844 REPORT— 1887. 



into our school courses in the higher grades, take a secondary place in the order of 

 studies ; lectures and text-books, more than experimental work and proof by 

 illustration, have to be employed from lack of time ; thus memory is again relied 

 upon instead of mental digestion and assimilation. 



It has been found that the introduction of objects and pictorial illustrations 

 greatly facilitates the efforts of teachers and aids the comprehension of children, 

 although the faculty of observation alone is exercised. How much greater, then, 

 would be the benefit to teacher and pupil if to observation were added the exercise 

 of the faculty of manual production, and if the conception of a truth or a fact should 

 terminate in the creation of an object with the hands to fully demonstrate its 

 properties and qualities ? 



Thus manual exercises and training would become the best aid to mental 

 development and culture, when continued systematically in conjunction with class 

 instruction. 



It will not be difficult to find ample place and time for manual or creative work 

 together with art work, both being based on drawing — mechanical and free- 

 hand — in all our elementary schools, by reducing the time bestowed on subjects of 

 an abstract character in the present Education Code. The change would be one of 

 gradual growth, depending on the qualifying of teachers. 



As our technical schools develop, opportunity will be afforded for teachers to be 

 trained in accordance with the duties they will have to perform in the elementary 

 schools. 



It is not desirable to teach trades or handicrafts in schools, but it is imperative 

 to combine %vork with instruction, that children may be better equipped mentally 

 than they are at present for all the trades, employments, and duties of life. 



4. Technical Education : the Form it should talced 

 By Edward J. Watherston. 



The author, whose argument was completely elucidated by statistics, laid down 

 three propositions: — (1) That, side by side with the ordinary elementary instruc- 

 tion given at present, all children should be instructed in drawing, and, after seven 

 years, in elementary science. (2) That children between ten and thirteen years of 

 age should receive definite practical instruction in handicraft work, if necessary, by 

 the exclusion of some of the more purely literary instruction at present given in 

 our schools. (3) That children, after thirteen years of age, should, by means of 

 scholarships or the payment of fees, have the opportunity of perfecting tbeir earlier 

 instruction in higher elementary schools, or, as they are called abroad, appren- 

 ticeship schools. Considerable difference of opinion existed as to the age at which 

 children should receive technical instruction. He thought that the Sixth Standard, 

 .as proposed by the Technical Instruction Bill, was too high, because if that proposal 

 had been accepted, only 128,151 children, throughout 19,173 schools, would have 

 been eligible tor technical instruction. If any standard was to be prescribed — a pre- 

 scription which he thought unnecessary — the Fourth — in which, last quarter, 

 454,752 scholars were presented for examination — would be more appropriate. It 

 seemed to be imperative that some technical handicraft instruction should he given, if 

 necessary, to the exclusion of some of the merely literary teaching. For one clever 

 and lucky youth who rose from the National School to the University a thousand 

 — aye, more — would, and must remain at the bench, the anvil, the loom, the engine, 

 the plough. That being so, after the child had learnt to read, write, and cipher 

 well, he should at once be inducted into at least the rudiments of some branch of 

 technical industry that would enable him to master, far more accurately than now, 

 the handicraft he adopted at a later period. He should become a half-time scholar, 

 spending one-half of his time in the literary department, where instruction in 

 drawing and mathematics should be the main features, and the other half in a 

 workshop-school, to which it might be affiliated. In the workshop-school, which 



' Published by John Lindsay, 104 High Street, Edinburgh. 



