mind, and learned by practice some of the means by which that nature may be influenced, applies the resources of his art to the child-nature before him. He knows that in this nature there are stored up reservoirs of force, moral and intellectual, on the development and exercise of which the child's well-being depends. He therefore draws them forth by repeated acts; trains them into faculty; exercises them in order to strengthen them, and continually aims at making all that he does, all that he gets his pupil to do, minister to the consciousness of growth and power in the child's mind. I cannot complete the sketch, but if I have given the slightest idea of what true education-good teaching-really is, I have a right, in view of the "results" to which I have so often referred, to deny that education is responsible for them. They are the lawful products of cramming, drilling, and stupefying the mind, of what might be correctly called anti-education, which produces habits of idleness, distaste for learning, incapacity for mental exertion, blurred conceptions, obtuseness; but true education disowns such results as these.

We can come then to no other conclusion than this, that it is the quality of the teaching, its inartistic and unscientific character, its want of adaptation to the nature of the children, its want of interest, that is the true cause of the failure in results; the quality of the teaching must bear the brunt of the indictment.

But a very important question now comes to be considered. Who are the teachers who seem working to so little purpose, whose practice, indeed, seems rather to show how not to do it, than how to do it; who, if they know the art of education, seem to keep their knowledge so carefully in abeyance ? The answer is that they are the certificated masters and mistresses, whose wonderful capabilities and success are, in the House of Commons and elsewhere, triumphantly proclaimed, and for whose professional training in training colleges and schools the most elaborate arrangements are made. I would gladly join in the chorus of praise if I could see that it was deserved; but speaking in the interests of education itself I cannot. Of course, there are noble exceptions, but such instances must be distinctly recognised as exceptions whose brightness only renders the surrounding darkness more palpable.

*

These teachers generally certificated, that is, declared competent to teach, show their real incompetence by the results of their work. By their fruits we know them. But who are their teachers, who prepare them for their profession? who give them their certificates of competence? The training colleges. These are the manufactories for the making of teachers, and I do not see how they can escape from the predicament in which I have placed them. The results of the instruction given in the schools condemn the quality of the teaching; the quality of the teaching condemns the system by which the teachers are themselves taught.

* "A body of men, to whom the public is indebted for the position which England has attained in respect to education." (!)—Mr. Whitwell, Times' report.

A full discussion at this time of the real value of the system of training and instruction pursued at the training colleges is beyond my power. An opportunity for doing justice to it may be found hereafter. After charging that system, however, with a large part of the responsibility for the failure we have been considering, I must briefly treat the subject.

I do not for one moment call in question the intelligence, culture, zeal, and sincerity of the authorities of the training colleges, nor the suitability of much of the instruction given in them to the end in view. The arrangements made for testing the knowledge of candidates for admission, the questions put at the yearly examinations of the inspectors, point to a high standard of attainments. If the pupils answer these questions well, and they often do, they must have worked hard. They go to the model schools to see what is doing by experienced and successful teachers; they go to the practising schools to conduct lessons themselves and have them criticized. They learn what is called "school management," how to keep registers and time tables, &c. All this looks well enough. I am not going to animadvert upon it; but having my mind painfully haunted by the "results" so often referred to, I cannot help wondering how the subjects of instruction are learnt and taught in these colleges. Is it possible that the mechanical jog-trot drill and cram, which undoubtedly forms the staple of instruction in the primary schools, can be an imitation of any routine in which the teachers themselves are initiated? Without insisting on this as a fact, one is tempted to doubt, at least, whether the teachers in their noviciate have been sufficiently guarded against it, and whether they have been told explicitly that even if mechanical drill is necessary for them who have so much to learn in a short time (though this argument is bad), it is fatal to success in educating, i.e., developing and training the tender minds of children.

