Eighty representatives of 31 countries attended a conference at Paris this summer to study means of education for international understanding; thirty-five students from 14 countries gathered at a Connecticut resort to promote better international relations; hundreds of teachers are exchanging classrooms between countries. Taken together, these meetings and exchanges should have a profound influence on the role that education is to play in the world.
But just what is being done about education in Canadian classrooms? Are young people coming forward to be trained to fill the teaching gaps? Are teachers being paid what their services are worth? Are they teaching the things Canadians want taught? Is the system for each province and the system within each classroom the best that can be devised?
The schools of this country, judging by reports, are in a serious plight, though it is not so bad as that in other countries. Many of them lack the number and quality of teachers they should have, others have been forced to increase class sizes beyond the limit of good teaching and beyond the bounds of healthful conditions.
If education problems have gotten out of hand, it is not due to any one cause, but to the piling up of many causes, and the beginning was not recently. Education is designed, in its best sense, to enable men to live as good members of their family, of their community, of their nation and of the whole human society. Education for all of these starts in the home, in the kindergarten and in the Sunday school. Not one source has been unaffected by the economic, cultural, sociological and political innovations and upheavals of the past forty years. Everyone who takes an impartial view will say that the teaching profession has measured up at least as well as others responsible for the training of youth.
Canada’s Education System
When Canada became a nation in 1867 a constitution was drawn up reserving control over education to the authority of the provinces. As a consequence, Canada has ten separate educational systems, (Quebec in effect has two systems) a situation which makes it difficult for provinces to act together in the building of educational ideals.
In spite of the generally-accepted idea that children in remote villages or on farms are entitled to the same educational opportunity as children in cities, and that the economic depression of a province should not deprive children of the educational advantages enjoyed by those in more prosperous provinces, the realities just don’t work out that way. Teachers are not attracted to country schools when they realize that a local crop failure may reduce their salary drastically. Provinces which pay the lowest rates are not getting the high quality teachers enjoyed by the provinces which pay two or three times as much.
Rural schools present a special problem. The children they serve are entitled to as mature, well trained and experienced teachers as city children. On the other hand, the teachers are entitled to good living conditions, decent salaries, and the proper working surroundings and equipment. Dr. S. R. Laycock, Dean of the School of Education at the University of Saskatchewan put the matter squarely up to the people when he said: “If the public wants able instead of mediocre or poor teachers it will have to provide better living conditions, especially in the rural areas where teachers often live in unheated bedrooms or lack privacy. There is no use saying: ‘The teacher has to put up with what we ourselves have to put up with.’ Quite frankly, many of our best young people don’t have to do so and don’t propose to do so.”
At the same time as new physical needs are becoming manifest, there are increasingly diverse demands being made for new forms and subjects of education. Industry is no longer satisfied with the simple hand training of youths through minor vocational exercises. The student of today has to be more thoroughly prepared for his work. He must have, too, a wider appreciation of what life is all about. There are industrial facts of life as well as physical and spiritual facts which must be taught if the student is to graduate as a well-rounded personality.
Evidence seems to show that education is an essential instrument in the expansion of commerce, industry and agriculture; that money spent for education is an investment that can be afforded in increasing measure when related to the improvement of local economic conditions, and that if the high standard of living provided under private initiative economy is to be maintained, then sound and immediate measures to improve schools are necessary. This is one more reason for the greater participation of industrialists, agriculturists, and financial men in education plans.
Canadian Education Association
There is one splendid co-ordinating organization in Canada, to which credit for much of the success of educational efforts must be given. It is the Canadian Education Association, called for some years the Canada-Newfoundland Education Association. This organization is maintained by the Departments of Education of the nine provinces of Canada and of Newfoundland, its budget being provided by annual contributions in proportion to population from each of the provincial governments. It represents the constitutional authorities over education and has unique advantages for conducting nation-wide educational research. Much of the factual and statistical information in this article was kindly supplied by the C.E.A.
