E.—2

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10. The Time-table. —This document should contain a complete exposition of the main lines on which the school work is conducted, and also as much detail as is necessary to make it a practical guide to teacher or scholars for finding what kind of work is to be done in any class at any time during the week. Consistently with this kind of explicitness it should be as brief as possible. It should be within the pupils' reach, and should be thoroughly understood by them. It is very convenient when the time-table contains a summary showing the time devoted to each subject, in addition to the ordinary statement of the distribution of the subjects over the school time. It should not be necessary to say that the very name "time-table" implies that the document, the work, and the school-clock should always be in strict accord. Section B. — Discipline. 1. Order is hard to establish, but easy to maintain lohen once established. —To persons unaccustomed to the work of teaching, the remark that "it is very easy to keep order in an orderly school" may seem unmeaning, but it is, nevertheless, a true statement of the case. When once the pupils of a school have been trained to orderly ways they like them, and do not readily depart from them. 2. Threats and Appeals should be few. —Good order, however, cannot in the first instance be secured without constant watchfulness and sustained effort; but at all times the exertion of such effort as is needed should take place as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. The master who threatens his pupils frequently, or incessantly appeals to their good feelings, seldom has any order worth speaking of. In the best schools, one perceives that the order is excellent, but it is impossible to tell from mere inspection of the children at work how this order has been secured, or by what means it is maintained. 3. How to have First-class Order. —The most thoroughly effective plan that has yet been discovered for keeping children in thorough order is to provide such interesting employment for them as will, from its very nature, never leave them an idle moment. Nine-tenths of the disorderliness of children in school is caused by their unfailing stock of energy, and the absence of a legitimate outlet for it. Give them this outlet, by providing well-ordered and interesting school work for them, and the greater part of the difficulty will vanish. 4. Punishments. —Now and again a disciplinarian of the very highest class is to be met with who finds constant employment a sufficiently effective disciplinary agency, and does without rewards and punishments altogether, except such as are involved in a kindly smile or a glance of disapproval. If formal punishments must be had recourse to they should be as mild as possible. Many teachers have found it possible—and even advantageous—to dispense with corporal punishment. It is, however, hardly desirable for a teacher to entirely renounce the power of inflicting this sort of punishment. A boy who is inclined to rebel should always feel that a thrashing is a possibility. 5. Mode of Punishment. —When punishment is inevitable it should be inflicted with perfect self-control on the part of the teacher. Pupils should never have reason to feel that punishment is a consequence of, or is modified by, the ill-temper of the teacher; they should have every reason to believe that it is simply and solely the result of their own misdoing or neglect. For this reason it is advisable to let the punishment take its character from the nature of the offence. Thus a good punishment for careless mistakes in spelling and punctuation is an imposition involving the faultless transcription of a long piece of poetry. For want of punctuality or for waste of time detention is a suitable penalty. 6. Drill. —Drill generally and school drill especially are very useful for promoting good discipline. To say nothing here of their effect on the health and spirits of the children, these exercises tend to do away with talking, leaving places without permission, disorder while class changes are being made, &c. Besides, drill teaches children to do things smartly at the word of command, when and where they ought to do them, and to sink their individual peculiarities and wishes in order to produce a good joint result. 7. School Tone. —Good order is an excellent thing in a school, but before one can say whether the school in which it is found deserves to be called a good one he must learn the cause of the satisfactory appearance presented by the school. If in an old school it is found to depend on the constant watchfulness and the severity of the master the school is not nearly so good as it seems to be; but if the order has, through the training which the school affords, become, so to speak, characteristic of the pupils, and is maintained without effort on the part of the master, then the tone of the school is satisfactory, and the school itself is a good one. 8. Bclations between Order and Tone. —Sometimes the use of the word " tone " in this connection is sneered at. There is no real occasion for this even when it is a Maori school that is referred to. The word as used above has a special technical meaning, and has nothing to do with, say, the tone of society. The order of a school can hardly be very bad when the tone is good; but, conversely, the tone may be very unsatisfactory while the order is excellent, as was implied in the last paragraph. It is important to emphasize this distinction lest teachers should be led to think that if a school is quiet and orderly its discipline must be satisfactory. Generally, it may be said, then, that when a school has a thoroughly good tone the master of that school has but little to learn except, it may be, how to effect improvements in his methods of teaching. 9. Effects of Good Tone. —One of the most easily discernible effects of a good school tone is the evident earnestness of the children who are under its influence about the work that they have in hand. Jn a school that has this tone a visitor at once perceives that learning is looked upon by all the children as their real business there, and he looks in vain for traces of listlessness, inattention, or fitfulness in working.