IV. By AMY LUMBY.

Lady Principal of St. Hilda's College, Cheltenham.

THOUGH girls fare somewhat better than their brothers in the opportunities given them for learning the use of their own language, the results are still very disappointing. Most girls of seventeen have a miserably small vocabulary, are deplorably ignorant of the exact meaning of words, and are quite unable to read a moderately difficult book by themselves. They find it very hard to express their thoughts clearly and concisely in writing, and next to impossible to utter them in class in their own words intelligibly. What is the reason of this deficiency? The teaching of English as a distinct subject is neglected. Girls learn most of their lessons in English, and that has to do duty for learning English. They have generally learnt grammar in a dull and mechanical fashion in the early years of their school life, but their French and German teachers will bear witness that they rarely understand the principles of grammar and syntax. They have also usually read a play or two of Shakespeare, and are fortunate if an overdose of "notes" has not given them a dislike to the subject. Beyond this they know very little indeed.

How can these defects be remedied? It seems to me that much could be done by the simple means of making more of the reading - lessonthroughout the whole school course. The first thing children need for expressing their ideas is a vocabulary. How can they get this better than from abundant reading? There are plenty of cheap reprints of English classics and of prose and poetry suitable for all ages to be had now-a-days, and the teacher could easily make a graduated course for her Form. Reading-lessons should occupy at least two hours a week for every form up to the Fourth. On them could be based lessons in inductive grammar, in composition, and in oral reproduction, as suggested by Mr. Bell.

A great point should be made of answering questions in these lessons. No indistinct, incomplete or ungrammatical answer should be allowed to pass. It is delightful to hear the answering of questions in a German elementary school, where the child stands up and, embodying the substance of the question in his answer, makes a clear statement which the whole class can understand, and which not only exercises him in the use of language, but impresses on his mind the facts that he has to remember. The answering of questions in class is usually a very weak point in our secondary schools; hence arises great poverty of thought and language.

The reading-lesson will of course gradually increase in range and difficulty until in Forms above the Fourth, or even before, if the girls are ready for it, it becomes a lesson in literature, such as Mr. Bell sketches. Here, though the highest aim of literature-teaching is the training of the imagination and the ethical sense, and the true

teacher will never forget that, yet it is most important not to lose sight of the immense value of training in the accurate and graceful use of words. Exercises in analysis of sentences, examination of the fundamental meaning of words, discussions as to the exact sense of phrases, can all be based on such readings, and no pains must be spared to make the girls secure a definite grasp of the meaning of what they read. "Notes which are not likely to help them in attaining this may be avoided, and time thus saved to read a great deal more than is usually done. At this stage it will probably be difficult to get more than one hour a week for the English lesson proper, but even in this brief time two plays of Shakespeare and some good essays, say Addison's or some of Bacon's, could be read in the year.

Essay-writing will be seriously begun in the Fourth Form. For this the materials must be to some extent supplied at first, either from the substance of previous reading_or from sources indicated by the teacher. The essays must be carefully criticised in class afterwards, and credit given for conciseness and good choice of words. As the girls advance they may well be encouraged now and again to make an attempt in verse, either a translation or original. They will probably produce little that is of any worth, but the effort will give them capital practice in selection of words and will reveal to them more of the meaning of "style" than much talking could possibly do.

It is impossible to go into details in so small a space, but I think it might be a great help to teachers if a few alternative courses of reading suitable for the different forms of girls' schools were drawn up, with a few notes as to the kind of lesson that could be based on them.

SYLLABUS AND TIME TABLES.

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By P. A. BARNETT, M.A.

WHEN someone said in the presence of Talleyrand that it would be easy to found and establish a religion as good as Christianity, he assented-if the associated phenomena were repeated. A Time Table is the easiest thing in the world to arrange-if the conditions are favourable. It is necessary merely to have entire freedom of action, disinterested and clear views as to the general effect you mean to produce in relation to your pupils, an unlimited staff, and apparatus of the right quality. As the universe is ordered at present, however, few of us are fortunate enough to enjoy the freedom and opportunities which, as we hope, we should turn to such good advantage. We have to make the best of an indifferent matter.

We are first of all not, in most cases, permitted, much less are we actually called upon, to propound our own syllabuses. To propound a sylla

bus is to formulate for practical application a philosophy of education. When the King is a Philosopher, the first thing that he will set his hand to will be a Syllabus. Our rulers and guides are unable to carry into effect a consistent and statesmanlike plan because, a score of petty kings, they are legislating at cross-purposes. One set of "experts against another, each sees national, perhaps even human, salvation in some special subjects of study; and each, as Mr. Mantalini would say, "is right and neither wrong, upon my life and soul.

