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EXAMINATION PAPERS.-CHELTENHAM NORMAL COLLEGE.-MIDSUMMER, 1852.-SCHOOL MANAGEMENT.

I. ORGANIZATION.

1. What are the divisons of a school designated respectively Section, Class, and Draft? In what respect is each essential to real education and thorough instruction?

2. How would you organise a school of 100 children, supposing you had two apprentices, in order to come in contact with every child twice daily, once for purposes of education, and once for instruction, exclusive of the Bible Lesson ?

3. What apparatus, fittings, and arrangements do you deem essential to make a quiet yet effective school?

4. What means do you propose to adopt to secure intelligent and constant employment of all the children of your school? What is the connection of a good routine and syllabus of instruction, for a definite period, with this object?

II. DISCIPLINE.

1. What means of discipline would you adopt to secure punctuality, regularity, and cleanliness, with a quiet and respectful manner in entering and retiring from school?

2. What do you suppose is necessary to secure silence, decorum, and subordination? What sort of punishment would you employ for delinquencies in these matters, and how would you make your punishments effective?

3. What are the ingredients in the character of a teacher which are essential to good discipline?

4. What means would you adopt to secure diligence, accuracy, truthfulness, and earnestness in school-work?

III. METHOD-INSTRUCTION.

1. What position should reading occupy in an elementary school? Wha graduation is necessary to constant progress through the entire school? Through how many processes should a reading-lesson pass?

2. What methods would you adopt in teaching grammar, composition, and dictation? To what expedients would

you resort to make your teaching collective?

3. What objects should you aim to accomplish in teaching Arithmetic, and by what methods do you propose to attain them? What three things are essential to success, what organisation can alone secure them, and on what classification does this depend?

4. What are the points in the working of classes and drafts which are essential to efficient technical instruction, and how may they be secured?

IV. METHOD-EDUCATION. 1. Into how many periods, for the purposes of education, may school-life be divided, and what are the particular mental faculties to be cultivated in each period?

2. What is the nature and object of oral instruction? In which periods of school-life should it be independent, and in which chiefly supplementary ?

3. Show the difference between simultaneous and collective teaching. State the best means of employing interrogation and ellipsis, and simultaneous and individual answering in order to secure collective teaching.

4. What do you understand by the terms analysis, synthesis, induction and exposition as applied in Education?

V. NOTES OF LESSONS. 1. What are included in the preparation outline, and notes of lessons? What difference should be made in notes for independent and those for supplementary instruction?

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2. Draw up, according to the principles referred to in the above question, "outlines" and "notes of lessons" on value," wages" and "capital." 3. Draw up "outlines" and "notes of lessons" on taxes" and on "rich and poor."

4. Draw up "outlines" and "notes of lessons" on "letting and hiring," "division of labour" and the "employment of water, wind and steam."

No. 18.

PAPERS FOR THE SCHOOLMASTER.

AUGUST 1, 1852.

Christian Education.

Many years ago the great Dr. Chalmers who had a far insight into the workings of new political measures, expressed a wish that the experiment of Free Trade might be made. And he did so, not only and not so much because he was impressed with the conviction that the fears of the opponents and the expectations of the advocates of that measure were equally exaggerated, but he cherished the hope that, as one political nostrum was discarded after another by their disappointed patrons, the time would be hastened for the application of the one true instrument of a nation's advancement—a diffusive system of Christian Education. And by Christian Education Dr. Chalmers had far too much experience of the condition and wants of the nation at large to mean, nothing more than instruction in the dogmatic truths of Christianity, or in the creed of a particular church, but an healthy and an early exercise of the mental faculties under the direction and control of Christian principle. In his estimate of such moral machinery and of the moving power of all social and political progress, Dr. Chalmers was much in advance of his age. He despised the shallow maxims of mere worldly science, while he pitied the narrow prejudices of others, however well meaning, who would reduce Education to religious instruction, and that again to subjects which tend to make the instructed better controversialists, rather than to elevate them as men above the beasts, and as Christians above the world. We could wish that such views had made progress since his death, and that during the past eventful month when representatives have been elected to the British House of Parliament, larger stress had been laid upon the opinions of Candidates on this really momentous subject. We are thankful, however, that amidst the many and miscellaneous topics of ephemeral importance which have occupied the addresses to the constituencies, few have ventured to qmit an allusion to a subject which connects itself with the social as well as the material interests of the people.

