Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

‘Another difficulty about the system, besides its injustice, and its failure in its true object, is that it extinguishes private schools. When all the schools become of one kind, competition in excellence ceases, and everyone is content with a low standard of mediocrity. Every master knows that, so long as he is not more inefficient than his neighbours, his position is safe; and that his salary, which is all that he at last cares about, will be paid him.

‘The local superintendents, who are almost universally clergymen, have other things to attend to, and carry out their inspection in the most perfunctory manner.

‘A cause that is doing much harm to the schools is, that everything connected with them is rapidly falling into the hands of the politicians. No party can now afford to forego an opportunity for strengthening itself by electing, or procuring the election, of party men as managers; and these again, for the same reasons, are guided in the selection of teachers by party considerations. It is coming to this, that no one who has to do with the management, supervision, or teaching of schools, will be the fittest person for what he has to do, except by accident.’

This gentleman had studied the subject of education, as well in England as in his own country, and he gave me some of the opinions he had formed on the religious part of the question, or rather as to how he conceived the proposal for secular schools would affect the Established Church, in the following words. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘the Church will lose nothing by the absence of a Church character in the schools. I never met with a clergyman in the old country, whether it was an archbishop or the incumbent of a small rural parish, to whom I put the question, who felt sure that the Church gained by the schools being in the hands of the clergy. No one will say that this attaches the children, when they are grown up, to the Church. For my own part, I feel sure that a system which would rigidly exclude both all Church and all denominational teaching would be a gain to the Church. This is necessarily true, if under the present system Church schools do less to indoctrinate those brought up in them with Churchism, than the denominational schools do to indoctrinate those brought up in them with dissent. My conclusion is, that if I were an English Churchman, I should not vote against the plan which would supplement your existing system with secular schools. It would do you no harm, and would give you many intelligent members.’

Canadians not yet a People.

The way in which my Canadian friend’s opinions about common schools differed from those held everywhere in the United States, supplies a means for measuring the social and moral differences of the two peoples. Not one of the above objections, whatever weight it may have in Canada, has any weight at all in the United States. There the first thing thought about is making the schools as suitable as possible for all classes, and this object is very largely attained, so that the upper class need not, and do not, hold themselves aloof from them. There, too, instead of noting with feelings and expressions of discontent that a great number of the lower class in the towns do not resort to the schools, great efforts are made to bring them in, by varying, and adapting to their wants and habits, the character of the schools, as is done at Boston and New York, and by getting as many people as possible to become volunteer workers in the effort to persuade such parents to send their children. I was, while at Washington, very much struck and interested by the account Mr. Barnard, the Commissioner of Education, gave me of the way in which this had been effected. And then, as to the deadness and inefficiency which show themselves in the public schools in Canada, as soon as competition with private schools ceases, an American public and American parents would not tolerate anything of the kind. And the American teachers themselves are so energetic and ambitious, that they would be the last in the community to succumb to such influences. The inefficient inspection the Canadian objectors complain of is a great evil, but is very far from being an irremediable one.

The fact is, that the inhabitants of Upper Canada are not yet a people. They are Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Irishmen, just as if they were still in the old country; and what would not have suited them there, they think will not suit them where they are. Unlike their neighbours, they are not possessed with the idea, that if they will only give themselves the trouble to attempt it, they can make anything bear its proper fruit. The American is the hardest worker in the world, never sparing himself, but always toiling on, in the faith that he will soon be able to bring all things right; and he generally succeeds in doing so. These are not yet the characteristics of the inhabitants of Upper Canada.

In Canada there is the stage, and there are the materials for a great nation. Its towns are more solidly built than those of the same size in the States, possibly on account of the greater severity of the climate. The country is generally fertile. It is also very varied, full of lakes, and streams, and forests. It abounds in mineral wealth and in agricultural produce. Notwithstanding its seven months’ winter, it is capable of ripening maize and maturing tobacco; and even, to speak of small things, through the medium of its peas, a crop which can rarely be grown profitably to the south of the lakes, it supplies no inconsiderable part of what is used for coffee among its neighbours. That product, however, of Canada, which most attracts the attention of the traveller, and is likely to make the strongest impression upon him, is the complexion of the Canadian ladies. It gives you more of the idea of transparency, otherwise you might have thought that it was of pearl.

On a Sunday, while at Montreal, in my way to the Episcopal cathedral of Christ’s Church, I allowed time for witnessing the celebration of High Mass at the church or cathedral annexed to the Jesuits’ College. As I left the building the thought in my mind was, ‘I should like to ask the priests who have just been officiating, if they have, or can imagine, any reasons for believing that this service is either acceptable to God or edifying to man?’ In the English cathedral the service was very well and impressively read by an elderly clergyman; but the young clergyman who afterwards occupied the pulpit was far too minutely acquainted with all that passes in the mind of the Almighty. No man could be so fully acquainted with what passes in the mind of his most familiar friend—hardly with what passes in his own mind.

Canadian Railways.