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In the vast majority of cases a school syllabus must be drafted chiefly in order to satisfy conflicting claims of various examinations, devised for various purposes, by various authorities. Conspectus is therefore unattainable; you can secure nothing better than a more or less ungainly and inharmonious compromise of studies. It may happen, indeed, that a syllabus-maker occupies a sufficiently strong position to be able to snap his fingers at the mischances of examinations, constructing his plan of studies with a single eye to harmony and a harmonious result; and he may find that even his examination results, as assessed by the orthodox examiner, may be told in Gath without bringing shame on him throughout Philistia. But he cannot expect or be expected to compete with the Philistines on their own ground, and to come off with the prime spoils of victory. Indeed, it is essential to the best work of education that the element of fierce personal competition should be excluded from the whole knot of motives to which appeal may legitimately be made.

Most of us, therefore, cannot sit down to compile a Time Table with clear and disinterested devotion to an ideal result in the conduct, character, and therefore highest ultimate good of our pupils. Populus vult examinari; examinetur.

The same jumble of conflicting claims and babel of authorities complicates the question of staff. A simpler and more philosophical curriculum would, above all things, revolutionise our notion of specialism, and would set us to look in the first place for teachers who had been trained to consider their task as a whole, as a system of which each part is essential to every other part, all and each contributing to achieve one simple, governing, and pregnant result. Such specialists would be competent we are now considering strictly "school" training-to deal with several divisions (we will not say subjects") of a school curriculum, just because the principle of inter-relation would be properly tackled. As it is, in plotting out instruction, we tend to fix our eyes almost solely on the subject-matter, which increases in complexity of articulation with every year of scientific research; for scientific discovery is successful analysis, and the race of specialist teachers increases in the land, and alas! the school. Now see the effect of this in your Time Table. You must cut up your classes, multiply them indefinitely, and increase the number of your teachers, each to deal with a newly-named plot in the ever

widening territory. Specialism, if we are not careful, will land us in chaos; it is the very negation of system. Οὐκ ἀγαδὸν πολυκοιρανίη.

All this shows us, if it shows nothing else, how aimless, in any philosophical sense, a time table may be. If you are the ordinary person, working under ordinary conditions, you must provide for half-a-dozen different examinations organised by different people, and you will probably have to provide for different stages of each of these examinations. And then, if you do not turn out a finished pupil satisfactorily equipped in the eyes of each of the classes whose soul is expressed in these organised examinations, you are thought to have failed; and some recording angel writes to the Times to say so.

But we

There hardly seems to be any likelihood of remedy for this mischievous state of things until the Man in the Street begins to take broader views, that is, to consider education in a more philosophical spirit. It may warm our hearts to see all sorts of public bodies eager to push their own ideas in the sphere of education, for that is a guarantee of national earnestness and life. are face to face with this imminent danger: State opportunism (the politics, as distinct from the statesmanship, of administration) endeavours, not to harmonise these conflicting missionary ideas, but, in the English way, to maintain a shifting equilibrium, so that no one may be able to feel or to say that his particular "interest" is neglected. This is a characteristic danger of democracy; the State authorities confine themselves more and more scrupulously to the duty of interpreting, not leading, public opinion. Here is the core of the mischief of the State organisation of education in a community like ours. A democracy will always heartily curse, its own ineffectual idols, either by writing to the newspapers or otherwise.

be

No one knows how English education may changed in the cycle that begins with April of this year. Meantime we speak and think as if secondary schools were at present free from the governmental interference which has done so much to give character to and to take character from the primary schools. This, however, is largely a delusion; the strong hand of those whose business it is to interpret in official acts the opinion of the public is to be felt in all schools. Where a school accepts "Science and Art" grants, where it runs departments for the special preparation of boys intending to pass the Army examinations, where the Charity Commission propound a syllabus, where ultimate employment in the public Civil Service determines the trend of a school career, in all such cases it is "Government" that calls the tune. And there is good reason to believe the haphazard character of the programme so compiled, while not without its value in producing variety, deprives us of the power of national concentration of purpose and a uniform national discipline.

No general remedy is possible, but there are evidences amongst us of very bold and not in any sense unpromising endeavours in private quarters

to try the more philosophical plan; to formulate a clear and definite object having regard to the whole nature and destiny of every pupil; to work without regard to immediate or intermediate achievements in "results," and to control the monstrous regiment of specialism. The Abbotsholme plan, with all its "program" and German affectations, is a genuine effort to this end, and a most valuable experiment.

