nised, that insecurity of life and insecurity of property are inseparable. Equally inseparable, in the opinion of their Lordships, are the insecurity of property and that want of the power of useful self-guidance which is the characteristic of ignorance and irreligion among the labouring classes of the people.

Their Lordships conceive that to leave a population, receiving comparatively high wages, like that of Monmouthshire, without the means of acquiring knowledge for themselves, or of giving their children a useful religious education, is both improvident and peculiarly dangerous. It is dangerous, because high wages are weapons of self-destruction in the hands of men so uncivilised as to be incapable of resisting temptation to the abuse of spirituous and fermented liquors; and because the habit of drinking in beershops and taverns is the first step in the neglect of domestic and social duties, and affords an opportunity to the emissaries of the disaffected to influence the population; of which opportunity they are, in periods of popular tumult, always ready to avail themselves. It is improvident, because the wages themselves would enable the population, with judiciously-administered assistance and advice from the proprietors, to unite with their employers in supporting schools for the education of their children, and in establishing the means of cheerful and instructive intercourse among themselves.

These considerations are based on the comparatively low level of a wise foresight concerning the interests of the industry and trade of the district, which will be prosperous in proportion as capital is secure, and as the labourers are skilful, intelligent, steady, and industrious. Considerations of a higher character would suggest that property has its duties as well as its rights, and that to neglect the opportunity to promote the well-being of a dependent population, by refusing to furnish them with the means of selfimprovement, is an evil resembling the neglect of a parent to train up his child in the way he should go, and implies the neglect of an obligation similar in character to the parental duty, though vastly different in importance.

My Lords direct me, in transmitting to you the enclosed forms and instructions for your guidance in conducting your application to this Committee through its usual steps, to assure you that they are anxious not only to afford you as liberal assistance as is consistent with their regulations and with their views of the wants of the important district on behalf of which you apply, but they are solicitous that their assistance should be so administered as to prove most effectual means of removing the evils described in the Report of Her Majesty's Inspector, Mr. Tremenheere.

I am to remind you that, in holding out the prospect of more liberal aid for the erection of schools in this district, my Lords expressed their desire that the plans of school-houses selected

should be consistent with the most recent improvements in elementary education, as confirmed by the experience of those parts of Europe where the greatest attention has been paid to the discipline and management of schools. They were not less solicitous that the steps taken in the selection of the schoolmaster and his assistants should be such as to warrant their unqualified approbation. Their Lordships express their anxiety on these subjects, because they are convinced that mere instruction in the rudiments of elementary knowledge (which is too commonly the limit of the usefulness of an elementary school) contains within it no element efficacious for the redemption of the people from semi-barbarism to the enjoyment of the benefits of Christian civilization.

My Lords therefore think that your school arrangements should be such as to put into the hands of the schoolmaster and his assistants the most perfect means of education, and that the previous instruction of the master and his assistants in the knowledge appropriate to well-conducted elementary schools, and his training in the discipline and method adopted in such schools, should have been completed so as to warrant their Lordships' confidence.

Subject to such considerations, my Lords direct me to renew to you the assurance that you may expect half the cost of the school-buildings from this Committee.

(Signed)

I have, &c.

JAMES PHILLIPS KAY, Secretary to the Committee of Council on Education.

To Sir Thomas Phillips.

4.-MINUTE on CONSTRUCTIVE METHODS of TEACHING READING, WRITING, and VOCAL MUSIC, published by direction of the Committee of Council on Education.

THE Committee of Council on Education deemed it important to ascertain at an early period in their labours, whether the methods adopted in the best elementary schools in this country resembled those sanctioned by the experience of the best primary schools of the Protestant States of Europe. Varieties in method may be attributable solely to differences in detail, or they may result from the influence of principles essentially distinct. It appeared important that such varieties should be analysed; and differences in detail, referable to similar principles, separated from varieties created by principles essentially distinct.

Among the varieties of method observed in the best primary schools of Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and Prussia, two principal classes attract the attention even of a cursory ob

D

server:-1. Methods of a synthetic or constructive character. 2. Analytic methods.

The Socratic method might be pursued either synthetically or analytically, but it was most commonly employed in the former mode. Pestalozzi was the chief restorer of the synthetic methods to Europe, and Jacotot and others have endeavoured to propagate peculiar developments of analytic processes. Mere dogmatic teaching cannot be said to belong to either class, but when followed by explanations may be regarded as an analytic method. An attentive examination of the details of school management in great numbers of elementary schools throughout Protestant Europe shows that the synthetic or constructive methods prevail in Germany, Switzerland, Prussia, and Holland.

The authority of Pestalozzi's teaching is acknowledged in Holland, Switzerland, and some parts of Germany. In other provinces, where the methods are strictly constructive and closely resemble those pursued by him, they are not so directly attributed to his influence.

The Committee of Council having recognised the general prevalence of the synthetic or constructive methods of instruction in elementary schools in Protestant Europe, have deemed it desirable to furnish the schoolmasters and promoters of schools in this country with examples of the application of such methods to three departments of instruction, viz.-reading, writing, and vocal

music.

