The

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Province of Quebec

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'The Protestant School System

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Province of Quebec

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The

Protestant School System

in the

Province of Quebec

John Adams, M.A., B.Sc., etc.

Professor of Education in the University of London Formerly Principal of the U.F. Training College, Glasgow

Longmans, Green, and Co.

39 Paternoster Row, London

New York and Bombay

E. M. Renouf, Montreal

1902

OPPORTUNITIES FOR OBSERVATION.

BETWEEN the 23rd of April and the end of June, 1902, I devoted the whole of my time to a careful examination of the Educational System of the Protestant Schools of the Province of Quebec. My work fell into two divisions : (1) the actual visiting of schools ; (2) the interviewing of School Commissioners, Inspectors, Secretary-Treasurers, Educational Officials of all kinds, and members of the general public who showed any interest in education. In the visiting of schools I had the great advantage of the guidance of Mr. H. M. Tory of McGill University. As Mr. Tory has very exceptional local knowledge I was enabled to pass from school to school with the minimum expenditure of time. While the railway facilities of the Province enabled us to move easily from

•j

centre to centre out of school hours, we found it necessary to do most of our travelling between the smaller schools by driving. In this way in passing from one Academy to another we were enabled to see several typical district schools on the way. In no case did we spend any time during school hours in doing anything else than visiting schools.

Protestant School System

The following is a list of the schools that we visited : —

1. Academies. — Aylmer, Bedford, Cowansville, Coaticook,

Cookshire, Danville, Granby, Huntingdon, Inverness, Knowlton, Lennoxville, Lachute, Ormstown, Richmond, St. John, Sutton, Sherbrooke, Three Rivers, Valleyfield, Waterloo.

2. Model Schools. — Aberdeen (Montreal W.), Barnston, Buck-

ingham, Bury, Clarenceville, Compton, Dunham Graded School, Farnham, Frelighsburg, Gould, Hatley, Hull, Kinnear's Mills, Lachine, Lacolle, Leeds, Magog, Sawyer- ville, St. Lambert, Stanbridge East, Scotstown, South Durham, Waterville, Windsor Mills.

3. Special Secondary Schools. — Boys' High School (Quebec),

Girls' High School (Quebec), Stanstead Wesleyan College School, Bishop's College School, Dunham Ladies' College, Dufferin Grammar School, Westmount Academy, The Senior School and The High School of Montreal.

4. City Schools, Montreal. — Of the twelve City Schools I

visited six : —

Aberdeen School, Ann Street School, Dufferin School, Mount Royal School, Riverside School,1 The Victoria School.

Quebec. — Under the guidance of Secretary- Treasurer Wurtele, we had an excellent opportunity of seeing the full working of Elgin Street School.

5. District Schools. — Of these we visited in all 120 representa-

tive schools in all sorts of districts between Argenteuil on the West and Beauce on the East.

1 Through the courtesy of Superintendent Arthy I was privileged to accompany Inspector MacOuat on his official visits to Riverside and Mount Royal Schools.

2

Opportunities for Observation

In all those schools I was able either to observe the teacher at work, or myself to conduct a class in one or more subjects. Frequently the teacher welcomed an examination. In every case I saw and spoke to all the teachers in school, and dis- cussed their methods. Towards the end of June, one or two of the schools that we visited we found closed for the Session ; and in other cases we found that the annual examinations had so far disorganised work that we could not see the schools in their usual working order ; but in all cases I was allowed to see through the school premises, even when the school was closed for the Session. In almost every case in which the school was closed I was able to interview the principal teacher, and in every case I was able to examine the Time Table, and thus complete my record of the curricula and Time Tables of the various schools.

All my time out of school hours was spent in interviewing school officials and others interested in educational work. Every facility was given me by the Education Department and its officials. All the official and other literature on educational matters was placed at my disposal, and I had an opportunity of conferring with most of the members of the Protestant Board itself.

Protestant School System

CLASSIFICATION OF SCHOOLS.

It will be seen that the schools naturally fall into five classes. Of these I have least to say about the City Schools, for the reason that they labour under none of the disadvantages which constitute the essence of the peculiarly unfavour- able conditions under which Protestant Education labours in the rest of the Province. The Pro- testant population of Montreal is large enough to warrant the organisation of an Educational System for itself, and wealthy enough to provide the necessary buildings, apparatus and staff. While in a sense forming a part of the general Educational System of the Province, the Montreal Protestant Schools are really worked as an independent Department, under a respon- sible Superintendent. The organisation of the schools is quite different from that found any- where else in the Province. The half-year is made the unit of classification, instead of the year, with the best results. A special scheme of work •is drawn up for the schools, which are thus enabled to provide education of the kind that meets the needs of the city. The twelve ordinary schools give a particularly good Ele- mentary Course that is complete in itself. Secondary Education is provided in two special centres — the Senior School and the High School. The Senior School makes a specialty of the

4

Classification of Schools

Commercial side of education, while the High School has a curriculum, which in the upper classes may be so modified as to be complete in itself or to prepare the way for University study.

The distinction between the Senior School Course and the Commercial Course in the High School is difficult to make out. The two schools exist apart, for reasons that are now of merely historical interest.

The connection between the Elementary Schools and the Secondary is made by a system of Open Competition Scholarships, which enable all the pupils of the city to advance as far as their ability and ambition can carry them. The fees in the Elementary Schools are 50c. per month, and in the High School run from $6*25 to $15 per term. But remission of fees in the Elementary Schools is easily obtained, without loss of self-respect, in every case of genuine in- ability to pay. The Protestant Board of School Commissioners for Montreal are confident that, thanks to remission of fees where necessary and to the Commissioners' Scholarships and Govern- ment Scholarships, no child in Montreal of suffi- cient ability to profit by a Secondary Course is ever debarred from that Course on account of poverty.

The special Secondary Schools, while import- ant in themselves, do not readily fall into line with the general system of the Province, which

5

Protestant School System

includes Elementary or District Schools, Model Schools and Academies. This triple classification is not satisfactory.

The District School is the most clearly marked off. It is the ordinary village or country school taught by one teacher, and limiting itself to the four grades of the Elementary Course prescribed by the Protestant Committee of the Council of Public Instruction (which has the control of Pro- testant Education in the Province, and which I shall refer to after this simply as the Committee). A Model School must have two teachers, one of whom holds a special diploma known as the Model Diploma ; and in addition to the elemen- tary subjects provides " instruction in Algebra, Geometry, French and the Latin Elements " according to a three years' course prescribed by the Committee. An Academy must have at least three teachers, one of whom must hold what is known as the Academy Diploma ; and must provide instruction in the higher branches according to the Committee's scheme covering three years, and known as the Academy Course. Model Schools and Academies must remain in session at least one hundred and eighty days during the year. Thus, a Model School is an Elementary School with a higher department, while an Academy is a Model School with a still higher department added. There is thus no justi- fication for the name Model School. A simpler

6

School Buildings

classification would be to adopt the United States plan, and number all the classes consecutively from the bottom. Classes I. -IV. would cover the Elementary Grade, V.-VII. the Model Grade, and VIII.-X. the Academy Grade. In this way the work done in any school could be at once indicated by quoting the number of its highest class.

SCHOOL BUILDINGS.

DISTRICT SCHOOLS. — Speaking generally, these are very bad. They consist of three parts : the schoolhouse proper, the woodshed, the outhouses. The schoolhouse is almost always built of wood, generally clap-boarded, and often painted a dark purplish red. Even the literal log-cabin is not lacking. The number of windows varies from three to eight ; five and six being the most common numbers. Frequently there is a window in front of the pupils in spite of regula- tion 109 of the Protestant Committee. It is quite exceptional for a school to conform to regulation 107, which declares that "the outside door should never open directly into the school- room ". The rule is that when one enters from the road one finds oneself directly in the school- room, facing the teacher who is seated at her desk on a slightly raised platform. Between the door and the teacher is the stove. On both sides of the room the desks are arranged so that the

7

Protestant School System

children face the teacher. It is very rare to find any realisation of the Committee's desire for "anterooms or cloakrooms for pupils of both sexes separate from the schoolroom, warmed and ventilated and supplied with hooks and with shelves for the pupils' luncheon ".

The floor is usually made up of broad planks full of nails and knots. In most cases the build- ing is weather-tight, but I saw several schools that let in the rain through the roof, and permitted the wind to make itself felt within the room. The Committee very properly declare that the school- house must be swept daily and scrubbed at least once every two months, but when they state " but it is not the duty of teachers to do this work," they fall back upon abstract principles. In very many cases the teacher with the aid of some of the girls, taken in turn, does the daily sweeping. The scrubbing too often limits itself to an annual function, and in not a few cases the mistress, rather than tolerate the accumulating dirt, tackles the scrubbing herself. In several schools I found that one dollar was offered by the Commissioners for the scrubbing, but that no scrubber was found willing to accept the contract.

The woodshed is usually quite suitable, for here the needs of the case appeal to the practical Commissioner.

The outhouses as a rule are not very satis-

8

School Buildings

factory, either from the point of view of sanitation or of refinement. Sometimes the outhouses and the woodshed are combined in such a way as to make it unnecessary for children to go out into the open air during bad weather. Occasionally the woodshed forms a sort of vestibule or porch to the school itself.

In one very important point these schools are eminently satisfactory. Since they have been in almost every case built for larger numbers than are now available, there is no difficulty in providing the fifteen square feet of floor space or the 150 cubic feet of air space demanded for each pupil. In most cases the requirements of regulation 106 are met in the most satisfactory way, both as to area and cubical content.

MODEL SCHOOLS. — Nearly all the Model Schools are old buildings, dull and antiquated. Sometimes they are touched up on the outside and appear to greater advantage from without than from within. This is the case with Hatley School, which claims to be the oldest Protestant School in the Township. It is more common, however, to find the inside much better than the outside promises. Speaking generally, Model Schools have a broken-down look. If a district has ambition enough to renovate its school build- ing, the ambition usually carries it on to erect the school into an Academy. At Montreal West, at St. Lambert, at Lachine, at Magog, at Compton,

9

Protestant School System

at Waterville and at Hull there are good buildings, fresh, well-aired and in every way satisfactory. Most of the others that I saw are exceedingly depressing, some of them distinctly bad, one in- deed— Scotstown — condemned by the Inspector. Several of the present Model Schools began life as Academies. Lacolle, for example, once held an excellent place among the Academies under the distinguished Mr. Masten.

ACADEMIES. — In comparison with the District Schools and the Model Schools, the Academies are excellently provided in the way of buildings. Of the twenty regular Academies that I visited, I would rank the buildings of eight as in every way excellent, of six as distinctly very good, of three as fair, and of other three as unsatisfactory. Of the unsatisfactory buildings one is to be rebuilt next year. In almost every case the Academy building is not only excellently suited to its pur- pose, but is a handsome block in a well-chosen situation. The buildings vary in size according to local needs, but in all cases great attention is paid to ventilation and sanitary conditions and appliances. The newer the building the more perfect the ventilation and sanitation. The building just completed at Coaticook, for example, reflects the greatest credit on the Commissioners' zeal and enterprise, but all the newer buildings that I have classed as excellent really leave nothing to be desired.

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Furniture and Apparatus

CITY SCHOOLS. — The buildings that I saw in Montreal — with the exception of Ann Street, an old patched-up structure in a grimy district — reflect great credit on the educational authorities of the city, and can stand comparison with similar buildings anywhere. The same cannot be said for the one City School — Elgin Street — in Quebec.

FURNITURE AND APPARATUS.

DISTRICT SCHOOLS. — In some of the better districts the modern folding desk is being largely introduced, but the majority of the District Schools still retain the fixed desks built on the spot by the local joiner. It means much to find in the Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, among the statistics of the state of Protestant Schools, two columns, one for the schools that are and another for the schools that are not "provided with desks and seats with back". The total number of schools thus pro- vided is 570, while 308 is the total of those not so provided. In one school, which did not in any way strike me as uncommon, I was assured that there had been no change in school or desks since my informant had sat there as a tiny boy forty years before. It is not the age or even the shape of the desks that renders them unsuitable. The great trouble is that there is usually no difference in height among the desks, and little children and big must accommodate themselves

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Protestant School System

to the height as they find it. As matters stand, the Committee need hardly hope as they do " that all pupils may be seated with their feet firmly upon the floor".

The teacher's desk is usually more modern, though in certain districts it reminds one of nothing so much as a horse-trough fitted with a lid and padlock. As to the petty furnishings demanded by regulation 124, "a wood-box or a coal-bucket, a shovel, a poker, a broom, a water- bucket, a drinking-cup, a hand-bell, a clock, a thermometer," and things of that kind, a great deal depends upon the Inspector. In one district <every school has a washhand basin. It is greatly to the credit of the local Inspector that all his schools are thus supplied, but it is significant that the basins should strike one as worthy of notice. I do not think I observed a thermometer in more than three District Schools.

The apparatus in these schools is of the simplest. Fixed to the wall behind the teacher's chair is the blackboard, usually too small for the needs of the school, and almost always worn bare.1 Sometimes the wall itself is painted black to serve as a board, and if the plaster is kept

1 It would be worth the district teachers' while to note that for a few cents they can get a mixture of black paint and turps which, laid on the blackboard at night, will leave the board ready for use next morning with an excellent new surface.

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Furniture and Apparatus

in good order this arrangement works admirably. Unfortunately the plaster is nearly always cracked and broken.

The blackboard is used in all kinds of schools in the Province to a much greater extent than in Britain. But this use is not of that per- nicious kind that mars the teaching of some of our enthusiastic young teachers, who insist upon putting everything upon the blackboard, to the serious waste of the school time. Not the teachers but the pupils make the chief use of the blackboard in the Province ; it is the means of making class teaching possible. Even in very young classes pupil after pupil is called upon to come to the board, and do whatever work admits of this method of treatment. When the black- board is of sufficient size, a whole class is called upon to write down simultaneously the parts of a French verb, the solution of a given equation, or the correction of a given faulty English sentence. In Quebec High School (boys) this system is worked admirably.

Then there are one or two maps. Schools are required to have maps of North America, Canada and the Province of Quebec. In many cases North America and Canada have to suffice,, but in almost all the schools the teachers have been promised a proper supply of maps. In several cases the present supply is excellent.

In some districts, particularly in the eastern

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Protestant School System

counties, the schools are provided with what is known as the Caxton Chart, published by a Toronto firm. This contains diagrams and illus- trations in almost all the subjects of the school course — reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, drawing, music and elementary science. The sheets are mounted on a handy easel-frame, and the teachers who are supplied with the Chart say that they do not know how they could get along without it.

Except the Caxton Chart it is exceedingly rare to find any diagrams in District Schools. Models are almost unknown. The sand-table to illustrate geographical terms and phenomena is not used, though the materials for fitting one are at hand in almost every school. It was pleasant to find now and then a teacher inventing simple bits of apparatus — but this occurred only once or twice. It is not that the teachers have no invention, but rather that their attention has not been turned in this direction. It is interesting to note that in the Kindergarten Schools, in which the teacher tries to draw out the inventiveness of her pupils, she herself exemplifies the power she wishes to cultivate. Will it be argued that the Kindergarten teachers differ in kind from their fellows in the District Schools ? May there not be some in- struction in the fact that Kindergarten teachers are trained ?

It takes one back a long way into the past

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Furniture and Apparatus

to find children carrying their slates to school, and still farther back to find them carrying their own charged ink bottles there. In some schools, however, it is becoming customary to use " scribblers " for working out arithmetical sums, and in many schools, especially in the Secondary Schools, the pupils are freed from the necessity of providing their own ink.

MODEL SCHOOLS. — The furniture and apparatus of the Model Schools are fairly satisfactory. In the newer buildings the furniture is of the best, each pupil has a desk of his own, there are suit- able cloakrooms, and the sanitary arrangements are excellent. Some even of the old buildings have been entirely refitted within, and are quite respectably furnished and equipped. But the majority of the Model Schools have furniture and apparatus quite in keeping with the antiquated buildings in which they are held.

ACADEMIES. — Speaking generally, the Acade- mies are well fitted up, and supplied with all needful apparatus. The newer buildings, indeed, are handsomely appointed, but even the older buildings are well provided with modern furniture and apparatus. One naturally makes the correla- tion between the building and the apparatus, but it should really be made between the teacher and the apparatus. The teacher may not be able to effect much change in a building — though one Academy Principal has been responsible for the

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Protestant School System

erection of a new building in each of the three districts in which he was successively Principal —but he is almost always able to induce his Commissioners to supply him with suitable apparatus. Even when his Commissioners fail him the energetic Principal does not give up. He adopts a method that reflects credit upon him- self, his staff, his pupils ; but that ought to cover his Commissioners with shame. This method is known as : —

THE SCHOOL CONCERT. — In Britain the School Concert is quite an institution. The pupils like the stir and the excitement of the preparation and the actual performance, the parents enjoy the interest shown in their children, the general public are indulgently generous, and if the teachers have to work overtime there is at least the reward of public acknowledgment, and the funds to supply some of the aesthetic needs of the school. Pictures, plants, magic lanterns, pretty books for the school library, a school foot- ball or cricket outfit — these are the things on which the money goes. This is true also in Montreal. In most of the excellently equipped schools there, one meets capital engravings artistically framed which have been bought with the school's proportion of the proceeds from the children's concert. [Here it may be remarked in passing that certain members of the Committee deserve credit for what they have done in intro-

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School Books

ducing into Canada some of the best productions of the " Art for Schools Association ".] But in the country schools there is a grim realism about these school entertainments. Teacher and pupils spend time and labour to induce the public to supply them — in return for an entertainment — with money to pay for the cleaning of the school, the purchase of a broom, the repairing of walls, the glazing of windows, the replacing of danger- ously loose planks in the flooring. In one school the chair on which the teacher sat, the desk at which she wrote, the dictionary to which she re- ferred, the drinking-can, the wash-hand basin and the foot-mat at the door were all the produce of a couple of school concerts. The Commissioners who make it necessary for teachers to supply the things essential to the efficient discharge of daily work are past shame, and it is not in the hope of moving them that I mention these facts. It is rather to strengthen what I have to say about the essential importance of the teacher as the beginning and ending of all educational success. Everything depends upon the teacher.

