Berlin. Secondary Modern School. Class II. Thirty boys present, fifteen and sixteen years of age.

Three hours a week are given to this subject in these secondary schools. It is begun in Class VI., when the pupils are about eleven years of age.

This lesson was a nature study. Each boy had some flowers or fruit before him which he had brought to school. A light pencil sketch was made first and then painted, though, in lower classes, the boys paint at once. There were many elaborate drawings in shaded model drawing, but some of the model drawing was wrong, even in that which was exhibited as commendable. The teacher agreed with me that the colouring was extremely crude, violent contrast being much delighted in. There seemed to be little method and collective teaching in drawing, the individual boy working independently and subject to the occasional visits of the teacher. This strikes one as strange in Germany, where didactic method is so much, and generally so admirably, attended to, being perhaps, if anything, somewhat over-emphasised.

The importance of memory drawing was recognised and some of the best boys were asked to draw for me a. A candlestick.

b. A helmet.

c. A wine-glass.

d. A tall hat.

The teacher was disappointed, and I think he had reason to be, but we should not rashly conclude that our own memory drawing would be, as a rule, much better.

Hamburg. Secondary Modern School. Secunda. Average age, about seventeen years.

The same methods of teaching drawing prevailed as in the primary schools. Each boy had his individual copy, and the teaching was principally given in the few minutes' individual attention to the pupil as the teacher passed round. There were the same little wooden models and little tin pots and kettles only a few inches in size, from which the pupils were required to draw. But in this school I saw plane and solid geometry of a high order of excellence. The solid geometry book seemed a very good one.1 A review of the best work done showed the usual prisms and pyramids with sections, the projection of lines, shadow projection, and the projection of lines and plane figures on oblique planes. The drawings were extremely neat and accurate.

This was an optional subject, and the school, presumably, was specially capable of, or specially interested in, the teaching of this subject; in any case, this projection work was of a very high character. The difficulty of the work was rather above that required for Stage I. of the South Kensington Syllabus (Board of Education, Secondary Department).

1 Darstellende Geometrie. Schroeder, Darmstadt.

CHAPTER XVIII

PHYSICAL EXERCISES

Hamburg.-Primary School. Classes IV.a. and IV.b. One hundred girls present, ten and eleven years of age, under the charge of two teachers.

The discipline and order were everything that could be desired.

A number of simple arm and leg movements were well done, and I was particularly interested in the fact that the girls kept together in their marching and halted together, and on the same foot, without the noisy stamping which is so noticeable in many of our primary girls' schools, and in some German schools.

In this standard Reigen, which the unsophisticated might call dancing, was commenced. Forwards and sideways movements, with dance steps, and the formation of simple figures, were of interest to me and a source of pleasure to the girls. But it was not well done, and the head teacher told me that this class was only just beginning, and that the girls found the Reigen very difficult. I had been told this before, and should certainly have thought myself

1 It might be of some service to English teachers of physical exercises for girls if a translated copy of Reigen für das Schulturnen ("Figuremovements for School Exercises "), by A. Herman, with 144 figures, published in Berlin, 1894, were available for use.

that, if brilliant work could not be obtained under such discipline, the trouble must lie in the nature of the work itself. I very much regretted that there were no corresponding movements in our English systems to permit of comparison.

In this school drill-hall I saw little apparatus. There were, indeed, four sets of swinging rings, but their actual use by individual children must have been small in amount.

Leipsic.-Higher Primary (Middle School). Class III.6. Twenty-seven boys present, eleven and twelve years old.

The extension motions in open order were so like many of those in vogue in England that a more than superficial glance would hardly have seen much difference; there were the same combinations of leg and arm movements and the same repetition of movements. I thought that the precision and accuracy were slightly above our own average, but, as might be expected, were not within range of the style displayed in the Albert Hall in the annual exhibition. The marching I thought inferior to the other work; but we must remember that there is little, if any, military drill in German schools; neither the teachers nor the army authorities wish it; nor does the German school-boy march in and out of class in the same orderly way as in our country. Judged by our primary schools, it is we, and not the Germans, who would be thought a military nation.

The work with apparatus is much in excess of our

own. Here, in the playground, with leaping board and loose bar supported by two graduated uprights, the boys followed each other in leaping practice, the limit of height for the third class being 90 centimetres. Two hours a week are given to drill and gymnastics (Turnen).

Hamburg. Primary School. Class II. About fifty girls of twelve and thirteen years of age were drilling together.

The marching was not very dissimilar from that in English schools; and, as in our own country, it seems to be accepted that girls cannot and ought not to march without stamping, though our boys, and I think rightly, are required to do so. The turning movements were unlike our own, and more nearly resembled a little jump round than a pivoted movement.

At my request the girls exhibited a number of steps and movements; some were hand in hand, which I should have called dancing, but, as in Frankfort, where I saw this previously, these movements were called Reigen. One movement seemed to me unmistakably a schottische. The figures were in some cases complicated, and much "brain" was required by the pupil, said the head teacher, and good disciplinary power in the teacher.

An extremely interesting question arose as to the relation between physical dexterity and success in the more difficult school studies; but the head teacher, whilst being of opinion that the cleverest