What Sir Charles Reed says about the education given in the schools seems to come to this, that the children are not overtaught. He quotes the testimony of Mr. Alderson on this point, who, in not altogether ornamental phrase, says that "Elementary school work nicely executed, is, at present, the characteristic note of their operations." Sir Charles goes on to speak of the Bible instruction given in the board schools, and here, we regret to say, he descends to twaddle. What a sharp school boy has said about the lessons to be learnt from the Good Samaritan may be told after dinner, pleasantly, and with effect, but it hardly seems to be consistent with the dignity that should characterise an address of this kind. In the same way the story of the boy who gave a halfpenny to the collection for the Indian famine, and seemed to think that "want would be known no more" had better been left untold. Again, the chairman of the London Board must have had a presentiment that he was talking idly, when he gave utterance to such a sentence as this— "Of the instruction in history, in particular, it must be said that it is given in few schools, and when given is too often a dry matter of dates and dynasties and battles, instead of the broader view of the growth and progress of our country." The word "instead," in this sentence shows that Sir Charles would abolish in the teaching of history all mention of dates and dynasties and battles, and what a strange and lying jumble history would be then. The dates and battles and dynasties must be given, as well as the broader view of the growth and progress of our country.

What Sir Charles Reed says about the anxiety of the board for the physical condition of the young is very sensible :

In the eager discussion of educational questions, it might seem that the physical condition of the young was lost sight of; but it would be a mistake to suppose that the board regarded this as a secondary consideration. The constant ventilation of school and class rooms, the ample supply of pure water for drinking, the adaptation of desks and seats, the periods of recreation, the covered and open playgrounds, the drill and gymnastic apparatus, all bear witness to this care; while the recommendation that some of the playgrounds should be made available under certain conditions for children not belonging to the schools, is a strong proof of our desire to make as many as possible sharers of the advantage. We have no reason for thinking that our children are overtaxed by the work of the school or their home lessons; there is greater danger of the strain telling upon pupil teachers, who, in addition to the instruction they give, have to prepare themselves for examinations.

School libraries are now connected with every school, the books of which are selected with great care. The tendency to twaddle re-appears in the statement on corporal punishment, which seems to regard it as the relic of a barbarous age. One of the board inspectors thinks it a very gratifying fact that it has been "actually abolished" in twenty-eight departments of his district, and has been "practically abolished" in the

great majority of girls' and

:

infants' schools. The inspector goes on to remark, "It ought to be known that the head teacher alone has the power to inflict it, and that every case is reported to the board." All that we have to say on this point, is that we live in an age singularly intolerant of physical pain, but prepared to sanction any amount of mental torture that may be necessary. The hypocrisy of the Pharisee will be strongly developed in schools where corporal punishment is abolished. If troublesome boys cannot be whipped, they will be punished in ways worse than whipping, but which methods have this notable advantage, there is no need to report them to the board. We are not at all surprised that board inspectors, like some of the prophets under the Jewish monarchy, love to prophesy smooth things-things that will be quoted with approbation in the annual address of the "Chairman of the Board."

Later on in this address, we have a prolonged wail over the vagrant children--the street Arabs—which the board was constituted to exterminate, but which cling to their wild life with a strange tenacity, and seem to successfully defy all the efforts of the board. But Sir Charles has this consolation, the twelve Apostles would not have succeeded where his visitors have failed. "Our visitors have to work daily in places of which it has been said that an army of Apostles would be beaten, by the ordinary conditions of life, in these back slums.'" There is a spice of profanity in such a quotation as this, which somewhat detracts from its brilliancy. The visitors have succeeded in numbering and registering their enemies, and in some instances in drawing them to school. The only result has been that they "have to return day after day to these 'lazar houses of modern life.' Sir Charles seems as fond of quotations as Mr. Richard Swiveller, and he places us somewhat at a disadvantage, as he does not inform us of the sources from which they are drawn. The net result of this part of the work of the board seems to be this, that the street Arabs are numbered and registered, but cannot be got into the schools, at which, we doubt not, the scholars and teachers of the surrounding schools rejoice; and some evil-disposed persons think it is a state of things that the board wink at, having no great desire to come to close quarters with these street Arabs themselves.

