E.—lβ,

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this point of view, the hostility of the average parent, acquiesced in by the Board, to reasonably frequent changes in the Readers that may be used in the public schools is greatly to be deplored. The cause of this hostility to a desirable and helpful change and variety is obviously the expense it entails on the heads of families. The time seems to have come when an effort should be made to lessen this expense. As we compel all parents to send their children to school with high regularity, and incidentally compel them to buy all needful school-books, is it unreasonable to ask that these books should be procured at the lowest possible cost ? If all school-books, and especially all reading-books, were published by the Education Department, printed by the Government Printer, and supplied at cost-price through the agency of Boards and head-teachers or otherwise, the outlay incurred by heads of families would be g - eatly reduced. ■■ v "j "Recitation is worthily treated in only a relatively small number of schools. Mr. Crowe bluntly says, " This subject is badly named. Treated as it is in this district (the southern), repetition would be a much more suitable term." Mr. Mulgan writes of it : " This subject has not improved to any great extent, if at all, during the last few years. -When I say that the repetition was accurate I have exhausted the laudatory vocabulary. Clearness of enunciation, pleasant delivery, and, above all, expression, are conspicuous by their almost entire absence. I find, too, that the meaning of simple passages is not always understood. So far as the younger children are concerned, it does not matter very greatly whether the meaning is known or not, so long as the pupils are interested in learning the poems. With the older pupils, however, a knowledge of the meaning of the passages learnt is a matter of such absolute necessity as to form an irreducible minimum of what should be required." There is, I believe, considerable ground for these criticisms, and teachers who are true to themselves and their calling will need to make a strenuous effort to teach recitation more worthily. No poem should be committed to memory until the reading of it has been properly taught. With older pupils the general study of the poems as specimens of literary art should be complete and thorough. Not only should the meaning of the language be understood, but the nature and force of the imagery and the other rhetorical devices that give poetry its characteristic excellences, should be carefully considered. The general scene and setting, as well as the emotional effects, should also be noticed. All this is indispensable if the learning and study of choice poetry are to contribute to the growth and ripening of literary taste in any worthy degree. No teacher should feel that the demand for such treatment is unreasonable. In teaching|,both writing good work done in the great majority of schools. Mr. Grierson finds writing "not altogether satisfactory, though in many schools it is distinctly good. In a few schools the pupils, while writing, are allowed to assume a posture that absolutely prohibits the possibility of good writing." Serviceable lessons in word-building are generally given, but, so far, no really helpful text-book has appeared, so that teachers have had to rely mainly on their own resources in evolving a course of lessons. It is highly desirable that most or even the whole of the work done under this head should be entered up in the pupils' exercise-books. In general the written composition exercises have afforded evidence of careful, and often of welldirected, training. Weakness in this subject is most commonly apparent in Standards IV and V. On the whole, teachers are aiming at, and are to a creditable degree reaching, a distinctly higher level of ■performance than was thought possible a few years ago. Insistence on fairly long exercises has done much good by encouraging thought and requiring consideration of its orderly arrangement. Teachers should be inexorable in enforcing this demand. The schools of the northern district display some grave weaknesses, but in them " the composition exercises were in general well done. As a rule, the pupils wrote naturally, and seemed to find no difficulty in complying with the regulation as to quantity." In Standards IV and V classes the comparison of familiar animals and objects might be more generally used as topics for composition exercises. Many have found such subjects helpful in eliciting thoughtful observation. For the culture of the imagination original stories suggested by suitable pictures, and the so-called " autobiographies " of animals and articles of use and of dress, might appear more freely on the list of composition subjects. Oral composition —one of the new features of the syllabus—has been very fairly dealt with in the lower classes. Mr. Goodwin says he has often found it good in Standards I and 11. " The importance of oral composition," Mr. Mulgan writes, " does not seem yet to have been fully realised. One of the aims of education is to insure that a pupil has an ample fund of information about the common things of life, and that the words necessary to set it forth are readily forthcoming. This can be best secured by a course of oral composition continued throughout the school, and dealing in the case of the younger pupils with talks on familiar subjects. There is hardly any subject demanding greater skill than that of oral composition. Much of the work done under this head is marred by the too liberal help given by teachers —the result partly of anxiety to cover as much ground as possible, and partly of the choice of unfamiliar and unsuitable subjects." Among suitable subjects common domestic and wild animals, vehicles of various kinds, the apartments of a house, articles of furniture and utensils (such as the kettle, the bellows, the looking-glass, the clock, the lamp, &c), the operations of gardening, farming, and house-building, and even familiar trees and plants possessed of well-marked characteristics (such as the cabbage-tree, the oak, the pine, the willow, the tree-fern, the cabbage, the turnip, &c.) might find a place. About any such subject even young children will have a good deal to say, and could soon be trained to set it forth in satisfactory form. The forming of sentences to contain given words is not to be commended in this connection. Altogether, oral composition wisely handled will prove a valuable agent in securing facility of literary expression, and much may be expected of it. In most schools the parts of formal grammar that are important for correct writing receive a considerable share of attention. As text-books on grammar are no longer in general use, most or even the whole of the work done under this head should be concisely entered up in the pupils' exercise-books. For the higher classes in all schools there should be prepared a scheme of work setting out a suitable