Fifth Year—Boys from 14 to 16.
1st. Latin.—Virgil; Horace; Livy, Juvenal; Tacitus; Composition, in prose and verse.
2nd. Greek.—Græca Majora; Homer; Thucidides; Composition, in prose and verse.
3rd. English.—Grammar and Composition; Elocution; Civil and Natural History; Geography, Ancient and Modern; use of the globes; construction of maps.
4th. Mathematics.—Algebra; Euclid; Trigonometry, Application to heights and distances; Surveying; Navigation; Dialling; Elements of Astronomy, etc.
5th. French.
Rev. Dr. Strachan's System of School Management.
Rev. Dr. Scadding, in his sketch of Dr. Strachan, "The first Bishop of Toronto—a Review and a Study," says:
"The system pursued in Dr. Stachan's school at Cornwall and afterwards at York, exhibited features that would have gratified the advanced educationists of the present age. In that system the practical and the useful were by no means sacrificed to the ornamental and theoretical, or the merely conventional. Things were regarded as well as words.... In regard to things—the science of common objects—we doubt if in the most complete of our modern schools there was ever awakened a greater interest or intelligence in relation to such matters. Who, that had once participated in the excitement of its natural history class, ever forgot it? Or in that of the historical or geographical exercises? We venture to think that, in many an instance, the fullest experience of after life, in travel or otherwise, had often their associations with ideas awakened then; and often compared satisfactorily and pleasurably with the pictures of places, ani given, rudely it may be, in text books, ransacked and conned in a fervour of emulation then. The manner of study in these subjects was this: each lad was required to prepare a set of questions, to be put by himself to his fellows in the class. If a reply was not forthcoming, and the information furnished by the questioner was judged correct the latter 'went up' and took the place of the other. This process, besides being instructive and stimulating to the pupils, possessed the advantage of being, as it often proved, highly diverting to the teacher."
On this system Dr. Strachan himself remarks: