General Report on the Cork Circuit by Dr. ALEXANDER, Head Reports on the State of Education. Inspector. GENTLEMEN,-In compliance with your instructions, I beg to sub- Cork. mit the following report upon the state of National Education in the Cork Circuit. No change has taken place in the boundaries of the circuit since The circuit. the date of my last report January, 1898. The ten districts included in it occupy the southern half of the province of Munster. The aggregate of the urban population in it is relatively small. Speaking generally, the number of schools is not in excess of the Schools. requirements, and they are, as a rule, so distributed as to be within reasonable reach. It may be safely assumed that the clergy of the various denominations are quite alive to the educational needs of their people, and that they will not allow any district to remain inadequately provided with schools. It is quite possible, however, that here and there there may be remote valleys in mountainous localities which have not had their due share of attention in this respect. One such instance came under my notice recently. In a secluded locality in the County Kerry I found that there were some 80 children who were living at distances of three, four, or five miles from the nearest school. As might be expected, under the circumstances, the great majority remain at home. Active steps, however, are now being taken to provide these children with proper educational facilities. Unsuitable school In a former report I called attention to the unsuitability of a considerable number of the existing school-houses. This is a very grave houses. defect, and is one that, in the interests of the health and progress of the children, urgently calls for removal. As I have indicated on a former occasion, an increased Parliamentary grant for building purposes is the only solution. It is obvious that, no matter how industrious a teacher may be, School the quality of his "tools" will have much to do with the character of Apparatus. the result produced. The present arrangement for equipping the schools with the necessary apparatus are far from being satisfactory or effective. It is true that the Commissioners give a liberal grant of maps, &c., when a school is first taken into connection; but when in the course of years these are worn out and dilapidated, there is often 3 difficulty in having new ones supplied. If I am to accept the statement of teachers who have spoken to me about the matter-and have no reason to question their truth-the burden of providing requisites usually falls on their shoulders. In many cases, owing to the domestic calls upon a teacher's purse, this becomes a serious addition to his responsibilities. He is frequently obliged, in con sequence, to have regard to cheapness rather than intrinsic worth in making his purchases. A small, useless map is therefore bought Sometimes because it costs only half the price of a really good one. I find that a ball frame, for instance, or a blank map, of Europe, is used in common by adjoining male and female schools. Each of these requisites has to be carried from one school to the other according as it is required. All this is eminently unsatisfactory, and is a weak spot" in existing arrangements. Reports on the State of National I am glad to report that a School Attendance Committee has been formed in Cork, and that its officers are now actively at work. Education. Much good has already been accomplished, particularly in the poorer parts of the city. Some time must elapse, however, before a Alexander, reliable conclusion can be formed as to the degree of success attending the efforts of the committee in grappling with the evil of nonattendance at schools. Dr. Head Inspector. Cork. School Attendance Reduction of average The recent rule of the Board granting salary to an assistant when an average of 60-instead of 70 as before can be maintained, is one that will be welcomed by everybody. The task of giving instruction in an extended programme to all the classes in a school attended required for frequently by 80 or 90 pupils involved a tremendous overstrain, and was too much for a good many. Teaching, under the circumstances, frequently became a mere scramble over a wide programme, and steady, intelligent, and effective work was impossible. Assistant. Monitors. San'tation. Out Offices. The concurrent reduction in the number of monitors was a much needed step in the right direction. The energies of many of the young people who would otherwise have become members of the junior staff, will now be turned into more useful channels, and the teaching profession will not be so overcrowded as it is at present. Furthermore, many of the weak or middling schools will be improved by withholding monitors from them. This statement may appear paradoxical, but experience proves its truth. The teachers of such schools appear to think-so far as may be judged from their actions -that once a little boy or girl is appointed monitor by a Board's order, he or she is straightway fitted for the work of instruction without further preparation, and may be entrusted with the charge of classes without any guidance from the principal. Hence, when classes break down in such schools, their failure is frequently accounted for by the fact that "they were in charge of the monitor." The non-appointment of new monitors in such cases has frequently been productive of good effect. The reason is obvious. The experience gained during the year has only confirmed me in the opinion expressed in my last report, that the monitors usually receive adequate literary