498 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 



The underlying motive of the scheme is to vivify the class-room teaching 

 by bringing it into intimate contact with the out-of-school life of the district 

 in which the pupils move, thereby making the pupil an interested learner, 

 developing into an accurate, observant, reasoning, and adaptable man^ with 

 bodily, menUl, and spiritual faculties developed to the fullest possible extent. 



The school is situated in a small market-town of 5,000 inhabitants, served 

 by two lines of railway. The number of pupils has varied from fourteen at 

 the start to eighty-five, and now averages about seventy to seventy-five boys, aged 

 eight to eighteen, of whom all, except at most half-a-dozen, are day boys. About 

 two-thirds of the total come from surrounding towns and villages. The chief 

 industries of the locality comprise farming (milk, cheese, butter, and cider 

 making, with little arable land), brewing, quarrying, coal-mining, a little 

 lime-burning, brick-making, and the manufacture of lace-making machinery. 

 The school staff consists of the headmaster and four assistants, who receive 

 occasional help in the more technical portions of the science course from the 

 county experts in agriculture and horticulture. 



The buildings comprise a main block, including headmaster's house and 

 three class-rooms, cloak-room, &c. . and a detached block containing work.shop, 

 physical and chemical laboratories, lecture-room, balance-room, and store- 

 rooms. The physical laboratory is also used for practical botany, but experi- 

 ments in this connection are also set up in the lecture-rooms and chemical 

 laboratory. 



Out-of-doors about two-fifths of an acre are devoted to experimental and 

 demonstration plots, and there is a meteorological station. Formerly the plots 

 included gardens cultivated by individual boys, but they proved to be unsatis- 

 factory and of little real educational value, and were ultimately abandoned. 

 A model fruit plantation has been substituted. The boys are not called iipon 

 to do much manual labour in connection with these plots, but they use them 

 largely for experimental and observational work. 



For science work the school may be divided into three main divisions — 

 Preparatory, Middle, and Upper — and a boy spends an average of three years 

 in the Middle Division after reaching the age of twelve years. The following 

 is the division of time in class which has been found to give satisfactory 

 results : — • 



Preparatory Division, 8-12 years old. — Religious knowledge, I5 hour per 

 week; English subjects, including reading, writing, spelling, grammar, composi- 

 tion, history, geography, 15 hours; arithmetic, 7^ hours; physical exercises 

 (excluding organised games), f hour; art and music (singing), 2^ hours; 

 science, 1^ hour. 



Middle Division, 12-15 years. — Literary subjects, including religious know- 

 ledge, English, geography, history, 7^ hours ; mathematics, 6 hours ; language 

 (French), 3J hours; manual and physical training (apart from organised 

 games), 3 hours; science, 6 hours; art and music 2i hours. 



Upper Division, 15-18 years. — Literary subjects, 9 hours; mathematics, 

 6 hours ; language, 5^ hours ; science, 6 hours ; physical training, | hour ; art, 

 I5 hour. 



In the Preparatory Division the science taken is of an informal character, 

 such as that usually included under the term 'Nature Study.' The object 

 of the course is to stir up interest in Nature at large, and to develop the 

 observational and descriptive powers. Plants, animals, insects, natural 

 phenomena, simple experiments in mechanics, chemistry, physics, &c., are all 

 drawn upon to furnish subject-matter. Scientific terms are, as a rule, avoided, 

 but accuracy of observation and of description are demanded. The lessons 

 usually take the form of a conversation between the teacher and the class on 

 the specimens to be described, or the experiment to be observed. It is a general 

 rule all through the school that every observation made or answer given shall 

 be a complete sentence grammatically constructed, and 'No ' or 'Yes' without 

 amplification is never accepted as a satisfactory reply. Sketches are frequently 

 made in the course of the lesson, and the information gained is often utilised 

 in the next lesson on English composition or a question upon it is set to be 

 answered as home-work The boys frequently suggest subject? for future 



