CHAPTER 6.
EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS 1833-1847
We saw that in 1833 machinery in New Brunswick for the administration of education was of the simplest kind. There was no central educational authority, nothing corresponding to a board of education or a superintendent of education. There were no qualified inspectors; in fact there was scarcely any effective inspection at all, since the parish trustees, on whom the responsibility rested, either neglected their duty or performed it in a perfunctory manner. Licenses to teach were issued by the Lieutenant-Governor on simple conditions, without examination, to untrained applicants, who all too often were individuals who had failed at other occupations because of certain habits or limitations.
In 1854 this picture of negations was no longer true. A Board of Education, a Normal School, a Superintendent of Education, and a system of inspection had all been established by legal enactments and were functioning, after a fashion at least. Even assessment as a means of supporting schools had regained on the statute books that place as a permissive measure prematurely won in 1816, and lost in 1818. These achievements were crowded into the last seven years of the period, but one cannot call the interval from 1833 to 1847 completely barren, for the School Act of 1837 paved the way for the establishment ten years later of a central authority, and the special inspection of 1844 of all schools in the province, by exposing the truth about school buildings, teachers, texts, and school attendance, emphasized the urgent need of improvement, and may be regarded as a preliminary to the reform measures which followed.
The Act of 1837 differed from the Act of 1833 in only a few of its provisions. One pertained to female teachers. There was now to be no distinction between a grant issued to a female teacher and one issued to a male, but not more than three schools in a parish, if taught by females, could be included in the schedule of trustees' certificates submitted semi-annually to the Lieutenant-Governor by the Justices of the County.
1 This meant that female teachers in excess of three to a parish were deprived of their government grant, unless they petitioned the legislature for a special dispensation in their favor. A perusal of the Journals of the Assembly for the next ten years informs us that many teachers petitioned the House for these reasons, or because the Trustees had been careless and failed to certify the school, or because the school happened to be in excess of the total number which in any given parish or county could legally receive the provincial allowance. To reduce the number of petitions arising from the reason last mentioned, an amendment in 1840 increased the maximum allowance to each parish and county, therefore increasing the number
of provincially supported schools.
2
The most important change provided for by the Act of 1837 was the appointment of County Boards of Education. These boards, unlike the County Boards recently inaugurated in New Brunswick, which are for financial purposes only, were not finance boards but examining boards. Each board was to consist of three or more persons appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council for the purpose of receiving applications from persons desiring to obtain parish school licenses, and for the examination at an early and convenient time of the moral character, literary attainments, and loyal principles of such applicants. Those candidates who were reported to the Lieutenant-Governor by the County Boards as being suitable persons to enter upon the important and responsible duty of teaching would then receive licenses valid for the County for which they were issued.
3
This step towards centralization was designed to prevent undesirables from entering the teaching profession and to introduce a degree of uniformity into the licensing of teachers. The difficulty, however, of finding qualified men willing to act as unpaid members of such examining bodies operated against the continuance of County Boards, especially when in 1847 a Normal School was established and the examination of teachers for license could then be carried through on a provincial basis.
According to the Act of 1837 County Boards were to investigate not only the character and learning of prospective teachers but their loyalty as well. In 1837, when rebellion was seething in the Canadas, New Brunswick was especially conscious of that loyalty, which, according to a correspondent of Sir John Harvey's, prevented any disloyal subject from daring to raise his voice.
4 There seems, however, to have been difficulty in procuring for this loyal people school texts imbued with the proper sentiment. In a letter to Sir John Harvey reporting on some elementary school books, Edwin Jacob, vice-principal of King's, observed that there was little, if anything, in any of the publications calculated to answer His Excellency's avowed purpose of conveying to the youthful mind English impressions of men and things, and went on to say that he thought that even the British and Foreign School Society, could its agency be employed, would be found “very much in the hands of those who look with no particular reverence on the institutions of the Church and State of England” .
5It is not clear whether this collection of books was the same as that commissioned by Sir John Harvey from England, and reported on to the Assembly in 1839 by Jacob and George Roberts, Headmaster of the Collegiate School, but at any rate the same fault was found on this occasion. Commenting on the History of England contained in
Fenning's Spelling Book the critics stated that it could be pronounced “a bold and well-written epitome, indulging however too freely in observations which we consider ill calculated
to cherish a due respect for the Throne.” Of a book entitled
Pictures and Descriptions of Remarkable Events in the History of England, published under the superintendence of the “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge” , Jacob and Roberts declared that in their judgment it contained portions “calculated to cherish a democratic and disaffected spirit” . Jacob added his regret that in the whole collection he saw no work calculated to instruct the rising generation in the true principles of the British Constitution.
6 A little later in the year approved books were sent to the several County Boards of Education for distribution, under the direction of the members for the respective counties, but there is nothing in the Journal to indicate whether the books censured by Jacob and Roberts were included or not. At this same session the Lt.-Governor, Sir John Harvey, suggested that besides the books sent gratuitously to the Boards of Education a number should be imported at the public expense, placed in the charge of individuals in the principal towns and ports, and retailed by them at their wholesale prime cost, that thus parents might obtain books upon terms far more reasonable than could be procured anywhere out of England.