The last part of this report consists of a defence against the charge of extravagance made from time to time against the London Board. Sir Charles regards the Education Rate as an insurance against future and menacing evils." He quotes the letter sent by the Education Department to the memorial from the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, to show that the board do not spend more money, in proportion to the

work they have to do, than their country brethren.

The only successful way of meeting this charge is by stating that the ratepayers are paying now for the meanness which characterised all educational payments during the twenty years before the Education Act was passed.

THE BLUE-BOOK FOR 1877.

B

EFORE we commence our examination of the Blue-Book

recently issued we must take a bird's-eye view of the reports yet unnoticed in the volume for last year. As the gentlemen who have written these reports will not be required to write again for three years it is fitting that what they have written-the fruit of three years' observation and meditation in the past-should not be passed over without criticism.

Mr. Oakely inspects schools in Durham, and what he says about writing is very good. He is glad "the detestable system of 'impositions' is almost unknown at elementary schools."

Where we find bad writing we also usually find bad slates and fragments of slates not properly ruled or graduated, stumps of pencils an inch long, paper of the poorest quality, pens with points like needles, careless and ill-formed black-board writing by the teacher and pupil-teachers. All these things require careful attention and receive it at all good schools.

This report abounds in common sense and acute observation, and we wish our space would allow of extended extracts. He very justly says, "Knowledge of the (supposed) exact heights of half a dozen mountains in the Pennine chain is quite worthless, yet children should be taught in round numbers the general heights to which the highest mountains run in a country, and should compare these with heights in their own neighbourhood, and similarly with other geographical features." He exposes the "percentage" system of passes, but at this time of day it seems like thrice slaying the slain.

Mr. Parez inspects schools in Cumberland and Westmorland, and part of Lancashire. He questions whether the parsing of idiomatic phrases in the monthly pupil-teachers' examinations is really a good test of grammatical knowledge. "It is very difficult often, even if possible, to reduce such phrases under the forms and rules of grammar; at any rate, the solution depends on a minute research, which is not to be expected of our examinees." He makes another excellent recommendation-"No school ought to be considered complete without a good children's library." Like Mr. Oakely, he reports that night schools are in a languishing condition.

Mr. Rice-Wiggin inspects schools in Stafford and Derby. He complains much of the bad management of schools by school managers. The Church of England schools, Roman Catholic schools, and British schools are managed the best; the worst are Wesleyan and board schools. His explanation of this is not to us satisfactory, since, to our thinking, British schools are mostly altogether in the hands of their teachers, who are, however, generally good teachers.

He thinks

Mr. Sandford inspects schools in the Sheffield district. "the schools in Germany and Switzerland, in so far as they are taught by adults, enjoy a great advantage over the English schools, in which so much of the teaching is carried on by boy and girl teachers." He thinks pupil-teachers ought not to be apprenticed till the age of 15 or 16. He reports an increase in the number of night schools. He does not think the 40-hours system works well, and what he says has reason on its side. He also objects, again with reason, to the rule requiring night scholars to be examined in a standard higher than that of the preceding year. Mr. Sandford knows about what he is writing, and his

report ought to be well considered at the Education Department.

Mr. Smith inspects schools in the Chester district. The following passage is very just, and we wish inspectors would attentively bear it in mind in their examinations :

Vivid pictures are often drawn of the stupidity of children, and especially of the ignorance which they display of the meanings of common English words. But such pictures are more vivid than true. A child may understand the meaning of a word perfectly well without being able to find a synonym for it. To give a definition of the commonest word off-hand is not always easy. A well-known story is told of an inspector who expressed his surprise that no child could tell him the meaning of the word "boat," and who, upon being asked himself to define it, said, "Why a boat is a a boat, you know. Everybody knows what a boat is." The story is too good perhaps to be true; but it points a moral nevertheless.

