in the use of turns of voice that are not conven-
tional but perfectly natural, depending only on an adequate
conception of the writer's spirit and meaning. There is no
need to question really good readers to ascertain whether
they understand what they are reading, except perhaps with
regard to the meaning of an obscure word here and there;
the good reading is sufficient proof of the intelligence of the
reader. It must, however, be remembered that a child's
understanding of a passage may be good as far as it goes, and
may yet be naturally limited by the inexperience natural to
his years, so that his reading will not give full expression to
the utterance of sentiments of passionate desire, disappointed
ambition, or overwhelming grief, although it may indicate an
elementary appreciation of them.

In SPELLING, the intelligence of the child should be directed,
in the first place, to the recognition of the phonetic values of
the letters, and for that reason words of peculiar formation
should not be used as tests for the First Standard. When the
phonetic values have been well established in his mind the
pupil is capable of intelligent observation of anomalous forms;
at a further stage he can appreciate the reasons for different
ways of adding inflectional and other terminations; and still
later he may come to see how the derivation of words affects
their orthography.

WRITING and DRAWING are not to be regarded as merely
mechanical and imitative arts. The pupil should from
the first be taught to observe the constituent parts of the
letters he has to write, the method of joining the several
parts of a letter and the several letters of a word, the slope
of his copy, and the due spacing of the whole; so that he may
have not a vague and general idea, but a clear and precise
conception of what he is expected to reproduce. In this
exercise, as well as in drawing, the training is partly for the
eye and partly for the hand; but it ought also to do something
for the brain which keeps them in relation. The earliest
drawing-lessons will be found to require more intelligence
than most young children are at first disposed to bestow upon
them. The teacher soon discovers that they have very in-
definite ideas of a straight line, of a square, of a circle.
They may know that a square has four sides, but their in-
telligence has to be aroused to observe and recognise the
equality of the sides and the sensible character of a right
angle; they may know that a circle has no corners, but
the perfect symmetry will escape their unaided notice. One
great advantage of drawing is that it develops the sense of
proportion; operating perhaps more immediately through
the eye in the case of freehand drawing, and in the case of
geometrical drawing and perspective operating more imme-
diately through the understanding. This sense of proportion
is what is most required for the appreciation of arithmetical
and physical problems, and it has unlimited applications to
the concerns of daily life—even to dressmaking and cooking.
Upon many of the practical arts drawing has a still more
direct bearing, and to the skilled artisan of the future a
knowledge of it will be indispensable.

In these regulations more prominence is given to English
COMPOSITION than to English GRAMMAR. It is not possible to
define separate stages of progress in composition as clearly
as in grammar; it is therefore necessary to leave a great
deal to the discretion of the Inspector. The Inspector will
ascertain from the teacher what plan is followed in the
teaching of composition, and will as far as practicable adapt
his examination to that plan; but where he finds the system
of instruction unsatisfactory and ineffective he will indicate
its defects and suggest improvements, and he will do his
utmost to prevent any continuous and persistent neglect of
the subject. In setting an exercise in composition, the
Inspector will be careful to choose a subject of which it is
certain that the children have considerable knowledge; or
he will read a passage or recite a narrative, or in some
other way supply them with suitable material for com-
position. The teacher should habitually correct defects
of composition as they occur in the ordinary speech of
the pupils, and in their written exercises. Correct speech
and good composition depend more on practice and habit
than on a knowledge of rules of grammar and composition.