E.—ls.

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in each subject is based on a school year of 38 weeks as a minimum. The total number of hours required is 2,880, so that the high-school pupil who wishes to gain admission to a teachers' training-school must make up the balance by taking one or more optional subjects; he commonly takes some branch of handwork and geography, or a second foreign language. The theoretical part of his training-school course includes elementary logic, child psychology, the principles and history of education, and the methods of teaching the various subjects, which he revises with that purpose in view. Not less than sixty minutes per week during the first eighteen months is' devoted to the observation of work in the model school; part of the time set apart for the study of methods of teaching a subject is devoted to giving lessons in that subject to a group of pupils selected from the model school. The last six months of the course is devoted to practice-teaching under working conditions. Although the model schools are large, yet, as there are 642 student teachers at the Brooklyn Training School and 430 at the Manhattan Training School, it is evident that the practice during the last halfyear must be taken elsewhere ; it is taken at ordinary elementary schools associated with the training-schools, which, in order that there may be harmony in methods and aims, are placed under the direction of the principals of the training-schools. In connection with the Brooklyn institution (the one I visited) there are six such associated schools, and, to complete the connection between them and the central institution, there are six critic teachers (officers of the latter) whose sole business it is to guide and help the student teachers in their practice, and to assist the principal of the training college at the end of the period of probation in determining whether she should advise the Board of Superintendents to issue teachers' certificates to the various candidates. Each student is assigned for the six months to a particular associated school, but receives no pay. If at the end of that time she has not given sufficient evidence of skill, she may be assigned for a second period of six months to gain more skill by practice —still without pay. If her work is then still unsatisfactory, she must seek some other field of employment; often she goes to take charge, as an uncertificated teacher, of some country school in the Western States. The observation-work at the Brooklyn Training School is particularly well planned and carried out; the head of the institution is a lady with a deep knowledge of education, vast organizing powers, wide sympathies, and great personal charm of manner —Miss Emma L. Johnston. There were in 1906 two men students and 640 women ; I believe two or three of the 32 instructors and critic teachers are men, all the rest are women. The programme of work —theory, observation, and practice —will be found in the Appendix ; it is well worthy of the serious attention of the authorities of our training colleges. High Schools. The public high schools of New York provide in general for a four-year course. There are three kinds of high schools : (i) commercial high schools, two in number, for boys only ; (ii) manual-training or technical high schools, one for boys, one for girls, and one for both sexes ; (iii) the ordinary high schools, two for boys, two for girls, and ten for both boys and girls. But many of the ordinary high schools make provision for a more or less complete commercial or manual-training course, or for both courses, as well as for a general programme ; indeed, the tendency is for the one high school to undertake all three kinds of work. It is argued with some force that a parent often cannot tell in what direction the special aptitudes of a pupil lie until he has been for some time at a high school, and the total dislocation of work that takes place if he has to be removed from one kind of school to another is avoided by teaching the various branches at the one school; if, then, he has to change his course, it means only the alteration of certain classes in his programme, and he is not disturbed by being shifted into totally new surroundings. The wisdom of the plan on which most of our secondary schools in New Zealand are being organized is thus borne out by the experience of America, for the practice in New York is virtually followed to a large extent elsewhere in the United States. No money has been spared upon the buildings and equipment of the high schools recently erected in New York. The buildings are not only commodious and excellently adapted for their purpose, but often have great architectural beauty. The illustrations of the De Witt Clinton High School given in connection with the text will serve as an example of modern highschool buildings. This is a high school of the general type, with strong classical bias, but giving at the same time in its curriculum a much wider