SCHOOL BOOKS.

There is a very widely spread discontent throughout the Province in regard to school books, not among teachers but among School Commissioners and the general public. The grievances are mainly the following : —

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Protestant School System

1 . Children are said to be required to have too many books. " More than they can carry, to put it on no other ground," complained one Commis- sioner. " My boy has to carry fifteen volumes to school every day," objected another. Neither of these complaints could stand investigation. The " fifteen volumes " gave the complainer a very bad quarter of an hour to explain away.

2. It is said that books are being continually changed in order to benefit the publishers. In particular there is a great indignation against " improved " text-books. It is maintained that no sooner is a text-book introduced than some trifling improvement is made in it which makes all the first issue useless for younger brothers and sisters, to say nothing of the unused copies of the first edition left on the hands of the Commissioners. I had no means of testing the truth of this complaint : but while the reference to the publishers' interest seems irrelevant, it must be admitted, that it is good policy to avoid frequent changes of text- books. The Committee is fully alive to the im- portance of maintaining a certain stability in the list of authorised text-books, and there is no trace of any desire on their part to make capricious changes, or even to enforce the immediate adop- tion of a new book that they find it advisable to recommend. All their regulations in this connec- tion are eminently reasonable, and are based on a full knowledge of the prevailing conditions.

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School Books

3. I can hardly understand the complaint that costly books are prescribed, and when they are procured the children use only a very small portion of them. This applies specially to classical texts. The pupils get a copy of Caesar, it is said, and read only one book, of Virgil and perhaps do not complete the reading of even one book, and next year still a third author must be bought. Teachers maintain that there has been up till lately cause for complaint, though I find no trace of pupils being compelled to buy a complete Caesar or Virgil. This may have been the case in times past, but now no pupil need buy more than the part he has actually to read.

Several Principals of Academies say that only one Latin author should be used throughout the Academy Course, in order to avoid the undue multiplication of text-books. But this is to subordinate the whole Educational System to a detail of school management. It is unreasonable to suppose that the same training in Latin can be got from the three years' study of one author as would follow from the careful study of typical selections from the works of three or four. The difficulty is no longer so great as it was. A glance at the most recent table of requirements in the Classics will show that the text-book matter has been carefully considered. I am almost inclined to think that too much con- sideration has been given to this aspect of the

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Protestant School System

question. The difficulty may be met in two different ways. The first depends entirely on the teacher. This is how the skilful teacher in Britain meets the complaint about unexhausted text-books — for it would be well for Canadians to remember that they have not a monopoly of dis- satisfaction about school books. While preparing thoroughly the part of the book that must be professed at the examination, he uses other parts of the book for tests in sight-reading and free translation, and makes a point before the end of the Session, of running rapidly through the whole book with the class. Parents do not inquire how the book has been studied : provided the pupil can proclaim that he has gone through the whole book no questions are asked about who supplied the translation. The method not only avoids complaints : it is good in itself, since it combines the accuracy of thorough treatment of the part, and the broader view of the author's work gathered from the rapid reading of the whole. The second way of meeting the difficulty lies in the hands of the Committee themselves. Let them publish in one volume all the books prescribed for the various grades. All that is required is the selec- tion and printing of good texts. Since no notes and no original matter would be necessary, the books could be published at a very moderate rate, and all the necessary annotations and explanations could be supplied by the teachers. The lack of

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The Teachers

vocabularies would merely involve the somewhat earlier purchase of a dictionary. It goes without saying that any study of Latin, or any other language, which does not involve the possession of a dictionary is not worth considering.

THE TEACHERS.

It is easy to overestimate the importance of buildings and apparatus. There is an ever- present temptation to the practical man to spend money on that which shows something tangible in return. All over the world money is much more readily voted or subscribed for building than for any other educational purpose. Given a good building and plenty of the newest apparatus, it is believed that good educational results must naturally follow. The teacher is subordinated to the mere machinery of education.

While everything must be done to maintain the schools in the best state possible, in respect of both accommodation and apparatus, it can- not be too strongly maintained that the school, the school grounds, the school furniture, and the school apparatus sink into insignificance com- pared with the teacher. Many of the schools I saw showed up miserable work although the buildings and apparatus were all that could be desired, while some of the best work in the Province is done in schools which in respect of buildings and apparatus do the Province little

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Protestant School System

credit. No doubt the ideal state is an excellent teacher in an excellently equipped school. But if a choice must be made between a good teacher and a good school, by all means let us have a good teacher, however bad the school may be. It must be remembered that after all a school means fundamentally the teacher and the pupils : all the rest is more or less accidental. A school is an institution, not a place.

The teacher, then, is the crux of the whole question. Given a good teacher, all the rest follows. He will never be satisfied with bad buildings and poor apparatus. He is a force that cannot but work towards the improve- ment of his surroundings. While making the best of his present conditions, he persistently strives after their improvement. It is sometimes said that excellent buildings and apparatus bring out the best that is in a teacher. But if there be nothing in the teacher, the best buildings and apparatus will bring nothing out of him. As is the master so is the school. Every experienced Inspector of schools has his memory filled with cases in which the same school under exactly similar conditions has been a bad school under one teacher, and an excellent school immediately afterwards under another. Indeed the Quebec Inspectors tell me that in this Province the ups and downs of the same schools with the change of teachers is specially striking. Yet among

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The Teachers

School Commissioners there seems the belief that one teacher is pretty much the same as another. What they want is a teacher. It is almost inconceivable that School Commissioners, evidently intelligent and progressive men in their own business, should use the following argument with which I have been met on many occasions : "We have only to advertise in the Montreal papers, and we'll get fifty candidates eager to come to us at $15 a month. Why should we pay more ? That wouldn't be business." In one case a Commissioner added, " Three or four of the candidates offered to come for nothing more than would pay their board". With the economic question here involved we are not concerned : the interesting thing is the Commissioner's point of view. He does not ask : How am I to get a good teacher ? but merely : How cheaply can I get a teacher ? A teacher who works for no more than her board may conceivably be an excellent teacher : but this does not interest the Commissioner. Cheapness and quality are correlative terms in dealing with cloth, or paint, or tinned meat : but in education the Commercial Commissioner thinks only of the absolute price. This may be small, and yet the teacher may be extremely dear at the money.

DISTRICT SCHOOL TEACHERS. — In view of the little the State does for their training, and in view of the salaries they receive, it cannot be

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Protestant School System

denied that the District School Teachers are a good bargain to the State. But when we con- sider the small percentage of trained teachers, and the limited training even these have received, we cannot regard the present supply of teachers as at all satisfactory. Further, unsatisfactory as it is, the body of teachers is in a state of con- tinual change. The annual "waste" among all the Protestant teachers of the Province is es- timated by Dr. Robins at about 15 per cent., but the Inspectors of schools put it much higher in the case of the District Teachers, and call it 20 to 25 per cent. This involves a very great change annually in the personnel of the teaching body. But even among those who remain in the ranks of the teachers, there is a widespread spirit of unrest, resulting in an unhealthy frequency of change of school, that cannot but have the most disastrous effects upon the progress of pupils. Among the schools I visited, I was startled at the number of cases in which the teacher was in that particular school from the beginning of the Session only. When stated in actual figures the result is still more striking. Only 18 per cent, of the teachers I visited in District Schools had been in the same school the year before. In other words 82 per cent, of the teachers I met had changed their school at the beginning of the year. This inordinate amount of change demands some explanation.

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The Teachers

To begin with, when a teacher is appointed in Britain the engagement is permanent. In Quebec " the engagement of a teacher shall be for the term of a school year". It is true that unless teachers receive notice at the end of the year that their further services will not be required, they may regard themselves as engaged, by default, for the ensuing year. But the general feeling is that the engagement is from year to year, and at the end of each Session the question of go or stay is discussed. In Britain the teacher remains as a matter of course. It is almost the opposite in Quebec.

From all that I have been able to gather, it appears that in the majority of cases the desire for change is on the teacher's part, but naturally there are a great many instances in which the Commissioners want to get rid of an incapable or troublesome teacher. Of the 82 per cent, of changing teachers, we may safely assume that a large proportion are really " moved on " by Com- missioners who feel that any change will be for the better. Those who are good teachers may wish to change for one or two of the following reasons : (1) To better their position by going elsewhere for an increase of salary. In many districts the salary is quite fixed. A young teacher is willing to put in one year at the small fixed salary in order to acquire experience. Next year she is worth more, and goes where

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Protestant School System

she can get her market value. Under this head may be included the desire to get to a town.. (2) Sometimes the change is made for the mere sake of variety. The new school may bring no more money and no better status, but it is different. Young people love change, and soon exhaust the interest of a neighbourhood. (3) In the intimate life of a village or hamlet occa- sions of offence frequently arise, interests clash and relations become strained. Disputes between boarder and landlady are not uncommon, and there is the ever-present difficulty of denomina- tional differences. When trouble of this kind arises, the teacher naturally seeks a change. DIPLOMAS. — The following results of my own inquiries give a pretty fair idea of the kind of teacher to be found at present in the District Schools. Of the teachers whom I visited 36- 1 per cent, had received a more or less thorough training. This percentage is made up as fol- lows : —

Per cent.

Trained at the McGill Normal School for four months . 18-1 „ „ „ „ nine months . 13'2

„ „ „ „ two years . 4'&

36-1

The following table gives a complete view of the diplomas held by the teachers whom I met : —

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The Teachers

No Diploma ........ 9-7

Elementary Diploma after four months' training . 18-1

„ „ „ nine months' training . 8-4

2nd Elementary Diploma Board Exam, with no training 43'4

1st ii ii ii ii ii • 7*2!

2nd Model Diploma „ „ „ .1-2

1st ij ii ii ii ii . .Z 4

Model Diploma after nine months' training . . 4-8

„ „ „ two years' training . . . 4*8

100-0

It is illegal to employ a teacher without a diploma, yet the table shows that nearly 10 per cent, of the teachers I met in District Schools had no diploma. Nor were these teachers found only in the very smallest schools. On an average, the attendance at schools taught by uncertificated teachers was twelve. Only 37*5 per cent, of schools thus taught had an average attendance of less than eleven. Certain districts are much worse than others in this respect. Mr. C. A. Jenkins, the Secretary-Treasurer of the Munici- pality of the township of Stanstead, told me that of the thirty-three schools under his Commis- sioners three were now closed, while of the remaining thirty exactly one-half were taught by teachers without diploma. All the thirty teachers, whether holding Model Diplomas, Elementary Diplomas or no diploma at all, receive exactly the same salary, $16 per month.

MODEL SCHOOL TEACHERS. — The quality of the

27

Protestant School System

teachers in Model Schools is distinctly higher than that found in the District Schools. To begin with, the chief teacher must hold a Model Diploma, and as a matter of fact many of the sub- ordinate teachers also hold this diploma. Some of the Principals indeed hold First Academy Diplomas. Then the school aims higher, the number of pupils is greater, and altogether there is a greater chance to put heart into the work. The salaries, too, though far from adequate, are less discouraging than those of the district teachers, and there is always a vague hope of promotion. The average female Principal of a Model School is a capable, energetic and ambiti- ous woman, with respectable educational ideals, and a conscientious determination to realise them. The same praise cannot be given to the average male Principal. In the case of three or four of the better paid posts the master has made teach- ing his profession and does capital work. It would be difficult, for example, to find a better teacher than the Principal of Lachine Model School. But the ordinary poorly paid Principal is at his post because he can find nothing better to do. He does his day's work, but he has no ideals and no enthusiasm. He has no ambition and there is the note of temporariness in all his ways. Five out of the ten men I met are leaving their schools this year, four of these at the request of the Commissioners ; another is not

28

The Teachers

sure whether he will remain ; and in the case of one of the five his whole staff of three certificated teachers is also being changed.

With the female Principals there is much greater permanency. Comparatively few of them change their place this year.

The Protestant Committee require that there shall be at least two teachers before a school can claim Model rank, but of the twenty-four Model Schools I visited, a respectable proportion had three or more teachers. The subjoined table gives the actual staff in each case. It will be noted that there are ten male Principals and fourteen female : —

Model School.	Master.	Mistresses.	Model School.	Master.	Mistresses.
Aberdeen (Mon-			Kinnear's Mills		2
treal W.)	1	2	Lachine	1	6i
Buckingham	1	2	Lacolle	—	2
Bury .	—	2	Leeds	—	2
Barnston .	—	2	Magog	1	3
Clarenceville	1	1	Sawyerville	—	2
Compton .	1	1	St. Lambert	1	4
Dunham Graded	—	2	Stanbridge East	—	2
Farnham .	1	2	Scotstown	—	3
Frelighsburg	—	2	South Durham	—	2
Gould	—	2	Waterville	—	2»
Hatley	1	1	Windsor Mills	—	2
Hull .	1	3

ACADEMY TEACHERS. — The Principals of the Academies, with one exception (Inverness), are men. Here at last we come to conditions which,

1 Staff to be increased next year.

2 Plus a teacher for half-time to meet the special pressure for this year.

Protestant School System

if not all that could be desired, are yet such as to enable men to regard teaching as a profession, and to adopt it as a life work, without too great a sense of sacrifice. Almost all the Principals are graduates, some of them graduates with distinction, and if they did not start with the advantages of professional training, they have now acquired by experience — mayhap to the cost of former pupils — a thorough mastery of their craft. Most of them are interested in the practi- cal side of their work, and a few of them (notably the younger men) in its theoretical and philo- sophical aspects. They are men highly esteemed in their districts, men whose influence is not limited to their school sphere.

The subordinate teachers in the Academies are in general of a higher quality than is found in either the Model Schools or the District Schools. The causes of this are easily discovered. The buildings are better ; the larger numbers allow of better classification ; there is room for promotion. Further, there is more intercourse with other teachers, better opportunity for study, and a certain professional status from being an " Academy " teacher. Besides, the Academies are usually in more or less populous centres, the attractions of which are generally acknowledged.

Before a school can be recognised as an Academy it must have a staff of at least three

30

Teachers' Salaries

teachers. Only four of the Academies I visited were limited to this minimum.

The following table shows the actual figures with regard to staff : —

Academy.	Master.	Mistresses.	Academy.	Master.	Mistresses.
Avlmer	1	3	Lennoxville	1	3
Bedford .	1	3	Lachute	1	6
Cowansville	1	3	Ormstown	1	3
Coaticook .	1	4	Richmond .	1	4
Cookshire .	1	3	St. John .	1	2
Danville	1	3	Sutton	1	2
Granby	1	4	Sherbrooke	1	9*
Huntingdon	1	4	Three Rivers	1	2
Inverness .	—	3	Valleyfield	1	4
Knowlton .	1	31	Waterloo .	1	3

TEACHERS' SALARIES.

DISTRICT SCHOOLS. — I should think that teachers are worse paid in the Province of Quebec than in any other part of the world. From the " Report of the Ontario Educational Association for 1901," I learn that "Quebec pays 380 teachers at $7 a month". One is not sur- prised at the comments made upon this fact by one of the best informed of the speakers at the Congress of the Association : " I have never had anything that made my whole nature shrink with apology for Canada like that — $7 a month for 380 women to teach the children ! It takes all the

1 Including the French mistress who teaches the French Elementary Department that forms part of the Academy.

2 There are in addition some visiting masters.

31

Protestant School System

stiffening out of a man's backbone when he wants to speak proudly of a people who will do that." This payment, however, is probably limited to Roman Catholic Schools, for the lowest salary I came across in my visits to Protestant Schools was $14 a month. $15 is not uncommon, $16 is quite usual, $17 is regarded as satisfactory, and $18 or anything above it as distinctly good. To a visitor, this calculation by the month is very misleading. To him $15 a month naturally means $180 a year, but in Quebec it will at best mean $150, and at worst may mean $105, and in extreme cases $60 a year. For, since schools are kept open for a varying number of months each year, the teacher is paid for only the exact number of days that the school is open. This consideration makes the averages of salaries given in the Superintendent's Report meaning- less, so far as any relation between work and pay is concerned. There we learn that the average annual payment to female teachers in the country schools is $114 in the case of those that do not hold a diploma, and $149 in the case of those that do. But the possession of a diploma does not seem to imply any necessary increase in salary. In one country school I found two teachers, the as- sistant being a very young girl who has no diploma of any kind, but who receives the unusually high salary of $20 a month. In a school not two miles distant I found a teacher holding a First

32

Teachers' Salaries

Class Model Diploma, and receiving a salary of $15 a month. No explanation of any kind was offered.

Board costs generally between $5 and $6 a month in the cheaper districts, but as board must go on throughout the whole year, while salary runs for a limited number of months, we must not deal with the monthly amounts but with the annual in comparing income and cost of living. Some skilful campaigners among the teachers contrive to fill two engagements in the year ; one in an eight months' school, the other in a four months' school. But it is rare that the times coincide so as to permit of this combination. " Boarding around" is forbidden by the Com- mittee, but I came across one or two cases. In- asmuch as this "boarding" was in addition to the ordinary- salary, there seems no reason to find fault. What the Committee desires is to prevent the abuses that obviously arise out of the objectionable plan of saving money by paying in kind. The teachers who " boarded around " were highly satisfied with the arrangement.

