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For Ordinary Pass.
Improved reading, and recitation of not less than seventy-five lines ofpoetry.
N.B.—The passages for recitation may be taken from one or more standardauthors, previously approved by the Inspector. Meaning and allusions tobe known, and, if well known, to atone for deficiencies of memory.
For Special Grant (Art. 19, C. 1).
Parsing, with analysis of a "simple" sentence.
For Ordinary Pass.
Reading, with expression, a short passage of prose or of poetry, withexplanation, grammar, and elementary analysis of simple sentences.
Specific Subject—English literature and language, 2nd year. (Art. 21and Schedule IV., Scotch Code.)
Three hundred lines of poetry, not before brought up, repeated; withknowledge of meaning and allusions, and of the derivations of words.
This seems a fitting place in which to explain the general aim ofthis series of Reading Books. Primarily, it is intended to provide asystematic course for use in schools which are under State inspection;and, with this view, each Book in the series, after the Primer, is drawnup so as to meet the requirements, as set forth in the English andScotch codes issued by the Committees of Council on Education, of theStandard to which it corresponds.
This special adaptation will not, it is hoped, render the series lessuseful in other schools. The graduated arrangement of the books,although, perhaps, one to which every teacher may not choose to conform,may yet serve as a test by which to compare the attainments of thepupils in any particular school with those which, according to thecodes, may be taken as the average expected from the pupils in schoolswhere the Standard examination is, necessarily, enforced.
The general character of the series is literary, and not technical.Scientific extracts have been avoided. The teaching of special subjectsis separately recognised by the codes, and provided for by the numerousspecial handbooks which have been published. The separation of thereading class from such teaching will prove a gain to both. The formermust aim chiefly at giving to the pupils the power of accurate, and,if possible, apt and skilful expression; at cultivating in them a goodliterary taste, and at arousing a desire of further reading. Allthis, it is believed, can best be done where no special or technicalinformation has to be extracted from the passages read.
In the earlier Books the subject, the language, and the moral are allas direct and simple as possible. As they advance, the language becomesrather more intricate, because a studied simplicity, when detectedby the pupil, repels rather than attracts him. The subjects are moremiscellaneous; but still, as far as possible, kept to those which canappeal to the minds of scholars of eleven or twelve years of age,without either calling for, or encouraging, precocity. In Books II.,III., and IV., a few old ballads and other pieces have been purposelyintroduced; as nothing so readily expands the mind and lifts it out ofhabitual and sluggish modes of thought, as for