While, however, the Country, as a Country, is making only slow progress in the right direction, there is an increasing number of individuals who are seeking to provide for the worthy employment of the leisure hours of the working man. We rejoice to observe the efforts of a new Society, entitled " The Working Men's Educational Union." Its object may be expressed by an extract from an address delivered by its Hon. Sec.

"How are these classes, which have been long neglected, to be educated and elevated? Many plans have been suggested and advocated by various parties, but the Working Men's Educational Union had a plan of their own. Their idea was this that they should place literature, science, and the fine arts within the reach of working men, but this was the Pagan maxim nineteen hundred years ago, and therefore the question arose, should Christians of the nineteenth century be content to stop at that point? Literature, science, and the fine arts were doubtless humanising in their tendency; but this was not all that was required in Education. Men needed to be humanised and fitted to dwell in civilized society; but there must be an attempt also made to Christianize them, and make them fitted for the society of heaven. This was the great and true purpose of Education, to combine the two objects."

Nothing can be more encouraging than the exposition of such views at a Meeting attended or patronised by such men as the Rev. Lord W. Russell, the Hon. A. Kinnaird, Sir T. Blomefield, J. C. Colquhoun Esq. We hail the efforts of this Society with pleasure, as marking the progress of correct opinions, but we shall lament this movement, if it should tend to draw away the exertions of generous people from the Education of earlier life. These philanthropic gentlemen may assume it for granted that all prospect of success will depend upon the fitness of the working men for appreciating the manly employment which they are anxious to prepare. To offer the means of rational amusement to the grown up, whose minds have been stagnant through the season which God has given for Education, is simply to begin at the wrong end. Let the office of the Schoolmaster be understood as one which seeks to prepare the child by an early culture, while the mind is pliable and impressible, for a wise employment of his after years; let the means of our Training Institutions be multiplied for fitting the Schoolmaster for his holy mission, and we may well rejoice at so noble an attempt, as this commenced by the Working Men's Educational Union, to solve that greatest of social questions-how shall we retain our hold upon the youths of our parishes when labor, calls them from School before tastes can be formed, or principles be rooted? Such a Society as this

must not be repulsed by immediate disappointment. Its success can only bear proportion to the antecedent success of the Elementary Schoolmaster. To expect working men to appreciate lectures on the history of their own or other nations, however interesting, while they are ignorant of their own language beyond what is necessary to express their daily wants; or upon science, however simple and illustrative, when their minds have been dormant except in the matters of gain and loss, from their childhood, is simply to expect what is unnatural and unreasonable. A very different result may be looked for, when the enlightened sentiments of the noble Chairman, upon the occasion referred to, are more widely entertained and first applied at the earlier period of a child's life;

"It should be borne in mind, moreover, that all science was more or less connected with the revelation of God's will, and of course the object of the Union would be to demonstrate this fact, whenever opportunity offered, by sound and comprehensive scientific teaching. The reason that so many well-meant attempts to accomplish this object have failed, he believed to be, because they had been accustomed to cover over their dogmatic theology with a very superficial veil of flimsy science. That would not do, because a suspicion was at once awakened, that there was some ulterior object in view, and that the teacher was not in earnest. Now, this must be entirely rectified and changed. This Society was not established to assert that truth, because this had been done by the Evangelical Alliance, but to carry it into practical operation. The sentiment which had so long been cherished by many, that all secular learning should be looked upon with suspicion, must be completely abandoned. Secular knowledge, indeed, would not of itself bring souls to Christ; but surely that could be no reason for holding it back. Christians were bound to do what they could, and they knew that men had minds that required education; and it was not unfrequently the case, that secular knowledge led a man on to a saving acquaintance with those truths of the Gospel which were life eternal to the soul that

received them."

The prevalence of such sentiments as these on the part of those who fill places of influence and honour constitutes a broad ground of hope in stirring times. Education, which embraces the heart as well as the intellect, which instills kindliness to the brute, charity to man, and love to, as well as the knowledge of God, Education which seeks to provide for the wants of that complex being, called Man, which, while it supremely honours the Word of God, does not dishonour any of His Works; which would not, and dare not intercept one ray of light, through whatever avenue, that proceeds from His throne, and comes reflected from the thousand laws which regulate this lower world, as well as from the face of its Redeemer; such an Education is it, that will prove a lever more effectual for the advancement of the social masses, than what the Candidates for suffrage have so eloquently discoursed about, to gain the applause of unthinking crowds.

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