Out of all the documents displayed at the "Education Exhibition" recently held at South Kensington, there were a few truly bearing on education. Of these the sets of Time Tables from various schools well repaid examination. Tell me how a man spends his time, and I will tell you what sort of a man he tries to be; it is less important to see the shoes he makes, for that will inform me only whether he succeeds in shoemaking. Tell me how you make your pupils spend their time, and I will, with due diffidence, venture an opinion on the ideal of life which you have formed for them. I care less to see their Latin Verses, or a specimen of their Vertical Chiselling, for these show me only a small part of a fragment of the whole process-very important as far as it goes, but, like the right answer to a sum, of less import than the process in its entirety. Mr. Kipling's Tomlinson seems to me to be open to a disastrous interpretation. We may expect to be asked not what we have done, but what we have tried and contrived to be doing.

for this is adequately recognised; the Time Tables of secondary schools are not so generally considerate, even in cases in which it would be quite possible to place the heaviest labour earliest without difficulty arising from inadequate staff. For instance, there is a school of some repute which dispenses Algebra to its Fourth Form during the last hour of the weary afternoon; another exacts Latin Grammar from little boys at the bottom of the school within an hour of unlimited roast beef and suet pudding, when by all the laws of physiology their best blood and energies should be operating at the centre and not the top of their bodies. It does not mend matters to devote the early afternoon to gymnastics or violent games; what are we to say of programmes that set little boys and girls to learn the manége of the wooden horse at 1.30 ? It is true that big boys and girls seem to get no immediate harm from resorting to football and hockey and the gymnasium at such unholy hours; but an elementary knowledge of hygiene should warn us effectually against imposing such tasks so recklessly on our machinery. One remedy that has been successfully applied to this difficulty is to prescribe for the hour after dinner attendance in the school workshops or in the library, with associated variations on the avocations implied, such as arranging botanical or other like collections, and so forth.

To the third place in point of importance perhaps we ought to assign the principle of Digestion, physical and mental if such distinction can be made. The bow that is per

a

men, few of us can afford to offer in our shop windows articles which, however good, the public does not want. Our strategy is determined for us; can we turn our tactics to good account? Our syllabuses are sadly to seek; how can we manage our Time Tables so as to get the best out of our defective syllabuses?

The general rules are simple enough. The careful teacher considers pupil and subjectmatter of instruction in relation to each other. First he gives to his younger pupil shorter tasks than to the older. He knows that the power of continuous attention grows, grows, under ordinarily favourable circumstances, with the progress of years. The child under seven rarely does well if kept at one series of exercises or operations for more than half an hour at a time; the boy of thirteen and the youth of sixteen can hold out for twice the time; at eighteen and beyond, study is more profitable if more continuous still, a whole morning at one subject being often the best way of tackling it. And for the interested and advanced student, progress is greatest when application is at once more extensive and more intense.

In the second place, and especially during the years when the power of attention is weak and interest needs much artificial stimulus, the tasks requiring greatest concentration and steadiness must come at those hours in which the brain is most vigorous. In most primary schools the need

even Apollo is not exempt from the law. If we are constantly eating, our digesting organs get no rest for recuperation; if we are constantly feeding our pupils by means of lessons or lectures, there is no time for their brains to recover a normal relaxed tone which is essential to real growth. Here I have the record of a school in which the Time Table assumes that profitable intellectual work can go on continuously from 7 to 8 and 9 to 12 in the morning, from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8.30 in the latter half of the day. This is crambe repetita indeed. Of course, by repeating the cabbage under such conditions, you can ultimately fill your unfortunate pupils choke-full of cabbage, but it remains cabbage; the result is, so to speak, not chemical but purely mechanical, and not good at that. The result is not a different thing, the body and bone and texture of intelligent life, but a degenerate form of the very thing you put incabbage. The intervals for digestion in the case of very young children should occur frequently; in older pupils they should be substantially longer, so as to get the advantage, noted in the last paragraph, of intenser and more continuous study where the power of disinterested concentration is strongest and longest. It will be remembered that the late Mr. Sherlock Holmes did not spend all his time in looking at the mud on people's boots and counting stairs; he passed whole days together "doing" nothing; coquetting with a

