SCHOOLROOM ARRANGEMENTS.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2156, 22 January 1881, Page 2

SCHOOLROOM ARRANGEMENTS.

The Dunedin School Committee head their annual report with a dissertation on the benefits of making school premises attractive to the children. The headmasters, they say, are, without exception, earnest in their endeavours to keep the premises free from scribbling of any kind, the schoolrooms are hung with pleasing pictures, and “ flower-pots are freely introduced.” “ The committee,” the report proceeds, “ are happy to boar testimony to the fact that the children take a very lively interest in their growth.” This we can quite imagine. Anybody would be intensely interested in watching the growth either of a flower-pot or of a committee. And, again—“ The children learn their lessons better than before these were introduced.” A singular phenomenon this, peculiar, perhaps, to Dunedin children. The report proceeds : “ The head-masters are anxious to see this interest in the schools increase, so are most of the assistants; and although as yet the sympathies of all are not enlisted, the Committee hope that before next year their successors may be able to report that without exception all the teachers understand that the children have something better to learn than even reading, writing and arithmetic.” All this is rather mixed, but, wo presume, allusion is made to habits of order and cleanliness and to the love of the beautiful. The Dunedin School Committee are on the right track, but their grammar is feeble. A short course in their own schools would do them no harm.