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E—No. 4

c. Proper domitories and bedding, and separate beds, unless for children under ten years of age; in such cases not more than two to sleep together. d. A regular dietary scale in each School. c. The introduction and observance of a Time-table. f Adults and children not to be admitted into the same School. All over sixteen years of age to be considered Adults. g. In Schools for adults and in Industrial Schools, one or more branches of mechanical labor to be attended to. a. As it is impossible but that offences will come where Schools for boys and girls are held under the same roof and on the same premises, I would recommend the total separation of the sexes. Let Managers and Monitors be ever so viligent, still experience has proved that " nunquam homini satis cantum est in horas." Each School should be expressly a School either for boys or for girls, unless in the case of children not exceeding ten years of age. A difficulty presents itself in the case of married monitors with a family, for them some allowance must be made. With the view of inculcating habits of order, cleanliness and regularity, I would advise that their children should be treated exactly as the other children of the School and be made to sleep in the common dormitory and not in the native whare usually set apart for the Monitor and his family. The Native Monitors are valuable assistants to the School manager, yet in many cases I have had serious misgivings as to the propriety of considering them bona, fide scholars. They do certainly undergo almost daily a careful course of instruction iv Biblical and sacred learning, but receive little secular education, while from the fact of their being allowed to live exclusively in their own whares, they are not subjected to the regular discipline of the establishment, and are therefore in part excluded from its benefits. The case of their wives is still mere perplexing, for they receive a still less amount of secular instruction and regular training, yet without them, under the present regime, the School literally could not go on, for they do all the cooking and other domestic work of the establishment. lam far from ignoring the usefulness of the monitors, or detracting from their value in the School, if we were only to regard them in the light of examples to the younger children, my doubt is how far managers are justified under the above circumstances in entering them on the School Register as pupils. There is another light in which they are to be regarded, viz., that of Recruiting Sergeants to the Schools, they are for the most part men of rank, and as such have weight in their several tribes, and it is to them in many cases and not to the Missionaries or Managers that the parents confide their children. My proposal in reference to them would be, that those who are now in the Schools should continueto be regarded as pupils, but that in every School hereafter established, Monitors and their wives should be admitted as pupils in the ratio of one to every ten children. b. If my suggestion in reference to the appointment of qualified Teachers was carried into effect, the Government would only be discharging an obligation to the Missionaries for their valuable services in the work of Native education; the more valuable, because they were volunteers. The appointment of Teachers in every School would afford the Missionaries au opportunity of devoting themselves more exclusively to the preparation of young men for holy orders, and would leave them unfettered for the uninterrupted discharge of their ministerial duties. I would reserve to every missionary the general superintendence of the establishment, and the right of giving daily spiritual instruction in the School. c. The miserable hovels, oftentimes devoid of the means of ventilation, in which I have seen the children huddle together at night, satisfy me that the work of civilization attempted in these Schools must prove a failure, unless we make some change in their sleeping accommodation; I have seen six or eight boys or girls as the case might be, crowd together on the floor for the sake of warmth, their individual supply of bed-clothes being insufficient for their individual requirements. I have known four grown girls to sleep in one small bed, while in close proximity, only a yard apart, lay a Maori and his wife. Practices such as these, together with the accompanying moral evils which must naturally result from such a state of things, have a most pernicious tendency; they not only prove injurious to the health of the children, but are decidedly prejudicial to tho growth of habits of common decency and propriety. (d.) The publication of a dietary scale for every School is desirable, not only as a satisfaction to the Natives that their children will be well cared for, but also with a view to prevent in future the children from running away from the School. Among a people where education is at its lowest ebb, and whom present efforts reach only very indirectly, some ertra efforts not as yet included in the regular system of educational agencies must be employed, and I know of none more likely to prove attractive or so satisfactory to the Native as the promise of sufficient food and clothing. Painful as such a reflection is, it is nevertheless true. But the Aboriginal Native is not exceptional. A similar attraction has to be held out to many children in the heart of London, where the promise of a crust of bread or of a garment is offered as an inducement to them to enter the Ragged Schools. (<?.) Of the probable benefit to the Native Race generally from the employment of a time table in the Schoolroom, I have already spoken. (/".) The admission of adults into Schools on the same footing with children is objectionable, on the n-rounds " that they go far to destroy the necessary subordination of the ■ younger pupils, and thereby render the management of the School more difficult, and the attainments of tho Scholars precarious." With the view of removing wrong impressions from the Native mind as to the character of our Industrial Schools, and to prevent future misunderstandings, it would be desirable before receiving a young man into a School that the character and amount of work expected of him should be distinctly stated; if he then refused compliance, he should not be admitted. Heretofore they have beeu under a

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ON NATIVE SCHOOLS.