GEOGRAPHERS TO THE QUEEN, EDUCATIONAL AND GENERAL PUBLISHERS 16 SOUTH ST ANDREW STREET, EDINBURGH; 5 WHITE HART STREET, WARWICK LANE, LONDON, E.C. 3 The National M SUMMARY. R. STANHOPE has remained but a short time at the Education Office. On the appointment of the Duke of Richmond to the new office of Secretary for Scotland, he has been selected to fill the position vacated by His Grace, of President of the Board of Trade. No appointment has been made to the Vice-Presidency up to the date of writing. We regret Mr. Stanhope's translation, for we are quite of opinion, as regards the Government, that "Another of his fathom they have none To lead their business." Death has been busy in the ranks of educational workers in the past month. Mr. Thomas Smith, chief clerk to the School Management Committee of the London School Board, and formerly head master of the Hampden Gurney Schools, Marylebone, died suddenly while spending his holidays in Worcestershire; and our readers will notice with regret the death of a scholar familiar to most of them through a well-known book-Mr. Robert Potts, of Trinity College, Cambridge. The Times, in the following extract, has been calling attention to the urgent need of small schools. There is a certain amount of force in the remarks of the writer which are summed up at the conclusion of the article as follows: Whatever may be the most effectual remedy to apply, the case itself is plain beyond all possible mistake. Large schools, as a rule, are everywhere rapidly improving. They can command larger fees, employ better teachers, earn higher grants, and in every way ensure more rapid progress. Small schools, on the contrary, are at a standstill, chiefly from want of funds to meet the much greater outlay per head required for maintaining them. This lack of funds compels the managers to employ a less efficient staff than is really required, with the result of earning small grants and of never reaching the position of being able sensibly to increase or improve their teaching power. The difference between these two classes of schools has long been known; but, thanks to the New Code, that difference has now been greatly accentuated-so much so as to call loudly for some remedial measure to bring small rural schools up into line with the larger and more highly favoured town schools. But we must bear in mind that the Times is a paper published at three No. 178.-September, 1885. pence per copy, chiefly read by wealthy people and owners of property, and, as a matter of course, representing their views. It is not, of course, largely read by teachers, and has not a great deal of sympathy with them. What this outcry really comes to is that the country squire grumbles loudly at the cost of maintaining the village school on his estate. The cost is nothing like so much what it is in large towns; a twopenny rate in the country will go at least as far as a fourpenny rate in the town. But the country squire who reads his Times daily does not believe in education for the country labourer, and grudges very much the expense he is compelled to incur on its behalf. He does not give his subscription solely because he is attached to the Church and the denominational system, but because he has good reason to believe that if a School Board were forced upon the parish what he would be compelled to pay in a rate would be about twice as much as he now gives in a subscription. In some cases, indeed, this does not apply, for the squire having very little land in his own hands would pay considerably less in the School Board rate than he now pays in a subscription; but then his farms would not let for so much with this heavy addition to the local rates, so that it comes to the same thing in the long run. It is an unfortunate precedent the Times is setting in making its appeal to the Consolidated Fund for the relief of the owners of property, for it is an example sure to be followed by those who need relief more keenly than they, and who, by their vast numbers, have greater power, under the new Reform Act, of obtaining access to the fund. The blow aimed at Mr. Mundella in the Times extract is not a fair one. We have said hard things about that ex-Minister, and may have to say the same again; but we do not believe he has made matters any worse for small village schools. What there is righteously to complain about is the folly of applying a system of seven standards to a school of thirty or forty children, where, when you get beyond the third standard, you will find five or six children in Standard IV., three perhaps in Standard V., and very likely only one in Standard VI. That one child in Standard VI. has to read through two separate books, and how the one teacher finds time to hear this one child read through about five hundred pages of fairly small type is a matter wholly incomprehensible In a few years we shall doubtless have the system of payment by results swept away; but we should be very grateful to any Education Minister in the meantime who would give us a composite standard, including the present Standards IV. to VII., with a composite reading book for small country schools where the average attendance is not in excess of a specified number. to us. Mr. Broadhurst, M.P., has brought before the notice of the VicePresident the case of a clergyman, the Vicar of St. Mark's, South Shields, who, it was stated, had applied the Government Grant towards the discharge of his own personal liabilities. On the first occasion the right hon. gentleman denied that there had been any irregularity in the matter, and administered a somewhat stern rebuke to Mr. Broadhurst, but a few days afterwards he admitted that he was justified to a certain extent in making his statement. We give below the question and answer which contain the conclusion of the matter : Mr. Broadhurst asked the Vice-President of the Committee of Council whether he hath made further inquiries into the case of the action of the vicar of St. Mark's, South Shields, relating to the National Schools under his charge; and, if so, what was the result of those inquiries, and what, if any, action had been taken by the