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fiddle, smoking, and so forth. But everyone knows the extraordinary attentiveness and concentration which he could command when they were necessary. The fact is, we must give leisure not only for exhausted ground to recover its tone, but also to allow the scattered seed to settle and grow. Growth is almost always insensible. If we try to make the process evident and explicit by perpetual meddling, it is checked. What has been learnt does not pass away because it is not always being repeated; it is finding its place under the threshold of consciousness," amongst other like matter, and it emerges in its right place when it is wanted, by a process which psychologists find it easier to name than to explain. Young children ought very rarely to be pestered by really severe intellectual tasks; they more healthily spend their time in (their own) chatter and (unorganised) play. Older children chatter less, but, if properly treated, think more; and adolescent and adult students should be left to themselves and their books as much as possible, with just enough "quiz" (American for catechisation) as may keep their faces in the needed direction. To begin work very early, before the blood is fairly started at its normal pace and is charged with its ordinary supply of working nourishment, is wasteful; and it is wasteful to allow young people to bemuse themselves when the vigour of physical life declines naturally at the end of the day. The practical experiments and experience of the present writer induce him to think that the first error is the worse, and particularly in the case of women. If mental and physical life is vigorous, then boys and girls should have their sleep out. If it is thought well to exact an hour's exertion before breakfast, then the time so spent should be regarded as an "extra"; for instance, it is in one case-a girls' school-made a "penalty" class, defaulters of the previous day reporting themselves for an hour of study or preparation from which others are excused; in a certain boys' school, choice may be made between some athletic exercise or an hour's preparation. Between breakfast and school, again, ample time should be given for the cura corporis, neglect of which does such serious damage, especially amongst women.

It may be worth while to look at one or two Time Tables, to see whether we can make any profitable reflections on them. It would be all but impossible to cite types of all the secondary schools that exist, and we must be content, therefore, to note some exemplary characteristics of one or two. One division of the Clifton 3rd Form in the Junior School gives fourteen or ten hours to Classics, to Mathematics six or eight, to English three, to Modern Languages two or six; the alternative pairs are Classics and Mathematics, Classics and Modern Languages. These boys are therefore specialising at an average age of thirteen years eight months; and this is, in effect, the practice at many, if not most, first-grade schools. Higher up the schools, of course, specialisation is more intense; the time given to classics may be, as at Shrewsbury, about seventeen hours, with corresponding varieties

in Natural Science or in Modern Languages; and at Shrewsbury the Sixth is practically five different forms. Or take a school of the second grade, say the High School of Newcastle in Staffordshire, where the authorities lament that "the chaotic system of examinations in England necessitates elaborate specialism." So, for the Sixth, ten or twelve different schemes might be drawn up to suit the needs of ten or twelve different boys or sets of boys. Here alternatives are offered of (1) Greek, Science, and English; (2) Science and English; (3) Mathematics and English. But, better off than the schools of the first grade, in the second grade schools specialisation usually begins later.

But the closer one scrutinises the details of Time Tables the greater the chaos appears; the unhappy Head Master is not merely between the Devil and the Deep Sea, but between Pandemonium and the whole barren ocean; and no one model Time Table could possibly be drawn up, unless it be at Abbotsholme and Bedales, and the few other schools, like Clayesmore, where private enterprise is bold enough and rich enough to take its own line.

But a minor beginning may be made, and perhaps will be demanded by public opinion, moved, not by philosophy, but by the pressure of daily experience. The relations existing between modern and ancient languages will be modified. Specialisation will be deferred. Training in languages will be considered as a whole, and it will be recognised that the modern language comes properly earliest. First, by the same ordinance that teaches our mother tongue before any other; it is nearest to us, and therefore easiest. Secondly, because it is manifestly of more immediate utility. Bifurcation will occur later, Latin and Greek being placed where their gymnastic and more purely literary effects will work out to greater profit. After languages will come the turn of school "science." hierophants of applied science are themselves asking that the liberal education should be more carefully given before science specialisation, and we may expect that a progressive course will be devised that shall be itself part of a complete and harmonious school education and shall lead naturally to technical study. When these two great points have been gained, rational Time Tables can be substituted for the present Cats' Cradles, by which schoolmasters and school mistresses are made to realise the bitterness of unfruitful organisation.

The

Meantime, our first and greatest duty is to keep specialism in its place. What we do NOT want is more "specialist" teachers. Entia non multiplicanda præter necessitatem.

A Rational Curriculum.—The principles to be carried into practice in a rational curriculum work down to four :-(a) That language being useful as the channel for ideas, the linguistic instruction, whether in a living or a classic tongue, shall lead to real familiarity with literary models, and be thorough enough to be a key to national literature and thought. (6) That this humanistic training shall be balanced by adequate scientific and mathematical training, dealing with real first principles. (c) That time shall be allotted to subject-matter in approximate order of its educational value. (d) That handwork and music shall receive recognition.-S. De Brath and F. Beatty in "Over-Pressure." (Philip.)