Shortage of Teachers
Schools, plans and curricula are necessary parts of education, but behind all, making them effective, is the teaching profession.
Canada has large numbers of highly skilled and capable teachers, but there are not enough to fill all the needs. The 1941 census recorded 88,000 school teachers, two-thirds of them women.
An appraisal by the Canadian Education Association in January revealed the following facts about combined elementary and secondary teaching positions:
| Existing Shortage of Qualified Teachers | Enrolment in Teacher-Training Institutions | Enrolment Needed (See Note) | |
| Prince Edward Island | 108 | 51 | 120 |
| Nova Scotia | 1000 | 265 | 625 |
| New Brunswick | 600 | 150 | 370 |
| Quebec (Catholic) | 1300 | 2747 | 3150 |
| Quebec (Protestant) | 169 | 118 | 313 |
| Ontario | 890 | 1509 | 2060 |
| Manitoba | 800 | 419 | 620 |
| Saskatchewan | 700 | 880 | 1000 |
| Alberta | 720 | 367 | 750 |
| British Columbia | 160 | 360 | 500 |
| 6447 | 6866 | 9508 |
(Note: The third column represents the approximate enrolment necessary to make good existing shortages m three years while providing for ordinary replacements; the second column indicates that the actual enrolment at the beginning of the year was 2,600 short.)
It is evident, then, that primary and secondary schools have a rough road ahead of them, with conditions getting worse before they can be called good. The condition is not confined to Canada, if that is any consolation. One out of every seven teachers in the United States is serving on an emergency or substandard certificate and 70,000 teaching positions were unfilled this spring.
What’s Wrong With Teaching?
Why do these conditions exist in Canada and the United States? Why do students not consider the teaching profession a good risk? Basically, say those who have investigated most closely, young people turn away from teaching because of the poor salaries paid. The factory worker with little or no education making things for our current use receives greater compensation on the average than teachers who are training our children to be the citizens of the future.
Let us admit to begin with that it is impossible to make an accurate comparison of teachers’ salaries across Canada. There are too many variations in the type and cost of housing, board, and transportation, and one school demands more hours of work than another.
Probably the best way to get an idea of the range is to take the lowest and highest minimum and the lowest and highest maximum for three grades of teacher in Canadian cities. The following are compiled from a list supplied by the Canadian Education Association, made up of data secured in August 1946:
| MALE TEACHERS | ||||
| Lowest Minimum | Highest minimum | Lowest maximum | Highest maximum | |
| Elementary | $800 | $1600 | $1310 | $3600 |
| Intermediate | 1100 | 1600 | 1475 | 3600 |
| Secondary | 1100 | 2800 | 2025 | 4000 |
| WOMEN TEACHERS | ||||
| Elementary | $800 | $1400 | $1250 | $3600 |
| Intermediate | 1100 | 1500 | 1475 | 3600 |
| Secondary | 1100 | 2300 | 2000 | 4000 |
It should be noted that provincial minima do not prevent the individual municipalities from adopting their own salary schedules, provided, they exceed the minimum. This accounts for the fact that in the 50,000 to 100,000 population class, for instance, the minimum ranges from $800 in one city to $1,600 in another.
While average yearly earnings in manufacturing industries were going up from $975 in 1939 to $1,564 in 1944, an increase of 60.4 per cent, teachers’ salaries increased from $854 to $1,098, or 28.6 per cent. This parallels closely the situation in the United States during the same period, where employed persons outside the field of education received 79 per cent more on the average, while teachers received only 31 per cent more. The 1944 figures for Canada, issued by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, are the latest available to us, but we are informed that teachers’ salaries have increased in Canada much more since 1944 than in the preceding five years.
Community Recognition
Next to salary, probably the greatest need of the profession is for a sane and sensible community recognition of the teachers. The Earl of Birkenhead, writing learned essays on famous court cases, said disparagingly “an elderly unknown assistant-master would hardly be chosen as an equal companion.” It is sad to think that the late 19th-Century snobbishness is still reflected in the community’s regard for teachers. Young people are discouraged by the idea that teaching is thought of by the public as a routine task. Teachers themselves regard it as a first-class job of social engineering, building for the future and imparting influences that will continue generation after generation.
