78 



NATURE 



{April 24, 1890 



service to the children who attend it and to their parents." 

 Taken one by one, the suggestions may seem unimportant ; 

 collectively, however, they indicate a policy of taking the 

 parents frankly into confidence, and so, if possible, of 

 establishing a new link of interest between the parent 

 and the school, besides the mere " cash-nexus " of the 

 school pence, which are destined so soon to disappear. 



Under the head of " class subjects " an explanation is 

 given of the object of the great changes in Schedule II., 

 which, we learn, have been introduced in order to allow 

 of greater freedom to teachers of different tastes and 

 capacities, and to localities of different industries and 

 requirements. " One good teacher of geography may 

 attach special value to physical facts and phenomena ; 

 another who lives in a manufacturing or maritime town 

 prefers to make commercial and industrial geography and 

 the interchange of productions the leading features of 

 his lessons." The same standard is, so far as possible, 

 to be kept in view, in estimating the teaching of all the 

 various alternative courses ; but, subject to this one con- 

 sideration, complete freedom of choice and treatment is 

 to be given to teachers and managers. " In sanctioning 

 any modification of the printed schemes it will be 

 necessary to have regard to the experience and qualifica- 

 tions of the teacher, and to any special opportunities 

 afforded in the town or district for instruction by a skilled 

 demonstrator, who visits several schools in succession, 

 or who gives collective lessons at suitable centres." 



The instructions further confirm the view we expressed 

 when commenting on the Code, that the policy of the De- 

 partment will be to encourage class teaching at the expense 

 of specific subjects. " Those managers and teachers who 

 desire to continue the object-lessons of the infant school 

 in due order through all the lower standards, and so to 

 lead up to the regular study of natural history or physics 

 in the higher, will probably think it better to treat science 

 as a class subject than to postpone specific instruction 

 until the fifth standard." 



The recognition of continuity, and the idea of the school 

 course as a connected whole, strikes us as a new and 

 valuable feature in the instructions. From the infant 

 school the child is to be led on through a series of 

 object-lessons to the scientific class-teaching of the upper 

 school, and thence in some cases to specific instruction 

 in the higher standards. But all this is but the beginning. 

 " Teachers should not be satisfied unless the instruction 

 in specific subjects awakens in the scholar a desire for 

 further knowledge, and makes him willing to avail himself 

 of such opportunities as are afforded locally by a Science 

 Class, a Polytechnic Institute, a course of University Ex- 

 tension Lectures, a Free Library, or a Home-Reading 

 Circle." All this is a truism, it may be said ; but it is un- 

 usual language for an olificial document, and carries us 

 forward in imagination to the time, which must come 

 sooner or later, when such fragmentary and scattered in- 

 stitutions as are here enumerated will take their proper 

 place as parts of a great scheme of national education. 



We fear that the realization of the aims of the Depart- 

 ment may be materially impeded if a literal construction 

 is to be placed on the clause providing that the same 

 subject may not be taken both as a "class" and as a 

 "specific" subject. Does this restriction merely mean 

 that no child is to be presented in the same subject under 



both heads — an obviously reasonable stipulation — or that 

 no children in a school may take as a specific subject any 

 branch of study which is taken as a class subject by any 

 other children in the school ? If the latter is the case, we 

 are informed that, in some cases at least, managers will 

 find themselves seriously hampered. 



Provision is made for the assistance of experts in the 

 examination of scholars, in cases where the managers 

 choose an "additional" subject with which neither the 

 inspector nor his assistants are fully conversant. But un- 

 fortunately this assistance, which will be given by a 

 colleague, on application to the chief inspector, will be 

 confined to the framing of suitable questions, and marking 

 the answers, and hence will be inapplicable to the case of 

 oral examination, in which it is most wanted. 



Those interested in manual instruction will turn with 

 interest to the thirty-fifth section, which lays down the 

 duties of inspectors with respect to this newly recognized 

 branch of instruction. It explains that the difficulty 

 which has hitherto prevented the recognition of manual 

 instruction as part of the ordinary course of instruction in 

 a public elementary school has been removed by the 

 alteration in the terras of Art. 12 (/), though how such a 

 change in Departmental regulations can alter the sense of 

 an Act of Parliament we are left to conjecture. The in- 

 structions suggest such exercises as "modelHng, the 

 cutting, fixing, and inventing of paper patterns, the form- 

 ing of geometrical solids in cardboard, and the use of 

 tools and instruments," which are in use in some foreign 

 schools, and are found to be " not without a useful reflex 

 influence on all the ordinary school studies." The inspector 

 is to report on the working of any system of manual in- 

 struction which may be adopted, though "no special 

 grant is made by this Department." The words we have 

 italicized clearly tend to confirm our impression as to the 

 intention of the Science and Art Department to include 

 manual instruction in their next Directory. 



It is rather strange that under the head of " drawing " no 

 reference is made to the change by which in future draw- 

 ing will be made compulsory in boys' schools and optional 

 in infant departments. It is true that drawing in ordinary 

 schools will, as now, be paid for by the Science and Art 

 Department, but power is given by the new Code to Her 

 Majesty's Inspector to exempt schools from the necessity 

 of taking the subject where the means of teaching it can- 

 not be procured. We should like to know what standard 

 the inspector will adopt in using this dispensing power. 

 Will the standard be the same in all districts ? 



This is the question to which we return again and again 

 after examining in detail the various changes in the Code 

 and the instructions. All will depend on the inspectors. 

 What will their action be ? We agree on the whole in 

 the praise accorded in the instructions to the " ability, 

 discretion, and fairness with which Her Majesty's In- 

 spectors discharge their arduous duties," but nevertheless, 

 in particular cases, complaints of their action have not been 

 wanting. The inspectors have hitherto been burdened with 

 an amount of routine work which has to some extent 

 hindered them from forming a really intelligent estimate 

 of the value of the school work which they have to assess. 

 This burden is now lightened, more visits may be paid 

 without notice, and thus more intimate knowledge may 

 be acquired of the real work of the school. " It will be 