7 There is no evidence that this suggestion was carried out at the time, and the text book situation in the province continued shocking. In 1841 Lt.-Governor Colebrooke wrote; “In many schools there are no books and in some the selection of books is objectionable; the American school books which are used containing matter calculated to prejudice the children against the institutions of their country” .
8 A year later, Colebrooke's son-in-law and secretary, Alfred Reade, in submitting observations to the Assembly on the reports of trustees of parish schools, referred to the great variety and inferior character of the books used in the parish schools.
9 In the Trustees' Reports on which Reade was commenting there is an admission by the Trustees of Charlotte County that most of the books used there were American, these being procured so much more easily than others.
10 Finally, when all the schools of the province were inspected in 1844 by a committee especially appointed for the purpose, that section of the Inspectors' report dealing with books declared that a list of texts in use in the province would present a catalogue of nearly every elementary work, of more than local celebrity, published within the previous seventy years. The Inspectors found that in some schools the Spelling Book and the New Testament were the only reading books. There was great need, they said, of a text on which the intellect of the children could be exercised, as explanations were not usually attempted on the Bible.
11 Steps to remedy all these deficiencies had to wait, however, for the establishment of a Board of Education in 1847, a development which was part of an impulse that energized education generally at that time.
Considerable credit for initiating this impulse must be given His
Majesty's representatives in the province. Sir John Harvey, shortly before he left New Brunswick, declared that the establishment of a training institution for teachers was the great desideratum and that he had omitted no occasion of bringing this question under the consideration of the legislature.
12 His successor, Sir William Colebrooke, seems to have seen, from the very beginning of his governorship, what the chief problem was. In one of his early dispatches he observed: “Under the law which provides for the payment of an inadequate stipend to a teacher and a local contribution of board and lodging and washing, respectable persons have not been found to take the appointments . . . . I apprehend that the system of instruction pursued in the parochial schools is very inefficient” .
13 We find that a few months later he wrote to Lord Stanley that he was proposing the formation of a model school at Fredericton, and he inquired if competent persons might not be secured in England to come out in the ensuing spring. He pointed out that the system of instruction must be adapted to a country where the schools included children of all Christian denominations, and he expressed the opinion that if a man and his wife could be found who would be willing to accept £ 200 a year, they would be able to establish a good model school, and with the aid of a local assistant could train ten or twelve females as teachers at a time, to supply the country schools.
14 Evidently Colebrooke was shrewd enough to realize that the needs of this small and educationally backward colony could not be adequately met by a sectarian training school, for in this same dispatch he said competent instructors for a model school could be readily obtained through the assistance of the religious societies in England, but he feared that this method might tend to excite jealousy in persons of other denominations. He believed that if the Committee of the Privy Council should procure fit persons for the training school, such teachers would meet with general support. Half a year later Colebrooke, although bitterly disappointed that the Assembly had not provided funds to carry out his plans for training teachers, reiterated his belief in a non-sectarian institution, saying: “A liberal offer was made by the Colonial Church Society to establish a training school here at their own expense but the offer I declined, being of the opinion that such a school if expressly established by a religious society would fail in acquiring that general support from all denominations which would render it extensively useful” . To this he added: “The Madras Schools have on this account been less successful than they might otherwise have been” .
15 This determination of Sir William Colebrooke's that New Brunswick's first normal school should be free of denominational control forms an interesting contrast to the Anglican spirit of monopoly which presided as a matter of course at the founding of the College of New Brunswick, and is significant of the changes which time had brought.
The failure of the Assembly to vote money for teacher training caused Sir William not only disappointment but also some embarrassment. The Home
Authorities, in response to his request, had engaged a Mr. and Mrs. Dixon to come out for the purpose of taking charge of the proposed model school, and the couple had waited in London for several months for exact instructions from New Brunswick. When the Assembly disappointed Colebrooke by failing to vote the sums necessary to the carrying out of his scheme, the province had to reimburse Mr. and Mrs. Dixon for the loss of their time and expectations.
16
In noting the Assembly's hesitation to launch in 1842 a scheme in the interests of educational improvement, involving an annual expenditure of £ 200, we remember that at this time the province was in debt, but we also remember, that five years before, it had had a large credit which the Assembly had frittered away in the meantime. We note, too, that in this colony unable to find funds for a training school the chief official positions were monopolized by a few families, and carried with them salaries disproportionately high. Colebrooke was quite aware of the popular resentment against the Family Compact, and of the reasons for it. In one dispatch he spoke of the “tendency of the prevailing system to render the public service of the province the patrimony of a few colonial families” and went on to say that “when this influence is known to have been so effectually exerted not only in securing the succession of the principal offices in the same families but in preventing a reduction of the undue emoluments attaching to them, it is not surprising that in a season of distress the jealousy of the public should have been more than ordinarily awakened” .