MODEL SCHOOLS. — The salaries of Model School Principals are naturally higher than those paid to district teachers, and in general the pay- ments made to the subordinate teachers in Model Schools are also above the average in the Ele- mentary Schools. Of the ten male Principals in the schools I visited one gets $925 (to be $1,000

c 33

Protestant School System

next year), one gets $700, two get $600 (but in these two cases I am not sure that I can rely upon my source of information), one gets $550, four get $500, and one gets $350. This gives an average of $572'5.

In the case of the fourteen female Principals whose schools I saw, five get $250, one gets $252, three get $300, three get $350, one gets $380, and one gets $400. This gives an average of $302-3. ACADEMIES. — The tendency of teachers' salaries all over the Province is to rise. For example, on page 297 of the " Superintendent's Report for 1900-1901," there is a statistical table giving among other details the salary paid to each Academy Principal. In several cases the amount stated is less than I found to be actually paid this year. The average of the salaries set opposite the Principals of the twenty academies I visited, in the " Superintendent's Report," amounts to $764-5. The average of the salaries as I found them is $799'5, an increase of $35 on the average, which cannot but be regarded as a substantial advance. In some cases an increase has been promised for the year 1902-1903, so that while the present state of salaries cannot be regarded as satisfactory, all the indications of change are in the proper direction.

34

Training of Teachers

TRAINING OF TEACHERS, The regulations at present in force regarding the training of teachers are excellent, so far as they go. No teacher is allowed (in theory — we have seen what the practice is) to teach without a diploma, and no diploma can be obtained with- out a certain amount of training. The standard of examination for admission to the Normal School has been raised of late. It now consists of a good pass in the Academy II. Examination. The results of this examination are considered by the Central Board, and certificates of admission to the Normal School are issued accordingly. These certificates are of two kinds : those ad- mitting to four months' training, and those admitting to nine months' training. The standard is higher for the former than for the latter, on the principle that a student who proposes to give only four months to the work of training, ought at least to be well prepared in the matter of the ordinary school studies. The four months' certificate admits to the nine months' course, but the nine months' certificate does not admit to the four months' course. The staff at the Normal School complain that the standard of pass must be very low, as the candidates admitted are in general poorly equipped in respect of attainments. Those who undergo four months' training success- fully receive an Elementary Diploma ; those who

35

Protestant School System

undergo nine months' training successfully receive an Advanced Elementary Diploma. The nine months' course is more popular than the other, the proportion of students in these classes being about sixty-two to thirty-eight. The Normal School authorities do all they can to favour the longer period, but it must be admitted that, in view of the present demand for teachers, the tendency to employ cheap uncertificated teachers, and the low salaries in District Schools, it would be unwise at present to make the nine months' course compulsory. Probably, too, the low standard of the admission examination is a thing to be deplored rather than remedied by any sudden pressure. While aiming at higher things we must make the best of things as they are. The advance recently made must be secured before another is attempted.

Candidates for the Model Course must pass the Academy III. Examination, or what is re- garded as its equivalent, the Associate in Arts (A.A.) Examination conducted by the McGill University. This is in every way satisfactory. But here again we have a back-door. Holders of the Elementary Certificate who produce satis- factory evidence of having taught successfully for eight months are allowed to join the Model Class without further examination. This equation of practical experience and examination knowledge is eminently unreasonable, but in the present

36

Training of Teachers

state of affairs is quite defensible. It is a great gain to get teachers under training for nine months.

Taking into account all classes of schools, I must have talked to close on two hundred teachers trained at the McGill Normal School for either the longer or the shorter period. In all cases I asked the opinion of the teacher as to the value of the training received. The replies constitute a chorus of praise. Not more than four or five gave any but the most favourable report on their training. It is interesting also to note that the longer a student had been at the Normal School the more highly she thought of it. Those who had had four months wished they had had a year : those who had had a year wished they could have another : those who had had two years of training were loudest in their praises. All admitted that they had much to learn when they left the Normal School, but they were very clear that they had learnt there how to deal with all the important parts of school work.

As stated in its Prospectus: "The essential work of the Normal School is training to teach ". Yet in both the Advanced Elementary Class and the Model Class there is a regular scheme of work such as we might find in connection with an ordinary Higher Grade School. This is very objectionable, but under the circumstances quite unavoidable. The ideal state is one in which the

37

Protestant School System

mere culture subjects, the matters to be after- wards taught to pupils, are mastered before the training in " how to teach " begins. So far the four months' course — which is entirely given up to the theory and practice of teaching — may be regarded as ideal. Unfortunately the culture subjects are not known by those short course pupils as they are assumed to be. Accordingly, better results are obtained in the long courses in which subjects are taught as well as methods. It has to be remembered that all the subjects taken up are taught from the teaching point of view, i.e., each of the Normal School Staff teaches his subject in such a way as to supply a model of how that subject should be taught. Unfortunately there is an examination at the close of the Session, an examination of the ordinary kind in " subjects ". The Normal School Staff must be very exceptional, or the students in training must have unusual profes- sional enthusiasm, if this examination does not seriously interfere with the teaching of these subjects from the purely pedagogic standpoint. GRADUATES AND THE NORMAL SCHOOL. — In the case of Graduates who take the Normal School Course of training in order to qualify for the Academy Diploma which is now restricted to Graduates of Canadian and other British Uni- versities, we seem to have all the conditions for the realisation of the ideal state. For here we

38

Training of Teachers

have students coming forward well equipped in respect of mere knowledge, and giving their attention to nothing but the theory and practice of Education. They are called upon to spend fifty half-days at the Normal School, and to pass an examination on the subject-matter of a course of Lectures on Pedagogy. " Failure to teach or to govern in the Model Schools, as indicated by the percentage of marks taken, no less than failure to pass the examination on the course of Lectures, endangers the Academy Diploma."

Yet the results are far from satisfactory. There is a singular hostility in the tone adopted towards the Normal School by Graduates who have gained their Academy Diploma after the course there. They have little good to say about their training, and yet when pressed they have little that is definite to say against it. Their attitude is rather that of tolerant contempt than anything else, an attitude very familiar to all who have had anything to do with the practical train- ing of Teacher Graduates. In the Day Training Colleges of England, and among the King's Students in Scotland, this contemptuous attitude towards training was formerly conspicuous. The cause is to be found in the fact that the practical part of the work is done outside of the University, and by non- University officers. The only cure is to raise the subject of Education to University

Protestant School System

rank, and associate the Professor of Education with what is now, by a convenient figure, gener- ally known as the clinical work of his Chair. The new University at Birmingham began by including Education as an integral part of one of its degrees : the other Universities of the same rank are following the example : in the Scotch Universities Education has for some time ranked as a regular Arts subject. All this has given Edu- cation a status it did not formerly hold. Further, in four of the Scotch Universities the Professor of (or Lecturer in) Education has an intimate con- nection with the practical training of his students. In almost all the English Universities the same is true, so that the reproach is rapidly detaching itself from " Training ".

Graduates complain that the fifty half-days at McGill Normal School are wasted. The same thing is said with more truth by Graduates of the Scotch Universities about the eight hours per week for twenty-four weeks that they must serve in some approved school by way of practice before receiving permission to take the examination for a teacher's certificate. The remedy is not to be sought in getting more time devoted to " actual teaching in the Practising School " as some practical persons recommend. Educational ex- perts now lay less stress on mere practice as such, and much more on well-chosen types of specimen lessons skilfully given by capable

40

Training of Teachers

teachers, and on lessons carefully prepared by the student himself to illustrate the principles studied in the Education Class. The Principal of one of the Academies told me he learnt more real teaching from observing the methods of Professor Adams of McGill University than from all the practice in the Normal School. What is desired is not mere " knack" in teaching — that comes easily with very little practice, if it is going to come at all — but broad general principles that enable the student to make intelligent appli- cations to the varying circumstances that arise.

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. — It is now recognised that the function of the teacher is to mediate between theory and practice. The University must supply the theory : the Practising School should supply not mere me- chanical practice as a thing in itself, but an exemplification of the carrying out of the theory. Hence the necessary connection between the University Chair and the Normal School Class- room. It is not at all indispensable that the Pro- fessor should himself give model lessons, but he must see that the lessons given, and the criticism that follows them, are in harmony with the principles he has expounded. School manage- ment is different from, but must be organically related to, the Science of Education.

It is cause for regret that there is not yet a Chair of Education or even a Lectureship in that

41

subject in McGill University. In view of the specially close connection between the University and the Education of the Province there is a clamant need for such a Chair. McGill, which is so admirably equipped in other directions, cannot afford to lag behind in such an important depart- ment.

If the experience of other countries supplies any guidance, the Province must look to the University to supply that breadth of view that is absolutely necessary to check the natural tend- ency among teachers to routine and rule of thumb. Even in the case of teachers destined for the smaller District Schools — perhaps indeed specially in their case — some connection should be made with the broader current of University life. There are many subjects of vital importance in school that do not come within the range of University study, but if the young teachers are brought under the best University influences in one or two branches of higher learning, they will in- evitably carry over the freer University spirit into their narrower and more technical studies. Anything which strengthens the connection be- tween the University and the general system of Education throughout the Province has the double effect of broadening the view of Education taken by the teacher, and of raising the level of the Teaching Profession in the eyes of the general public.

42

Training of Teachers

Even subjects which have to be taught only at the most elementary stages ought, wherever possible, to be studied on the University level. Thus reading is apparently not a subject to be considered from a University standpoint, yet in several cases in Britain students in training for teaching attend University lectures in Phonetics in order to learn how to teach reading in a scientific way. So with this new subject of Nature Study. In order that it may be carried on in a scientific manner the teachers should know in a broad way the essential principles of Zoology and Botany. Above all, it is essential that they should understand the methods of Science Study. In Aberdeen University all the students in training at the two Normal Colleges in the city have the advantage of studying Natural Science in the handsome and well- equipped laboratories of the University, under the regular University Instructors. The effect upon the students is excellent, and the public opinion of the Profession has been perceptibly raised. The closer the tie between the McGill University and the Teaching Profession, the better for the Profession in the Province.

PRACTICE IN TEACHING. — Every care is taken by the authorities of the McGill Normal School to provide for the students as much practical work as possible. All the familiar devices of Model Lessons, Criticism Lessons, Notes of

43

Protestant School System

Lessons, Reports of Lessons, and actual teach- ing in the Practising Schools are utilised. One misses some of the newer methods of child ob- servation, of parallel experimental classes to test the result-value of different methods, of practice in forecasting intellectual results. But in the limited time at their disposal, hampered as they are by their ordinary subject-teaching, the Normal School Staff find that they can do better work by confining them- selves to the usual course. Out of one exercise, however, they do not get the full value. This is the lesson given by a student to her fellows. Former students are agreed that this is at once the most trying and the most useful exercise of the course. As applied, however, the exercise is too much limited to the student who does the actual teaching. A great improvement is effected when the whole class is made to take an active share in the lesson as an exercise in pedagogics. This is accomplished by the Normal Master de- termining the stage and average age of the class the students are to represent for the time being. The teaching student must modify her teaching to suit the needs of the prescribed class, and the students who form the class must exercise all their ingenuity in trying to follow the lesson and to answer the teacher's questions, as pupils of the prescribed age would. It is found that the students who are being taught have at least as difficult a task as has the student teaching. As

44

Training of Teachers

the fundamental need of a teacher is the power to regard things from the pupil's point of view, this exercise is of the first importance in any course of training for teachers. The educator who cannot project himself into the personality of his pupils has not learnt the alphabet of his profession.

The supervision of the students' work in the Practising Schools is all that could be desired. As many as six and even seven independent reports are made on the practical work of each student. It is further satisfactory to note that the report of the Normal School Authorities on the work of their students errs, if it errs at all, on the side of severity. The Central Board sometimes grants diplomas to students whom the Normal School Authorities have declined to recommend, but never refuses to grant diplomas on the recommendation of those authorities.

NORMAL SCHOOL SCHOLARSHIPS. — The Authori- ties of the McGill Normal School apply an in- genious method of Deferred Scholarships that has the double effect of ensuring that students who receive training will make some use of it by actually teaching, and of encouraging young teachers to go to country schools. This is how it works. A student who has gained an advanced Elementary Diploma, or a Kindergarten Diploma, has only to show that she has taught successfully in some school of this Province under the control

45

Protestant School System

of School Commissioners or Trustees other than the Protestant Board of School Commissioners of Montreal, in order to obtain from the Principal of the Normal School a payment of $2 for each month of such successful teaching, not exceeding eight months in each year, during each of the two scholastic years immediately succeeding the award of her diploma. If she has had a two years' course at the Normal School, the payment is increased to $4 per month. The exclusion of Montreal teachers is readily understood when one considers the higher salaries there (beginning at $275 and rising by annual increments to $385 for Junior Classes, and beginning at $330 and rising to $440 for the three Higher Classes) and the natural attractions of city life.

Holders of the Elementary Diploma gained after a four months' course are not entitled to any repayment. There is at present a movement to obtain for them some aid to correspond to that given to the nine months' students. It is ques- tionable whether it is wise to encourage further a course of training that must after all be ac- knowledged to be merely a make-shift to meet the very unfavourable conditions at present existing.

46

Relation between Teacher and Pupil

RELATION BETWEEN TEACHER AND

PUPIL.

A visitor from the Old Country cannot fail to be struck by the greater attention given to children's feelings and rights in Canada. The pupils count for more in the schools. They give their opinions on all points, sometimes without being asked. Frequently in talking to the teacher I have had the conversation interrupted by an attentive youngster who joined in to correct some mis-statement on matters of fact. One of the questions I put to all the district teachers was, " What is the greatest distance from which your pupils come ? " On at least a dozen oc- casions the teacher's reply was corrected by the more accurate knowledge of an uninvited pupil- critic. It must not be supposed that this implied any ill-breeding on the part of the pupils ; it is simply the outcome of the early recognition in Canada of the equality of all men in relation to matters of fact. Occasionally the children were appealed to in a formal and pompous way that would have been very amusing in an English school. On one occasion I asked the teacher if I might put a few questions to her pupils — they numbered seven in all, the oldest eleven years of age. Turning to the children she said, glancing at our cards, " We have with us to-day two gentlemen, Mr. Adams from Glasgow University,

47

Protestant School System

Scotland, and Prof. Tory from McGill University, Montreal, who propose to examine you in the various branches of your studies ".

The same feature is prominent in the higher schools, where its effect upon the visitor is dis- tinctly unpleasant. One requires to detach one- self from preconceived ideas about the relation between pupil and teacher to get at a true con- ception of that relation as it exists in Canadian schools. I am convinced that the comparatively greater independence of the Canadian pupil is an advantage, and tells in his favour in educational work. The teachers do not seem to mind the free and easy way in which their pupils treat them, and at bottom the pupils are as respectful to the teachers as our British pupils are to theirs. Perhaps the difference may be best expressed by saying that in Canada the teachers command respect as man or woman, rather than as teacher. The class takes the teacher for what he is worth as a man and treats him accordingly.

It may seem a little pedantic to find fault with such details as attitude in class, and the drill of entering and leaving the schoolroom. But the lounging attitude of the boys in many of the Academies, and the rough and tumble exits and entrances of classes, cannot be regarded as satisfactory. The City Schools are certainly not inferior in tone to the Country Schools, nor are the city pupils less free than their country fellows,

48

Disregard of Regulations

yet the entering and leaving movements of the city pupils are conducted with admirable precision. It must not be supposed that I argue for the Prussian ideal of prim drill that does everything "by numbers". But I would urge teachers to consider what Thring has to say on the Potency of Attitude, and to compare that with the Lange- James theory of the relations between Emotion and its Expression.

There appears to be all over a very friendly relation between teachers and taught. Corporal punishment is very rare, and what may be truly called the discipline of the schools is healthy. That is, the pupils take life fairly seriously ; respect the traditions of the school ; and attend to their work, even when the teacher is occupied with other classes.

DISREGARD OF REGULATIONS.

To one accustomed to the regular working of a great educational system there is something disconcerting in the glaring inconsistencies be- tween departmental requirements and the actual working of the schools of Quebec. In the " In- spectors' Reports " there is a regular classification of those who do and those who do not attend to the regulations. The following items, for example, are quoted from one " Report " taken at random :—

" School Boards: There are 61 school boards

D 49

Protestant School System

in charge of the 132 schools of this inspectorate. Of this number 24 have visited their schools, and 37 have neglected this important duty. Nothing helps to encourage a teacher and her pupils more than a friendly visit from the school board, and all boards should endeavour to comply in this respect.

" There are 42 school boards that regularly audit their books of account, 9 do so irregularly, and 10 fail to do so at all.

"The accounts are kept in the regular, au- thorised form by 29 boards, and in unauthorised form by 28, while those of Montreal, Westmount, St. Henry, and Cote St. Louis are kept in proper form in regular books.

" Surety bonds are given by 54 secretaries, while 7 secretaries have given no sureties at all. It will be seen, therefore, that there is much opportunity still for confusion, annoyance and loss."

When we take into consideration, along with such openly acknowledged neglect, the custom of employing teachers without diploma, the keeping of the schools open for but a few months of the year, the occasional "boarding around" of the teachers and the collection of fees by them, and the general omission or careless performance of the duties implied in Sections 98-128 of the Regu- lations of the Protestant Committee, there arises

50

Disregard of Regulations

a feeling of doubt about the stability of the whole system.