Then there is a second thing I wonder at, and that is, the great amount of lecturing that takes place at the training colleges, i.e., of lecture-giving instead of lesson-giving. Many of the subjects seem to be taught in no other way. As, however, these young teachers will never give lectures to their pupils, and as it seems on many grounds desirable that a teacher should learn as he is about to teach, one cannot help doubting whether lectures can be so good for them as lessons. Lecturing, in fact, is not teaching in the sense of training the mind: it is the communication of knowledge to minds already trained and educated to a great extent. Now, as most of the young men and women who go to a training college go for the double purpose of learning how to learn and learning how to teach, it seems very desirable that they should have just that sort of personal experience of both as may aid their practice when they become teachers themselves. It seems then very desirable that teachers under training should learn as their pupils are to learn; that is, not by lectures, but by lessons.

But I need not dwell further on this point, for by any method of

teaching at the training colleges enough of knowledge may be gained for teaching the six standards. The most serious indictment against these colleges is still to come. It is this that they do not teach the true art and science of education. I found this charge, on the general argument that such results as we have had before us could not possibly have been produced by the working of teachers trained in the principles of education, according to any definition whatever that can be framed of education. The results, estimate them as we will -both as to quantity and quality-disown the parentage of an art founded essentially on the laws of mind, and which finds in these laws its grounds of action-an art which aims constantly and systematically to elicit and organize mental power.

The results that the Revised Code pays for are quite consistent with the theory that education consists in telling, preaching, expounding, lecturing, cramming the memory, mechanical drilling of the lower faculties, or driving to learn; they are its legitimate fruits, but they are quite inconsistent with the theory that it consists in awakening the mind to the consciousness of its power by bringing it into vital contact with facts of daily experience, cultivating by suitable exercises its faculties of observation, perception, reflection, judgment, and reasoning, aiding it to gain clear and accurate ideas of its own; training it, in short, to form habits of thinking. I confidently ask which of these two theories accounts for the facts we have before us? Do not the "results" sufficiently betray their ignoble origin?

But (2) I maintain that the training colleges do not teach the true art and science of education, because I do not see that they ever profess to do so. It forms no essential part of their curriculum of instruction, and is not recognised in the examination of the school inspectors. School management is, indeed, one of the subjects of the curriculum, and a few questions are asked upon it by the examiners. School management, however, the organization of classes, and the keeping of registers, has little or nothing to do with the object which we should naturally suppose that training colleges are founded expressly to secure-namely, that the teacher should go forth to his work thoroughly furnished with a knowledge of education itself, both as an art and as a science-the art which involves, the science which evolves, the principles on which he is to act. Now, education, both as an art and a science, is based essentially on the laws of mind, on the science of psychology; and as the teacher has every day to deal with intellectual phenomena, to guide the mind in its acquisition of knowledge or the use of its faculties, to aid it in the formation of ideas, to test its powers by repeated and varied exercise, to convert fortuitous into organized action, to correct its aberrations, to lead it to rely upon itself and gain habits of independence, is it not strange that psychology, which investigates such phenomena and explains the laws on which they depend, should have no place (except in some rare instance) in the curriculum of a training college? If education means mental culture (without which teaching, so-called, is mere mechanical routine), is it not a matter of prime importance that the

teacher should learn during his training how it may be most effectually conducted? But I once more ask, do our "results" look like the products of such culture; and do we see any evidence in them that such culture is made an object of study in the training colleges?

In concluding this long discussion, I must sum up the points which have been established.

We have seen that the results of our primary instructions, tried by any reasonable test, are singularly unsatisfactory. They consist in dismissing from our schools at least 15-16ths of the scholars with little or nothing that deserves the name of education; with neither knowledge nor the quickened faculties which would enable them to gain it for themselves. When we inquire for the cause of these deplorable results we find it mainly in the inferior quality of the teaching-teaching which consists, for the most part, of mechanical drill and cram, which ignores the native intelligence of the child, and therefore fails to develop and train it to power, which treats him as a machine and makes him one. We next inquire for the cause of this cause, and we find it in the defective training of the teacher, who, whatever he may be taught in the training colleges, is not taught how to educate the mind, and who therefore goes forth to his work as a machine to make machines. Lastly, inquiring for the ultimate cause of all these causes, we find it in the conception of education entertained and carried out into practice under the direct sanction of the Education Department, which pays for results in reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as a few other subjects, without any regard either to the intellectual quality of the results themselves or to the means by which they are obtained. This conception of education excludes, therefore, the notion of systematic culture of the mind, the formation of good mental habits, intellectual discipline, as requisites of elementary education. In short, the Education Department sanctions, promotes, in a word, pays for, a so-called system of education which virtually defeats the ends of education, and which is pervaded by a mean and mechanical spirit; but just because this system ignores the conception, aims, and means of true education, it seems to be ordained by a power, higher than that of the Education Department, that it should end in failure.

