6 o 2, On Technical Education. [Odtober, 
and he has opportunities for promotion : we have already 
learned how it fares with the Science teacher in these 
respedts. 
It is necessary, in order properly to estimate whether this 
Science teaching will have any effedt in improving the indus- 
tries of the country if the present system remains unaltered, 
to realise more thoroughly than we have yet done the 
teacher’s position as regards the payment the State may 
award him. Each course of instrudtion must consist at least 
of twenty-eight lessons, and each lesson must last at least 
one hour, and for pradtical subjedts an hour and a half; and 
even for non-experimental subjedts a teacher cannot properly 
teach them without some preparation for each lesson, — say 
one hour is or ought to be devoted to preparing matter for 
the lesson ; if an experimental science two hours more for 
preparing the experimental illustrations : in the latter case, 
therefore, four hours are or ought to be expended on each 
lesson. Now if the teacher is awarded any sum at all, it 
may, we have seen, be the munificent sum of £i for his 
labour : this would be at the rate of less than twopence 
farthing per hour. If he was so fortunate as to be 
awarded ten times that — viz., £10 — it would amount to 
is. g \d. per hour. 
The teacher cannot of course live on these small sums, 
and therefore, if Science teaching is his sole occupation, he 
must, in order to make a living, teach one or two subjects 
in half-a-dozen or more schools, or he must teach half-a- 
dozen or more Science subjedts, knowing little or nothing 
about the majority of them (see pages 96 and 97), in one or 
two schools, and he must cram his pupils for the stage and 
class which offer him the largest chance of success, and this 
we learn from the numbers quoted in the Science Report is 
the lowest stage and the lowest class in that stage. And as 
long as this state of things continues what the Deparment’s 
Examiners complain of — viz., the conventional descriptions 
of pieces of apparatus which have never been seen, still less 
used ; book-drill, in place of intelligent oral teaching; load- 
ing the memory with statements, with the sole objedt of 
reproducing them on paper at the Examinations, without at 
all understanding, or even attempting to understand, the 
Science to which these statements belong — must continue 
to be the mode of teaching under the system, because expe- 
rience has taught the teachers that it is the one best adapted 
for passing the largest numbers, and, in addition, it is the 
only one they could possibly adopt when they have to be so 