On the other hand, amid all this neglect of authority there is the bracing sense of freedom from red-tape. The educational system does not come to a standstill because certain regulations are not complied with. The Commissioners are unwilling or unable to do certain things in pre- scribed ways ; but as a rule they do what they consider to be their best. The Education De- partment is sensible enough to face things as they are, and do its best to improve them. To the natural question, " Why does the Protestant Committee not enforce obedience to its regula- tions ? " the answer is decisive. In Britain, if the local authorities fail in their duty, the Govern- ment grant is withheld or reduced. But in Quebec the grant is so small that the threat of withholding it carries little weight. When a Secretary-Treasurer can say that all he gets from the Government on account of seven schools is $35, or $5 per school, we cannot wonder that he snaps his fingers at Government Regulations, though we may hope that he goes too far when he asserts that his "trustees regard the whole educational system as a humbug". In another municipality I was told that the total Government grant was §200 for thirty schools, or $6-7 per school. These figures I found so startling that I referred them to an official in the

51

Protestant School System

Education Department to see if they were at all possible. His reply was that very likely they are correct, but that in each case there would be a certain amount additional to be collected by the Treasurer from the teachers in respect of premiums towards the pension fund, these premiums being deducted by the Education Department from the grants due to the School Commissioners. After all allowances have been made, there remains the fact that the Depart- mental grant is so insignificant that it is powerless as a lever to enforce obedience to Departmental Regulations. If indifferent Commissioners are called upon to spend $15 on a school, under penalty of losing a grant of $7, the arithmetical argument against complying with the Depart- ment's requirement is almost irresistible. Where- ever improvements have been effected, the cause has been a genuine interest in education, rather than Departmental pressure. Several Secretary- Treasurers whom I met unblushingly recom- mended their Commissioners to cut themselves off from the Department altogether, and run the schools in their own way.

The effect of the distribution of the money recently allocated to the poor municipalities is most instructive. Almost without exception the municipalities involved have made unusual exer- tions to meet Departmental requirements, because the grants offered, though small in themselves,

52

Endowment of Teachers

were, relatively to the local resources, valuable. The almost unanimous recommendation of earnest Commissioners when I asked their opinion was : Give us two things, (1) Compulsory Education and (2) a larger Government grant, and the position is secured. There are serious difficulties in the way of both, no doubt. But with regard to the grant it is worth noting how much would be necessary, however improbable it may be that it will ever be available. An additional annual grant of $20,000 placed at the disposal of the Committee to be used to enforce the regulations that are really import- ant, would go very far to put the Protestant Elementary Education of the Province on a satisfactory footing. The policy to be followed in any case is certainly that of aiding local effort by a pro rata contribution.

ENDOWMENT OF TEACHERS.

If any aid other than the ordinary Govern- ment grant should ever become available for edu- cational purposes, it would be well to consider the experience of the Trustees of the Dick Bequest in connection with the rural Public Schools of the counties of Aberdeen, Banff and Moray in Scotland. In 1828 Mr. James Dick bequeathed a sum close upon £120,000 for the purpose of the maintenance and assistance of the County Parochial Schoolmasters in the three counties

53

Protestant School System

mentioned. The conditions under which the benefits of this Bequest are to be distributed include the requirement that "the income there- of be applied in such a manner as not in any manner to relieve the heritors or other persons from their legal obligations to support Parochial Schoolmasters, or to diminish the extent of such support, and so as not to interfere with the rights or power of heritors and Presbyteries over School- masters or the schools intrusted to their care, as the same rights or powers are by law insured to them ". In other words, we have the Endowment of Teachers not of buildings or institutions, and this under the condition that the money supplied shall in no way interfere with legitimate local control. This Endowment of Teachers is no new thing. Mr. A. F. Leach in his volume on English Schools at the Reformation makes it abundantly clear that our forefathers knew, and very wisely applied, the principle of making pro- vision for a teacher, irrespective of any building in which he should teach. They had learned by experience that if a good teacher be provided, a mere place for teaching will not be lacking. The effect of the Dick Bequest (a smaller but similar endowment known as " The Milne Bequest" has supported the work of the Dick Trustees) on the three counties concerned has been admirable. These counties are now known throughout Scot- land as clearly superior in the matter of Secondary

54

Endowment of Teachers

Education in the rural schools. The connection between these schools and the University is closer than that existing in any other part of Scotland. The type of teacher is admittedly higher than is to be found elsewhere in the country, and altogether these three north-eastern counties have benefited in the most striking way by this Bequest. The effect is not limited to the teachers. The grant is so distributed that while the whole of the money goes to the teacher, the amount depends upon two factors. A fixed sum is paid according to the status and attainments of the teacher, while another sum varies according to the number of pupils in the school studying higher subjects, and the results attained in those subjects. It is thus to the interest of the teacher, not merely to gain as good a degree as is within his power, but also to encourage his pupils to remain as long at school as possible, and to undertake as many of the higher subjects as they are fitted for. The pressure thus brought to bear upon the teacher is all in the right direction (1) In favour of his own studies ; (2) in favour of making his school attractive in order to increase the attendance ; and (3) in favour of effective work in the higher branches.

One of the most striking features of the application of the Dick Bequest is the powrer shown by certain teachers in influencing their pupils to remain at school and to prosecute the

55

Protestant School System

higher studies. The type of teacher produced by the special conditions in the Dick Bequest district, is not unknown in the Province of Quebec. The attendance at the Academies and the numbers in the higher classes do not entirely depend upon the Commissioners or upon local conditions. In many cases the personality of the teacher has more to do with these matters than has anything else. Some men have a peculiar power of influencing parents and pupils alike in the interests of Higher Education. For an example of the kind of teacher in question, I would refer to the present Principal of Huntingdon Academy. The influence of such a man not only brings out all that is best in his own district, but beneficially affects the educational work of the whole Province.

The method adopted by the Trustees to secure that local effort shall not be slackened because of aid from the Trust, is to insist that a certain minimum salary ($675 and a house) shall be paid to the teacher irrespective of the grant from the Dick Bequest Trust. Further: " The governors will determine to what extent the salary to be attached to the office of Head Master by a Board should exceed this sum, looking to the whole cir- cumstances of each case as it arises". To give an idea of the aid supplied by the Trust, it is sufficient to say that the total amount available for distribution in 1901 was £3,151 4s. 8d.

A combination of the Dick Bequest method and

56

Endowment of Teachers

the Normal School System of Deferred Scholar- ships might meet the needs of the Province in its present state. A small number of Scholarships might be offered each year to enable boys and girls — but particularly boys, since in the mean- time there is a fairly good supply of girls willing to pay their own way for University preparation for the only profession that is fully open to them — of distinct promise, to complete their Academy Course, and then graduate at McGill University and the McGill Normal School, or whatever new institution may develop under University control. The Scholarships should be as small as will serve the turn. Liberality at this stage sometimes defeats its own object. But the Scholarship should not cease when the student graduates. Provided he teaches successfully in schools approved by those administering the hypothetical Scholarships he should receive an annual payment of say £5100 to $150 for a period of five or seven years. In order that local authorities should not misuse the help thus given, it would be necessary to fix a fairly high minimum salary under which no holder of a teaching Scholarship would be allowed to teach. The joint payments of salary and Scholarship would make a sum sufficient to attract good men into the profession. On the other hand School Commissioners would be shrewd enough to see that it would be to their advantage to get a man worth a certain good

57

Protestant School System

salary by the payment of only a part of that salary.

The details could be easily worked out : but only the general principle interests us here. Let it be admitted that in an ordinary English-speak- ing community such a system would be thoroughly unhealthy. Every self-respecting people ought to pay its own teachers well enough to secure the services of men and women worthy to be trusted with the care of the young. But the English-speaking population of the Province of Quebec is admittedly in an exceptionally un- favourable condition with regard to education. While in some districts they are able and willing to pay for what they require, in others they are so few and so widely scattered that even if they were wealthier than they are, they could not provide for their educational needs. Some districts no doubt are careless and do not try very hard to help themselves. But when we hear that a municipality pays as much as nine mils in the dollar, and school fees besides, and yet can afford to keep the school open for only three and a half months, we feel that if help is available it should not be withheld. Even when the parents are indifferent, the children have to be considered. It is not for the welfare of the Province that they should be allowed to grow up uneducated or ill-educated.

The existence of the poor Municipality Fund

58

Fees

indicates the willingness of the Protestant Com- mittee to do what it can to aid the poorer and more sparsely-peopled districts. The wealthier and more populous Protestant communities may be willing to aid their less-favoured fellows to some extent. But this kind of aid can never be adequate, nor can it be encouraged by a display of the good done. For the trouble is that the poor municipalities are likely to go on getting poorer, till at last as English-speaking communi- ties they cease to exist. Yet, so long as English- speaking children are found in these municipali- ties, the responsibility for their education remains. For the fairly populous English districts the Scheme of Endowed Teachers suggested above will serve, coupled with the concentration of schools in the more sparsely peopled districts. In the case of the municipalities where the English are rapidly dying out, Dr. Robins' sug- gestion of a few good itinerant teachers to guide the children's studies by periodic short visits, is well worthy of consideration.

FEES.

The Protestant Committee regard the pay- ment of fees as in itself a useful training to parents in the value of education, as well as being a means of raising a certain amount of money where money is exceedingly necessary. They accordingly make the condition that a minimum

59

Protestant School System

fee of 5c. per month shall be charged in all ordinary cases, leaving it to the discretion of the School Commissioners to determine the con- ditions of exemption on account of inability to pay fees. The maximum fee for Elementary Schools is fixed at 50c.

The payment of fees is further used by the Committee as a means of securing the attend- ance of pupils. Education is not compulsory in the Province, but the payment of fees is. That is, parents must pay the fees fixed for the district on account of all children between the ages of seven and fourteen whether these children attend school or not. It is felt that human nature will be on the side of attendance under these circum- stances. We all like to get value for our money.

The custom throughout the Province in respect of fees varies so much that no general conclusions can be drawn. A 25c. limit appears to represent a fairly common charge in the Elementary School, though there are whole districts where the minimum payment is adopted. When we come to the Model Schools and Academies the variations are so great that nothing but the great differences in the local conditions can justify them. The fact is that this very wide range of variation is an indication of the wide difference in intellectual interests in the different parts of the Province. In some parts the fees are high in order to keep down the rates, in others the

60

Fees

fees are low in order to encourage Higher Edu- cation. In Granby, for example, the feeling of the Commissioners is in favour of reducing the fees as much as possible ; some of them go the length of recommending entirely Free Education. In other districts, as at Huntingdon and Sher- brooke, there is a desire to maintain high fees, not as a matter of economy to the ratepayers, but in order to maintain as efficient a system of education as is possible, and at the same time to educate the people to value this education by paying well for it.

To give a mere average of the fees charged in Model Schools would be very misleading since such an average represents a rate of fee that is rarely found in actual experience. The two tendencies towards high fees and towards low fees produce the effect of a group of schools at a low fee and a group at a high fee : the average of these would represent a medium fee which does not really exist. Some of the purely Model Schools adopt the very low fee of 20c. or 25c. the month. At the other end of the scale 72, 75, 80 and even lOOc. are charged per month. In the Model Departments of Academies there is greater uniformity than else- where, and here the average may be stated as a little over 60c., though as a matter of fact, there are more examples of 50c. than of any other. At the Academy Grades the variation is still greater.

61

Protestant School System

Sometimes the fee is charged by the month, sometimes by the term, but comparing these on the monthly basis the average comes to be about $1-20. The lowest fee outside of Montreal for Academy Grades in an Academy is 75c. and the highest $2. In some schools there is a graded payment in the different classes of the Model and the Academy Departments, but in the great majority of cases there are three rates of pay- ment, one for all the Elementary Classes, another for all the Model Classes, and a third for all the Academy Classes.

It is common to make a higher charge for pupils who come from districts outside the municipality that maintains the school. The better teachers are strongly opposed to this policy as it often tends to exclude excellent pupils who otherwise might come a considerable distance to attend a good school. The restriction is not by any means universal, however, and a very reasonable compromise is sometimes made by allowing outsiders to attend on the same terms as the others, so long as their presence does not in any way interfere with the interests of those pupils for whose accommodation the school is carried on. The Committee does not interfere in these local arrangements, but its policy should certainly be to favour the abolition of all restrictions that limit the wider usefulness of a school. In the interests of centralisation of

62

Attendance

the smaller schools, it is well that the Academies should set a good example.

ATTENDANCE.

As is well known, the educational problem in the Province is greatly complicated by the gradual westward and southward movement of the Protestant population. Not only are many of the Protestants moving away, but many of those who remain have much smaller families than was formerly the case. This was impressed upon me by Commissioners all over the Province, and in many cases their assertions were supported by the results of a special census carried out on the Commissioners' behalf. In one fairly populous school district for example, I found that there were only six children of school age. In two of the sub-districts under the Philipsburg Com- missioners there are only three children of school age, i.e., there are two schools with only three children available for each. With a gradually diminishing Protestant population, and a falling average attendance at the schools, it is not to be wondered at that the Commissioners are un- willing to expend money in improving buildings which may very shortly have to be abandoned altogether.

From the Superintendent's latest report it appears that there are in all 26,511 pupils in

63

Protestant School System

the 878 Elementary Protestant Schools of the Province. This gives an average roll of 30'2 pupils for each school. But as the average attendance over all is only 18,903, we find that the average attendance for each school figures out to 21-5.

But these figures include the large schools of the city of Montreal. If these are withdrawn from the calculation, the average number on the roll in Elementary Schools is 22'7 ; while the average attendance left for each school is only 15*7. As might have been expected, the per- centage of absentees is greater in the country than in the city. This percentage, made up from the figures including the Montreal Schools, is 28'7 : but if these schools are not reckoned, the percentage rises to 3O8.

From a calculation based on the returns made to me by the teachers of the District Schools I visited, I find that the average attendance of each school comes out to be 15'2, or -5 below the average for the whole country. This very close approximation to the general average is an in- dication that the schools visited were sufficiently numerous, and sufficiently typical of the whole, to permit me to draw conclusions from the average of statistics that came under my own observation. Of the schools thus visited I find that 35 per cent, had an average attendance of 10 or less than 10; that 39'7 per cent, had an

64

Consolidation of Schools

average ranging between 1 1 and 20 inclusive ; while 25-3 per cent, had an average attendance of over 20. It is rather striking to find that 6 per cent, of the whole number of schools visited had an average attendance of 5 or less than 5. One school, I am informed by the inspector of the district, has been kept open for two years with an attendance of only two. This is the reductio ad absurdum of the system of keeping a school open wherever there is a schoolhouse and an unreasonable parent to demand school privileges at his very door.

CONSOLIDATION OF SCHOOLS,

From a return made by the Secretary of the Protestant Committee on 1st February, 1902, it appears that more than 60 per cent, of the Ele- mentary Schools have an attendance of 15 or less, considerably more than a half of these having an average of 10 or less. Another return of the same date gives the following significant figures regarding the number of months that Ele- mentary Schools are open throughout the year. These should be considered in connection with teachers' salaries, as well as with the scheme of gathering together several small schools so as to form one good school, usually known as con- solidation.

65

Protestant School System

NUMBER OF MONTHS SCHOOLS ARE OPEN.

4
months or	5 months.	6 months.	7 months.	8 months.	9 months.	10 months.	Total.
less.
45	26	68	81	237	55	264	776

In this total of 776 are included the City Schools of Montreal.

The need for the consolidation of little country schools is clamant. The objections urged against it are mostly of a selfish and unreasonable kind, but perhaps all the more powerful for that. Among the schools I visited I found no instance of the adoption of the system of concentration, though the matter has been discussed in almost all the municipalities. The nearest approach to concentration I found was two instances, in widely remote districts, of neighbouring farmers uniting to send their children to school in a covered buggy. Six children were sent in one case, and seven in another. Inspectors have recommended in several instances that certain schools should be grouped. Everything seemed favourable ; but local jealousy rendered im- practicable an arrangement which was generally admitted on abstract principles to be highly desirable. There is a good deal of misconception among School Commissioners on this subject,

66

Consolidation of Schools

and I received a great deal of contradictory evidence from men who professed to know what they were talking about. For example, I was told wTith great positiveness that concentration had been tried in Vermont and found wanting, and that it was being given up in that State. Others, on the contrary, maintained writh equal vigour that Vermont supplied a shining example of the success of the concentration system. At Derby Line I did all I could to find out some American centre where the system was practised, so that I might cross the Border and investigate for myself. But though we " rang up " half a dozen remote U.S. School Authorities I could find no available example.

As the result of inquiries in every school I visited, I find that one and a half miles is about the longest distance that children walk to school. Cases of two, two and a half, and three miles occur, but they are very rare. The average distance walked by pupils to a school, not in a village, is about three-quarters of a mile. In one school the nearest pupil walked half a mile. These walking distances are much less than are common in Scotland. In the sparsely peopled districts there, it is not uncommon for children to walk several miles. But the Canadians are poor walkers, and the nature of the climate and the roads makes it impossible to expect children to walk farther than they do at present. A little

67

Protestant School System

judicious pressure from the Committee and the dissemination of information regarding what is being done in the United States will do much to induce parents and Commissioners to give the system a fair trial. But experience has proved that nothing appeals to the popular mind like the Concrete Example. An experimental Consolida- tion School that proves a success will do more to convince the plain man than volumes of argu- ments. Thanks to the generosity of Sir William C. Macdonald, whose zeal in the interests of true education is beyond all praise, such an experi- mental school is to be provided in each of the Provinces of the Dominion that is likely to profit by the consolidation of its rural schools. The result of this series of educational object lessons will be watched with the keenest interest by all those who have the good of Canada at heart.