Lamentably enough, too many interpret their obligation to “take an interest in education” as an invitation to pry into and govern the teacher’s private life. Teachers are human beings, subject to the same impulses and entitled to the same personal freedom and respect as are other professional workers. “The private life of a teacher,” said Dr. Laycock in an address to the Alberta School Trustees’ Association two years ago, “should be subject to the same criticism as that of any other citizen – no more and no less. He should take his share in community leadership, as is expected of all other citizens – no more and no less. He is not the chore boy of the community. Nor should he be shut off from community activity any more than the business men or other professional men are cut off.”
Living Conditions
Unsatisfactory living conditions loom large in the minds of young people, especially women, who are considering entering the teaching profession.
Many teachers, attracted by the creative opportunities and personal satisfactions they believe exist in the profession, have become disenchanted when introduced to their living quarters in a crowded home. Others find teacherages which are poorly equipped, poorly furnished, and isolated.
A survey in one province in 1941-42 revealed that only one teacherage of 15 could be rated very good. Others had no cellar, no insulation, and only the bare essentials in furnishings. Most teachers (10 of the 15 were women) had to chop or split their firewood; one teacher used melted snow in winter and melted ice from an icehouse in summer to supply water, while three carried water half a mile. Supplies were hard to obtain. One teacher walked six miles to town every Saturday, taking a chance on catching a ride back with her week’s supplies.
There were 25 teachers who boarded at rates from $16 to $28 a month. Only five of the houses had furnaces, bedrooms were too cold and so they had to do their work and studying in the kitchens with the rest of the family, often to the accompaniment of radios or noisy children. Only three of the homes had running water, indoor toilets and electric light.
It cannot be said that such conditions attract young people into the profession. Superintendents find it extremely difficult to get good teachers for rural schools, and then to keep them. Teachers are much more readily convertible to other occupations than are other workers to teaching. After a period, sometimes only part of a year, in conditions which verge on the pioneering age, they move to new occupations or to urban schools. It will surprise many to learn that the average professional life of male teachers is only 7.5 years, and of female teachers 5.9 years, according to the findings of a subcommittee of the Alberta Post War Reconstruction Committee in 1945. Compared with any other profession, this reflects serious instability and unduly high replacement costs.
Material improvements in schools, living conditions and so on will contribute to the stability of the most important person in education, the teacher. A good teacher is the result not only of natural ability, study and sound training, but of contentment. The teacher must have health, vitality, and intelligence. The best teachers have good personalities, they are sincere, well-rounded individuals, vitally interested in their work and able to transmit their knowledge to students. As A. S. Mowat, Professor of Education at Dalhousie University remarked in Public Affairs: “You need not expect to get this paragon for two dollars a day. As in other walks of life to get quality you must pay for it.”
The Teaching Profession
The teaching profession is at once a great art and to a considerable extent a science. There are bookish blockheads in it as in every other profession, and you come upon teachers who are faded in a noticeable measure from the sharp and strong pattern so much desired; but these are not typical. Teachers on the whole radiate interest and enthusiasm to their students in a blend of personality and skill. They have a rare courage: the courage to repeat day after day the same lessons in a way to keep them always interesting and arresting. They have large stores of common sense. They are builders of character, the most important element in the progress of our children. Such a profession deserves respect; its practitioners are entitled to just and adequate material rewards and should be given a social standing in keeping with the work they do.
They should be allowed, too, to keep their ideals. Let no one try to take away the spiritual and philosophical values of the teaching profession. “Practical” people may scoff, but if it were not for values outside and beyond dollars and cents there would be few good people teaching.
The School Curriculum
It is a weakness of many schools today that teaching diffuses itself over a multiplicity of enormous problems, leaving only time and opportunity for a passing glance.