instruction, but that the principles of teaching are not explained to them and duly exemplified. Many of the teachers have yet much to learn in connection with the subject of sanitation. In a general way they know that a constant supply of fresh air is needed, but they do not understand fully how this may be done without endangering the health of the children by draughts. Others appear to think, with a certain eminent judge, that fresh air is dangerous, and therefore carefully keep all the windows closed. Again, they allow children to crowd together into some desks, while others are wholly vacant, and thus the air rapidly becomes vitiated in the part of the room where they are sitting. The children on the floor are permitted to stand in a stooping posture in class; and if they are in the desks, not only are they allowed, as I have said, to crowd together, but they may often be seen leaning with their chests against the edges of the desks. Again, the offices are, in many cases, very much neglected. The air in such buildings seem to be permanently tainted, and the very walls appear to reek with effluvium. Years may elapse without these houses receiving a single coat of whitewash, and the use of deodorisers or absorbents is apparently unknown. National The majority of the schools visited during the past year could not Reports on be described as neat, tidy, and well-kept. The washing of floors, the the State of sweeping and dusting of the rooms, and the systematic and orderly Education. arrangement of furniture and apparatus, are all matters that, too Dr . generally, receive very perfunctory attention. As this is a well- Alexander, worn theme, however, I shall refrain from further comment with Inspector. regard to it. I content myself with recording here that though I Head Cork. "broke fresh ground" during the past year, and saw many of the Untidiness schools for the first time, yet evidence of neglect in regard to the condition of the house and premises came frequently under my notice. It was the exception rather than the rule, to find matters otherwise. of School. On many occasions I had to find fault with the time tables in use. Time tables, They were either not drawn up on any definite system, or they contained some very unsuitable arrangements. The following are some of the defects noticed: (1.) Three half-hours per day allowed for Arithmetic, while provision was made for only one lesson per day in Reading. (2.) All classes on floor together, the juniors were to be engaged at Arithmetic and the seniors at Agriculture. (3.) All classes from second upwards on floor together for examination in Home Lessons, three-quarters of an hour being allowed for the purpose. (4.) Only two half-hours per week set apart for Reading in the case of Sixth Class, and only three in that of Fifth. (5.) All classes in desks together engaged at written exercises." (6.) All classes on floor together to receive a lesson in Reading. The teachers who could deliberately propose such arrangements as the above must have been strangely ignorant of the most elementary principles of school-keeping. School life. Apart from the question of literary progress, a well conducted Influence of school imparts to the pupils who attend it a valuable general training that is an admirable preparation for after life. This truth is not as widely recognised in our schools as is desirable. Habits of self-control, mental concentration, and ready obedience, if not acquired in youth, are rarely learned-effectively at least in later years. The chief occasions in the daily life of a school when its value and efficiency from the above point of view are fully tested, are the following:(1.) Changes of lessons; (2.) dismissal for recreation; (3.) return from play; (4.) final dismissal. I am sorry to say that a good many schools come badly out of the ordeal. Instead of the quiet and orderly movements of classes to their places, there will often be noticed a sort of confused rush from desks to floor, or vice versa. Pupils elbow one another, indulge in unrestrained conversation, and wander through the school looking for slates, &c. Copy-books are distributed pretty much in the manner in which "quoits" are thrown. Ali teachers have read the excellent suggestions in regard to this matter contained in Dr. Joyce's "Handbook," but, like much advice given in this world, they are too often disregarded. School I devoted a good deal of the time available for inspection and Defects in examination to the former, from the high sense I entertain of its importance. If I were to give the result of my experience in keeping. the State of National Reports on general terms, I might be thought to use the language of exaggeration. I shall therefore specify some instances of the defects in schoolEducation. keeping and in methods of teaching that came under my notice:— (1.) Principal spent half-an-hour reading a dictation exercise to Alexander, Third Class, while the Object lesson was given to some twenty Inspector. infants by the monitress, who was only in her second year of service. Dr. Cork. (2.) Principal occupied half-an-hour examining Second Class in oral Spelling, while the assistant was supposed to have charge of the Reading lesson of four of the senior classes. The latter was, apparently, of opinion that there was no use in attempting to accomplish the impossible, and accordingly three of the four classes were allowed to stand idle during the whole half-hour. (3.) Home Lessons were required from Fifth and Sixth Classes on only two days of the week; teacher explained that he was obliged to adopt the