The object of the paper read by the Rev. BROOKE LAMBERT on this head was to show that in judging of the results of education, we must be careful not to limit our conclusions to the tabulated results of passes in reading, writing, and arithmetic, as given us in the annual report of the Committee of Council on Education. The order, the power of application, the power of attacking difficulties, these are imparted by education, and cannot be gauged by any such tables. Modern educationalists rather depreciate the value of classical training, because they cannot verify the results; but if it does produce the power of grappling with difficulties, of sheer hard work, it may not be useless. The writer of the paper, whilst in favour of ultimately extending the curriculum of school teaching so

as to include all natural and physical sciences, was of opinion that before this could be satisfactorily done we must have-1. Teachers who knew the subject thoroughly. 2. Text-books adapted to young learners. 3. A new and less abstruse scientific nomenclature. He particularly endorsed Mr. J. W. Kennedy's suggestion in this year's report of the Committee of Council, of throwing over the standard examination after the Third Standard, and making the "special subject" the test of their acquirements in these ordinary matters, and also of their intelligence in this particular branch.

DISCUSSION.

Mr. METHAM (Chairman of the Devonport School Board) said that he quite agreed with the tone and tendency of Mr. Lambert's paper, holding that it was the object of education to lead even the poorest children up to the highest walks, and that a time would come when all the ologies would be taught, as a matter of course, in all our public elementary schools. He agreed, however, still more strongly with Mr. Payne that there was a radical defect in our present_mode of instruction which all the inspectors in the world would never cure. In our public elementary schools there prevailed no such thing as education-the drawing out of the mental faculties, and the teaching of children how to apply reading, writing, and arithmetic to the ordinary purposes of life. These elementary subjects ought to be considered, not as education itself, but merely as steppingstones to it; instruction to use them as such was a necessary part of education; but under our present system it was impossible that such instruction should be given. Observation of a class conducted by a pupil teacher would show where the radical fault lay. No system could be effectual that did not call out the individual intellect. He agreed with Mr. Payne that, although it might take a few months to teach children the meanings of words and expressions, that few months saved much time in the future, because it would teach children to think. The present system of instruction was too mechanical. There was no attempt to evolve from the individual child an individual appreciation of the terms used; and this was where the radical fault lay. As long as that remained, our system must be defective. In day-schools we selected as pupil teachers, to teach others, boys and girls who themselves had not been properly taught; they did not understand a great deal of what they were called upon to teach others, although they taught it to the best of their ability; and they retained their faults through life even as certificated teachers. We must begin reform by insisting that teachers shall learn the individual temperament of their scholars, and pay such attention to each child as to give it a fair chance. Certainly a teacher ought not to be content without making every child in the class understand the meaning of a lesson, which should be repeated until all had mastered it, for such thorough mastery furnished a solid foundation on which to build afterwards. Without such comprehension to begin with, anything above the elements, anything scientific, must rest on an unsound foundation. Every individual soldier received his share of attention, and so must every child; but before we could obtain such individual attention we must have better qualified teachers.

Mr. ROWLAND HAMILTON said that Mr. Payne had taken his figures from the report of the Privy Council for 1866-67; but the report for the year following showed that the number of children presented for examination had increased by rather less than 25 per cent., while the number in average attendance had increased by more than 25 per cent. Admitting that the results of examination were very unsatisfactory, he said that when we were asked to condemn our system we must have a standard of comparison; and what was the standard in this case? His own special work had given him an opportunity of comparing Government elementary schools with those that were subject to no inspection; he had carefully examined child by child with the utmost care; he