9

E.—7,

Hature. This is very far from being the case. Many a break-down of a Native school in arithmetic has been owing to imperfect instruction in these two important tables. Young children should be taught by the aid of the ball-frame to comprehend the nature of addition and subtraction, and then they should learn the tables by heart, and learn them thoroughly. In teaching the Third Standard mental arithmetic, the teacher will* do well to begin by setting easy questions on the black-board, such as 13 + B+l9, 37 — 16, 18x8, 157-4-7, and requiring the pupils to work them mentally. They will soon be able to work such questions without the aid of the eye, and consequently to satisfy the requirements of Standard 111. Teachers preparing pupils for the arithmetic of Standard IV. should give them as much black-board work (with oral explanations) as possible. It would take a very clever child indeed to find out the way to pass in the " reduction" and " easy problems" of this standard by merely poring over an arithmetic book; but with skilful and judicious teaching, a pupil that has passed Standard 111. may easily be prepared for Standard IV. in less than a year. In a few schools the mental arithmetic is surprisingly good. This, of course, shows that where a school fails in the subject the teaching has been defective in some way. Grammar. —Formal grammar is not taught in our schools. The standards, however, are so framed that children are required to learn a good deal of what may be called practical grammar to enable them to pass in English. For instance, Standard I. pupils must be able to give the plurals of nouns. To pass Standard 11. a child must be acquainted with the different forms of the personal pronouns, and with most of the distinctions of gender. For Standard 111. pupils must have a knowledge of the inflections of such words as this and that, of case inflections, and of the comparison of adjectives. Standard IV. requires that children be practically familiar with the mood- and tense-forms of verbs, and the more elementary syntactical concords and governments. - The fact is that, through their having had to learn a foreign language in our schools, Maori children that have passed through all the standards have had a better and more practical linguistic and grammatical training than can possibly have been obtained by well educated European children that have learnt no language but their own. It seems to me that a Maori child who knows that the English words, "The men have all gone away," mean "Kua haere atu nga tangata katoa," while the words, "The man will go away," mean "E haere atu te tangata," must, as far as a real knowledge of grammar is concerned, have the advantage over the European child that can merely parse and analyse such sentences correctly. The Maori, though he has never heard the words present-perfect, future, singular, and plural used in their technical sense, will probably have grasped the ideas that underlie these words, and that very completely. Possibly, too, he will have clothed them unconsciously in a technical language of his own. The European boy will have acquired a greater familiarity with grammatical terms and their application, and with the theory of the classification of words; but he will not have that clear apprehension of the facts of grammar which necessarily springs from daily exercise in the process of translation from one language into another. In other words, the European boy may thoroughly understand the relations that subsist between words as they occur in sentences; the Maori boy must understand them. Teachers might, however, in teaching English, smooth the way for their pupils to a considerable extent by making them do such grammatical work as is involved in drawing up tables showing the numbers and the genders of nouns, the comparison of adjectives, the declension of pronouns, the present, past, and past participles of verbs, and so on. It is, however, neither necessary nor advisable to burden the children's minds with technical grammatical terms. Geography.—This subject is in general fairly taught. The only remark that requires to be made about it is that children, to pass Standard 11. in geography, must know the definitions thoroughly. It is not sufficient that a child should be able to repeat these parrot-fashion. He must be able to show that he has formed a clear mental conception of the characteristics of each geographical feature that he is called upon to define. Sewing.—Only moderate proficiency in needlework is required for passing the standards. This is not always forthcoming. Teachers should remember that children, in order that they may pass a certain standard, are required to show that they know how to do certain kinds of work, and not to bring forward proof of their having made this, that, or the other gorgeous fancy article. For instance, a Third-Standard girl is required to stitch. The production, by the mistress, of an antimacassar, or even of a picture in wools, properly framed and glazed, and the bond fide work of the girl, is no proof that the girl is up to the work of Standard 111. For Standard 11. it is desirable that girls should be able to do felling in two ways: namely, that called running and felling, and that called over-sewing and felling. The latter is not often required, but experts say that girls ought certainly to know how to do it. In many of the schools the sewing is admirably done. The quality of the sewing, as a rule, depends on the amount of interest the sewing mistress takes in her work. The code regulation that provides for the supply of sewing material to Native schools is, in most districts, working well. Some of the mistresses, however, have made a mistake in supposing that the object of the department in sending this material to schools is to enable the Natives to purchase articles of clothing at a low price; the real intention being, of course, to give the pupils an opportunity of learning to sew well and to make all sorts of ordinary articles of clothing for themselves. In one or two cases teachers have not adhered to the terms of that part of the rule (VI., 1, Native Schools Code) that refers to the disposal of the things that have been made in 2—E. 7.