E.—s.

The school handwork subjects are intended to develop deftness of touch, the sense of proportion, and a love for the beautiful. It is proposed that for the future all the girls in town schools shall take brushwork during their progress through the standards. It would thus be possible for them to attain a high degree of proficiency in one branch of handwork. The town school technical subjects have, in addition to the objects aimed at by the handwork classes, an indirect bearing on the pupils' capacity for productive work in actual employment. The boys take woodwork and physical measurements, and the girls cookery, with the elementary scientific principles underlying the art of cookery. Hitherto every boy and every girl in Standards V and VI has been required to take these practical classes ; but it is a question whether, in cases of exceptional literary ability, attendance at such classes should not be excused. This step should be taken only in individual cases, and then after consultation with the Inspector. There is not a shadow of doubt but that a practical training is of the utmost use to every boy and girl, but exceptional treatment is due to exceptional ability. The country school technical classes have a direct bearing on the occupations of the people. If the principles of agriculture and dairying are to be thoroughly known by the farming community, they must, in their beginnings. be acquired at the primary school. When once a pupil has left school for the land there is little time to think about principles. It is proposed that during the present year (1909) the district high schools shall undertake a thorough course in elementary agriculture. A rounded course of instruction during the entire school course of our best pupils could thus be undertaken. For the district high schools there will be drawn up a more advanced .scheme than.that prescribed for the standard classes, so that the work done will prepare pupils for the Civil Service .Junior and Matriculation Examinations, and. in the ease of those not desiring to pass examinations, will supply a body of principles that may be applied and put to the proof in agricultural operations. The arrangement whereby Mr. Browne will relieve Mr. Grant of the instruction and supervision of the agriculture and dairying classes in the north will lead to greater efficiency throughout the entire district in these most important subjects of public instruction. This paragraph may not be inaptly concluded with a quotation from the pen of Professor I). S. .lonian : " Training of the. hand," says the Professor in the Educational Review, " is really training of the brain. This is a motor world we live in—a world in which men do things. We of America are tire eminently a motor people. We do things. What can Ido with it? is the first interest of every child. And to learn to do things with the hand is of greater value as mental training than the disentanglement of phrases or the memorising of irregular verbs. The development of manual training of some sort for all boys and girls will represent the greatest immediate forward step in secondary education. Putt the purpose of this training must be intellectual, not to teach a trade, and only secondarily to fit for the engineering courses of the universities." Continuation and technical classes were held at twenty-one centres, of which seven were in the Northern District, six in the Central District, and eight in the Southern District. Concerning tinwork done by the classes at the various schools and centres, the Supervisors by their reports speak for themselves. There are. however, certain general considerations to which I may be allowed to refer. An attempt is being made to reduce to a system all practical work whether done at the primary schools, tin secondary departments of the district high schools, or at the technical schools. This, of course. is not the achievement of a day, and therefore there must be much adjustment before the system is anything like complete. So far as purely technical instruction is concerned, the Board's efforts have been directed towards securing the interest of the people, who to all intents and purposes have the administration of technical affairs, outside the primary and district high schools, entirely in their own bands. At each "I the technical schools there is a local director who acts as the executive officer of the local Committee, the Supervisor for the district being the medium of communication between the Committee and the Board. This arrangement has worked well. Work bearing on technical instruction firs, takes practical shape in the infant department under the guise of kindergarten, and it is continued in various forms of handwork throughout the school course. The Board's expert in handwork has this year been instructed to visit I he larger schools to show the, bearing of practical drawing, cardboard work, and woodwork on the other school subjects, notably on practical arithmetic and physical measurements. With the practical skill acquired during their primary training, such of the pupils as do not take up a purely literary course proceed to various branches of employment, except those that attend the technical day classes at Wanganui. It is just here, where all connection with educative influences is apt to be snapped, that the instruction given at the various technical schools and classes becomes invaluable : and if pupils do nol or cannot attend technical or continuation classes the effect of much of the instruction given at the primary schools will be irretrievably lost. It is thought by some that technical training is being foisted upon an unwilling people for no better reason than its vogue in other lands. Such do not reflect on the dangers of a purely literary education (by which is aeanl education solely through the medium of books), else they would view the matter in a different light. What is the main cause of the present dissatisfaction in India? It is very largely the result of misdirected education. Why is it that the " unemployed" question is always with us in a more or less acute form in a terribly acute form in Britain at the present time i It is the result of misdirected education to a very large extent. Were people taught to use their hands in conjunction with their brains in their youth, they would not in their manhood readily become helpless appendages to machinery, or cease to be real factors in the development of the State. Whence come the flotsam and jetsam of society —the wastrels, the ne'er-do-weels, and the " Weary Willies" ? They are to a large extent the product of misdirected or incomplete education. If people were alive to their own interests they would welcome practical and technical instruction in every shape and form, and parents would encourage their young people to bend their necks to the yoke for a time if they cannot look upon attendance at t lie technical schools as a pleasure; so that through this salutary discipline they may learn to look forward with confidence to tilling an honourable position in Bociety. President Roosevelt, who presumably knows something of statesmanship, says that a hundred good citizens

40