Before describing the application of the principle to these divisions of elementary instruction, the general relations of the principle itself deserve some consideration.

During infancy the child has to become acquainted with the external world: his senses are in incessant activity; the sense of sight has to be placed in harmony with the sense of touch and of muscular movement; the distance, form, weight, and other qualities of objects have to be determined; the child is making continual discoveries; it constantly presses upon the region of the unknown. This process is chiefly synthetical. It is by the acquisition of new facts, and their combination with those already known, that the child gradually acquires knowledge, and corrects the errors into which he has fallen.

In the acquisition of language he is greatly aided by his faculty of imitation. In the use of this faculty he proceeds in two separate directions. In the imitation of sounds he first tries those which are shortest and simplest, and gradually acquires the more complex. A similar law determines his progress in all that relates to the structure of sentences. He acquires the names of objects with which he is familiar, and first of those which interest his affections. Then he learns to name the qualities of

The method of a logical arrangement of questions.

those objects. Their motions, actions, and influence on other bodies follow; and in these and every other part of his acquirements the simple precedes the complex. By this constructive process all his early acquirements are made.

Pestalozzi proposed to imitate this process in the further education of the child. Analysis appeared to him the duty of the educator, and the necessity for education was equivalent to the need of an interpreter of natural and moral phenomena.

The influence of tradition, and of more sure and permanent records, on civilization, are in harmony with this view of the means and limits of self-education, and of the first duties of a teacher.

In determining the mode of applying this process to any subject of instruction, that subject may be regarded from many points of view, and in each of these directions it may be found important to apply the same process. For example, language may be analysed-1. In relation to the sounds of which it is composed. 2. In relation to the signs of those sounds, as a printed or written language. 3. In relation to the combination of those sounds from words into sentences. 4. As respects the objects and subjects of which it treats. 5. As respects the laws of its structure, and modes in which it may be employed.

A child has commonly made considerable progress in the first and third of these departments of languages, by combining such sounds as he finds it most easy to acquire, before he has been called to examine the second; and here it is evident that his powers of analysis, or of any useful acquisition, would fail, without the aid of a skilful interpreter of the printed or written sign.

It is at this point that the instruction given in an elementary school ordinarily commences; and the difficulty of teaching to read the English language by any clearly constructive process has frequently engaged the attention of persons who have written on this subject, and has been the object of many very ingenious methods, which, however, from their imperfection, have been only partially adopted.

Consequently, the masters of elementary schools have generally persevered in a purely dogmatic method of instruction in reading, exercising no faculty but that of memory, and requiring, from that faculty, exertions greater than are demanded at any subsequent period of instruction.

The difficulties experienced by all who have attempted to introduce more rational methods of teaching to read have arisen from the great variety of the sounds which are represented by the same signs in the English language, and the variety of the signs which are frequently used to denote the same sound. This complexity has appeared too great to be surmounted by any attempt to arrange the signs of sounds in a rational order, ascending from the simple to the complex. A proposal made by Mr. Edgeworth contained in it the principle which has been adopted with greater

or less success in those countries in which elementary education has received the most skilful development, and it happily describes the common errors.*

In teaching a child to read, it is necessary first to teach him to recognise the simplest elements of sounds, and to show how they are combined to form the words with which he is familiar. In selecting words for this purpose the teacher is careful that they shall contain elementary sounds of the simplest kind, and in their simplest combinations, first-and then to proceed to those which present somewhat more difficulty.

The child is accustomed by frequent repetition to this reconstruction of words, thus analysed by the teacher. It acquires by degrees a knowledge of the simple sounds, and is enabled to recognise them in the words which it hears. It is thus prepared to understand that letters represent the sounds of which words are composed, and with many of which it has become familiar. The remaining difficulties would soon be surmounted if the sounds. were all simple, and if they were invariably represented by the same letter, or if the same letter did not often represent more than one sound. Some of the radical sounds of the English language are, however, compounded of two simple sounds.

This complexity renders any phonic analysis of the language exceedingly difficult. The preface to Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary enumerates the chief varieties of sound which occur, and the various modes of representing them by letters; and at first sight it would appear rather to cause an increase than a diminution of the difficulties of teaching children to read, if all these varieties are to be distinguished in teaching. This would be true if the labour of the analysis had to be encountered by every schoolmaster, or if it were impossible to furnish him with a manual making him acquainted with the principles on which the analysis is conducted, and on which the instruction is to be communicated; and also (which is of pre-eminent importance) present him with lesson-books in which in each successive lesson the children advance from one combination or class of combinations to another, without having their reasoning powers distracted by the occurrence of varieties not referable to the same law, or with which they have not previously been made acquainted. By such means the schoolmaster may obtain, in a compendious and simple form, a clear view of the principles on which the phonic combinations of the language depend. He may receive concise directions as to the extent to which it is necessary or desirable to make children acquainted with these principles, and, as far as such instruction is desirable, with the method of conveying it. He is spared all the labour of analysis and arrangement, and he is only * Practical Education, chap. ii., on Tasks, vol. i.

Analysis according to the sounds of which the spoken language is composed.