E.— 3

8

the child to select one thought and indicate the sentence which expresses it, and can thus lead him to capitalize and punctuate the sentence, at the same time setting him to thinking about the correct forms of expression. Other children whose work is not on the board will readily notice what is going on, and many will correct their mistakes through the correction of the work of this one child. The older custom of carrying home the papers and indicating the errors upon them is not so effective as this correction under the personal supervision of the teacher. Parallel with this work there should be a certain amount of dictated work, possibly taken from the reader. The children should be led to observe the sentences in the book, the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, and they should be held to account after a reasonable degree of practice for the reproduction of such work in a correct manner." Teachers must all feel that English language is the most difficult subject which they have to teach in the school. Yet reference to the time-tables will show that in nearly every case five hours per week—in some schools even more —are devoted to arithmetic, and two hours and a half to English. The difficulty experienced in teaching arithmetic is largely a matter of language, and we are confident that an increase in the time allotted to English, with a corresponding reduction in that devoted to arithmetic, would react beneficially on both subjects. 2. Arithmetic. — Except in comparatively few schools, the work of the junior divisions continues to give us much satisfaction, and reflects credit upon the assistant teachers who are chiefly concerned in teaching it. There is just one point concerning which we find some misapprehension, and that is in regard to the use of tables. It should be clearly understood that we do not object to the learning of tables by heart after the facts have been made patent to the child through his having realized their truth by actual experience with objects. That is to say, the tables should be taught bit by bit to the child, not learned, by repetition ad nauseam of the whole table written on the board or set out in the table-book, otherwise his knowledge of the work is merely a matter of mechanical memory and becomes no more than recitation. Having acquired the table, the child should be led to apply it at once, for that indeed is the purpose for which he was taught it. In the higher divisions the arithmetic is fairly satisfactory, and we consider that a steady advance is being made. We have met with not a few instances where the pupils have found their knowledge of arithmetic of practical use in their every-day life, and it is important that the teaching should be directed to achieve this as widely as possible. Thus in connexion with the teaching of the compound rules, practice should be afforded to the children in " keeping shop " ; the bills of accounts should be made as typical of local conditions as possible, and each child should have the opportunity of making up bills according to his own experience. To quote the new syllabus, "If the practical and utilitarian aspects of arithmetic are constantly kept in view, it will be a much more effective instrument for developing and disciplining the intellect than if it is taught merely in an abstract manner." This, of course. involves a considerable amount of mental and oral work which are yet made much too little use of in the majority of our schools. We have seen cases in which three hours per week devoted to this subject, mostly taken orally, produced far better results than the five or six hours commonly allotted for the most part to book-work with examples, many of which are quite foreign to the children's experience. To quote again from the new syllabus : "At all stages in the elementary school the mental and oral work should, as far as the staffing and the circumstances of the school permit, predominate over the written sums, the written work being designed mainly to teach the child to express clearly the several steps in his calculations, and thus lead to clear thinking, and also at the latter stages to enable him to solve questions involving somewhat higher numbers than the ordinary child can manage without the aid of paper. The difficulty experienced in cases where the teacher has several classes to attend to no doubt precludes in some degree the extension of oral work. But even in arithmetic grouping may be resorted to, for with questions concerning matters within the children's experience and dealing with the facts of everyday life it is not beyond the capability of the lower-standard class to deal with at least some of the work ordinarily prescribed for the higher standard. The so-called " rule of three," for instance, which forms part of the work prescribed for Standard V can be quite easily taught by the unitary method to children of Standard II; similarly, the work required in connexion with proper fractions in Standard IV is not beyond the children of the lower classes. In regard to the written work itself, we should like to draw attention to the need of better arrangement. How some of the pupils arrive at the answer we are often quite unable to make out, except after a protracted examination. They should be trained to set out the work so that the various steps in the process of reasoning may be followed without difficulty. The use of paper in place of slates has led to some improvement in this respect, but there is still room for more. Finally, we should like to see a more extensive use of simple apparatus and diagrams for explaining arithmetical processes. The first sets of problems in area, for instance, shoxild be first worked out by the children as exercises in ruled drawing; the teaching of mensuration should be preceded by the drawing and cutting out of the figure dealt with; exercises in finding the cubic content should be preceded as far as possible by the actual making of the figures in paper or cardboard; weights and measures should be actualities. 3. Geography and Nature-study show practically no advance on the whole. There are, of course, many schools in which exceedingly good work is done, but in a good many instances the idea of the syllabus is not fully realized, and schemes of work presented show that the old habits still cling closely. Geography properly handled will train the children to observe carefully, and hence is combined with nature-study. From the observations made deductions may be drawn and the reasoning-powers exercised and strengthened. Pictures, descriptions of foreign countries, and stories of adventure and discovery may assist in cultivating the imagination of