8.—12.

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[b. butler.

actual grammar and much correct speaking and writing during their early years, grammar as grammar could be left out entirely. If it enters into the primary-school curriculum I would h&ya it to be of th emost elementary character —viz., parts of speech, their functions, and the analysis of a simple sentence. If children write well and express themselves well, and are familiar with many of the well-known standard works (suited to their understanding) the extra time (if any) which would be required to make up for this lack of grammar will readily be found, as the pupil will have done a good deal of reading for her age, and will do still more by herself, and so time can be saved in that direction. In the teaching of arithmetic the great difficulty which has to be overcome is variety of method. Also, I think that the syllabus is too wide for the pupil to obtain a thorough grasp of every part of it. In geography I think that we ought to use pictures far more than we do. We should make the peoples of the various parts of the world live before the eyes of the children. Tales of travel and characteristic incidents in the lives of great travellers should be told to the children to awaken their interest and curiosity. As they advance further and reach the secondary schools I am greatly in favour of making it a real field of inquiry, so that the child considers cause and effect, always hunting for the cause when she meets the effect, or, unaware of results, by arraying before her mental vision such facts as she may know, draw possible and probable conclusions; then modifying causes alone need be taught by the teacher. For myself, I feel that wo do not develop the individuality of the girl sufficiently. lam pleading now for the education of girls, for I have no experience and no knowledge of the requirements of the modern boy, although, judging from a general standpoint, many things which apply to his sister apply equally well to the boy. To return to the girl, her time in school is piteously short compared with the amount of ground which she must cover. In the race for examination certificates one is bound to cater for the requirements of the examination, and when a great deal of ground has to be covered in several subjects, it means that a more or less condensed extract of the knowledge required must be prepared by the teacher and presented to the pupil. Personally, I feel that we ought to travel the path of knowledge much more slowly in the first years of a girl's school life (up to the age of sixteen years, say), and develop in her the powers of logical reasoning, ingenuity, observation, and intelligent methods of working. Knowledge, it would seem, should come much more readily, and be of a much more valuable character, when obtained in this way; and once her powers are developed you have a self-reliant, intelligent, human being capable of working, alone or under supervision; and, since she knows how to work, her progress in education will be ten times more rapid than it would otherwise have been, and hence any«delay occasioned by slow progress at first will be more than compensated. But this method of progress requires that she should be in sympathetic hands during this period of evolution. Only those who possess sympathetic understanding of the girl mentally, morally, and physically can bring her to her full perfection. This is true in any system of education —the sympathetic teacher is generally the successful teacher. This brings me to another handicap in the education of the girls. It is customary, I believe, for girls as they get into the upper standards in primary schools to leave their mistresses and to come under the jurisdiction of masters. And this, I think, is not the best thing for the girl. A woman understands women and girls far better than a man does. The man may be a teacher of exceptional ability and a disciplinarian of the first order, but he is always at a disadvantage in dealing with the girl —because, in the first case, he lacks the complete understanding of the woman, and, in the second case, chivalry gives the girl an advantageground of which she is not slow to avail herself. For her moral atmosphere, too. it is wiser that she be placed in the hands of women, and trained to be in the highest sense a womanly woman. Everyday experience teaches one that the grounds on which one appeals to a girl are very different from those on which one would appeal to a boy. Therefore I would strongly urge that women, and women alone, be intrusted with the school education of a girl. A man is the only teacher capable of fully dealing with a boy after infancy; and in the same way a woman, and a woman alone, can educate a girl in every sense during the years of her school-life. I distinctly approve of men specialists for certain subjects, if they are the best teachers to be obtained, but I think that the dominant influence must be woman's. When a girl's ideals are formed, her moral self developed, and her manners a part of herself, then it is immaterial what the teacher is—man or woman— provided that he or she be a good teacher. The girl is then able to discriminate, and to pick out the good, leaving the indifferent or bad alone. I think, therefore, that it would be a very great advantage if in the primary schools girls and boys could be separated, as they are in secondary schools, and the administration of the girls' schools be placed in the hands of capable women. I touched a little earlier in my paper on the over-burdened child from an examination point of view. I am in favour of public examinations being abandoned as part of the girl's school life until she is past the age of sixteen. The internal school examinations should be sufficient to maintain the standard of the work, and if public examinations, such as Matriculation and Junior University Scholarship, are set as standards in the upper part of the school (and even there they should be optional), the work of the school must be progressive, and hance we should not fall in standard. I have placed the age-limit for freedom from examinations at sixteen, because I think that the years from twelve to sixteen are the years of heaviest physical strain. Hence mental development, if forced at this period, will levy a much heavier tax on the girl then than it would do either at an earlier or later period. I deplore very much the necessity of keeping a growing girl in school, hard at work for five hours of the day, and then sending her home to further study varying from one hour and a quarter to two hours and a half at night. Preparation is essential under the present system, and girls stand on exactly the same footing as boys, without being quite so well catered for it in respect of physical exercise. I feel that some very great differentiation ought to be made between the boy and the girl at these ages. The girl must learn, and later she must take her stand shoulder to shoulder with her brothers in the arena of the world's work, and it behoves us to see that her physical strength is husbanded and not overtaxed, Hence I would ask,