1076
THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE.
[No. 32

distances and areas; its surface and coast features; chief towns: occupations of the people; leading products and industries according to locality; agriculture in its various branches; sheep-rearing (wool and frozen mutton); dairy farming; mining; fruit-growing; manufactures; gum-digging, &c.: principal ports; means of transit between different parts of New Zealand; the chief railways and the places they connect; steamer-routes; roads; objects of interest to tourists; chief telegraph-lines; climate; characteristic plants.

Australia: The names and positions of the several States with their chief towns and ports; intercolonial trade between New Zealand and Australia; leading industries; the most important exports.

Great Britain and Ireland: Great ports and other chief towns; leading industries, imports and exports; trade with New Zealand.

The countries and chief towns of Europe; the chief British colonies and possessions, with their capitals, ports, and leading products; the names and positions of other countries of the world; of well-known mountains and rivers, and other conspicuous features of the continents; chief trade-centres and trade-routes; the countries in which the principal articles of commerce are produced; the oceans, great seas, and important islands and straits.]

The parts of the subject indicated in this clause and the preceding clauses cannot for the most part be taught directly from observation of the actual facts; but it is recommended that pictures should be used as largely as possible in conjunction with the globe and maps.

Suitable pictures from illustrated papers are available in almost every school, and if these are mounted upon brown paper and kept, each school will in time come to possess a collection of pictures that, with a little supplementing from other sources, will form a very useful adjunct to the lessons in physical and descriptive geography. The pictures should be used in such a way as to call forth the reasoning powers of the children as much as possible. They may be passed round the class in order, each pupil having a map, or atlas, and a note-book; and the lesson at the end might sum up and enforce the ideas gained from the pictures. The pupils should be trained in the habit of making rough sketch-maps of small portions of the earth’s surface to illustrate special points, but it is not desirable that time should be spent in making elaborate copies of maps in the atlas. The use of pictures will generally also secure attention to places of interest in connection with current events, a point that should never be overlooked in the teaching of geography. The same pictures would in many cases suggest suitable subjects for oral and written composition lessons in the upper classes.

D R A W I N G.

GENERAL.

44. In preparatory classes, the instruction in drawing is to be directed towards preparing the children for the work of the First Standard. The character of the work should be such as to familiarise the children with elementary notions of form and proportion, to quicken their perceptive faculties, and to train them in habits of accuracy and decision, in dexterity of hand, and in freedom and boldness of style. The several branches of handwork that are prescribed for school classes in the regulations issued under the Manual and Technical Instruction Act, if taken in conjunction with suitable instruction in drawing, afford ample material for attaining the object in view.

In all work in which the subject-matter lends itself to such treatment, the children should be encouraged to draw diagrams or sketches to illustrate various points of the instruction; in other words, they should be taught, in a very simple way, to use drawing as a means of expression.

The several parts of Blair’s Colonial Drawing-book, issued by the authority of the Minister of Education, will indicate what is intended in the syllabus to be the range of freehand drawing in pencil from diagrams, but in no standard is such drawing to be taught altogether from set copies; indeed, these are to be regarded rather as supplying material for the teacher than copies for the pupils. As much as possible of the drawing from diagrams is to be done from examples drawn by the teacher on the blackboard or from wall diagrams.

The course in drawing for each standard is to include some instruction suited to the capacity of the pupils in elementary design; simple known geometrical, natural, or conventional forms are to be utilised as elements for the drawing of simple patterns and borders, and of simple decorative arrangements. The designs are to be inventive as well as imitative, and should show that the pupils have some knowledge of the fundamental principles of design, such as repetition, alternation, balance, radiation, &c. Drawing from memory is to be practised in all standards.