There is again another passage in this report which we cannot forbear quoting. It is very good, and very true, and withal necessary for these times

:

We want to be assured that our elder children can not only read a book which they have read two or three times over to their teacher, but that they can take up a book or a newspaper and read it without previous preparation. My practice has been to test the first class with an article in the Times or the Saturday Review, and, severe as the test may seem, in a large number of schools it was successfully borne. The paper was passed round the class and the article so read that the listeners could understand it, the answers to my questions proving that their minds had, to some extent at least, grasped the meaning of the writer. And I venture to submit to your lordships that a boy who can endure this test, if not highly educated, has at least got the key to learning in his hands. He may be unable to repeat long lists of capes and gulfs; he may not know the exact dates of every battle in English history and of every king's accession, all of which many children repeat with voluble facility; he may know nothing of physiology, botany, physical geography, French, German, Greek, all of which subjects are supposed now-a-days to be within reach of our elementary school children; but in the real knowledge of his mother tongue which is implied in the fairly intelligent reading of a passage he has never seen before, he is furnished at least

with instruments of education which, if his mind be of an acquisitive order, he may afterwards use to advantage. But the vast majority of minds are not of this order. They will not repay deep cultivation; and in less than a couple of years after leaving school the long lists of capes and bays and dates of battles which as a schoolboy he repeated with such faultless accuracy will have disappeared altogether from the mind of the youth as he follows his plough.

Mr. Smith has no mercy for the teachers of private adventure schools, which schools he calls "nurseries of ignorance." He finds the specific subjects in the Fourth Schedule never attempted with much success. "I wish some of those doctrinaires who discourse learnedly at social science meetings would spend half a day at one of our elementary schools, and see what a teacher's difficulties really are."

They would have this fact brought to their notice, which is so often forgotten in such discussions, that the vast majority of the children leave school before they are 12 years of age. Some few linger longer, but practically with the bulk of our scholars all must be done before they are 12. Those learned gentlemen and ladies who complain of the low state of education might learn also another fact, that most of the children, in rural districts especially, come from unintellectual homes. It is difficult to realise what that fact means to the teacher. Everything has to be learned during the few short hours of school-time. During all the rest of the day the scholar sees and hears little which will enlarge his mind. The cottage home has few books or pictures or maps. The illustrated papers, from which children in the higher grades of life learn so much, do not find their way there. There is probably no intellectual conversation round the fireside, and in most cases a good deal of manual labour is exacted from the children after school is over. The result is that the child leads as it were two lives, which are totally unconnected. The home-life does not dovetail into the school-life at any point. What is learnt at school is isolated in the mind, and receives no illustrations from the surroundings of the home.

We have been proclaiming this truth ourselves until we are almost weary, and it is refreshing to find it so well enforced by Mr. Smith. The whole report abounds in excellent observations, and shows great consideration for the teacher's difficulties.

Mr. Steele inspects schools in the Preston district of Lancashire. In his visits without notice "the irregularities we discovered were very few, and, in the main, unimportant." As regards teachers, their visits, he says, "have served greatly to confirm the previous estimate of their high character and strict performance of duty."

Mr. Synge inspects schools in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. He reports that school boards find great difficulty in managing their schools.

Mr. Vertue, who is inspector for Surrey and Sussex, sarcastically remarks that "a lobby or porch in which the hats, &c., of the children. could be left, instead of being huddled into a corner of the schoolroom, or hung around its walls, is almost invariably regarded as a luxury that can well be dispensed with." The walls, too, are not furnished, and the ventilation is imperfect. On the day of inspection the offices are models of cleanliness, but they are far different at visits without notice.

Mr. Waddington inspects schools in the counties of Monmouth and