Consolidation may take two main forms: (1) Consolidation at a purely rural centre. A con- venient point may be chosen as the nucleus of a sparsely peopled district and all the children within a given radius transported thither daily. Pigeonhill, for example, in the Philipsburg district, is an excellent centre of this kind. As things stand, three schools could be grouped there and no pupil be required to travel more than two miles. But the parents in the two threatened schools sturdily refuse to have their schools closed. (2) Consolidation at a populous

68

Consolidation of Schools

centre, say a town or large village. This form meets with much more favour than the other. To begin with, the centre school is already established, and has a certain reputation. The smaller schools to be closed cannot dispute the claims of the central school : even the most un- reasonable parent cannot in this case ask why his school should not be chosen as centre. Further, all the means of transportation are better, within an easy radius of such a centre. In many cases a daily, or almost daily, com- munication is kept up with the centre already, in connection with dairy produce. The transport of children could readily be combined with that of milk and general farm produce on the one hand, and the ordinary commodities from the stores on the other. Postal arrangements could be facilitated by this daily transport service. It only needs a beginning to commend itself to the common-sense and business instincts of the community. Granby forms a typical centre for such a system. Within easy reach of the town are no fewer than ten schools that could be closed to the great advantage alike of town and country. All the better Academies, indeed, form suitable centres. Apart from the urgent need of consolidation as a remedy for existing evils, it is desirable that the Academies should be regarded as Provincial centres rather than as local schools. Many of them have already

Protestant School System

attained this position, and a system of consolida- tion would so strengthen the weaker Academies as to make them worthy of more than merely local support. Consolidation in the immediate neighbourhood of the Academies, and a system of small maintenance Scholarships to enable pupils from isolated districts to board in an Academy town, would go far to build up a homogeneous educational system from the District School to the University.

AGES OF PUPILS AT THE VARIOUS GRADES,

HIGHER SCHOOLS. — It seemed to me of im- portance to discover the ages of pupils attending the various classes. Accordingly I noted the average age in each class I visited in the Model Schools and Academies. Taking an average of all these averages I find the following results over all : —

Model Academy

I. II. III. I. II. III.

12-1 13-5 14-6 15-5 16-4 17-9

An analysis of the figures in my notebooks brings out one or two interesting results :—

1. The above general results are not mathe- matically accurate as general averages, since each school counts for a unit irrespective of the number of pupils. But the range is sufficiently wide to allow of local peculiarities neutralising

70

Ages of Pupils at the Various Grades

each other, so as to leave a fairly just statement of things as they are. For example, the age of Model I. at Stanstead is ten while at Cowans- ville it is fourteen. Yet in running down the list of ages the number twelve occurs more frequently than any other. Some teachers have a theory that in the better organised Academies the average ages in the Model Classes are low ; but facts do not seem to bear this out. Indeed I was unable to draw any general con- clusions as to the relation between ages and the local conditions.

2. The difference of 1-4 as shown in the general average between Model I. and Model II. (the difference between 12-1 and 13'5) conceals the fact that in many cases there is a wide gap between the age of these classes. There is often a gap of two years, sometimes even of three : this is seen in the undernoted average ages : —

Model I. Model II.

Bedford 11 13

St. John H| isj

Coaticook, Cookshire, Farnham, Gould,

Lennoxville, Scotstown . . 12 14

Lacolle 11 131

Hatley 11 14

Ormstown 11| 14

Waterville 13 15

Sawyerville, Bury .... 12 15

Stanstead ..... 10 14

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Protestant School System

The explanation of this gap seems to be that the examination in Model II. is more difficult than anything the pupil has had to face before, is in fact the first experience of a test in real secondary work. A certain number of pupils consequently spend two years in this class. Further, it frequently happens that pupils from District Schools come to Model Schools fairly well grounded in all their subjects save Latin. From their age and general attainments they are fit for Model III., but their ignorance of, or insufficient preparation in, Latin makes it imperative for them to remain in Model II. for their first year.

3. Though the general average gives a differ- ence of '9 in the ages of Model III. and Academy I., an examination of my notes makes it clear that these two grades approach nearer to each other in age than do any of the others. In the following schools in fact the ages in these two grades are practically identical — Barnston, Bedford, Cowansville, Coaticook, Gould, Hunt- ingdon, Sherbrooke, Stanstead. On the other hand in Sawyerville there is a difference of three years : fifteen in Model III. and eighteen in Academy I. Such irregularities are usually caused by the presence of one or two old pupils whose ages materially affect the average of a small class of pupils of normal age.

4. The average age for Academy III. (17'9)

72

Ages of Pupils at the Various Grades

may hide the fact that in most of the Academies there are pupils of twenty and over. In Lachute, for example, the ages of the pupils run from seven to twenty-two.

DISTRICT SCHOOLS. — The ages of the pupils of the District Schools show the greatest possible variation. The lower limit seems to be about five, though I came across five or six cases in which children of four were in regular attendance. In one of these cases the child walked from his home a mile distant from the school. Sometimes I found still younger children present, but it was explained that they were there merely as spec- tators, to relieve pressure at home. The older limit varies still more. Between fourteen and fifteen may be taken as the average, but seven- teen and eighteen are not at all uncommon, and even twenty and over not unknown. The custom of young men going to school for a few months at suitable times of the year, though much less common than formerly, still exists. In most cases these older pupils study merely the elementary subjects. But I saw a number of schools in which the teacher carried her pupils as far as her own knowledge extended, i.e., to well on in Academy III. Almost invari- ably Latin and French cause great anxiety to both teacher and pupil. They have no confidence in their "versions " in the foreign language. In Mathematics, however, they have always the

73

Protestant School System

guidance of the answers to the exercises. Al- most all of this higher work is done out of school hours.

TIME-TABLES,

DISTRICT SCHOOLS. — In these schools there are generally really five classes, i.e., there are those known as Elementary, I., II., III. and IV., but I. is usually divided into two sections, each with a reading book of its own. The method followed generally is to take certain subjects (such as Scripture, Singing, Health, and to some extent Geography and History) either with the whole school at a time, or with half the school at a time. The ordinary subjects have to be taken from each class separately. This is done by the teacher calling up class by class and going through the lessons prescribed. Roughly speaking, there- fore, there must be always between 75 and 80 per cent, of the pupils engaged in what is some- times called " silent work " and sometimes " busy work". This is not in itself so disadvantageous as it seems. Where the teacher takes the trouble to map out her work carefully beforehand, and has the power of discipline, the system is really better for the pupils than that in which they are continually being taught. Self-reliance, and the power of initiative are cultivated. The pupils do their part of the work of education. For, as David Stow used to tire his students by repeating,

74

Time/Tables

" A thing is never given till it is taken : a subject is never taught till it is learned ". Unfortunately, however, many teachers find it impossible to get through all the subjects with each of five classes every day. The Time-table for a District School is very difficult to make, and still more difficult to follow. It is here that the difference between the trained and the untrained teacher is most apparent. Your Normal-trained girl is occasion- ally pedantic in her primness, but she has almost always a real and well-founded respect for her Time-table. She knows that unless she adheres rigidly to her well thought-out plans she will fall into a hopeless state of confusion. The untrained teacher as a rule has the appearance of working harder than the other, but the trained teacher does more effective work.

MODEL SCHOOLS AND ACADEMIES. — Except in the case of the City Schools, and a very few of the well-staffed Academies, the rule is that there is one teacher for the three Academy Grades, and one teacher for the three Model Grades. While the average Academy has three teachers in addi- tion to the Principal, the fact remains that in most cases the whole three Academy Grades are left in charge of the Principal. At Huntingdon, Lachute, Richmond Sherbrooke and Valleyfield the staff is so arranged that there is a certain interchange of work between the Model and Aca- demy Departments, so that a moderate freedom

75

Protestant School System

of classification according to subjects is possible. Occasionally a teacher of special attainments in one subject is set apart for the teaching of that subject throughout the whole school. But speak- ing generally the Academy Department is a room in which three classes are taught by one master. Sometimes indeed, as at Waterloo, the Principal undertakes the instruction of Model III. in ad- dition to the three Grades of the Academy. In almost all the Model Schools the same principle maintains — i.e., the three Model Grades are taught by one teacher. The result is that it becomes a mathematical impossibility to give to each subject the number of hours printed on page 6 of the little pamphlet issued by the Protestant Committee under the title of Memoranda of Instructions to Teachers. In Grade I. Academy, for example, the instructions require the following distribution of hours :—

English, 5; History, 2; Arithmetic, 3 ; French, 2£ ; Physics, 2 ; Algebra (or Geometry), 1| ; and Latin, 4. This gives a total of twenty hours. When we have added two hours for Writing, two hours for Drawing, and the necessary number of minutes each for Scripture, Singing, Geography, Physical Training, Temperance and Health, it is clear that there is nothing left out of the twenty- seven and a half hours which make up the ordin- ary week's work. Yet one teacher has to attend to two additional classes, each of which claims

76

Time'Tables

from him the same twenty-seven and a half hours.

The difficulty is solved by a compromise. Cer- tain of the subjects may be taught in common, but most of them must be taught in separate grades. Thus it comes about that pupils are taught each of their subjects for little more than a third part of the time set down for these subjects in the Time-table.

DISTRIBUTION OF TEACHER'S TIME. — As it is a matter of the utmost importance to discover how the teacher's time is distributed among the differ- ent subjects, I carefully noted the time allocated to each of the subjects in the Model School and Academy Time-tables. Even from the purely theoretical standpoint the time-limits for the several subjects of each grade do not coincide with those set down in the Instructions. At the Model stage, Scripture, Writing, History, Geography, Arithmetic, Science and Drawing get about their proper amount of time each, though Arithmetic varies perhaps more than the others. At the Academy stage, Mathematics is perhaps most uniform in the amount of time set apart for it, and that time corresponds very closely with the Committee's recommendation. French, too, gets very nearly as much time as is required. This will be best seen by the following comparison between the hours required by the Committee per week, and the average of the number of hours

77

Protestant School System

actually allocated to this subject in the School Time-tables : —

FRENCH.

Model Academy

I. II. III. I. II. III.

Committee's require- ments. . . 2} 2| 2i 2J 3 3 Actual average . .2-18 2-49 2-54 2-71 2-95 3-12

In English I found great difficulty in getting at a common standard — so many things are some- times included under this head. My plan was to limit English to all matters dealing with grammar, dictation, word-building, analysis, composition, and English literature. On this basis we have the following comparison : —

ENGLISH.

Model Academy I. II. III. I. II. III. Committee's require- ments. . 7 5J 5i 533 Actual average . . 3-45 3-37 3-66 3-12 3-11 3-07

There is a very general complaint that enough time cannot be devoted to English in view of the requirements of the other subjects. But when we turn to Latin we find it in equally bad case.

LATIN.

Model Academy I. II. III. I. II. III. Committee's require- ments. . . — 33 455 Actual average . . — 1-8 2'26 2-84 3-32 4-36

At the Model stage Latin is usually taught

78

Time-Tables

three times a week for half an hour in purely Model Schools, but in the Model Departments of Acade- mies it is generally taught every day for either twenty or thirty minutes. At the Academy stage Latin is taught every day, the usual period being forty minutes. One or two of the Academies give an hour a day (e.g., Lachute) at all the stages of Academy work, while thirteen schools give an hour a day to Latin in Academy III. At Coati- cook the subject gets seven and a half hours a week in Academy III.

It has to be noted that these are the periods of time in theory. In a few of the better equipped Academies the pupils may get instruction for those periods, but in the great majority of cases the periods represent rather the time the pupil devotes during school hours to the various sub- jects. As a matter of fact, the Committee's table of time-limits for the several subjects must be regarded as applying to the pupil's time, rather than to the teacher's. As has been pointed out in dealing with the elementary work, this limita- tion of the periods of actual teaching may not be a drawback after all. Eager pupils get all the guidance they require, and idle pupils have enough supervision to prevent them getting along with- out being found out. Everything depends upon the teacher. In many of the Academies the work is so supervised that the pupils really get the full benefit of supervision on the one hand,

79

Protestant School System

and the training to self-reliance and steady appli- cation on the other. In one Academy I found a large room with fifty-four pupils, representing the three grades of Academy and the third Model Grade. The work was so well arranged, and the teacher's command of his pupils was so great, that all four classes appeared to get full attention, and the time spent in studying appeared to be as profitable as the time spent under the actual instruction of the master. The thing can be done by an exceptionally able and enthusiastic teacher. But it cannot be said that in general this dissipation of a teacher's energy over the work of these three classes leads to even fairly satisfactory results. It is quite common to find lessons postponed on account of " want of time ". I have frequently heard the master say something like this: " Now Academy II. Latin, I'm going to take it for granted that you prepared lines 176 to 194. For to-morrow take 195 to 214." Nor must it be forgotten that there is a vague expec- tation that the Principal of an Academy in some way or other supervises the work in the other departments in addition to teaching three classes of his own.

OVERTIME. — The more enthusiastic teachers devote a great deal of time outside of school hours to overtake work that it is impossible to accom- plish within the school day. The Principal of Buckingham Model School tells me that he has

so

Higher Work in Elementary Schools

taught special subjects — without any extra charge —to his pupils for an average of three hours every night during the Session, in order to cover the ground required by the Syllabus, and his case is far from being exceptional. Very frequently this overtime is devoted to subjects in which the teacher is specially interested. Thus the Prin- cipal of Danville Academy does most of his Science teaching between 4 P.M. (when his school is supposed to close) and 5'30 or 6 P.M. Even in the District Schools it is not uncommon to find the teacher remaining for an hour after the regular closing time in order to push on some more advanced pupil who cannot get proper attention during the school period.

HIGHER WORK IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.

All this enthusiasm and overtime is most creditable to the teachers, but it is very doubtful whether it is for the ultimate good of the pupils. If the boy or girl in the District School, greatly over the usual age, comes merely to get a some- what better equipment in the ordinary school subjects, the plan may work well enough for the pupil, though somewhat hard on the teacher. But if the District School is used as a preparation for Higher Educational work, the plan defeats its own ends. The usual argument is that if the

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District School does not help the promising pupil of limited resources, he must give up for ever all hop 3 of enjoying the advantages of Higher Edu- cation. But what sort of Higher Education can be hoped for in the overtime work of a District School teacher ? The promising pupil really loses his most useful study-period. It is true kindness to drive him to some centre where real Higher Education is available. A system of small Scholar- ships sufficient to pay the difference in cost between living at home and living at an educa- tional centre is what is wanted. There should not be very many of these Scholarships, for after all the number of promising pupils is not great. Nor should they be of great intrinsic value. Promising pupils should find it possible, but not necessarily easy, to get educational advantages. The effort to get a Higher Education is itself a part of that Education. To understand how little is sometimes required to aid people to help them- selves, consider the case of the Bury Municipality. The Commissioners there desire to encourage Higher Education at their Model School in Bury Village. To begin with, they make the fees less for Higher than for Elementary Education. Pupils under fourteen pay $1 a month, pupils over fourteen pay 50c. a month. Then to en- courage country pupils to come to the Model School, the fee is entirely remitted in their case, and a payment made to them of 50c. a month.

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Small as this sum is, it is enough to pay for the share of a room in the village. Country pupils thus live in pairs in the village at SI a month for their room. Their food and their fuel are pro- vided by their parents. The pupils usually go home over the week-ends. Mr. Tarns, the Secretary-Treasurer, tells me that the scheme is working exceedingly well. This arrangement is possible in this case because the village forms part of the municipality, but surely something of the same kind could be done elsewhere.

The desire to do Academy work in Model Schools and Model work in District Schools has two causes: (1) Commissioners have the wish to provide Higher Education within as short a dis- tance from their constituents as possible. Just as the unreflecting crofter prefers a bad school at the end of his lane to an excellent one two and a half or three miles distant, so the farmer cannot understand why he should send his children five or six miles to an Academy when the neighbour- ing Model School is eager to teach the higher subjects. (2) A more creditable cause is the natural preference of a teacher of parts for the more advanced work. There is a silly prejudice, not limited to Canada, that the rank of a teacher rises in proportion to the degree in which he teaches "advanced" work. As this prejudice is backed by differentiation in salary it is little wonder that teachers should respect it, and

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become ambitious to include in their curriculum the most imposing subjects available.

Nevertheless the tendency is vicious. The demands of the Committee in respect of the establishment of a Model School or an Academy are certainly not excessive. Even when fully met, the result is far from satisfactory, as we have already seen, and to encourage any remis- sion would be a mistaken kindness to the schools themselves, and a serious injury to the pupils. If, even with the full staff demanded, .teachers are often compelled to work overtime ^ to. make ends meet, what would be the case of those who would attempt the same work with a confessedly inadequate staff. So far from permitting poorly staffed schools to do higher work, it would be a wise policy to screw up the requirements, even if that caused several of the poorer Academies to fall to the rank of Model Schools. It would be a pity, however, to reduce the weaker Model Schools to the rank of District Schools, as the Model School teachers are usually of a higher type, and fit for excellent work. But everything should be done in the way of limiting the profes- sion of the Model School curriculum to what can be satisfactorily accomplished under the existing conditions.

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Curriculum of Studies

CURRICULUM OF STUDIES.

"It is competent for each School Board to decide, in consultation with the Principal of the school, what particular selection of subjects within the limits prescribed [in the Memoranda of Instruc- tions to Teacliers'] shall be taken up in the school under its control." The Committee are to be congratulated on this recognition of the teacher. Here they are greatly in advance of that per- nicious system in Britain which studiously ignored the opinion of the teacher, and even invented little circumlocutions to avoid the necessity of officially recognising his existence.

