SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS

FOR

PUPIL TEACHERS, STUDENTS, & TEACHERS.

Moffatt's Pupil Teacher's Course.-Candidates, 2s. 6d.; Year I., 2s. 6d.; Year II., 3s.; Year III., 3s. 6d. ; year IV., 48,

Editors have been selected for writing these books who have special qualifications for the task.

These books contain the whole course of instruction for Pupil Teachers. They are carefully and fully written. Examination Papers in each subject are set, and practical hints to Pupil Teachers are given.

"We can give very high praise to this compilation. Books of this kind are not generally very well done, but the present work is excellently drawn up. Pupil Teachers will not need other books."-The National Schoolmaster.

Moffatt's Reprint of Pupil Teachers' Questions set by the Education Department in 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, with Answers to Arithmetic and Algebra. Price 1s. 6d. for each year.

These are a reprint of the official questions given by H.M. Inspectors at the Monthly Examinations of Pupil Teachers.

"It is just the sort of book a teacher finds useful for preparing for examination. Save in one or two minor particulars, the questions are as applicable to Scotland as to England."-The Educational News.

Moffatt's Answers to Scholarship Questions, 1878, 1879, 1880. Price 2s. each. These books contain full and complete Answers to all the Scholarship Questions, with particulars of Training Colleges, and instructions and hints for Candidates.

The Schoolmaster says-" To those looking forward for the scholarship examinations this will be a friend in need." Queen's Scholarship Questions, for 1870-1-2-3. Price Is. Queen's Scholarship Questions, for 1874-5-6-7. Price 18.

Queen's Scholarship Questions, July, 1878.

Queen's Scholarship Questions, July, 1879.

Queen's Scholarship Questions, July, 1880.

Price 6d.

Price 6d.

Price 6d.

"No better exercise

With Answers to Arithmetic, Algebra, and Mensuration.

for those preparing for a Scholarship will be found than in answering these questions"

Moffatt's Outlines of Grammar and Analysis. Price 9d.

Moffatt's Outlines of Geography. Price 1s.

Moffatt's Outlines of English History. Price 1s.

These books will be found useful for Pupil Teachers, Students in Training, and Candidates for the various public examinations.

How to Teach Arithmetic. Illustrated in a series of Notes of Lessons. 2s. 6d. By T. J. Livesey, author of " Scholarship Answers." This book takes up seriatim very fully every rule of Arithmetic.

The Schoolmaster says "The work will be specially useful to Pupil Teachers and students in training."

Moffatt's How to Teach Reading.

Illustrated with Notes of Lessons.

1s. 6d. This book takes up very carefully every system of teaching reading, and enters fully into the whole of the subject.

"This is a very interesting book, and is evidently the production of a master-hand."—The Irish Teachers' Journal.

"We confidently say it is the best book on the subject we have met."-The Irish Educational Journal.

MOFFATT & PAIGE, Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row, LONDON,

REVIEWS.

MAJOR'S GRADUATED EXERCISES IN ARITHMETIC, 2s. 6d.— This book should be in the hands of every teacher and student of arithmetic, containing as it does over 2100 graduated problems, given at the following examinations:-Pupil Teacher, Queen's Scholarship, Certificate, University Local Examinations, Civil Service, London Univeraity Matriculation, &c. It is conveniently divided into three parts: Part I. containing 981 exercises on simple and compound rules, Practice, and Proportion; Part II. furnishes 456 exercises on Fractions (vulgar and decimal); Part III. 688 exercises on Interest (simple and compound), Discount, Stocks, &c. I find it an invaluable help in the preparation of my large classes of P. T.'s and Candidates for Queen's Scholarship, ertificate Examinations, &c.

MAJOR'S PUPIL TEACHERS' GEOGRAPHY (America & Oceans), ls. -We have in this little book 90 pages of valuable information. It will be found especially useful to pupil teachers, there being over 40 pages of matter on the Oceans, written in an intelligent, scient fic manner, and containing the most recent researches of Dr. Carpenter and expedition of H. M.S. Challenger. This alone should recommend it to every pupil teacher, for the ordinary geographical text-books are singularly deficient in information on this subject. An index of contents would improve it.

1s.-In

MAJOR'S KEY TO PUPIL TEACHERS' YEAR BOOK IV., the key to Book IV. we have the exercises in arithmetic and algebra carefully worked out in a clear and concise form. It will be found a great boon to any student who cannot obtain the services of an instructor in these subjects.

