Report of the Superintendent of Education, for Lower Canada, for 1853 (Classic Reprint)

Bücher

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from Report of the Superintendent of Education: For Lower Canada, for 1853 Sir, - I have the honor to transmit to you, for the information of His Excellency the Governor-General and of the Legislature, my Report on Public Instruction for the year 1853, in conformity with the 85th Section of the Act 9. Vic., c. 27. This Report is accompanied by an abstract of the Statistical Returns made by the Inspectors, and it is based on the various Reports which they have themselves transmitted to this Office. The Tables, at full length, are so voluminous that I have considered it right only to make an abstract of the principal heads, which will be found at the end of this Report, being convinced that they will be held sufficient to convey all the information which the Government and the two Houses can desire. In the present Report I shall confine my remarks within very narrow limits, the Committee of the House on Education, having produced a Report which embodies nearly all that I had suggested in my Report of the 25th September, 1852, and in that of 20th April, 1858, as expedient to be done for the improvement of our laws on this head, and having recommended many other useful matters touching the manner of working the system and the nature and kind of instruction which should be imparted in our elementary Schools: questions to which I have given the most unremitting and assiduous attention, and which have made yearly progress to solution from the time when we first began to foster public education in this Country. I am foremost to acknowledge that we are as yet only at the entrance of the right path, and that much ground is still to be travelled over, before wc attain success. But on the other hand, I cannot refrain from expressing what is, in my mind, a deep rooted conviction arising from facts of which I am a daily witness, that is to say, that we are further advanced than is generally admitted. To maintain a contrary position, too great strew is laid on isolated facts applied to generalities, neglecting the consideration of the same isolated facts in the aggregate and the comparison of them with others more generally favorable. Ww should know how to make allowance for circumstances which vary in Upper and Lower Canada, in their relation to popular education, and are in every respect more heterogeneous in the latter than in the former section of the Province. Sufficient account is not made of the obstacles of all kinds which were to be overcome, especially at the outset, in order to the bringing the School Act into profitable working order. Every thing had then to be created, competent Teachers were generally wanting, the persons charged with the local working of the Law, were almost always destitute of education, and in many cases, inimical to the Law, and therefore, quite unfit to perform with advantage the duties entrusted to them. The people themselves were, in general, rather strongly prejudiced against the Law, the system of direct contribution which it imposes being previously unknown to them and everywhere odious. Again, unprincipled persons were not wanting, who availed themselves of the ignorance of the people to excite their prejudices, to arouse and nourish those which already existed, and to paralyse all the efforts of the true friends of the cause. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com