E.—ls.

30

AMERICA. The rapid progress of settlement in Canada, the movement of population westwards, and the great influx of immigrants, are elements sufficient to try severely and to disturb any education system. The various provinces of the Dominion are striving bravely to cope with the problems that crowd upon them, and will probably succeed in time ; but, meanwhile, with the exception of such institutions as the McGill University at Montreal, the Macdonald College at St. Anne's (near Montreal), and the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph, there are few points that call for mention in this report. These institutions will be dealt with in the Appendix. One note of warning is sounded in the report of the Minister of Education in the Province of Ontario.: he points out the serious facts that qualified teachers are becoming more and more scarce ; that the proportion of women teachers to men teachers —already more than three to one —is increasing ; that, out of 6,007 teachers in the rural schools, only 1,898, or a little over 30 per cent., are fully certificated, the rest holding only temporary licenses or a lower qualification still; that most of these uncertificated teachers are girls between eighteen and twenty-two years of age, with no intention of remaining longer than the three years for which their temporary certificates are valid. In Ontario the average experience of the male teachers in rural schools is only 6-9 years, of women 4-1 years, and even including the towns and cities the figures rise only to 9-3 and 6-4 respectively. The average experience of all the elementary-school teachers in the province is only 7 years ! Obviously, it was not too soon (last year, 1907) that the Macdonald College was opened, with facilities for training' four or five hundred rural teachers. The position is much the same for the majority of the small rural schools in the United States. The country school that manages to secure for its teacher a girl that has "graduated" after a four-year course in a high school is comparatively lucky : although she has had no professional training, she is at all events reasonably well educated. Until the salaries are increased above the miserable pittance that is usually paid (from £6 to £8 a month, paid for ten months only), the small rural schools in Canada and the United States are not likely to get, and perhaps do not deserve to get, better teachers. The following table may be useful for purposes of comparison : — Average Salaries of Primary-school Teachers in certain Places. Average Salary (adults) to the nearest Pound. £ Switzerland (1905).. .. 45 England and Wales (1905-6) 92 (men, £128 ; women, £78). Scotland (1906) .. .. 104 (men, £153; women, £79). Ontario, Canada (1906) .. 79 (men, £106 ; women, £72). United States (all) (1905) .. 126 Ditto, North Atlantic States 168 ~ South Atlantic States 80 „ Western States .. 176 ~ Chicago .. .. 181 New South Wales (1906) .. 145 *New Zealand .. .. 150 (men, £193 ; women, £133). There is much to be learnt from the education systems of the chief cities of the North Atlantic, North Central, and Pacific States ; although dealing with urban populations, they are much more elastic than the systems in vogue in the great centres of population in Europe. Accordingly, I have devoted a good deal of space to a description of the organization and methods of the schools of New York and Chicago. The great movement for agricultural education, seen to most advantage in the middle-west portion of the United States, is worthy of separate attention in the Appendix. Education in New York City. As is well known, public education in the United States is almost entirely the concern of the individual State, not of the Federal Government; it is regulated almost entirely by State laws. The various systems possess much in common, and.the similarity between them is very close in most respects in the North Altantic and North Central States. The unit of

* To give a fair basis of comparison I have excluded schools of grade o—that is, schools with an average attendance of less than 15, in which there is no fixed salary, but a capitation of £6 per pupil.