MANCHESTER READERS.

THE recent legislative enactments in favour of a comprehensive scheme that shall afford a sufficient education to the children of the poorest parents in England and Wales, render the present period a fitting one to bring before the notice of the public the

MANCHESTER READERS,

a new series of books of rudimentary instruction for elementary schools of all grades and classes. The production of these primary school books, it may be said, has long been contemplated by the publisher, but he has deemed it better to defer their appearance until the demand that has been for so many years in agitation for an extended scheme of national education in this country had been satisfied, and the basis and method on which such education should be imparted had been permanently determined. A suitable settlement of these important questions having been arrived at in Mr. W. E. Forster's Education Act of 1870," he no longer delays to announce the present series, the first that has been designed and offered to the public with the view of meeting the requirements of the new system and the standards fixed by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools in the fullest possible manner.

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Firstly, the MANCHESTER READERS will afford an efficient auxiliary to teachers in giving that elementary instruction in reading and writing which is absolutely necessary to rich and poor alike, to form foundations broad and stable enough to receive any superstructure of education in other branches of knowledge that may be reared upon them. Give children a knowledge of reading and writing, and you place in their grasp the keys that can unlock the gates that bar the way to all human learning past and present.

But how will reading and writing be taught in the MANCHESTER READERS in any way different to the plan already adopted in existing works of the kind? is a question that may possibly be asked, and to which

as follows:

In the Primer, or Elementary pared for the use of young child

3987. f.

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work, and require a reading book of a simpler character than that which the pupil must master for examination under Standard I.), simple narrative in monosyllables is the chief feature, the lessons in spelling and reading being graduated, on a system based on the sounds of the vowels, commencing with the short and more simple sounds, and then passing on to the long sounds and complex combinations of dipthongs and and consonants. In the First Book, adapted to Standard I. according to the New Code, in which the learner is required to read words of two syllables, the same system of gradation will be observed, leading the beginner onwards by degrees to the more difficult monosyllables in the English language, interspersed with dissyllables. In the adoption of this system the MANCHESTER READERS will present an essential difference to books of a similar kind already in use. In the advanced books of the series this system will manifestly be no longer of advantage, but the attention of the learner will then be directed to word-building, or the construction of groups of words from single roots, with the relative meanings of the words thus constructed.

Although the value of the system enunciated above has been dealt on at some length, no attempt will be made to induce the learners to recognise it. It will be merely the backbone so to speak of the Primer and First Reader, and like the backbone of the human frame, which supports the body and sustains it in an erect position, but which is hidden from view, and little thought of and studied except by the anatomist, so this system, although it will lend strength and stability to the progress of the learner, will be unheeded by him, and apparent only to the skilful teacher, who looks below the surface which is alone apparent to the pupil.

Of the subject matter of the lessons it is perhaps unnecessary to speak at any length, but it may be as well to say that the leading principle in their selection and composition will be to render them interesting in every way to the pupil, to make them amusing as well as useful in the earlier numbers of the series, and, in the later books, to bring them to bear on the life-work of the learners, and give them a knowledge of such matters as may be of use to them after they leave school, and enter on a more active part in the everyday dealings and

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doings of daily life. An endeavour will be made to arouse the interest of the pupil in the uses of the familiar objects around him, to implant in him a knowledge of common things, and to awaken in him a due perception of the wonderful operations of Nature, and the laws by which she works. In short, to use the words of Dr. Lyon Playfair, "the properties of air and water, illustrations of natural history, varieties of the human race, the properties of the atmosphere as a whole-its life-giving virtues when pure, and its death-dealings when fouled by man's impurities--the natural products of different climes, these and such like teachings are what can be introduced with telling and useful effect."

Nor, while every attention is paid to these things, will weightier matters be overlooked-the teaching of the great moral laws that regulate our social intercourse with each other, the duties that we owe to God the creator, and man his creature. An education that ignores the teaching of our duty towards God and our duty towards our neighbour is worse than no education at all. These great principles, however, can and should be taught without offence to the peculiar views of any one with regard to the mode in which it pleases him to worship, or the dogmas that he loves to entertain, and to avoid all mention of them in books humbly offered for the instruction of children whom it is sought to train into God-fearing and law-abiding men and women, would be as mean and pitiful as it is wrong.

Next, with reference to writing and the method of teaching it in the MANCHESTER READERS, it will be remembered that the slate and slate-pencil form the only writing implements of every boy and girl who are being educated in the first grades of our elementary schools. In every Reader in which writing copies of any utility are given, their use is diminished by shewing black letters on a white ground, which the pupil is expected to copy in white letters on a black ground. In our Primer this interchange of contrast between the letter and the ground on which it is written will be obviated, for the pupil will have placed before him letters and figures in white on a black ground, similar to those which he produces on his slate, and which his teacher produces in chalk on the black board. To give the pupil examples of which he may produce copies in