Utopian dreams interject themselves into these large views, and the fact is lost sight of that those who seek Utopian living should be capable, by knowledge and skill, of operating a Utopia.
Anyone who mentions “curriculum” is practically certain to start an argument. There are so many possibilities, so many temptations to try this and that, we are confused.
In these days, education must prosper by economy. This means that the teacher must pick a careful way through cartloads of rubbish to choose the vital factors in education; and then the teacher must make the selected subjects attractive, but not with the kind of attractiveness that consists only in easiness.
The acute reader will have noticed that this principle leads back to something of an old-fashioned sort from which the world has been rapidly fleeing. It is a return that is recommending itself to many societies and communities. For example, William H. Conant, New York businessman, said in May that a committee of which he was chairman had prepared a plea for the revival of traditional education in fundamental subjects. “We have had too much progressive education,” he declared. “We have found there is no easy short-cut to knowledge. Our pupils have been high in arithmetic only because progressive education could find no way to fiddle with the multiplication table.”
It is fashionable in some circles to look down upon the education of a generation ago. It had its defects, but it was based upon the solid notion that in order to learn to think one must first acquire the tools of thought. Teachers in those days believed that to get a mountain-top view you had to climb the mountain. Techniques of study change, quite properly, and new curricula must be prepared to accommodate the new things in the world, but the more important and deeper things do not alter and should not be brushed aside. In the sense of providing a solid base upon which to erect a life of satisfaction and usefulness, Shakespeare, Plato and Montaigne are modern, while many who masquerade under the banner of modernism are as ancient and as useless as the impressive creatures which dominated the landscape when mankind was a mere blob on a warm mudbank.
Not in School Alone
Much of our education takes place outside of school walls. Other agencies are the family, books, work, newspapers, movies, and daily contacts with people, the great mass of “public opinion.” Chief among the influences educating for living fully is religion. In pioneer days in Canada religion was as much a part of school life as it was of home life. The Bible was a textbook, and extracts from it were used in the school readers.
Today, religious instruction is making its way back into the school. It is realized that in a time when transient fears threaten the intellectual and moral standards of the world there is needed something to give life to the eternals in belief and conduct.
Academic Freedom
The rights of the student demand that instruction, whether in religion or economics or social studies, shall not be a reflection of a one-sided view by the teacher.
The teacher is not entitled to take advantage of his position to impose beliefs dogmatically upon students or to convert them to a doctrine. One of his great successes is when he trains his students effectively to reach their conclusions through critical reflection upon carefully ascertained facts.
Teachers generally are aware of their grave responsibility in discussing debatable political, social and religious ideas and movements. Their role is analysis, discussion and teaching. In some aspects their job is like that of a judge: they must have opinions that are competent and at the same time disinterested. The judge is not an advocate, and he must avoid the very appearance of pleading a special cause, of being under subjection to groups or cells, or of theorizing without sound factual knowledge.
The teacher, too, needs to beware of falling under the influence of “movements” whose slogans and catchwords are all too likely to be accepted by the unthinking as statements of profound truth. This warning is cogently expressed by the Harvard Committee of 1945 which remarked that a course dealing with social life which emphasizes classes and “scarcely mentions the humanitarian movements of the last hundred years, with the common premise of the dignity and worth of all human aspirations and their magnificent, if unfinished, list of achievements, is likely to foster either cynicism or romantic zeal for a quick remedy, which may turn into disillusion at the first contact with the difficulties and complexities inherent in the attainment of true reforms.”
Education Week Is a Chance for Review
Special meetings of Home and School Associations and other organizations interested in “education to be held throughout Canada during Education Week in November offer a splendid opportunity for discussion of teaching problems touched upon in this Monthly Letter. The purpose of the week, which has been an annual event since 1935, is to draw public attention to all phases of education and increase understanding of its problems. This Education Week should enable Canada to sweep up the bits and pieces and attain something more of an overall plan for Canadian education.
