EDCUCATION IN QUEENSLAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXV, Issue 209, 3 September 1891, Page 2

EDCUCATION IN QUEENSLAND.

i (Brisbane Courier.) > The fifteenth i*eport of the secretary • for Public Instruction in Queensland presented to both Houses of Parliament gives some interesting reading. The following —by no means chosen for superiority in ignorance —may be set down, as it is from this "material that pupil teachers and the ranks of instructors are I replenished. Oould it be conceived that » a Queensland boy, aiming at becom--1 ing a ruler of a Queensland boy's educational aspirations, should place Ipswich and Charters Towers near the bor. der of South Australia, Maryborough on the Fitzroy, Rockhampton north of Townaville. or «• Qaetta" as «• a coral island in the East Indies, noted for ship, wreok and many lives loBt." A pupil teacher of the third class takes a bolder \ historical and geographical flight, inform- | ing a startled world concerning " Ajac. [ eio" that it is " A town in the island of s Sardinia, " Capital of Sardinia," " birth- [ place of Nelson 5 " while a similar bright , spirit, or the same, terms " Mantua a ducal palace, containg 500 rooms, in | Lombardy." Of minor inconsistencies the examination papers are, as the ad- ; vertising emporiums would say, replete. ; " Dunedin," one learns, is in Ireland; Parramatta a goldminiug township in the United States; Formosa a channel off • the coast of Spain; Bourko in the Gulf ot • Carpentaria, terminus of Queensland ' railways—not so unpardonable this, 1 Burke being evidently alluded to \ but Geelong as not for sugar plantations and tea growing, and Socotra, an island near the Gulf of Aden, west of Africa, death place of Cicero, the greut orator form items ol copy much beyond the average of the comio periodical. That the Baltic is bounded on the east and south by jjart of France $ the bade of tho Mississippi —whatever that is-rare called parries, intending prairies, and that "the Mississippi rises in the Brazilian Mountains, and flows south through Brazil; the chief tributaries Parana and Paraguay, navigable for 12 miles." " Amazon flows into Mediterranean Sea," Mississippi navigable almost to the mouth," "Amazon 20,000 miles long," form examples of what the Prime Minister terms monumental ignorance too appalling to credit, Turning to arithmetic in candidates for admission as pupil teachers of the first olass, 25 per cent failed to distinguish between notation and numeration; of fourth-class males, comparatively few candidates understand discount; of the femaleß, explanation given exhibited very little intelligence; 15 per cent reasoned absurdly, though under the advanced grade of teacher of the second class the female candidates are stated by the inspector to be more methodical and intelligent. In grammar 90 per ceut of examinees as pupil teacher of the second class failed in analysis. Muoh ot this last-mentioned pauoity of success is duo to the employment of two text books constructed upon two diverse lines. Candidates as teachers of the second class resembled ninety-nine hundredths of the community in not recognising che difference between .*' metonymy" and " synedoche" while one examinee boldly declared" Lallaßook"—eo spelt—a noted allegory in England. Touching drill the same inspector says :—" Very hazy notions as to what drill can be taught in a small space prevails," Perhaps in this connection the most important papers treated of, the series appertained to the teaohers of the third class subtend the most gloomy outlook. This is what tho inspector tells us: " Comparatively fow of the examinees show an intelligent graßp of the subject or a satisfactory capacity for dealing with it. The papers afiord abundant evidenoe of undue haste and want of consideration on the part of* writers, resulting in weak composition, numerous blunders in regard to factsmany of them perfeotly ludicrous—and very defective spelling. One paper has no less than 54 misspelt words. Cromwell was translated into Oranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and "Dudley, ■ft"s, of, Leices.er, into Lord Gwldford Dudley."