Education Department. : Mr. Stanhope The result of further inquiries has been to show that the vicar's pecuniary difficulties were the cause of some unpunctuality in the discharge of school liabilities, and he has therefore been informed that the Education Department cannot for the time continue to recognise him as the correspondent and treasurer of the school in question. Mr. Jesse Collings, M.P., has given notice of a resolution of a very sweeping character which he intends to move in the new House of Commons next session. But is Mr. Jesse Collings quite sure that he will be one of the elected representatives in the new Parliament? The notice of motion runs as follows: : Next session to move that, in the opinion of this House, the public elementary education of the country should be under the management of elected representatives of the people; that such education should be free of charge, and the deficiency caused by the abolition of fees supplied by an increase in the Parliamentary grant; that in order to secure these objects School Boards should be elected in every district, under whose control all public elementary schools should be placed during the hours in which the ordinary school instruction is given. Sir Henry Holland, Bart., M.P., Financial Secretary to the Treasury, has been appointed Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. REVIEWS. The Scholar's History of England. By J. S. Horn. Manchester and London: John Heywood. THIS is a new edition of a well-known and useful work on the History of England, bringing down the narrative to the massacre of General Gordon in the present year. The book is well arranged in short paragraphs with descriptive headings, and has evidently been drawn up by an experienced teacher. It is not too much crowded with facts, and the narrative is drawn up in a simple and interesting manner. Laurie's Kensington Test Cards in Arithmetic. Standards III. to VII. THE special feature in these cards seems to be that each card contains a problem to test the ingenuity of the worker, and his power to apply practically the knowledge he has gained; and that this problem is printed in large script type, so as to quite stand out on the card, and be specially distinguishable. There are 30 cards in a packet, and each card contains about four questions. There is also a paper in each packet, containing the answers to the questions. The questions are simple and well-framed, and such as generally appear on the cards used by the Inspectors. We must say a word in favour of the stiff cardboard cases in which the cards are enclosed, which bid fair to last as long as the cards themselves. It is also a good plan to distinguish the cards of different standards by printing them in different colours, as is done in this series. The Sixth Standard Reader. Edited by Professor Meiklejohn. THIS is a dainty volume. It is beautifully printed on thick white paper, with good readable type, and is full of pretty illustrations. The selection of subjects is an admirable one. Professor Meiklejohn has ranged through the whole extent of our literature, ancient and modern, and has produced a collection of chapters which a reviewer feels a difficulty in noticing from the natural desire to look through first one and then another of the extracts. Among recent writers whose works have been drawn upon to make up this Reader, we may mention Kingsley, Froude, J. H. Shorthouse, Macaulay, Miss Martineau, Disraeli, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold. There are some charming sketches of the writers prefixed to the chapters, and full notes explaining geographical and historical allusions are given at the end of each lesson. Some of the illustrations are very striking. We may instance those on pages 221 and 243. The children of the Royal Family could not be furnished with better readin books than these, and yet they are issued at a price which brings them within reach of the humblest village school. Tales from Shakespeare. By Charles and Mary Lamb. London: Crosby, Lockwood, & Co. THERE are so few books on which a teacher can lay his hand as in every way suitable for reward books for boys and girls between the ages of ten and fifteen, that we are always very glad to point out any work which we can unhesitatingly recommend for this purpose. Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare is too well known to need any special remark from us as to the quality of the reading-matter; so we confine ourselves in this notice to the statement that it is issued in a form in every way suitable as a school prize or present to a pupilteacher or monitor. The book is rendered more attractive by the insertion of twenty engravings from designs by Harvey. It is very nicely printed, and bound in cloth with gold lettering on the back. Teachers and pupil-teachers would do well to add such a book to their libraries, for the purpose of reading out occasionally one of these tales to their pupils. It is just the book, too, that should be added to every school library, and when the binding gives way, as in time it will, it will be an easy matter to get some local binder to put some stout covers on it that will stand the wear and tear of schoolboy use. Notes for Boys on Morals, Mind, and Manners. By an Old Boy. London: Elliot Stock. THESE notes, which we are told in the preface "were written at a time when it seemed to the author not unlikely that he might never have the opportunity of telling his own boy many things which it was needful or expedient he should know, are on such subjects as "unselfishness, truth and honesty, courage and manliness, energy and perseverance, courtesy and gentlehood, generosity and thrift, purity, chastity, and temperance," &c., &c. It is saying much for these chapters to state that we find very little indeed that we are unable heartily to agree with. There is a moderation in the advice given, sound sense all the more likely to be regarded that it is expressed in quiet tones and without constant appeals to the highest feelings. The chapters are enlivened by allusions and anecdotes, and there is not a dull passage or a worthless passage in the |