In doing so, let’s not forget the ideals. Teach the pupils all about the Vanity Fair in which they have to live and make their living, but, as Sir Richard Livingstone urged, don’t forget to show them the Delectable Mountains. The whole purpose of education cannot be to train men and women to make a lot of money quickly. This is an age when leisure is more plentiful for more people than ever in history, and yet some “practical” people seize upon this time to urge the turning of education into nothing but training for work!
The teaching profession of our ideal would be made up of men and women inspired by a warm, sensible and kindly humanism. They would be in favour of democracy, in favour of the future, and in favour of youth. They would convey knowledge, but they would also show their pupils the way to a flowering of the True, the Good and the Beautiful in their own lives and in Canada and in civilization.
Educationalist’s Comments
In an attempt to give readers a cross-Canada view of certain aspects of education, we invited all Provincial Departments of Education to provide information and we asked each to write a brief article dealing with some important provincial educational matter. They have been most helpful, as will be seen in these forward-looking contributions:
ALBERTA
What teaching has to offer young people.
Teaching is outstanding among the professions as one which provides numerous non-monetary rewards. For example, it provides almost unequalled opportunities for growth through service.
1. As a teacher you will have unexcelled opportunities to work with people as your stock in trade…The experience gained while helping to guide and stimulate the growing and maturing of others will not leave you unaffected. You, too, cannot help but grow.
2. As a teacher you will learn how to organize your thinking and working; from the great mass of knowledge you must learn to choose that which will be significant for each group of learners.
3. As a teacher you will never cease to be a student. You will never feel that you know enough to do your pupils justice. You will realize that if you do not keep up with the world, it will march away from you in seven-league boots.
4. From the outset of your career you will be your own boss in a very large measure. There will be problems of curriculum, guidance and administration the solution of which will set the tone of your school and determine your success or failure as a teacher. Furthermore such decisions may affect very literally the future of many of your pupils.
5. You will find that the human science of teaching offers intriguing possibilities for original research and investigation. The human race is beginning to realize that the sadly neglected field of the social sciences must be expanded rapidly if mankind is to develop the social conscience that will allow him to use aright the awe-inspiring power conferred upon him by the physical sciences.
6. Finally, as a teacher you will be one of a fraternity engaged in making an essential contribution to human living. It is not, perhaps, making too great a claim to assert that the pattern of the world for the next half-century is being decided in the classrooms of the world this very year.
Hon. R. E. Ansley,
Minister of Education, in his booklet: “Should I Teach?”
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Help each child to grow toward social harmony.
The Department of Education of British Columbia believes in constant improvement of the curriculum for the schools…
Of particular interest is the revision now under way in the field of the Social Studies. An experimental programme for Grades I to VI was issued last fall and is now being followed in the schools. Its general aim is to provide children with those rich experiences in group activities of a co-operative nature that will help each child to grow towards a self-realization in harmony with society. To put it in another way, British Columbia schools seek to help children to develop those understandings, attitudes, habits, and skills that will enable each one to become a well-integrated and socially responsible citizen.
A committee is now engaged in the revision of the Social Studies for the Secondary School grades. The basic concept underlying this revision is the training for Effective Canadian Citizenship. During the fall of 1946 the Honourable the Minister of Education called two public. conferences, in Vancouver and in victoria, for a discussion of the present courses of study in the Social Studies. To these conferences were invited not only leading provincial educators, but also citizens representing all groups in the community. The purposes of the Conferences were outlined as follows in the agenda sent to those participating:
“The decay of democracy abroad has led many thoughtful persons to conclude that, if democratic institutions are to be preserved, much more systematic understanding, training and experience in the duties and responsibilities of effective citizenship are necessary.
“The purpose of this Conference is to seek advice for the guidance of professional committees, who will be charged with the task of producing a curriculum which will train young people more adequately for effective citizenship in a democratic society…”
The revision committee which is now at work preparing a course in the Social Studies for the Junior and Senior High School grades expects to complete its work during the winter of 1947-48, and it is anticipated that the programme will be in effect in the schools of British Columbia in the fall of 1948.
