A Plea for the Criminal

e which are not based upon a scientific system of education. Whatever this system may prove to be, it must have one distinct aim, and that is t

ss than a grievous misfortune. It is obvious that where children are so regarded a blight has fallen upon the domestic life. Home cannot be the brightest spot on earth to them; neither can the father and mother be their sympathetic guides, counse

in this colony, are growing up with less care and attention being bestowed upon them than what their parents are prepared to bestow upon even their very horses or their dogs. This f

pride. Possibly it may not be so very great as the vast difference in results may lead us to suppose, a

is, sufficient to handicap them throughout their whole life. Parents profess that they have done their best with this or that child and that they have failed, but the fault largely lies in the parents undertaking the task with every expectation of failure, and the chief characteristics noticed by the child have been the parental irritability, impatience and incompetence. Having estimated these the child then knows exactly how to gain its own ends and has s

hem will ever use. Imagine the object, if one can, of spending the precious hours of a child's educational life in teaching it the names of every dozen or so of the

e would like to be. His father looks about for something for him to do without any knowledge of the boy's possibility of greatest success lying in one well marked direction. The boy remains in a billet only so long as he fails to get another with a greater wage attached to it, and when perhaps twenty years of age are reached he is conscious of where the true lines of his destiny lie; but it is then too late for him to begin the necessary education, and the consequence is that his life loses its inspiration. Now it is quite possible that if our school system were so reorganised that parents saw as a result that their children developed a true love for labour and worked with definite purpose, that they would take a more intense pride in them and enter more sympathetically into their labours and ambitions. The education of the child would thus be brought to react upon the parent and tend immediately to reorganise the domestic life and bring it closer

on is regarded are:-(a) the utilitarian, (b) the d

education should content itself with so developing the faculties that when matured they may be adequate for such mental tasks as the after life or vocation may provide. The middle course is held by those who en

knowledge will be to them when they become men and women-which development the child of eight expects will be attained sometime before the end of the world, and will then come by chance. The reward of the child's labour is thrown into

house out of a soap box, a jam tin, a few stones and any odds and ends that it can lay its hands on, is sufficient evidence of this. The child loves to make things for itself, and its a

ave made their appearance in our New Zealand schools and have met with somewhat severe criticism, the whole system being condemned as being ideal theoretically, but valueless practically. It took many y

oral, and physical powers. The object is NOT to make artisans of the children, although undoubtedly those children who afterwards become tradesmen find that the ed

scovered to be the most useful, and it alone survives the severe tests

LE OF DIFFERENT

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ve a respect f

rain in order

low cleanlines

ultivate the

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teach dexter

Sloyd. A B C

o Yes Yes Yes Yes & no To

Tolerably Yes No No N

rdly Tolerably Yes

s? Yes Yes & no Yes N

s?? Yes Yes? Tolera

No Yes & no Yes

No & yes No Yes Yes N

Tolerably Hardly Tolerably Y

Yes? Yes No Yes very h

Yes Yes Yes? Yes Y

rdly partly (not quite

es & no Yes & no No Ye

Yes No No Yes & n

ry of Sloy

) to instil a taste for, and

s based his study upon Herr Salomon's works "The theory of

ed by fatiguing exercises, but the first cut should be a stroke towards the accomplishment of the desired end. The exercise must afford variety. The entire work of the exercise must be within their power and not requiring the aid of the teacher to "finish it off." It must be real work and not a pretence; and the objects should become the property of the children. To give children intricate joints to cut is of no real value. The child has no genuine interest in what are simply

e work into schools of all grades so that ALL classes of the community may engage upon it, and by t

ot tell too much, the child should endeavour as far as possible to discover by experiment the best methods

of order, exactness, cl

work shall always be done in an orderly manner and with the greatest measure of exactness that the child

ense of form. To cultivate dext

nables the child to distinguish between good and bad work and to put a right value upon the former, to understand the right use of ornament, and also cultivates the ?sthetic taste upon classic lines. An enormous number of jerry

he interest of the child, and under careful direction this interest is sustained throughout. A genius has been described as a man capable of taking pains-a master of detai

is character, and in a natural way introduces the elements of patience and perseverance in his work. These qualities are not confined

hese diseases are attributed to the many hours during which children are required to sit and to the bad positions they assume during those hours. Skoliosis-curvature of the spine-a serious disease, as it produces dis

development of his body, and not to cramp the vital organs in such a manner as to interfere with the discharge of their functions. The pupils are taught to use both hands and to develop both sides of the body. The following chart from Herr Salomon's work will sh

of aim and he does everything with a purpose, and in such a child only the most depraved parent will fail to take interest, and children have this characteristic, that they force their knowledge upon the notice of their parents whenever they can. The boy who begins to learn house painting soon expresses the wish to paint his own home; if carpentry, he wishes to build a shed; if joinery, he wishes to make a table; and how often one notices a home where tidiness and order are due to the educated child, and where taste in furnishing is accounted for by the daughter

the paper along the axis of the diagram,

ry of Sloy

te the lessons they are endeavouring to have instilled into the minds of their scholars. So, too, a similar system must underlie the method of teaching the ordinary lessons at the school desk. How many children will say "I love history but I detest dates"? What value are the dates? Let history be taught as Fitchett teaches it in his "Deeds that won the Empire" and the end will be accomplished, patriotism will be inspired, and

s that the religious education of the child be also undertaken and effectively carried out. The question of the religious education of the young is one which is exciting attention throughout the whole of the English speaking w

it is unjust to call upon the teachers of a secular education to give instruction in religion, or for the State to, in any way, subsidise the various religious denominations

ng against the powers of Darkness: but they forget that they are doing very little to bring others to hold the same convictions as themselves. It should not be a difficult task to answer to the utilitarian position with an emphatic affirmative and to bring conclusive evidence to support that affirmative. Where, it may be asked, are to be found the men who are leaders in thought and action who have, without any religious influence whatever, risen from the depths of misery, crime and filth? Where are to be found the families now living in honesty and virtue, though still in poverty, families in the midst of which every form of wickedne

ational Report for 1897-98 declares that it is most important for the inculcation of sound morality, t

and means with a determination that a satisfactory solution must be arrived at, and what it will then demand is not s