EXPERIMENTAL CHEMISTRY.

A Course of Work based on thE JUNIOR LOCAL EXAMINATIONS OF OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITIES.

BY PROF. J. B. COLEMAN, A.R.C.S., F.I.C.
South-Western Polytechnic, Chelsea.

II. The Atmosphere and its Constitution.
Nitrogen and Oxygen.

TH

Moisture and Carbon Dioxide.

ex

HE subject is treated in such a manner as to give the teacher working details of the periments suitable for the course. The experiments, unless otherwise stated, are to be performed by the student. If an experiment is starred (*), it should either be performed by the teacher in the lecture room, or done by the student under the personal supervision of the teacher.

It was seen in Section 1. that certain substances alter on being heated in air; thus magnesium (Article I., Expt. 3.) was totally changed when heated in the atmosphere. Many substances change even at the ordinary temperature of the air. rusting of iron is a very familiar instance.

The

(6) AIR FREQUENTLY INDUCES CHEMICAL ACTION. That air is necessary in many instances for chemical change to take place may be illustrated by the following experiments.

Experiment 11.-Heat a piece of sulphur about the size of a pea in a long narrow test-tube (Fig. 3). The sulphur will melt, go off as vapour, and condense in the cold part of the tube. If the sulphur is allowed to stand for some time, it will be seen to have undergone no permanent change. Practically, the air is excluded by the narrowness of the tube, and no chemical action takes place.

Experiment 12.-Take another piece of sulphur and place it upon a fragment of porcelain, or upon the lid of a porcelain crucible, and hold it in the Bunsen flame by means of the crucible tongs. The sulphur will melt, take fire and entirely burn away. This experiment shows that air is necessary for the combustion of the sulphur.

FIG. 3.-Heating sul

phur in narrow tube.

(7) AN INCREASE OF WEIGHT USUALLY OCCURS WHEN AIR ACTS CHEMICALLY UPON SUBSTANCES.

In the last experiment, although the sulphur increased in weight, the product being gaseous, this increase of weight is not readily shown. If, however, a solid compound is produced, the increase of weight can be easily shown.

Experiment 13.-Break off the handle of a porcelain crucible lid, so as to enable it to lie flat, and place on it a thin layer of finely sifted iron filings (or better, "reduced iron"). Carefully weigh the lid and contents. Next place the lid on a pipeclay triangle, supported on a tripod stand, and heat to redness for ten minutes. Stir the filings occasionally with a stout wire, so as to bring the whole in contact with the air. Allow to cool and weigh again. It will be found that the air in acting upon the iron has caused an increase of weight.

*(8) ACTION OF PHOSPHORUS ON AIR.

A convenient substance to use for studying some of the properties of the atmosphere is the element phosphorus. phosphorus. Care must be taken in handling it, since it is very inflammable, and causes painful burns. For this reason it is kept under water.

*Experiment 14.-Cut off a piece of phosphorus the size of a split-pea, using wet fingers. Carefully

and quickly dry between filter-paper, and place in a small dry porcelain basin. Place the basin on a plate and set fire to the phosphorus by touching it with a hot wire or glass rod. Invert over the basin a dry glass cylinder (Fig. 4), and notice the white substance formed by the burning phosphorus settles like FIG. 4.-Combustion of phosphorus in air. snow on the interior of the jar. When all action has ceased, remove the jar and pour water into it and shake. The water will dissolve the substance, which property is utilised in the next experiment.

*(9) THE INACTIVE CONSTITUENT OF AIR CALLED NITROGEN.

If now the phosphorus is burnt in a similar way, but the bottom of the jar is trapped with water, we shall be able to ascertain whether the phosphorus combines with the whole or a portion only of the air so enclosed.

* Experiment 15.-Take a piece of phosphorus the size of a pea, dry it as before and place it in a small porcelain dish. Float the dish upon water contained in a stoneware pan, about 10 inches diameter (Fig. 5). Set fire to the phosphorus and immediately invert over the dish a glass cylinder. In order to obtain the level of the water the same inside the jar as outside, it is necessary to proceed as follows: insert a piece of narrow rubber-tube a few inches up the jar and hold the other end in the hand, thus enabling the air in the interior of the jar to communicate with the external air, so that when the jar is placed on the bottom of the