arrangement when he had no assistant.. An assistant had been appointed more than five months prior to my visit to the school, yet the arrangement remained unchanged. (4.) Principal spent half-an-hour teaching the senior infants, while he left the examination of the upper division in Home Lessons entirely to the assistant. (5.) Desk Arithmetic lesson of senior classes was carried on thus: A pupil in each class dictated sums out of a book, which were worked on slates, and, after all were done, checked the answers. The speed of all the pupils was regulated by that of the slowest boy, and the teacher who exercised no supervision whatever over these classes had no means of knowing afterwards how much work had been done by each. How much more effective the lesson would have been if each boy had been provided with a text-book and had worked on paper! (6.) Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Classes taken to same draft circle for a lesson in Parsing; the sentence chosen was I have a long tube." (7.) I found several cases in which the sums which the pupils were working had been set down "out of their heads." (8.) While the assistant was vainly endeavouring to give oral instruction at once to Second, Third, and Fourth Classes, and t the same time to supervise the work of an unpaid monitor who had charge of infants and First Class, the Principal contented himself with dictating 'sums' to Fifth Class, who were engaged at Arithmetic in desks, and walking about the floor till each exercise was finished. He did not even attempt any teaching. As a trained First Class teacher he ought to have known that, apart from the waste of his own time, this method was not the right one for conducting the lesson, and that even if it were, it could have been carried out just as well by a monitor. He would thus have been enabled to remove some of the burden from the shoulders of the assistant. (9.) Senior classes engaged at Arithmetic in desks; they were told to put down 896 (on slates) and multiply it by 18 ten times. They spent the half-hour at this exercise. (10.) At the time for Floor Arithmetic of Junior Division, Second, Third, and Fourth Classes were placed on separate forms arranged gallery-wise, and were examined by a pupil in simple Addition table. (11.) Pupils in Fifth Class, Second Stage, spent half-an-hour Parsing, on slates, the sentence "John loves James." the State of (12.) Infants and First Class pupils-22 in number-were kept Reports on sitting on separate forms for two hours continuously. They were National examined in Oral Spelling and Tables for an hour; in Tables alone Education. for half-an-hour longer; and they were then supplied with large Dr. unruled slates-which they had to hold in their arms and short Alexander, fragments of pencil, for a Transcription exercise. They were not Inspector. placed in desks, where the exercise could have been carried on with Cork. some chance of success, though there were three vacant. (13.) At the time for Transcription in the case of the junior division, Second, Third, and Fourth Classes were told to write out on slates sixty difficult words; the children were, themselves, to be the judges of the "difficulty" of the words. The slates were never looked at by the teacher. (14.) Geography lesson to Third Class: Principal placed the class in charge of a little girl, to whom he gave a card on which were written lists of gulfs, &c. She called out each name, and the pupils, in turn, prodded the map with a rod somewhere in the neighbourhood of the name. (15.) Reading lesson given to First Cass thus: Principal walked from pupil to pupil, and holding a First Book in front of each boy, asked him to read particular words to which he pointed. While this was going on all the pupils, except the one actually engaged, gazed listlessly about them. (16.) Instruction in Agriculture carried on by means of catechisms: After the pupils had spent some ten minutes or so "conning over a certain number of questions and answers, the Principal took the catechism" in his hand, and examined the pupils by simply reading the questions out of the book. He did not even take the trouble to express the questions in a different form. 66 (17.) In another school the pupils who were supposed to receive instruction in Agriculture simply transcribed on slates from the text-book; nothing else was attempted during the half-hour devoted to the subject. (18.) At the time for Floor Arithmetic of juniors, a pupil wrote on blackboard three sums of four addends each every addend contained three figures-and the pupils in First, Second, and Third Classes were all directed to work these exercises. The same pupil wrote on the blackboard-" out of his head," as he expressed it to me-four exercises for Fourth Class. (19.) "Object lesson" given by a pupil; she held one of the Natural History illustrations (the Salmon) in her hand, and after reading the letterpress below the picture, asked questions of the children in the class. (20.) "Object lesson" given by paid monitor; a picture of a blind man led by a child, and of an injured dog that is apparently being attended to by a little boy, as well as another picture of a somewhat similar character, were hung up before the class. The "lesson consisted of a series of such questions as "What is the man doing?" "What is the boy doing?" &c., and without any variation the half-hour was thus spent. The above is far from being an exhaustive list of typical defects noticed. I merely give them as concrete instances of the culpable neglect shown by some teachers in the discharge of their duties, and Head |