ELEMENTARY SCIENCE. 839 



State schools. The percentage of children nnder fourteen 

 who are educated in denominational and private schools is 

 very small. Most of the schools for boys and girls whose 

 parents are wealthy, or in easy circumstances, supply both 

 primary and secondary education, having junior and senior 

 departments. Only in a few of these schools is there systematic 

 science teaching in the lower department; though in the 

 higher department of several there is good teaching, especially 

 in the exact sciences, for tliose pupils who choose to avail 

 themselves of it. In the schools for girls of the same grade 

 of society matters are not so satisfactory. In the majority 

 little or nothing that can be called science teaching is 

 attempted, except, pehaps, task-work in catechisms de 

 omnibus rebus. It is wonderful how many teachers still 

 believe in catechisms, forgetting, or perhaps never having 

 recognised the truth, that children may be trained to repeat 

 glibly the stereotyped answers to set questions, without even 

 a glimmering of real knowledge in the subjects they are 

 expected to be thus learning. 



In the private and denominational schools, attended by 

 children of the working classes, as well as in the great 

 majority of the State schools, httle or nothing is attempted 

 in the teaching of elementary science ; although tor the 

 higher classes of the latter it is included in the " Standard of 

 Instruction." Only a small minority of the teachers have 

 had the training requisite for such teaching ; while, except a 

 limited supply of specimens and apparatus in the model 

 school, and a few charts illustrative of natural philosophy, 

 zoology, &c., in that and the other large town schools, there 

 is no material provided to assist them in the work. As may 

 naturally be expected, only a small percentage of the few 

 quahfied teachers, who are thus hindered in their work by 

 the want of apparatus, are sufficiently zealous to provide it at 

 their own expense. Those who are skilful in using chalk on 

 a blackboard, and are ready in improvising makeshift arrange- 

 ments, can do a great deal in helping children's conception, 

 but not sufficient to dispense with proper apparatus, specimens, 

 &c. The ordinary "object lessons," which should supply 

 some little instruction in science, are too often no better than 

 mere words, conveying at the best very inadequate ideas of 

 the subject supposed to be taught. 



To sum up this account of elementary science teaching in 

 the primary schools of Tasmania, it may be stated that, 

 except in a small percentage of the schools, there is virtually 