From: “Education in British Columbia”,
A Report prepared by the Department of Education, June 1947.
MANITOBA
Spiritual farce finds expression through teacher.
(This is the concluding chapter of the Report of the Special Committee of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly on Education).
The Special Select Committee of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly has endeavoured to form and to present a realistic picture of the educational system of the province as it is today, and to formulate definite and specific proposals for such modification as it deems necessary to meet the challenge of tomorrow. It recognizes that these proposals cannot be implemented without the approval and sanction of the people, and recommends that every effort be made to secure such endorsation.
The Committee realizes that we are passing through one of the great transition periods of history. Once more, in the words of Jan Smuts, mankind has struck its tents and once more is on the march. Great sociological experiments have been made, still greater may be foreseen as the drama of that greatest adventure of the human mind that we call civilization steadily unfolds. It realizes, too, that one of the leading roles in that drama must be played, and will be played, by the teacher.
For in the last analysis, it is not so much the system of administration, or the careful adjustment of financial support, or even the scientific synthesis of curricula, that determines the quality of education – it is the seriousness of purpose with the power of inspiration of the teacher that infuses vigour, provokes activity, and evokes the stirrings of new life in the hearts of our young people. Material conditions may be improved-and it is the sincere desire of the Committee that this Report may accelerate that improvement – but in the end, it is the spiritual force behind our educational effort that will determine, not only the quality of our citizenship, but also the course of our civilization. And that spiritual force must find its outward expression through the teacher.
NEW BRUNSWICK
Future of teachers never so bright as at present.
Since the war, unfortunately, we have been compelled because of scarcity of teachers to employ a large number of High School graduates on temporary certificates. Every effort is being made to reduce the number, and we do not expect to issue temporary certificates after 1948 in any considerable numbers.
Our aim is to have two years of professional training for all High School graduates entering the teaching profession, which would result in all our teachers possessing first class or higher licenses. There is a good chance of attaining this objective within the next five years.
The introduction of the plan of financing rural schools as county units in 1943 has very greatly changed the prospects for rural teachers in New Brunswick. County Finance Boards now have schedules for teachers’ salaries comparable to the city boards, and the future of the teaching profession in this province never was so bright as at present.
Fletcher Peacock,
Director and Chief Superintendent
NOVA SCOTIA
Keep standards but widen scope of education.
During recent years several important changes have come about in Nova Scotia’s school system. Through the establishment of the municipal school unit a modern, practical financial system has been formed whereby the cost of education is being levelled out and borne equitably throughout all parts of the province; this system affords the guarantee of a minimum educational level in every school within the municipality, and the minimum generally is considerably higher than the average under the former system-of sectional control. A second improvement has been the setting up of a provincial minimum teachers’ salary scale and very considerable increases in the government’s grants towards teachers’ salaries. These have been necessary preliminaries to and important first steps towards further improvement. Plans have been made for the setting up over a period of years of a large number of rural high school areas, by consolidation in rural and urban centres. This consolidation has already begun. Work has commenced, too, on the establishment of strategically placed vocational high schools in a smaller number of centres. Substantial progress has been made in the newer media of education, radio education, visual education, educational and vocational guidance and in a broad programme of adult education.
Now that administrative reform has been effected, attention is being concentrated on improvement of the educative process itself. Kinds of schools, subjects of instruction, teacher training and the quality of the guidance and teaching of pupils are some of the problems for further development in the continuing reform in education.
The feeling of the people – educator and layman alike as to the primary needs of education in Nova Scotia has for some time been crystallized. Without detriment to academic standards or to academic education for those who will profit thereby, wider avenues of practical education of a useful, functional sort are needed; and the getting of the right kind of education needs to be made equally possible to all children – in city and rural school alike. Education appropriate to the individual and equality of opportunity to get it – these are the watchwords.
R. A. Simpson,
Secretary, Department of Education.
