E.—7

4

is in a similar Maori district no difficulty at all. As a rule, to which there are a few exceptions, no Native school would be required within fifteen miles of a similar school. This, of course lessens the number of schools required to supply the wants of any given district, and justifies a larger expenditure on schools that are to he built in suitable central localities. The new buildings at Motukaraka, Omanaia, &c, are well constructed and commodious, and are furnished with all necessary appliances. In fact, the teachers of these schools will have every facility for carrying on their schools just as if they were European schools. This is exactly what is required. School Furniture, etc. All sorts of desks have been in use in Native schools : double desks, which are objectionable, because they give children very undesirable facilities for carrying on conversation while in school; wall-desks, which almost seem to have been contrived to make the master see as little of his pupils as possible; and long desks, that do not allow the teacher to have access to his pupils without disturbing, more or less, the order and work of the class. Dual desks of an improved kind, which have none of these disadvantages, are gradually being substituted for the older kinds, to the manifest improvement of school discipline. "Illustrations of Natural History" are being supplied to the Native schools. It is hoped that these will be of very considerable use to the teachers, by giving them the means of leading the children to form something like accurate conceptions of the forms and sizes of the animals, birds, fa&c., treated of in their reading lessons. These illustrations, too, may be made a valuable means of educating the pupils' faculties of observation and comparison. Discipline. The discipline in Native schools is, as a rule, good. Maori children, if properly dealt with, are very easy to manage. They take great interest in their work when they are taught intelligently ; they are seldom disposed to be either sullen or disorderly. In a few schools the children are allowed to leave their places without permission, or to talk to one another during school hours, and the masters endeavour to cure these faults by expostulating with the children, without insisting on the restoration of complete order in the school before anything else is done. In such cases one hears the master frequently saying, "Now, children, this noise will not do;" or, " You really must be quiet;" the children, apparently, thinking in the one case that the noise will do very well, in the other that the necessity for their being quiet is by no means urgent. In one or two schools this nuisance is endured as a necessary evil, and no attempt is made to abate it. I have endeavoured to convince the masters that the proper remedies for it are good school drill, and the refusal of the teacher to go on with the school business while there is unnecessary noise in the schoolroom. In no case should a master continue to teach while children are talking to one another. The school-work should be stopped as soon as such a breach of discipline is observed; the principal offender should, for the first offence, be made to change places with some other pupil, then, after perfect silence has been maintained for a short interval, the work should be resumed. For a second offence the child should be removed from the vicinity of the other pupils, and detained for a few minutes after the school is dismissed. But in a really good Maori school there is seldom or never any occasion for this sort of thing; all the children are kept constantly employed, and they have been so thoroughly disciplined by means of school drill, that they have neither time nor inclination to attend to anything but the school-work. It seems to me that in a Maori school corporal punishment should be inflicted as sparingly as possible, and only as a last resource. Native children appear to resent such punishment in a way that European children have no conception of. There is only one school that I know o fin which the master uses the cane without alienating the affections of the children to a greater or less extent. He, I believe, would get on much better without it. Where punishment is absolutely necessary, a few minutes' detention after school will be found to be unobjectionable, especially if more than one offender has to be punished. Maori children have a great dislike to this kind of punishment, and at the same time it does not lower them in their own estimation, as corporal punishment does. Occasionally a pupil may prove to be hopelessly intractable; in such a case, the removal of the child from the school is advisable. In nearly all the Native schools the tone is good. That is to say, the children are fond of their work and of their teachers. It is seldom that one hears of any attempt being made by pupils "to serve the master out," or to annoy him in any way. Prompting and copying are the principal faults to be complained of under this head. But a teacher should generally have no difficulty in doing away with these faults. When once he can succeed in making the children understand that it is against the interests of the school, that it prevents their own progress, and that he himself is really anxious that this kind of dishonesty shall not be practised, they readily give it up. The average tone of Maori schools is, I believe, rather higher than that of European schools, and for this reason : A European school may be, and often is, kept going long after its tone has hecome very seriously defective. In a Maori school this is not possible. If the pupils have once lost their respect for and their confidence in the master, the school cannot go on at all. The children then simply leave the school, and it is useless to attempt to get them to attend it. In some cases this loss of confidence and respect is brought about by circumstances for which the master cannot be considered responsible {e.g., the parents sometimes wrongly think that he does not understand his