The freedom of choice in framing the curri- culum is not so great as would appear from the above quotation from the Instructions. In the Elementary Course and in iModel I. there is prac- tically no choice at all, except that French is optional in the former Course. In Model II. and III. "the Grade subjects are Reading, Writing, Scripture, English, History, Geography, Arithmetic, French, Temperance and Health, Drawing and one of the remaining subjects ". The remaining subjects are : Geometry, Mathe- matics Part II., German, Greek, Algebra, Latin, Science. But as in the Time-limits in the Com- mittee's Instructions there is no figure placed against any of the first four of these subjects, and since algebra gets a figure only in Model III.,

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it is clear that the real choice for the additional subject lies between Latin and science. Latin claims three hours per week, while science is content with one. For teachers and Commis- sioners, therefore, who prefer the line of least resistance the choice is clear. There is, indeed, an open and vigorous campaign throughout the Province against the teaching of Latin to pupils who have no intention to go to the University. This hostility to the subject is generally more marked in connection with the purely Model Schools. In some cases the teacher is forbidden to take up Latin : in others the popular feeling is so strong against it, that it is quietly dropped out of the curriculum. Very often the teacher has an ambition to have a Latin class, and does what he can to encourage the subject. In one Model School, for example, the master has tried in vain for three successive years to establish a Latin class. This year, by boldly declaring that the subject is compulsory, he has attained his object ; but he is now endangering everything by trying to do three years' work in Latin in one Session.

The most common argument used by teachers who favour Latin is that without this subject the pupil cannot go forward to any profession that demands a University education. This argument appeals powerfully to the commercial instincts of parents who think of a professional career for

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their children ; but it alienates the great majority of parents. " Give my boy plenty of English, Arithmetic, Commercial Geography and enough French to hold his own in an office " is the usual beginning of a sentence that ends badly for Latin. But this "University" argument is not only in- judicious, it is educationally unsound. If Latin is valuable only as a means of passing University examinations it ought to disappear from the great majority of the schools ; for, as the opponents of Latin are fond of repeating, 95 per cent, of the pupils in the Quebec Schools have no intention of going to the University. Latin is either valuable in itself or it is worthless in the schools of the Province. It is not a subject to be " got up ". Not the result in mere knowledge, but the result in training is valuable. This is no place for the threadbare discussion of the claims of science and classics : but it is necessary to insist here on the true grounds on which Latin must base its claim to a place in the curriculum. Let it be remembered that in the Higher Schools of the United States Latin is gaining a stronger position as an aid towards training in accurate English. Further it is noteworthy that the Scotch Educa- tion Department, whose leanings towards nature study, manual work, physical training and other anti-bookish branches are specially marked, has recently made Latin a compulsory subject for all students in Training Colleges. The subject is to

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be taught in these Colleges not for examination purposes at all, but as a training in accurate expression, and an aid towards the better under- standing of English Grammar and English Com- position.

Under present conditions and with the small staff at present available, it may be desirable to cut out Latin altogether from the curriculum of the Model Schools not connected with Academies; for, as the authorities of M'Gill University them- selves maintain, "It is better to have no Latin at all than sham Latin ". But let it be clearly understood that the schools in that case will give up something that is good, because they cannot afford it, not because it is not worth having.

In their laudable desire to avoid an overloaded curriculum the Committee recommend that Aca- demy pupils " should be recommended to take fewer subjects in order that the quality of the work may be improved". The tendency in the Province of Quebec as elsewhere is to take up too many subjects for the staff available. In Grade II. and Grade III. Academy, for example, " the pupils should take at least six subjects, including one subject under each of the following heads : English, Mathematics, Science and Lan- guage ". As a matter of fact, this often implies English, Geography, History, Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, French, Latin, Physics (and sometimes Botany and Chemistry) and Drawing. Teachers

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find it difficult to omit any of these subjects, and after all, with a good staff and a well-arranged Time-table, the list does not represent an excess of work. But it is clear that it demands the whole time of one teacher to do justice to one Grade. To allow options to individual pupils is out of the question under present conditions, but in more favourable circumstances a mainly linguis- tic course might with advantage be made alter- native with a mainly scientific course.

It is worth considering whether the system of examining by individual subjects combined with an elaborate system of cumulative marks does not tend to encourage the dissipation of energy among a multiplicity of subjects.

SCHOOL INSPECTION.

The educational authorities of the Province take a very wise view of the functions of the Inspectors of Schools. These officers must of course see that all the instructions of the Educa- tion Department are followed, and must see that teachers keep up a respectable level of attainment in their work. But the Inspectors do not make the mistake — somewhat common in longer estab- lished systems — of thinking that their function consists merely in appraising the work of others. They realise their joint responsibility with the teachers. The Inspector does not rest content with the report that the work is badly done. He

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feels called upon to find out the cause of the defect, and to supply a remedy. His function is to spread the contagion of good methods. What- ever is admirable in one school he communicates to others : when methods turn out badly in one district he gives other districts the benefit of this unpleasant experience. He is in a very real sense the earnest teacher's friend, standing between her and the Department on the one hand, and between her and the Commissioners on the other.

It is part of the conditions of his appointment that the Inspector should have been himself a teacher for a period of at least five years. Ac- cordingly he is qualified, not only by knowledge but also by experience to guide the teachers, as well as to appraise their work. At his annual visits to the schools he not only examines the pupils, he teaches them. Wherever his tests show a subject to be weak, he tackles that sub- ject, gives a specimen lesson in it, and afterwards gives the teacher such hints as he thinks will be of service. A legitimate development of this aspect of the Inspector's work are the conferences with teachers held in the autumn of each year. In each district a certain number of suitable centres are chosen for those meetings with teachers. The work extends over two whole days, during which the teachers are permitted to close their schools. Further, an allowance of

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seventy-five cents per day is made to cover their expenses — an allowance that is usually insufficient. At each centre four or five lectures are given by the Inspector. These are usually of a most practical character, and have a very direct bear- ing upon the ordinary work of the schools. Actual demonstrations of teaching are given, apparatus is exhibited and explained, and teachers are encouraged to ask questions and discuss the various matters dealt with. I tried in various ways to arrive at the teachers' real views of the value of these conferences, and I am convinced that the average teacher regards them as of the utmost service in guiding her in her work. While no compulsion is used to secure attendance, practically all who are invited are glad to be present. In any but the most adverse conditions as to weather there is an attendance of about 90 per cent, of the teachers invited. The actual numbers at these conferences vary from fifteen to twenty-five. In order to increase the attrac- tiveness and usefulness of these meetings the Inspectors sometimes arrange among themselves to lecture in each other's districts, so that the whole body of the teachers may benefit by the expert knowledge of those Inspectors who have specialised in some part of schoolwork.

In the meantime the Inspectors are under- paid. But their salaries are at present under consideration with a view to revision. It would

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be well to have their travelling expenses paid independently of their salary, as there is other- wise a temptation for them to rest content with the minimum amount of travelling.

The Model Schools and Academies are not placed under the ordinary school Inspectors. A special Inspector of Higher Schools visits them annually, and also arranges for their annual written examination. There appears to be a good deal of dissatisfaction about inspection among the teachers of Model Schools and Academies.

NOTES ON THE TEACHING OF THE VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

READING. — The children in the District Schools generally read well what they understand, but the initial mechanical difficulties of reading aloud are not, in most cases, very intelligently faced. Many teachers follow the blunt old alphabetic method. Others loudly prefer the phonic or phonetic method, and all the while really teach by what is known as " look-and-say ". I frequently came across unintelligent promptings supposed to be phonetic. A child stumbles at the word " shall," for example, and the teacher gives him a hint towards the initial sound by asking, " What does mother say to you when baby's asleep ? " This kind of prompting I met so often that I wonder

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whether it can have any local sanction. The fundamental connection between sound and symbol having been made, progress is rapid in the Quebec Schools. Perhaps the reading as a rule is too low to be easily heard, but this is a less serious defect than the school drawl from which the schools of the Province are remarkably free. Besides, the real purpose of practice in reading aloud is to secure ability to read to one- self. Elocution as such is a different branch. The few examples of declamation that I came across were excellent, as exercises in elocution, though the subjects treated left much to be de- sired. It is as easy to memorise good English as bad, and it is a pity that the old exercise of recitation should not be utilised in supplying the pupils with models of English. There is room for a better correlation of the reading lesson and the lesson in " English ".

WRITING. — Writing is generally well taught at the early stages. The upright style is almost universal, and the results in clearness and neat- ness of execution are satisfactory. There is a tendency, occasionally, in the District Schools, to make too much of writing as a " busy " subject to keep pupils quiet while their fellows are under instruction. But in most cases the subject is honestly as well as successfully taught. The collection and preservation for the Inspector of

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particularly good specimens of writing has an excellent effect on the ordinary copy-book work. At the later stages, particularly in the Academy Grades, the quality of the writing deteriorates greatly. The cause is to be found in the fact that at this stage writing is used as a mere means towards an end. The amount of note- taking and of " scribbler " work accounts for a good deal of the slovenliness that marks much of the Academy handwriting. At the early stages the pupils are required to write well, and are allowed to write slowly. By and by comes the time when they must write quickly, and nothing is said about the quality of the writing. What is required is a graded series of exercises in rapid writing. Training in speed is singularly neglected in the teaching of writing. The argu- ment seems to be : train a child to write well, and speed will come by and by. This is true, but the quality of the writing suffers as it need not suffer if speed is gradually acquired with a distinct reference to legibility. The upright system lends itself to a style of teaching that would deliberately superinduce speed on neatness and clearness.

ARITHMETIC. — This subject is generally well taught, or rather well learned. For this there are two main reasons. First, the importance of the subject is recognised by all, and its

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application can be readily tested. Teachers know that any weakness here will not only be sure to be discovered, but will lead to serious dissatisfaction. Secondly, the subject lends it- self to the teachers' necessity. Pupils may be kept diligently at work for long periods on arithmetical problems, and the results tested by a moment's glance over their "answers". Thus it comes about that a large amount of time is devoted to the subject by the pupil, and that in a very profitable way. He acquires con- fidence in dealing with questions on his own account, and perseverance in pursuing the required answer. Even when he fails and has to get the teacher's help, he has gained the great advantage of a mind prepared to under- stand the explanation and eager to receive it. Here the trained teacher shows to advantage. She insists not merely upon a correct answer, but upon the best method. The teacher who has gained her certificate by experience is more inclined to be content with the " answer ".

The great defect in the teaching of arithmetic is the same here as in Britain — a tendency to bookishness. The arithmetic text-book is ar- ranged according to the various " rules," so that in the child's mind, there is gradually formed a fixed idea that all numerical operations must fall under one or other of the rules in his book. If a problem is given, the pupil

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very often asks, " What's the rule ? " instead of thinking out the matter on the lines of common-sense, and then applying his skill in manipulating figures. For example, the follow- ing problem nearly always baffled a class that could easily solve it when the rule was given : " If 7 and 5 make fourteen, what will 8 and 6 make ? " Still it has to be noted that fewer were misled in the Quebec Schools than in British Schools, for the Quebec teaching gener- ally prefers the unitary method, while in Britain the "Rule of Three" forms a trap for the un- wary, who are tempted to treat the above problem as an example of the Compound Rule of Three "because there are five terms".

In almost every school I held up my pen and said, " My pen is six inches long. Now, how long is a half of three-quarters of my pen ? " In no case did I get the answer directly. Yet, when I wrote upon the blackboard

" | of f of 6 inches "

the answer was given at once. It is the correla- tion between book-work and real life that is most to be desired in our school system, and the con- ditions of the District Schools are not such as to favour this correlation.

MATHEMATICS. — The great defect in the teach- ing of mathematics is again bookishness. The blackboard lesson in Euclid in almost every case

Notes on the Teaching

resolved itself into a more or less free recitation of the book constructions and proofs. Only very rarely did I find any ingenuity in modifying the figure so as to produce unexpected effects and suggest new points of view. Riders were almost never given. The explanation appears to be that the teachers find that a certain amount of ground must be covered, and that the time given to this subject is barely sufficient for the book-work. It is felt that this book-work pays in examinations, whereas the time spent on freer work is more or less of a speculation with regard to examination results. The pupils on their part, being left to do a good deal of the work on their own account, naturally depend upon their books. In the few cases where I saw the subject well taught, the recitation method was abandoned altogether : each pupil had to present his book-work for the day in a sort of geometrical shorthand on his scribbling-book ; a glance showed whether this was correct, and the rest of the instruction period was spent in dealing with simple riders to the day's problems.

Algebra appears to be on the whole better managed than geometry, perhaps for the reason that the exercises of necessity demand a certain amount of ingenuity in applying familiar formulae to varying circumstances. The "answer" is always a stand-by that ensures to the pupil a certain amount of confidence in his work. But

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the answer, while a guarantee of accuracy, gives no guidance in method. One cannot but be sur- prised at the clumsiness of the methods usually followed by the pupils. Factorisation appears to be imperfectly understood, and a great deal of time is accordingly wasted in working out in elaborate detail results that ought to be reached by inspection. As in arithmetic rule-working is prominent. The pupil is taught — or learns for himself — the "rule" for performing a certain operation, and thereafter punctiliously uses that rule for that operation to the neglect of all the short cuts that count for so much in algebraic manipulations. In too many cases the teacher himself showed little familiarity with contracted methods, and allowed his pupils to fill the blackboard with elaborate calculations to attain results that could be obtained by the application of elementary formulas. Wherever practical ap- plications of mathematics are made — in dyna- mics, mensuration or other subjects — I observed a distinctly upward tendency in respect of methods. As soon as algebra ceases to be an end in itself, and comes to be regarded as a means towards other ends, it loses its rigidity, the pupils see it in its true relations and forthwith take liberties with it, liberties that result in the pupils' gaining that command of it that ensures its intelligent application.

It has to be stated, however, that in the case

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of some of the advanced pupils in Academies where the Principal has a mathematical bent, excellent work is done both in respect of quantity and quality.

SCIENCE. — (1) Physics. Save in the case of one or two enthusiasts who devote their overtime to the subject, the teachers are unable to do much in the way of experimental work. In many schools apparatus is lacking, and in most the science teaching has to be done in the ordinary classroom. In the Montreal High School there are excellent laboratories, but in the Country Academies it is rare to find any special accommodation for practical work. What struck me most was the ingenuity of the few who were interested in this subject in utilising odd little rooms and corners of rooms for science teaching.

(2) Dynamics. In dynamics sufficient atten- tion does not seem to be given to graphic methods of dealing with the mathematical work. Euclid, practical geometry and algebra could all be applied in dynamical calculations to the great advantage of the pupil who would not only under- stand his mathematics better by seeing the differ- ent branches used interchangeably, but would also be able to choose that form of calculation which appeals more to his natural turn of mind.

The Committee do all in their power to dis-

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courage the teaching of science as a mere exercise in book-work. Where science cannot be taught by means of the necessary apparatus, they prefer that it should not be taught at all. The whole trend of educational progress is away from bookishness ; and the Committee are deter- mined that the Province shall be saved from that lowest depth of bookishness, the teaching of practical science from little handbooks.

HISTORY. — By very general consent of the teachers of District Schools this subject is voted the most difficult to teach. The explanation is to be found partly in the nature of the subject, and partly in the nature of the text-books. Canadian history at the earlier stages — at what may be termed the Heroic Period — is interesting enough : but it soon becomes a record of constitutional changes which are in themselves intensely dull for young people. Then the text-books do not make the most of the material at their disposal. The Committee have done their best not only to choose the best books in the market, but even to encourage the writing of a suitable book. But the writers on Canadian history make the not uncommon mistake of thinking that a book written for little people must itself be little. The com- plaint is made that it is difficult to put all that is necessary into small compass. What we want is not a synopsis, but a full account. A synopsis is

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of value only to those who already know a subject. Pending the production of a comparatively full nar- rative of the more important events in Canadian history, the teachers should be encouraged to teach the subject orally, and to depend upon the text-book merely as a synopsis. As a rule the teachers appear to rely upon the text-book as the sole source of information : they seem in- capable of adding anything of their own. It is not difficult for a well-informed person to make history interesting. Even the more constitu- tional parts can be made quite attractive, as was proved by an admirable lesson I heard Inspector McOuat give in an Elementary School on the Change of the Seat of Government from Montreal to Ottawa.

British history and the history of Greece and Rome are much better taught. Intrinsically they may be somewhat more interesting, but I am strongly inclined to believe that they are taught better chiefly because the teachers know more about them. It has to be remembered, however, that Canadian history is largely en- trusted to the younger and less experienced teachers, while the more general history falls mainly to teachers of Model or Academy rank.

GEOGRAPHY. — In the District Schools this subject is more intelligently taught at the earlier stages than at the later. A good deal of in-

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genuity is sometimes expended in illustrating the definitions of the divisions of land and water, and the meaning of the plan of the school is often well brought out. There is a good deal less of rote definition than I had expected. The instruc- tion at Grades II., III. and IV. is meagre in quantity and unsatisfactory in quality. It is to the advantage of the pupils that a great deal of the geography teaching has to be done with no other help than the ordinary wall-map. If the teacher had more time for this subject, and (in too many cases) more knowledge of it, better work would be done in geography than in history, for the reliance upon text-books is not here so common.

In Model Schools and Academies geography usually gets too little time, but I came across several teachers who were doing capital work, dealing with this subject in a very intelligent way, and correlating it to co-ordinate studies such as history and economics.

