No. 12.

PAPERS FOR THE SCHOOLMASTER.

FEBRUARY 1, 1852.

This month our publication will complete its first year. We sent it forth on its humble mission with the hope that it might serve to help forward in some measure a great cause which is come to be regarded in this country with more attention and sympathy, and in which its highest interests are involved. We sought to reach the homesteads of some solitary workers in village schools, or within crowded cities, and to offer our best guidance and encouragement to those who are associated together in this important enterprise. Our thanks are due to all who have given us their confidence and have helped to extend our sphere of influence. Kind words and wishes have often greeted us in our work, and lead us to hope that our efforts for that class whom we designed to benefit have not been without result.

Thus much on the past; for the future we shall seek to merit that confidence with which we have been entrusted. Wider influence opens out new responsibilities; and the readiness with which our Papers have been received will animate our efforts to extend their interest and usefulness. Our purpose is to keep strictly in view the wants of elementary schools; it is for these we write. It will be seen that we propose to enlarge our publication next month: we hope thus to fall in with wishes which several correspondents have expressed, though we have sought to avoid an enlargement which would involve such an additional expense as might seem objectionable to some of our readers.

It has been our endeavour to help those who are engaged in Education with plain suggestions on its theory and practice, and to awaken an increased interest in their work. We would remind them again that it rests mainly with themselves to determine the future progress and efficiency of English elementary education; already we seem to have reached a turning point in its history: and they can do much to communicate to it an earnest spirit and a wise direction, and to spread intelligence and moral habits and Christian influences amongst the masses of the English people.

PUPIL TEACHERS AND QUEEN'S SCHOLARSHIPS. We insert the following letter with an earnest desire to remove anxiety from the minds of a large and deserving class represented by the writers, and to encourage them amid circumstances apparently calculated to depress their zeal in a cause to which they have devoted their lives. We will place the letter before our readers, and then first examine the charge which it implies, and secondly the remedy which may be found for the evils of which it complains.

To the Editor of the "Papers for the Schoolmaster." SIR,-We hope you will pardon the liberty taken in addressing you, but we think that the importance of our inquiry will be a sufficient reason for so doing.

What does the Government intend doing with unsuccessful candidates for "Queen's Scholarships?"

Their success as candidates does not really depend on themselves, for at the recent examination for Queen's Scholarships, in December last, Her Majesty's Inspector stated, in reply to a question proposed by one of the candidates, that, in his opinion, out of the competitors for "Queen's Scholarships then present, less than a half would be accepted;" and to another question he replied, "There are no Government offices worth spending a life in." Now, Sir, if such an answer were given to the candidates on that occasion, what answers will be given to the enormous number of candidates in the following years? and what will become of the 800 or 900 youths who will thus be thrown on the "wide world," their hopes blighted and their strength for manual labour misapplied? Does the averting of these fearful alternatives depend upon the Pupil Teachers' own exertion? No! For fair promises were made, as will be seen by reference to the "Minutes of the Committee of Council for Education," for 1846, and in which may be read, "That the Committee of Council on Education, on comparison of the testimonial and examination papers of these apprentices, should award for as many as they think fit an Exhibition of £20 or £25 to one of the Normal Schools under the Inspection of Her Majesty's Inspector." So far this is perfectly fair and has been acted upon. But glancing further down we see their Lordships were also of opinion that it might be useful to offer further incentives to exertion and good conduct among the "Pupil Teachers, by opening to such of them as might not display the highest qualifications for the office of Schoolmaster, but whose conduct and attainments were satisfactory, an opportunity of obtaining employment in the public service under regulations as may be hereafter adopted."

This last promise has not been, nor is likely to be, fulfilled.

Then why not have told us of this before we applied ourselves to the occupation of Teachers, with the apparently certain prospect of either being schoolmasters or public servants.

We can vouch for the accuracy of these statements, two of us being present when H. M. Inspector replied. Is not this enough to dishearten us? Will not these tidings be a favourable argument to the antagonists of the present system?

Trusting you will pardon the liberty we have taken, and favour us with a reply, allow us to remain (willing to give our names should you wish),

Jan. 13, 1852.

A FEW PUPIL TEACHERS.

Now, this charge is, indeed, a serious one; for it implies nothing less than a breach of faith towards a confiding class, called into existence by the holding out of hopes which were never intended to be realised. We beg however, our young readers to remember that the Government scheme for promoting education was necessarily an experimental one; it was scarcely possible but that some of its details, adjusted as they were to conjectural results, would have to be afterwards revised and modified. We acknowledge that there seems some reason to conclude that there has been a departure from the first intention of the Minutes of 1846, in regard to the encouragement and disposal of Pupil Teachers.

