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[h. j. del m. mahon

a programme were insisted upon in our secondary schools we should be sending into the world youths with a broader and more liberal education, with better aptitudes for both mental and manual work, and with higher ideals than those of mere getting and spending. With regard to the manual work in secondary schools, Mr. Heaton, the science master at the Grammar School, maintains that any system of science that is worthy of the name must bo accompanied by some course of manual work, including glass-blowing, but thinks that at the present time the teaching of science is hampered by the short time which is given to it. He says in reference to this, speaking of his experience of the Wyggestin School, one of the best of the modern secondary schools in England, " The boys enter at the age of thirteen, and at the end of three years complete a course that extends over five years in New Zealand. The last two years are devoted to speciiil work, and at the end of his five-years course he could pass the M.A. examination of the New Zealand University in science, and gain first-class honours. I attribute the higher standard of work in a school like Wyggestin to the fact that the classes are small. The conditions are very different in New Zealand, and the teachers cannot be expected to work miracles." With regard to the courses in secondary schools, the report of the consultative committee of the English Board of Education upon higher elementary schools said, " ' The committee considered that the years spent at the secondary school furnish the only opportunity that a pupil may have to. acquire a broad and humanizing training. The diversity of occupations that the pupils take up after leaving the school is so great that in most cases it is difficult to say what would be useful; and it is undesirable to sacrifice any part of their general education for the sake of a subject that would be of very little real use to them.' The evidence, on the whole, was decidedly against imparting any particular knowledge or dexterity that might be learnt, and would naturally be learnt, during the period of apprenticeship. An engineering witness said, 'I do not advocate including in the school curriculum any of those things which a boy will afterwards have a better opportunity of learning in his handicraft or employment.' The representative of the Scotch Department said, 'I should say that to attempt to introduce anything definitely technical into a day-school is somewhat hazardous. Technical instruction comes better after a pupil has taken up some line of life and knows what he wants.' Another witness summed up thus the case against book-keeping as a school subject: 'It is quite absurd to try to teach from a text-book —perhaps by the agency of a man who has never been inside an office —the details of the procedure of a large office with which the boy is quite unacquainted, which are absolutely unreal to him, and which will lead to the most mechanical form of work; and probably when you have finished you will have taught him a system of book-keeping which he will have to unlearn in the first office he goes into.' Another witness said, ' What I feel strongly is that in the attempt to introduce these subjects into the curriculum we are sacrificing the development of a more important thing—the habits of mind which will be important in commerce.' My own experience agrees with the report of the committee on the question of including shorthand in the school curriculum. There is not time enough to teach it efficiently. It has little or no educational value, while the majority of those who take it up never make any further use of it. The report was equally decisive against the inclusion of typewriting : ' Even in the case of women we should be opposed to it, not only on general grounds, but because we understand that employers require in typists a much higher standard of general education than can be expected from girls who leave school at the age of fifteen; nor should we desire to see encouraged the tendency to increase the number of poorly-paid women clerks when preferable careers are open to women' in other professions.' " I may mention that the experience of German educationalists agrees with this report, but in Germany there is an intermediate secondary school called " realschule." In these schools all the subjects are such as are taught in a secondary school, great importance, however, being given to mathematics, science, the mothertongue, and modern languages. Classical languages are rigidly excluded. •In those schools there is nothing whatever of a technical nature, and a three-years course at these schools is insisted upon in most cases before a youth can enter an engineering school, a marine school, or a school of commerce. The opinions of these educationists is that the best preparation for life is a broad general education, where application and habits of thought are cultivated. At the present time there are two other defects in our secondary system —first, that the examination system is overdone; and secondly, the fact that a number of youths come to school and merely put in one year, leaving without doing any good at the school to themselves or any one else. Many others keep one eye on the exaniination, and put in the minimum amount of time and work needed for their examination. Whether the subject will be of any benefit does not concern them. Mr. Heaton informed me that he lately reproved a boy in one of his classes for the small amount of progress he was making. The boy came to him afterwards, and asked permission to give up heat and read mechanics alone, because he was going to be an engineer, and heat did not come into his examination. Wo want in our education to see that boys are taught to value knowledge for its own sake; otherwise the education grants are being largely wasted. The remedy lies in increasing the grant in order that we may have smaller classes. Then the teaching will be more rational, and the influence of the teacher upon his pupils much more marked. A second reform is in the direction of fewer examinations. It has been already urged by the Inspector-General that a satisfactory four-years course at a secondary school should be considered a qualification for entrance to the University. Personally, I maintain that that is an ideal method; but in NewZealand there are practical difficulties in the way. In Germany, where education is well organized and the teachers take a scientific interest in their work, there are absolutely no examinations in girls' secondary schools. In boys' secondary schools there are two examinations during the year, but they are of a very minor character —not nearly so exhaustive as in our secondary schools, but merely examinations to test the progress of the pupils; and then there is the final leaving examination, which is the qualification for admission to the University, and which is conducted almost entirely by the teachers responsible for the subject and the headmaster, an official of the Educa-