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only natural as long as a " pass" depends on subjects of which grammar is not one. When complaining to teachers of poor work in grammar, we have from some received the reply, " I know it is, but then it is only a class-subject " ; from others, " I know it is, but I can't find time enough for it." Some remarks with regard to "methods of teaching" were made by us under the subject " Beading," and a few now in the same direction under this subject will not be out of place. Some inexperienced teachers, we noticed at our inspection visits, put the cart before the horse, so to speak; they required words, phrases, and clauses to be classified before the functions of such were investigated. But, as we have already pointed out, such is quite the wrong order of procedure. In this connection an amusing example of the difficulty of breaking bad habits came under our notice several times: we saw papers ruled carefully in three vertical columns headed as required —" Word," " Function," " Pare of Speech "; but it was the first and the third columns that were filled in, while the pupils were scratching their heads in a vain endeavour to elucidate what on earth was to go in the second column ! It is this kind of thing that leads to the difficulty Standard IV. pupils-— and Standards V. and VI. pupils, for that matter—find with the " fors," " buts," " thats," &c. But failure in grammar was almost quite as frequent with our experienced and most earnest teachers as with our inexperienced and easy-going ones ; and for this we think that the following, in addition to reasons before mentioned, is responsible: Too much reliance is placed upon the deductive method of teaching, rather than upon the inductive. In passing, we may say this remark applies to the treatment of arithmetic also. The pupils are required to learn rules by heart, and then to apply them deductively. But, as only that which is understood should be committed to memory, and as the pupil should be led to teach himself rather than to receive anything on his teacher's authority, we should put in a plea for the following method : Let the teacher proceed from the concrete to the abstract, from the particular to the general, from what is familiar to what is strange, giving some knowledge of the thing itself before the rule that refers to it; let him employ his pupils in analysing matter put before them, rather than in working synthetically according to precept; let him elicit the rule by comparison of familiar examples, and so establish it inductively. And this method is particularly easy of application in teaching the pupil his own language; for he is already familiar with examples of inflexion in number, comparison, &c. : in a "dead" language, of course, it would be different. Another very noticeable feature in oral lessons in grammar (and in arithmetic also) was the inability of pupils to go through their work without a great deal of help from their teachers. Numbers of questions have to be put to elicit points that well-trained pupils would give as a matter of course ; and so during a lesson not only is little work got through, but the little that is tends in a harmful rather than in an educative direction. " All the best cultivation of a child's mind," says Dr. Temple, " is obtained by the child's own exertions, and the master's success may be measured by the degree in which he can bring his scholars to make such exertions absolutely without aid." " I try to make myself useless to my pupils," was an eminent French teacher's terse but pithy way of expressing the same idea. History continues to be a very weak subject. In Standard 111. we frequently found it had been intelligently treated, and at some schools the pupils in this class took the greatest delight in the examination of the subject. In the higher standards it would appear that the method most in favour is to have dry summaries and catalogues of names and dates committed to memory: yet often even these were nob known, and it was nothing unusual to find Julius Csesar and William the Conqueror changing places, or Marlborough and Wellington. We were often surprised at the weakness in Standards V. and VI. at some of the large schools. It was amusing, but at the same time annoying, to find how pupils had learnt by heart answers from note-books, and could not be stopped until they had repeated them to the last word, like a town-crier over an auction-sale. The fact is that the general present treatment of history, with a view to examination, is calculated to create in the ordinary child a feeling of disgust for the subject that will endure with him for a lifetime. Now, there is a fundamental principle of teaching that it is not so much the thing taught as the manner of teaching it that constitutes its value to the pupil. But history cannot be taught well in many of our schools where one or two teachers have so many subjects and so many standards to look after. We should, therefore, be in favour of abolishing history, for examination purposes, from Standards 111. and IV. in all schools, and from all standards in small schools, and of treating it in the other schools by reading-lessons from an Historical Beader. Science and Object-lessons. —The number of schools at which elementary science is well taught yearly increases. Agricultural chemistry (Blackie) appears to be popular, except in the third year's course. In physiology too much attention is paid to the " dry bones " of the subject, and not enough to " function," pupils being wearied with names which even adults would know to-day and forget to-morrow, to say nothing of the fact that a knowledge of these names is of no educative value. In botany, also, names were much in evidence, but not things or specimens—a common mistake in our teaching in many subjects, and one that accounts for such answers as, " Carbon is a gas." Object-lesson teaching shows little improvement, many teachers plainly evincing quite a dislike to it; yet no lesson can compete successfully with a well-conducted object-lesson in sustaining the interest of a class. At quite a large number of schools the treatment is at fault in paying more attention to processes of manufacture and the like, which as often as not are above the grasp of the class, than to the actual properties of the object itself, which could easily be educed by a proper guiding of the children's senses. Again, at many schools too few lessons were given, or shown in the note-books as given, during the year —some ten or twelve, for instance, though the timetable allowed for two lessons per week. Going over the same lesson several times until it is learnt by heart is not object-lesson teaching ; and, be it noted, such a system invariably breaks down in its results on the examination day. Yet one other matter; We sometimes noticed,