It is true that there is ample cover in the expression "to as many as they may see fit," to shelter, if necessary, a determination to revoke even the entire system of Queen's Scholarships. But the question, placed in a moral point of view is,-what is the fair construction to which these words are liable? Is it not one which justifies the expectation, which the majority of School Managers collected, that the appointment to a Queen's Scholarship would be the rule instead of, as now appears, the exception? The second quotation given in the letter, we confess, when connected with the words "to as many as they may see fit," and, regarded as their exponent, seems to intimate, that all, except those who do not evince peculiar fitness for the office of a Schoolmaster, should receive the privilege of a Queen's Scholarship, and that those who were rejected should be otherwise provided for. For the failure of these promises, we cordially offer our deepest sympathies with a class of the community which, we believe, under the excellent and fostering system of the Government, are calculated by their intelligence and their tone of character to make impression for good upon the country, however and wherever they are employed. But the truth is,-and on this ground we claim a kindly judgment from our young correspondents, that the system has answered too well. Its operation has produced so large a band of embryo teachers, and so large a proportion among them of well-prepared candidates for Queen's Scholarships, that the result has presented quite a problem to those who had not, perhaps, sufficiently estimated the Saxon energy and perseverance and intelligence which has been brought out in the actual development of the system. We trust that the Government will see that of all grants proposed by the responsible advisers of the Crown, it is to this the country will most cordially and ungrudgingly accede. We earnestly hope that by a more liberal bestowal of Queen's Scholarships the recommendation of all H. M. Inspectors to endow more largely our Normal Schools will be carried into effect, while by the same act faith will be kept with a class which the Government is itself responsible for having called into existence.

There is another evil to which our correspondents have not alluded, viz., the peculiar mode by which the system of Queen's Scholarships has been regulated. No number of Queen's Scholars can be allowed to any Normal School exceeding 25 per cent. of the aggregate of students resident at the time of examination. Granting that this high restriction of 25 per cent. is necessary for public economy, we can see no reason why the per centage should be calculated with reference to any given Training College, instead of to the aggregate number of students in the whole country. Two decided evils arise from adopting the former principle; first, candidates for Queen's

Scholarships are set upon the inquiry at what Training Colleges there is likely to be found the least competition; secondly, the Queen's Scholarships will often not depend upon merit, but on the accident of selecting some Training College where fewer candidates had presented themselves. For example, A, and B, two Pupil Teachers, from the same school, compete at different Training Colleges; A fails, while B succeeds, though he is acknowledged as, in every respect, inferior. Such an operation of the Minutes of the Education Committee must dishearten those who are connected with it, and will tend to neutralize its efforts.

In regard to the remedy, we suggest that the Training Colleges should devote their fund for Exhibitions to support those candidates who have been prevented from obtaining Queen's Scholarships through the limitation to which we have referred. We believe that the National Society made an arrangement by which the overplus at one of their Training Colleges was transferred to others under its control. At Cheltenham all who were excluded by the restriction as to the number of Queen's Scholars admissible had allotted to them every privilege to which such Scholarship would entitle them, provided their attainments justified it.

As it may not be generally known that no Pupil Teacher, who has not passed through a Normal College, is admissible at the general Easter Examination for Certificates, we strongly dissuade those who have failed to obtain a Queen's Scholarship from seeking to undertake at once the charge of an elementary School. Let them endeavour to obtain an Exhibition at one of the Training Institutions and make every effort to pay the remaining balance. When their own circumstances will not admit of this, their relatives or School Managers or other friends would, we feel sure, advance it, on the understanding that it is to be refunded out of the additional payment, which a certificate would bring to them as the fruit of a year's residence in a Training College. After such payment the augmentation of salary will become their own property, and they will have acquired besides all the advantages that would arise in future life from increased attainments, higher technical skill, and that education of mind and character which it is the object of our Training Colleges to promote.

METHODS OF TEACHING-ANALYSIS.

Analysis is the method of resolution or decomposition, by which ideas, sentences, arguments or subjects are separated into their elements. This process is necessary for the purpose of communicating knowledge in a simple and effective form, and is the opposite of synthesis. The difference between the two methods may be

illustrated in this way,-a watch is an instrument complete in its structure, and hence to obtain a complete idea of the thing-watch, we must gain a knowledge of its parts. This may be done in two ways, we may observe it as a whole, and then observe its analysis or decomposition, listening at the same time to explanations of the structure of its various parts and their uses, and by this means gain the complete idea of a watch. We may, however, gain the same complete idea in another way; we may observe the process of construction, how each part is fitted in its proper place, and is made to perform by its relations an assigned function, till the whole shall have been framed and made to do service as a timekeeper. The first would be the method of analysis, the latter synthesis.

It is an admitted fact, that but little either in the subjects or instrument of instruction is found in a simple form. Take any of the subjects of instruction, as Reading, Arithmetic, Geography, or Language, and it is evident that they can only be taught when decomposed into their elements, and these elements are made to take some natural or convenient arrangement. Again, take the subject of a simple reading lesson; in this, too, there exists the same necessity for resolution, that there may be gained an intelligence of its terms and sentences, before there can be an apprehension of it as a whole. Now this necessity is the greater, as the majority of words are symbols of general conceptions, terms growing out of the use of the faculty of abstraction and a subsequent generalization. Thus the predicable tree is the symbol of a general conception, and to obtain a complete idea of all that is signified under that term, it must be analysed, or submitted to what logicians call "division." As the physical element of a tree, we should have root, trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit, and these again admit of further analysis; and the idea of a tree cannot be said to be perfect, till it is made to include the apprehension of its parts.

To a cultivated mind, such analysis may be altogether unnecessary, but it must be borne in mind, especially by Teachers, that a child is a being but of yesterday, whose opportunities of observation have been but limited, and even supposing that power to have been properly trained and exercised, the child's notions will be more of generals than particulars. Besides children are not only physically, but mentally immature; we never expect the child to possess the physical power and energy of the man, so neither may we expect of them the mental power of a trained adult mind. Their powers of apprehension and mental digestion are such as befit their age, and it is with things as they are that Teachers have to operate. Since then children have but a limited measure of mental power, and as we have seen the subject and the instrument of instruction are