MAJOR'S PUPIL TEACHERS' YEAR BOOK IV., 2s. 6d.—As its name implies, this book embraces all the subjects required by pupil teachers for this year of apprenticeship. It contains much valuable information, and the questions already given at various examinations which it contains will be found very useful. Of necessity the style of writing is very concise, and occasionally a little dry.

MR. WATKINS, P.T. Instructor, Leicester School Board.

MAJOR'S PROBLEMS IN ARITHMETIC, in Six Standards.—Well calculated to make arithmetic what it ought to be a logical training for the schoolboy mind.

MAJOR'S MUSIC FOR SCHOOLS, 3d., contains in a small compass and at a small price the essentials of the "old notation." With copious vocal exercises to go with it, the book would prove quite enough for any elementary examination.

MAJOR'S CROWN DRAWING BOOKS, 2d. each, in seven books, are well graduated. The examples are elegantly drawn, and the course must be a capital preparation for South Kensington candidates.

MAJOR'S CROWN READERS, 6d., 8d., 1s., 1s. 4d., 1s. 6d., 2s., in a preface claim ten grounds for preference, and, after going through three of the books, I think the claim well sustained. The series is strongly bound, well printed and illustrated, and contains an unusual number of new extracts. Considerable aid is given in teaching spelling by well selected columns of words. The subject matter is diversified, and a good proportion of it affords scope for intelligent, supplementary oral teaching. I can cordially commend the "Crown Readers" to practical teachers.

WILLIAM HUGH, High Pavement Schools, Nottingham.

Intercommunications.

1. To do a piece of work, it takes B twice as long as A and C together, and C thrice as long as A and B together; and A B and C together can do it in 5 days. In what time could each do it by

himself?

2. Will any reader favour us with the names of the "four terrcstrial paradises of the Orientals?" Analyse, and parse italics: "No one knows how good the world is till grief comes to try us."-D. C. N.

3. A field is in the form of a right angled triangle, the two sides which contain the right angle being 100 yards and 200 yards: find its area. If the triangle be divided into two parts by a straight line drawn from the right angle perpendicular to the opposite side, find the area of each part (Todhunter's Mensuration, p. 79).-DISCO.

4. Can any fellow P. T. recommend a book of short Essays suitable as models for 5th year Composition?

5. Find the area in acres, etc. of a triangular field, whose perimeter is 30 chains 32 links, the triangle being right-angled and isosceles.

6. Find the average space in square feet per child, for a School of 168 children, if the room contain 8 equal groups of desks, three deep, each group occupying 152.25 sq. feet, with eight gangways occupying 288 sq. feet, and a space of 10 feet is left clear in front of the desks.

7. Show how the following words are compounded, and derive their meaning from the meaning of their component parts:-but, since, become, although, whither, good-bye, towards, forsooth, complex.

J. W. FIRTH.

8. Could you or any of your readers advise me of a good geography

with a full and good description of the Rivers of Europe, giving course, tributaries, towns on the banks, description of country flowing through, etc., also please state publisher and price.

9. Will someone kindly analyse fully, naming the kinds of sentences, the following passages:-(a) "Edward promised to name him heir to the Crown."

(b) "But finding soon a smoother road

Beneath his well-shod feet,

The snorting beast began to trot

Which galled him in his seat."

(c) "Quoth Mistress Gilpin, That's well said;

10. If A can do as much work in 5 hours as B can in 6 hours, or as C in 9 hours, how long will it take C to complete a piece of work of which has been done by A working 12 hours and B 24 hours?

11. What is the value of £1,625 stock in the 4 per cent. when they are at 813 ?

12. In what time will 65 guineas amount to 78 guineas at 3 pcr cent. ?

Conference Code Reform.

While the religious world has been busy with May meetings, the educational world has been no less busy, hopeful and ardent, stirred up by the rumours of approaching important changes in the Revised Code. Among the most enthusiastic of the Conferences recently held was that on Code Reform, professedly carried on by "gentlemen conversant with the practical working of the public elementary school system," and others "interested in the application of sound principles of education to the recognised course of public elementary instruction in this country."