SINGING. — In the schools of the Province singing is not well taught. In the City Schools all the teachers are expected to be qualified to teach singing or suffer a deduction of $10 in their salary. In consequence the singing in these schools is satisfactory. In Sherbrooke the sub- ject is in the hands of a special teacher. But the good results thus obtained are not to be

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found in the ordinary Academies, Model Schools and District Schools. There is a good deal of singing done in connection with the opening and closing exercises and with patriotic demonstra- tions, but little is attempted in the way of artistic finish. In very few cases indeed did I hear any songs in two parts. Almost everywhere the children sing in unison, and even that mainly by ear. In no country school did I find any pro- fession of singing at sight, and in many cases the teachers did not appear to understand what I meant by ear exercises. A very little attention to this subject would be amply repaid in results not merely in singing but in clearness of enuncia- tion in speaking and reading. Children of nine and ten properly taught on the sol-fa system ought to be able to sol-fa at sight an easy tune, and all children of this age should sing some class songs in two parts. A few minutes a day is all that the subject demands, and these minutes would act as an aid to other subjects, not a hindrance.

CALISTHENICS. — There is a Nota Bene to the table of the course of study for Elementary Pro- testant Schools: " Music and Physical Exercises are required to form part of the School Course ". In the case of the District Schools the " Physical Exercises" part is quietly dropped. When I spoke of it to teachers and Commissioners my questions aroused nothing but mild amusement

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mingled with tolerant contempt for the city man's ignorance of country conditions. The popular opinion clearly is that gymnastics and drill may be all very well for pale-faced city children, but that the sturdy country children require no such adventitious aids. " Most of these children," said one teacher grimly, regarding her seventeen pupils, " walk a mile and a half to school and a mile and a half home every day. The most of their time out of school they spend in the river or up trees. I don't think they need exercise." This confusion between mere exercise and physical drill is almost universal. In the very few cases where the difference is understood and acted upon, I found that the teacher had herself been trained in the Normal School, and had been taught the mental and moral, as well as the physical effects of the scientifically arranged rhythmic motions. The Model Schools and Academies recognise the value of calisthenics, and in many cases a room is set apart for this subject. The best work of this kind that I saw was at Coaticook, where Miss Wadleigh has given the subject serious study and has adopted the Emerson System. This system claims three advantages : (1) It strengthens not only the external muscles but the internal organs ; (2) it gives grace of movement ; (3) it trains in the power of physical expression. The claim touch- ing the internal organs need not be pressed : the

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remaining advantages are sufficient to justify the system. To me an additional and most important advantage lies in the fact that the exercises can be carried on in the ordinary classroom, beside the ordinary desks. A consequence of this ad- vantage is that the exercise may be — and at Coaticook actually is — given for ten minutes each day, instead of for fifty minutes once a week. At Sherbrooke this subject gets special attention, and the results are excellent. Some of the Academies have a cadet corps, and do a good deal of military drill with great advantage to the bearing of the boys, and to the corporate life of the school.

HYGIENE AND TEMPERANCE. — Teachers appear to have a great dislike to deal with, or even talk about, hygiene and temperance. These subjects are prescribed and therefore they are taught, but I had few opportunities of seeing hygiene taught, and none at all of hearing a temperance lesson. Hygiene appears to resolve itself into common-sense lessons in Elementary Physiology in relation to ordinary life. Temperance is merely a specialised department of hygiene. While teachers were unanimously coy regarding the teaching of temperance in the presence of a stranger, they very generally approved of the subject, and maintained that it was a useful part of the curriculum.

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ENGLISH. — Owing to the greater intimacy between pupils and teachers in Canada, the sub- ject of English begins under better conditions than obtain in Britain. It is only of late that speaking or conversation has come to be regarded in British schools as a part of the school course. In Quebec the pupil has always considered him- self entitled to talk with his teacher on points of common interest. Leaving accent and pro- nunciation out of account, the Canadian pupils talk much better than British pupils. In Quebec, therefore, children in school begin their study of English with a better grip of the language as a means to be used rather than as a subject to be studied. Further, at the early stages the Quebec pupils are left comparatively free from technical nomenclature. It is not a mere matter of names. That is only a new form of pedantry that seeks to simplify a noun by calling it a naming word, and a verb by calling it the telling word. The advantage the Quebec pupils enjoy is that their teachers lay more stress on the use of language than on its grammatical structure. At the early stages parsing is mercifully simple, and synthesis of sentences gets on the whole more attention than analysis. Even at Academy I. technical detail is limited to West's Grammar for Beginners. Yet the pupils have an excellent grip of the essential meaning of grammatical forms. I frequently began to examine a class in English

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only to be interrupted by the teacher pointing out that the pupils had not had this or that technical term ; yet before I had finished with the class I had satisfied myself and the teacher that the pupils fully understood the real meaning underlying the unknown term.

Composition is on the whole rather well learned than well taught. The subject is not systematically treated at all. Just as in Britain, the pupil is not so much taught how to \vrite as ordered to write on this or that subject. Even of this form of teaching there is too little. The labour of marking papers after the exhausting day that falls to the lot of most teachers is too great to be faced frequently. Yet this subject can be taught only by constant and supervised practice.

From the pupil's point of view the composition exercise usually takes the form of an examination in general knowledge. It is a challenge to him to show what he knows about a given subject, rather than an exercise in how to express what he knows. When set to write an essay the pupil of to-day echoes the prayer with \vhich the pupil of Locke's day importuned his elders under similar circumstances, " Pray give me a little sense ". There can be no doubt that the Quebec pupil has always a greater stock of " sense " in this meaning than has his British fellow. The greater prominence given to children in social

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life, coupled with the greater amount of public discussion of all matters, affords an opportunity to the Quebec pupil to acquire much vague general information, which he uses on paper with great confidence. Further, the newspaper reading habit is very early acquired. In many schools several papers are regularly taken in. These, fastened to reading sticks, are hung up at one end of the room and are available for the whole school at recesses, and before and after school. Some newspaper proprietors send gratis copies, and almost all newspapers supply copies to schools at specially reduced rates. If anything of unusual public interest occurs, the teacher reads the account of it to the class, and gives whatever explanations he thinks necessary. All this gives the pupil familiarity with new subjects and confidence in dealing with them.

The school library is another very popular means of improving the general knowledge of the pupils and thus promoting their study of English. Almost every Academy, and a large number of the Model Schools, have libraries. Some even of the District Schools have libraries, and there is a movement at present to aid all schools to found such libraries. The selection of books in the libraries at present in existence is, generally speaking, good, and the pupils make full use of their opportunities.

The teaching of English literature is not at

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present in a very satisfactory state. But im- provements have been recently made, and others will follow. The time-honoured custom of teach- ing English literature from a text-book is still retained. But in justice to the Committee it must be stated (1) that the book selected — Stop- ford Brooke's Primer — is the best of its kind, and (2) that the portions selected for study are the most suitable in the book. The modern tendency is to prescribe certain standard works in English to be read at first hand, and to discard mere books about books. The objection usually raised is that in a school course so few books can be read that the pupil will go out into the world with no adequate knowledge of his native litera- ture. The answer is (1) that a knowledge of the names of certain books, the dates of the author's birth and death, and a sentence summarising the contents of the books is a sham knowledge that is useless and immoral, and (2) that a very large number of books can be read if they are read as they were meant to be read. The vice of "notes" to English standard works not only makes the book repellent to pupils, but renders it impossible for pupils to read more than one or two books per Session. If one English Classic were carefully studied each Session, while a dozen selected Classics were read for their own sakes and with no special reference to examination, Stopford Brooke's Primer might

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disappear from the Syllabus with no harm to any pupil.

LATIN. — At the Model Stages Latin is prob- ably the worst handled of all the subjects of the curriculum. To begin with, there is invariably too little time allowed for the study. In only one Model School did I find Latin begun in Stage I. ; and at Stage II. it is quite common to find only one hour per week set apart for the subject. Sometimes, even in the Academies, the distribu- tion of time for Latin is very peculiar. In one Academy, for example, the times are :—

Model Academy

II. III. I. II. III.

(No pupils) Four hours 1£ 2J 3

Though this distribution of time does not agree with the recommendations of the Committee, it might be justified if there was any consistent principle underlying it. If it is argued that the earliest stages need most time, then Academy I. is too early to introduce the lowest time-limit. As a matter of fact the time-limits are determined mainly by the exigencies of school staff rather than by educational considerations. Where Latin is best taught it is taken every day. A quarter of an hour per day produces much better results than half an hour three times a week.

Then there is a very general diffidence among Model School teachers regarding this subject. They were unwilling to teach it in my presence,

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and still more unwilling that I should examine their pupils in it. There were very general com- plaints about the excessive demands of the Com- mittee from Model School pupils in Latin. In particular it was objected that the gap between Model II. and Model III. is too great. I found a general preference for Ccesar as compared with the Fabulce Faciles, but could get no intelligent reason for the preference. In many cases, indeed, it came out that the teachers had not even seen the Fabulce. Almost all the teachers with a competent knowledge of Latin appear to prefer the Fabulce, though, in several instances, for examination purposes, they presented their pupils in Caesar as being more familiar and therefore more likely to lead to good marks, even when the pupils had read both the fables and the prescribed portion of Caesar.

In the Academy Grades the diffidence about Latin is not so marked, though even here I found that the teachers generally preferred that I should take up some other subject. Some of the Princi- pals have made a special study of the teaching of Latin. At Knowlton, for example, the Principal has restudied his Latin and Greek entirely from the pedagogic standpoint, and as a result throws a great deal of enthusiasm into his work with the natural effect of arousing great interest in these subjects among his pupils. The Principal of Sherbrooke Academy has worked out some in-

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genious combinations of fancy and philology that aid him greatly in interesting his younger Latin classes without endangering the accuracy of their scholarship. At Lachute the Principal has arranged his Time-table so that he can himself undertake the whole of the Latin teaching of his school. The results are excellent here, and at the Boys' High School, Quebec, where the same arrangement is made in favour of the Classical Master. The Principal of the Girls' High School at Quebec is an enthusiast in Latin. I heard her give an admirable lesson to a Senior Class. A very general defect in the teaching of this subject throughout the Province is the too close attention to examination limits. A disproportion- ate amount of time and attention appears to be given to the mastering of the prescribed texts, as compared with what is devoted to sight reading and exercises in Latin Prose. The language is not treated with any freedom ; the pupils are not made to feel that they are studying Latin, rather than getting up Caesar, Bk. iv., 1-5, and certain other items. Further, even in getting up the translation, the important thing appears to be to acquire the power of giving off a good English rendering. The pupil opens his book and reads off in fairly good English the meaning of a para- graph often without mentioning a single Latin word. It was explained to me that at the time of year at which I made my visits the work of

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translation had got to the stage of revision, and that at the earlier period of the school year great attention was given to "construing ". Frequently, however, when I was permitted to take a class myself, I found that while the general sense of the passage was understood perfectly, the pupils had a good deal of difficulty in making a detailed connection between the English words and the Latin. On the other hand, I am convinced as the result of careful and persistent inquiries and experiments, in school and out, that the use of " cribs," by the pupils, is much less common than it is in Britain.

GREEK. — Nearly all the remarks made with regard to the teaching of Latin in the Province may be applied to the teaching of Greek. There is this difference, however, that on the whole the teaching of this subject is somewhat better than in the case of Latin. The cause is twofold. (1) There is not the same general expectation that every one can teach Greek, and those teachers who do undertake the work usually do so from a certain liking for and knowledge of the language. (2) In the second place the pupils who take up this subject are limited to those who propose to go forward to the University. They have therefore a definite aim in their study, and their inclination is less likely to conflict with the teacher's efforts to get accurate results. Greek

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is so clearly out of the path of ordinary general culture, as found in Canada, that there is no temptation on the part of either pupil or teacher to take up the subject in the dilettante way so familiar in the case of Latin. Further, the de- mands in Greek being more limited than those in Latin, the pupil who begins at the Academy stage is able to get up the comparatively small amount required by the end of the third year without the strain of which almost all the country teachers complain in the case of Latin. In such a well- equipped school, however, as the Montreal High School, surely the subject might be begun at a somewhat earlier stage with students who are going forward to a Classical Course. It does not appear till the fifth form, so that pupils have only two years of Greek, while pupils in the ordinary Academies who take up this subject, have a three years' course. It is interesting to find that in one Model School — Lachine — a beginning has been made in the teaching of Greek. In view of the time spent on this subject in English and Scotch schools it is difficult to believe that boys can be prepared in two years to begin the study of Greek in the University plane. At Bishop's College School Greek is taught from the third form.

FRENCH. — Special interest attaches to the teaching of French in the Province from the fact that teachers have everywhere the oppor-

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tunity of acquiring French as a spoken language. To my surprise, I find that the teachers in Quebec are certainly not better qualified in this language than teachers of the same class in Britain. It is as rare in Quebec as it is in Britain to find an English-speaking teacher who speaks French fluently, and with regard to knowledge of the grammar and literature, I am inclined to think that the advantage lies with the old country.

In the Elementary Schools French is optional, but if taken up it begins in the first class. To meet the special needs of the case, and to en- courage the teaching of French as a spoken language, alternative courses in this subject have been outlined by the Protestant Committee in their course of study. Teachers have their choice of the Natural Method and what, for want of a better name, is known as the Translation Course, but they are enjoined to keep to the method chosen. Mr. H. H. Curtis, who has been led to give this subject special study, and who has been successful in placing the teaching of French in the schools of Montreal on a most satisfactory basis, has published a series of little text-books named Oral Lessons in French, which are of the utmost value in making it possible for ordinary teachers to apply a method which is very difficult for any who are not masters of the language. An essential part of Mr. Curtis' system is the series of Teachers' Manuals, a manual for each

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of the text-books. These make it possible for even inexperienced teachers to adopt the Natural Method with some chance of success. As a matter of fact, almost all the better teachers adopt the Natural Method. Wherever at the earlier stages a teacher is found to prefer the Translation Method, it indicates a lack of con- fidence in her power to deal with the language. At the later stages, many teachers prefer the Translation Method because of the necessity of preparing for the University examinations. Several of the Secondary teachers in fact main- tain that the Natural Method is being carried too far. The complaint is to be expected, though it cannot be justified. The method does not at all propose to get rid of accurate grammatical treatment ; all that it does is to begin with the language itself, to use it, to know what it is, and then to begin the analysis. The Translation Method aims at a bookish accuracy of expression, and hopes that when this is acquired the pupil will pick up the habit of speaking the language. With adults studying a foreign language this method has a good deal in its favour, but when we can begin with pupils at the age of seven, the Natural Method is certainly preferable. The Committee clearly appreciate the importance of grammatical accuracy in its proper place. Their instructions tell us : "It will be found that the five parts of Curtis' Oral Lessons contain as much grammar and

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as much work in other directions as is prescribed for the same years in the Translation Course, and at the beginning of the Academy Grades the pupils who have been following the Natural Method will be prepared to continue their work on these lines, or to join those who have been translating, as may be found expedient ".

In actual practice the Curtis' books are used with varying degrees of success, according to the capacity of the teachers. A very common error is to act as if the vocabulary were the language. Then, many teachers teach the language as a guide book teaches it to those who are about to enter a foreign country. Yet the Oral Lessons are so arranged that, even when used as a phrase book on the method of parrot-like repetition, a certain amount of good results. The structure of French sentences, the peculiarities of pronouns and verbs, and a useful if limited vocabulary are all acquired in spite of the woodenness of the teachers' method. At least the germ of the Sprachgeftihl is developed at a most susceptible age, and the work of better teachers at a later stage will have something to found on. At the very worst the pupil will have learned more than he would have from the purely grammatical study of a foreign language, before he knew even the rudiments of the grammar of his own.

The pronunciation of French in the Quebec schools is on the whole better than that found in

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Britain. When driven to teach French colloqui- ally, the teacher finds she must name her words somehow, and naturally turns to her French neighbours for help. [In two cases, one in an Academy and one in a Model School taught by a man, I got my answers in French spelt at me. The pupils had evidently been taught to spell the French words instead of saying them.] The consequence is that the general level of pronun- ciation is high but is marred by the introduction of several of the habitant peculiarities. For ex- ample, in many schools I found fdtais pronounced j'ttds, and noir pronounced nware. Some teachers even defend this pronunciation, on the ground that if French is to be learned as a living language it should be learned in a form that will cause no comment among the people among whom it is to be used. Without entering into this discussion, I have to admit that a few habitant peculiarities of pronunciation are usually accompanied by a naturalness of pronunciation that more than atones for them. It is, however, surely not impossible to get the general advantages of the spoken example, without adopting local peculi- arities.

DRAWING. — This subject is not well taught throughout the Province. In the District Schools it is often not taught at all, and when it is taught it owes its place mainly to its use

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as a "silent" or "busy" subject. The pupil is provided with a book in which there are certain drawings to be copied, and at the ap- pointed time he copies them. As a rule there is no trace of teaching. Some of the best copies are selected as " specimens," and that is all.

Prang's drawing copies are largely used. These are prepared on the principle of providing a drawing of some object, and then requiring the pupil to draw some other object of which the drawing is a type. A drawing of a cylindrical hat may be given for example, and the pupil called upon to draw a garden-roller. In most cases, however, I found that the drawing was simply copied as it stood. This is done indeed in several schools that loudly proclaim the excel- lence and scientific value of the Prang Method.

Though the blackboard is very much used in Quebec schools I found only one school in which the walls were supplied with blackboards so as to allow of free-arm drawing by the pupils. This school was fitted in this way as the result of a lecture by Mr. Thomas, the Manual-work Instructor.

But if the Quebec schools neglect free-arm drawing, they have not fallen into the opposite blunder from which our British schools are just escaping. The fine line and the equipollent figure do not appear to have obtained that bad eminence that has done so much to retard the teaching of

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real drawing in Britain, where for long the pupils did most of their drawing with their india-rubber. The Canadian pupils produce rough, dirty work that stands in great need of improvement, but it is at least the right kind of work so far as lines and freedom of hand action are concerned.