ONTARIO
Today’s education is civilization of tomorrow.
“Own your own business, run your own business, mind your own business.” The teaching profession defaults this maxim three ways: it does not own its own business – the municipalities and provinces own it; it does not run its own business – school boards and provincial departments of education run it; it does not mind its own business – it minds the growing-up business of other people’s children.
This may sound negative and satirical. But there is a positive and constructive side, immensely important though very simple. The teaching profession has a job to do and an aim in doing it, like anyone else whose living and thinking are worth while. Life is simple when faced frankly. Farmers produce from soil, clouds send rain, citizens vote and object to taxes, women bear children – and teachers educate them.
The teaching profession visualizes a generation in advance; for today’s education comes tomorrow’s civilization. Education and catastrophe are running a close race. To avert catastrophe, barbarism must be educated out of the world – and quickly. The cost of one merry little war – like this last one – would educate the world for centuries. Get good educators – it would be the best investment the world could make.
J. B. Wallace,
Editor
Ontario Educational Association Year Book
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
Composite High School, better-paid teachers to serve rural P.E.I.
Prince Edward Island being almost exclusively rural is served for the most part by schools of one and two rooms. These schools in addition to the work of the eight elementary grades attempt the work of Grades IX and X, as well. Obviously this is an impossible task in the light of educational requirements for present conditions. The High School work done in these one-roomed rural schools must, of necessity, be confined to a narrow course leading to Prince of Wales College, a Junior Institution, which completes the work of the High School grades, as well as doing the first two years of college work.
Having in mind the present situation, as indicated above, the Department’s plans for the future include a system of Regional Composite High Schools for the Province, sufficient in number to serve all the pupils of High School age, and sufficiently broad in their offerings to care for the varied needs, interests and aptitudes of these pupils. Legislation has already been passed giving the Minister of Education authority to establish such High School areas.
In preparation for this, the immediate task is the improvement of the present rural schools in the matter of school property, equipment and the teaching service. To this end, teachers’ salaries have been increased for the present school year by approximately thirty per cent, and grants have been made available to districts to encourage and assist them in improving present school property, and in the construction of new buildings.
L. W. Shaw,
Deputy Minister and Director of Education
QUEBEC
New Normal Schools: Increased salaries: Raised qualifications.
Saying modestly that the objective of Quebec is to raise the qualifications of teachers as circumstances permit, J. P. Labarre, superintendent, the Department of Education, goes on to tell of some ways in which this result is being sought.
More Normal Schools are being established and higher salaries are being paid, two important factors in increasing the number of teachers. The proportion of population of high school age actually attending high school has increased from 21 per cent in 1922 to over 37 per cent at the last census, and the demand for teachers has risen proportionately.
Mr. Labarre adds: “A new course of study more in line with modern educational theories has been adopted for Catholic schools.”
SASKATCHEWAN
Apprenticeship is basis of practite teaching.
The revised programme of teacher training for Saskatchewan makes provision for a four-year course leading to a Bachelor of Education degree and an Interim High School or Interim Elementary School specialist certificate, according to the option chosen. A limited amount of specialization is possible in several fields of subject matter. Students graduating from the one year Normal Schools receive Interim First Class certificates and credit for the work of the first year of the four-year programme. No certificate is issued on the conclusion of the work of the first year, if it is done in the College of Education. At the end of the second year an Interim Junior High School certificate is issued, which is valid for teaching grades above six.
Practice teaching is on an apprenticeship basis. Normal School students serve as assistant teachers for a period of six weeks in special schools under selected teachers, and the whole programme is closely supervised by Normal School instructors. A special feature of the practice teaching programme is the provision of multiple grade classrooms in the cities in which the Normal Schools are located.
In-service education has been organized on a province-wide basis and has been closely integrated with the supervisory programme. Also, a considerable amount of co-ordination has been effected between the pre-service training in the Normal Schools and the field services of the Superintendents.
A. B. Ross,
Deputy Minister, Department of Education