Leaving the questions of technical detail discussed to those more immediately interested, we would call attention to some of the principles in which the public will be generally interested. It must be a subject of hearty congratulation that the education of the poor has thus, for the first time on a large scale, engrossed the time and attention of the "head masters of secondary schools," and of "experienced educationists." There would probably have been no drawback to this satisfaction if the "educationists" had been " experienced" in the sense of knowing the character and wants of the particular kind of schools for which they were providing a new future. There is no doubt, moreover, that the head masters of secondary schools could stamp the best features of their own methods upon the upper forms of the children in our elementary schools. The great weaknesses of the Conference were that there were evident proofs of hurry in the preparation of the reforms contemplated, that the theorists, as opposed to representative men among elementary school teachers themselves, were allowed to be practically too prominent; and that head masters of secondary schools have very crude notions, speaking generally, of the inside of an elementary school. The first charge, that matters requiring the most careful consideration, and the most ample reference to the practicable as the only standard of utility, was abundantly manifested in some of the drafts of reform suggested. Thus, it was proposed that children of Standard IV., averaging say eleven years of age, should commence the study of French with the translation into English of French fables, with a knowledge of the first conjugation only. This hurried sketch of the way in which thousands of elementary teachers should in future do their work in this department was too much even for the Conference itself, and as it was that there would be no time to recast the scheme that day, it was resolved to omit the languages altogether." The reforms proposed as a whole are so excellent in their spirit, that it is much to be regretted that they should be marred by such unsightly blots as these. The second point, also, of the theorists predominating over the practical men in the teaching profession, was painful to witness, and was prominent in many directions. This is much to be regretted, as the Couference should have largely consisted of Government and School Board Inspectors, and of several of the more representative men and women of the elementary schools. If the reforms contemplated had been purely administrative, instead of being, as they were, purely executive, there would have been more reason for the predominant representation of Chairmen of Education or School Management Committees. But the

seen

matters dealt with were essentially matters of detail, and practical working in which what is possible has to be studied even more than what is desirable. This fatal weakness in the representation was evidenced both in the infinitesimally small doses homoeopathically given in some standards, and in the gorging of the mental digestion in others. Thus, to take one example only, the arithmetic bears the evident stamp of a theorist known in a good many high schools for girls as author of a work in which every arithmetical process is reasoned out from the beginning. We have a lively appreciation of the actual experience of this kind of hobby-riding. The pupils acquire no manipulative skill, and are bothered and nonplussed with problems which are of no practical use in daily life. In the present Revised Code an average school has no difficulty in meeting the requirements in arithmetic in Standard I., and most good Infant Schools even satisfy these, in their top classes, a year in advance; and yet it is proposed by the Conference Code Reform scheme to cut out at least two-thirds of the work in Standard I. from the year, under the plea, apparently, that children cannot conceive of numbers greater than 100 at this stage. For that matter it would not be impertinent to enquire whether they can conceive adequately, or whether the theorists themselves can do so, of 100 better than of 1000. It would puzzle our philosophers to say at sight which was a group of 95 or of 100 of concrete articles. This objection against the cutting down of the work of the Standards is a most important one, for although provision is wisely made, both by the Government and by the Conference, for six, and even seven standards by the latter, yet it must be kept in mind that the bulk of our scholars in Elementary Schools are in Standards I., II., III. To waste a year, therefore, in their school life, is with them a far more serious thing than to do so with children attending secondary schools; and though in the abstract, or if we could hope to live as long as Methuselah, the plan proposed by the Conference might be the better-as things are, and must be for at least years to come, the proposed reform is a retrogression, not an advance. While we thus object to the stamp of an individual mind, and the stamp of a theorist, being put upon the work proposed to be done in the future by our Elementary School Teachers, we hail with gratitude the spirit of the proposed reforms. Much is required to raise the schoolmaster in our Elementary Schools out of a rut into which he almost always falls, or into which the government appears so ready to thrust him. Of a limited education, and put into a situation that hardens him into dogmatic assertion and action, he wants his experience enlarged by that of others, but this should not be attempted by ignoring his own. After all, the great bulk of the work in a Board or Denominational School, is, and must be, the patient drudgery of teaching the three R's:and these in classes ever increasing in size as methods improve. Of this kind of experience the head masters of secondary schools know too little to be able to improve the elementary teacher. Their efforts will be of greater avail where general culture and wider knowledge begin to tell, as in the class and specific subjects, and here their aid should be gladly welcomed.

The general conclusions of the Conference are recognized as axioms among men who have had the slightest to do with education in any