Colour — save in the form of coloured pencils — does not appear to be used yet in the Country Schools, and wherever I spoke of colour I could see that my suggestion was regarded as worse than Utopian. Experience has taught me that the brush is as easy and as natural a means of expression as the lead pencil. But it will take long to convince the ordinary man that a brush is an instrument for people as ordinary as himself. To the Normal College and the University we must look for that training that will remove the superstition that reserves the brush for " artists " in the sense of geniuses. In the High School, Montreal, I spent a couple of hours examining the drawings done by pupils during the Session. The kind of work is exactly on the lines of the newer developments in Britain. Some rough colour work representing common objects- candlestick, open book, jug — with and without backgrounds, exemplifies exactly the kind of thing that students in training for teachers should practise.

In some of the larger schools, notably in the city of Montreal, the children are encouraged to

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use drawing as a means of expression. In the Kindergartens throughout the Province this method of free drawing is found to produce excellent results. In several of the Montreal schools, and in one or two of the well-equipped Academies, I found young pupils taught to draw things as they saw them — trees, birds, horses, hats, tables. The results were naturally grotesquely out of drawing, but the educational gain appears to me to be unquestionable.

Wherever a beginning has been made in nature study, there drawing as a means of ex- pression has taken its proper place. In one school I found that a whole class had kept a pictorial record of the growth of a bean. Many of the drawings were quite fit to illustrate a botanical lesson, and yet the children were only nine years of age.

In all the Macdonald Manual Training De- partments the use of drawing is seen at its best. There it is entirely separated from the notion of Art in the sense of Fine Art. Drawing as such no more belongs to Art, in that sense, than does writing. The confusion between drawing and Art has done serious harm to British education. It is pleasing to find that in the Quebec schools, at least, there is no danger of a repetition of the British blunder.

Apart from the manual work drawing I saw almost no trace of training in the use of set

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squares and compasses, though the requirements in Academy III. are " Geometry and Freehand". Drawing to scale used to be carried to excess in British schools and produced admirable examina- tion results without giving any real mental train- ing, because the pupils were never called upon to apply practically what they had learned. Where - ever manual work or cutting out forms a part of the school curriculum there drawing to scale will form a valuable and interesting study. So with geometry. It should not be studied by itselfr but in connection with Euclid or whatever other form of theoretical geometry is taught in school. Some teachers object to this because it confuses two distinct subjects — Drawing and Mathematics. This fetish of independent separate subjects has done much to render the school curriculum rigid and hurtful. Teachers should be encouraged to view their work as centring in the pupil, not in the subject. All the school studies are related to each other only through the medium of the mind that studies them.

Great things are hoped for this subject from the recent appointment of Mr. Henry F. Arm- strong, of McGill University, to the post of Instructor in Drawing in the McGill Normal School. Mr. Armstrong's rare combination of scientific knowledge of his subject and practical acquaintance with the possibilities of elementary instruction in drawing, cannot fail to produce an

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immediate improvement, which will increase with each new class that passes through his hands at the Normal School.

MANUAL TRAINING. — I saw the Macdonald Workshops for Manual Training at Westmount, at the Model School, Montreal, at the Aberdeen School, Montreal, at Waterloo, at Knowlton, at Bedford, at Fredericton and at Truro. In several of the schools I found the pupils at work, and in all cases I had a long interview with the teacher, discussed his course, and looked at his specimens. In Truro and Fredericton I was fortunate enough to see the exhibition of the year's work of students in training as well as of the ordinary pupils. As I have given this subject a good deal of attention, and have had it introduced into the ordinary course in my Training College at Glasgow, I am able to speak from knowledge when I say that all the work I saw, whether completed or in process, was in the highest degree satisfactory. The subject is gradually winning its way in Canada ta that place which it deserves. Already the pre- liminary misunderstandings are being removed.

Professor James W. Robertson, and the admirable staff of pioneer teachers he has dis- tributed throughout the Dominion, are gradually succeeding in convincing parents and Commis- sioners that this new subject is not an abortive attempt to teach joinery, but a method of training

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the mind. Not the thing produced, but the effect upon the mind in producing it, is the essential thing. The mind is free only in so far as it can express itself in terms of its environment : this can be effected only by a perfect co-ordination of mind and muscle : manual training is the best means of practising this co-ordination. In the literature of the subject there is a tendency to confusion in one particular, a confusion that gives opportunity to the opponents of manual training to make a point. It is often said — in arguing that manual training is different from mere joiner- ing — that the thing made is of no consequence. It may be thrown into the waste basket : the important thing is the process. Yet in another connection it is argued that one of the main charms of this subject is that the pupil is called upon to make some definite thing : his work has an end and a meaning that is lacking in most of his school studies. The exhibitions of pupils' work tend to emphasise this apparent incon- sistency. " If the thing made is of no conse- quence why all this proud display of results, and why this stress laid on the fact that the things made are definite things ? Why this straining after specific names ? Why, for example, do manual trainers always prefer to call one of their models a ' square ruler ' rather than a square prism and another a ' round ruler ' rather than a cylinder?" The answer is that a definite end

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is necessary as a stimulus to the right kind of work. The thing produced is important inasmuch as it is the end to be striven after ; it is unim- portant in itself. The piece of wood fashioned into a paper-knife may be a very poor paper-knife, and yet may represent excellent work. As paper- knife it may go to the waste-basket : as repre- senting an ideal it is of the utmost consequence, As a material thing it is naught : as an idea it is everything.

The complaint is even yet not uncommon that in such a short school course as we can afford, it is a pity to spend time on what is not real edu- cation. It is peculiar to find this objection coming mainly from men of a pronouncedly practical turn of mind. They do not lay too much stress on book-learning, but they maintain that school is the place to get whatever book-learning is neces- sary, and if book-learning is not got at school it will never be got at all. Whereas, this manual work — why on a farm a lad with a hammer, a knife and a box of nails will learn more wood- work in a week than in a year of theoretical workshop work. Passing over, for the time, the false view of the nature of manual training, and taking only the fundamental complaint that this training interferes with the literary side of school work, what are the facts ? The evidence all goes to prove exactly the opposite. Experience in Britain had already convinced me that the other

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subjects benefited by the introduction of manual training, and all the teachers whom I interviewed in connection with this matter in Canada, without exception, maintained that so far from interfering with the other work, the introducing of the Macdonald Workshops had improved it. Be it noted that this is not the evidence of Manual Instructors, but of teachers of those subjects which are supposed to suffer from the competition of the workshops.

Manual work, however, should come early in the school course. The humanistic studies are usually begun too early for the pupil to benefit fully by them. If only the mechanical parts of these are taken at the early stages there is both time and need for the kind of training the work- shop supplies. On the other hand, at the Academy stages the humanistic studies are the most suit- able and ought to have more time than they at present get.

Quite a different line of opposition is followed by those who admit the popularity of manual training, and add that they have no doubt that a course of two hour lessons on leap frog or basket ball would be even more attractive. This argu- ment is based upon a fallacy that misleads an amazing number of earnest people — the fallacy that anything really good and useful must be a little disagreeable. The pleasure pupils experi- ence in the workshop is not the pleasure of

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recreation, but the pleasure of creation. Work that is within our power and is carried on under suitable conditions ought to be pleasant. If the ordinary work in school is unpleasant — note that I do not say it is — that may arise from its not being properly suited to the pupil, or to its being carried on under unfavourable conditions. The singular argument was used by some Quebec Commissioners against manual training that it did not provide a training that would fit the pupils for the drudgery of life. No one who has watched a boy patiently and persistently cutting and rubbing the angles of two queerly shaped pieces of wood that are to make a tight joint will for a moment desire for him a more severe test in keeping his temper and rising above petty annoyances. Let any critic who thinks manual work enervatingly pleasant set about making a " round ruler" with a knife and a piece of sand-paper, and he will find that for honest drudgery the process has few equals. If the whole process is pleasant, it is because the joy of creation, the charm of success, more than repays all the effort. In the workshop as in life we cheerfully face drudgery to attain what we think worth while. What could be a better preparation for life ?

In connection with this manual work I am a good deal surprised at the all but complete absence of needlework from the schools of the Province. This subject is treated as of the utmost importance

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in British schools. Needlework is a compulsory subject in British Training Colleges for Women , and is taught to girls in all the Elementary Schools. In a country like Canada, one would have thought that this subject would get special attention from the utilitarian side, if from no other. But the general impression seems to be that girls will pick up at home all the skill they require. It does not seem to occur to country people that schools have anything to do with needlework. There can be no doubt but that in Britain needlework has been carried to excess in schools and Training Colleges. The long fine white seams that are sometimes demanded should be left for the sewing machines, as is done in real life. But much useful work might be done in teaching the best methods of patching and darn- ing and doing many of those little repairs that the sewing machine cannot attend to. In particular "cutting out" should be taught in all girls' schools, and at this point the connection with manual training becomes clear. All the advan- tages of scientific training in woodwork can be had from a course of cutting out and making up. The pattern has to be made to scale, the material cut to most advantage, the joins must be made, the results may be tested entirely by the pupil herself, the result is an end in itself full of mean- ing and representing admirable training.

In several of the Manual Training Centres

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girls are anxious to share in the privileges pro- vided by Sir William C. Macdonald, and in some cases they are admitted to cardboard work, and in others they get exactly the same kind of work as the boys. The instructors report very favour- ably on their work, but it would be well to con- sider whether the girls' share of manual work should not be limited to needlework and cutting out. It in no way interferes with the educational value of a training in needlework that it leaves the pupil with the power of doing most useful work. The training is the main thing from the teacher's point of view : but the bye-product of practical skill as applied to daily life is certainly not to be despised.

It is worthy of note that the McGill Normal School is alive to the importance of needlework, and includes it as part of the work of longer- period students in training.

NATURE STUDY. — In none of the schools I visited is the new subject of nature study yet taken up in anything like a definite or systematic way. In the Kindergarten and Primary Depart- ments of many of the Country Schools a good deal of observation work is carried on. The collection of plants is encouraged in many of the schools, and in several instances improvised aquaria are found on the infant school table. Wherever drawing is well taught I find a natural tendency

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towards nature study. The habit of observation cultivated by drawing real things gets perhaps its best practice in observing plants and animals. The proposal to introduce school gardens to be treated as a kind of territorial blackboard, appears to be not only a very useful but a very practicable suggestion in the case at least of all schools outside the city. I talked over the pro- posed school gardens with very many of the parents and Commissioners. There is no strong feeling in favour of the innovation. The public are to be educated up to it, but there seems less prejudice against the school garden than existed against manual training before it was properly introduced. It is regarded with a certain amount of good-natured tolerance, as a fad that can at least do little harm. There will be the same difficulty in disassociating the school garden from the teaching of practical agriculture, as there was in clearing up the distinction between manual training and joinery. As in manual work so in nature study the purpose is not to attain material ends, but so to regulate processes that facts shall produce their proper effect on the mind. As Herbert Spencer would put it : The observer must turn the facts of nature into faculty.

The usual complaint about burdening an already over-loaded curriculum need have little weight in connection with nature study. Most of the

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proposed work may be carried on out of school hours, and the part that falls within school hours will justify its place there by the correlation established between nature study and the re- cognised subjects of the school curriculum. It must be recognised, however, that the place for this informal subject is in the Elementary School, and the early Model Grades.

This seems the best place to point out the general advantages of those newer subjects which depend less upon books.

The Kindergarten system has now established itself as a permanent institution. It is recognised as the best way of training very young children, and the only objection to its general adoption is the cost involved in providing teachers for such small classes as the system demands. One of the strongest objections to the introduction of the Kindergarten into our ordinary school system, is that it is only applicable to the earliest stages, and since most of the education in our public schools has hitherto been conducted on quite other than Kindergarten lines it has been felt that there is an unnatural break between the be- ginning and the end. The very name " Transition Class " is an acknowledgment of the difference in kind between education before and after that class. Philosophers are agreed that the process of edu- cation is one and indivisible. It is against all reason to suppose that one kind of education is

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suited to one time of life, and another totally different to another time of life. Since the child is an organism his life must be a development. There must be an organic relation among all its periods. It has frequently been said that the effect of the Kindergarten training has been lost so soon as the child comes into the ordinary stream of school education. Now, these newer subjects and some of the older subjects, treated as the newer subjects are treated, supply oppor- tunities for continuing all that is best in the Kindergarten method. The self-activity of the child is recognised as one of its fundamental qualities — a thing to be encouraged, not repressed. One of the fundamental principles of the Froe- belian method is to provide opportunities for the child expressing himself by impressing himself on his surroundings. "To make the outer inner" is the Froebelian phrase which covers the process of assimilation. The bookish work done in school is almost entirely of this kind. The child is brought into contact with external facts. He takes them in and works them up within his own mind into what we call knowledge. When edu- cation is entirely bookish the process stops with the acquiring of knowledge, but the other side of the child's nature comes out in the process called by Froebel " the making of the inner outer": that is, the child reacting upon the knowledge acquired builds up ideal combinations and then

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sets about turning these ideals into realities. Nowhere can this be better exemplified than in manual work. The child can express himself in many ways, but three of these are of paramount importance. The first is speech. The value of this mode of expression is so clearly recognised that the training in it has practically monopolised the attention of teachers. The expression by means of deeds has hitherto been largely left to the training of life out of school hours. The third mode of expression may in a certain sense be said to be a combination of the other two, and is what we call pictorial representation, or in plain English, drawing. Both manual work and nature study insist upon the child drawing. In manual work the object to be made has to be drawn from specifications, and the object when made must correspond in every detail with the original drawing. In this case the expression may be said to precede the thing. In nature study, on the other hand, the child is called upon to reproduce on paper what he has actually observed in nature. In both cases there is the attempt to reproduce exactly in a drawing what actually exists, or is about to exist in nature. Between these two aspects of drawing there is a third in which lines are made to represent ideas symbolically. In his nature study the child keeps a record of ordinary phenomena, such as the daily temperature in morning and afternoon,

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the rainfall, the barometric pressure. (Some- times the daily attendance is recorded in the same way, with the best results on the attend- ance.) These are carefully plotted on a specially ruled sheet ; the joining of the points forms a curve which acquires for the child a definite meaning. Lines in fact become means of expres- sion without forming any pictorial combination, and the pupil passes from the concrete to the abstract. So far from manual work and nature study limiting the child to things here and now, they make use of the child's actual environment to free him from it. What are in themselves the most concrete subjects in the curriculum become an excellent preparation for that abstraction which is necessary to ensure real thinking.

SUMMARY.

The following notes may be found convenient by way of summary :—

1. There is need for a more rational classi- fication of the schools of the Province.

2. More money is urgently needed to enable the Protestant Committee to give effect to its regulations. To a reasonable extent the more populous Protestant districts might aid the others, if all municipalities were made to pay a certain small part of their school tax into a common fund to be distributed by the Committee.

3. Education might now be made compulsory.

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Summary

There appears to be no valid objection to this reform : but if it is felt to be too great a step, there ought to be at least an examination in the three R's which must be passed in order to secure exemption from school attendance.

4. In the interests of the sparsely peopled dis- tricts some form of consolidation of small schools is urgently needed. This should, if possible, be combined with a system of small maintenance bursaries and free scholarships to enable pupils from remote districts to stay at an Academy centre and carry on their studies there. The principle of consolidation should not be confined^ to Elementary Schools. Wherever possible a weak Model School should be united with the nearest Academy.

5. The prevailing bookishness of school edu- cation is to be remedied not so much by a change of curriculum as by a change in the methods of treating the various subjects. Nature Study and Manual Work are valuable inasmuch as they show how knowledge may be applied. Many of the school subjects — such as Arithmetic, Geometry, Drawing — ought to be treated more as Applied Sciences than they are. But certain other subjects are essentially bookish and ought to be so. A useful reform must not blind us to the fact that the adjective " bookish " acquires its sinister meaning because it connotes an abuse of a good thing.

135

Protestant School System

6. It would be a great advantage if there were a Chief Inspector of Schools who had the power to introduce a greater measure of system than at present exists, particularly in the Higher Schools. The Inspectorial system for the Ele- mentary Schools is so satisfactory that it is a pity that the Secondary Schools should not share in its benefits. The Secretary of the Committee, Dr. G. W. Parmelee, an accomplished teacher as well as an exceptionally able administrator, has done admirable work throughout the Province in edu- cating public opinion and in guiding the teachers to good methods. For this Missionary work in Education he has now very little time, and it would be well if a Chief Inspector could be appointed to carry on that work and to do for Secondary Schools what the ordinary Inspectors do for the Elementary. The function of this officer would not be to reduce the curricula and methods of all the Secondary Schools to a dead level of uniformity, but rather to guide local effort into the channels most likely to produce the best results. How much should be uniform through- out the Province, and how much ought to be left to be modified by local needs and resources, is one of those problems the existence of which makes such an officer necessary.

7. But after all we must end where we began — with the teacher. In order that capable men and women may be kept in the profession, better

136

Summary

salaries must be paid than at present. In order that capable men and women may make the most of their capacity, they must be trained. Four months' training is better than none at all : but nothing short of a two years' course can be re- garded as satisfactory. If teachers were well paid they would go through a two years' course at their own expense just as other professional men and women do. But in view of the present rate of payment teachers must be subsidised.

8. We must look to the University to maintain the status of teachers in the Province. There is great need for a Chair of Education at McGill, in order that the standing of the subject may be acknowledged, and that the Professor — through his connection with the University on the one hand and the Normal School on the other — may establish that correlation between theory and practice that enables teachers to make the most of themselves and their pupils.

THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED 137

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