17 But Colebrooke also saw that the Assembly was not blameless either. He expressed himself so often and so clearly on the necessity of having executive responsibility for the initiation of money grants that in this connection his successor, Sir Edmund Head, could say in the year 1848: “I believe that the soundness of Sir William Colebrooke's views is beginning to be felt” .
18 Colebrooke was Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick at a time when the political and financial problems of the province were extremely troublesome. Whatever his administrative errors, credit is due him for his keen interest in the social welfare of a “rugged” people whom he wished to see subdued “to the useful and the good” . One feels that, like Ulysses, he was impatient of “soft degrees” , and one can imagine that he often experienced a sense of frustration. Possibly that was so in 1842. But, although disappointed, he continued to revolve plans aiming at improved educational conditions. We find that in one of the dispatches in which he expressed regret at having had to relinquish the prospect of a model school he suggested that perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Dixon could come out under the auspices of the British Board of Education, with a guarantee for their stipend until funds could be provided in New Brunswick. He pointed out that large funds were raised in England, and parliamentary grants obtained, for the education of the negro population in the West Indies. Considering, said he, the wealth of those colonies “in contrast with the limited resources of these provinces, where so many of the most ignorant and indigent
classes of British Emigrants are annually settled” , it was not unreasonable “to hope some assistance may be given in the present depressed state of the local finances in the province for the proper training of a multitude of children on whose character may hereafter depend the preservation of the relations of this Province as a dependency of the Crown” .
19 Colebrooke may have seriously thought that this suggestion would be acted on, for a month later he wrote to George Dibblee, Clerk of the Peace for York County, asking him to bring under the consideration of the magistrates the importance of preserving the buildings and grounds of the old jail, at that time vacant, for the establishment of a Central Training School.
20 However, a dispatch to Stanley written in August, a few weeks after the letter to Dibblee, indicated that he had given up hope of establishing such an institution in the near future, and explained that the disappointment of the expectations he had formed previous to the last session had arisen from the unlooked for reception by the Assembly of the financial changes which he had proposed.
21 It was at this session that Colebrooke, at the request of the Colonial Secretary, had brought before the House the question of the disordered provincial finances,
22 and that the absurd amendment, referred to earlier, had been passed by the opponents of reform in support of the old method of making appropriations. It would appear, from Colebrooke's reference, that those who objected to political and financial reforms hindered the establishment of a Normal School because it was proposed by the same man who had suggested the unpopular financial reforms. This means, if Colebrooke diagnosed correctly the reasons for the failure of his Normal School project, that we have found evidence indeed to support our earlier statement that in New Brunswick a question was often judged not by its relation to the public interest but by its connection with individuals.
Continuing with Colebrooke's dispatch of August 12, 1842, we find that to his regrets at the loss of the services of Mr. and Mrs. Dixon he added another regret, namely, that the condition of the common schools should not have been investigated, for “to the enquiries which were prosecuted in Canada may be attributed the facilities with which a reform in the system has been there effected” . He then made the following interesting observation: “As the inhabitants” (of New Brunswick) “possess but limited means of judging by comparison, they are little conscious of the great defects in the schools and of the serious consequences of these on the prospect of the rising generation, which I consider to be a question of national interest” . The example of an efficient model school would, he thought, enable the members of the Legislature and other influential persons to estimate the defects of the present system, and would induce them to apply an early and effectual remedy.
23 A letter written a little later reflected Colebrooke's disappointment that such had not yet been done and hinted at some of the difficulties in the way of progress. “So many individual
and local influences,” wrote Colebrooke, “impede the adoption of any comprehensive plan that we must, I grieve to think, be satisfied to use our best efforts merely to improve our old paths instead of striking out new ones.”
24
Although the session of 1842 was unproductive of legislation relating to schools, the Assembly did appoint a committee on education, of which Wilmot was chairman. His report to the House declared that the extension of education among all classes was a subject of national and provincial importance; expressed fear that in many rural districts there was an extraordinary degree of apathy among parents and guardians; referred to the necessity of a normal school; and hoped that the subject of assessment would be seriously considered during the recess.
25 In addition to this report, the members of the Assembly also had before them, for the first time, reports of the trustees of parish schools. In one report from Charlotte County there occurred this statement: “The poorer classes frequently, from a feeling of false pride, and the notion that they become in a manner Parish paupers by sending their children on the Provincial allowance, leave them to grow up in ignorance; the few of such class who attend have been sought out by the Trustees” .
26 Is this not of some significance in relation to our earlier designation of parish schools as institutions for the poor? If the people felt that attendance at the parish schools stigmatized them as paupers, may not that have been because the well-to-do had long considered parish schools as synonymous with pauper schools?
27
Another interesting point to be noted in the Trustees' Reports of 1842 occurs in connection with reports from the parishes of Northumberland County. Blissfield Parish reported using “some of the latest improvements which have been made in the method of teaching in the Scottish Juvenile Schools” . Newcastle reported that the system taught was that of the common school system in Scotland, and that the books used chiefly were those published by the Society of Schoolmasters or Murray.
28 Evidently teachers from among the Scottish folk of the Miramichi relied on whatever training, experience, and tests they had brought with them from Scotland, but the Trustees' reports do not indicate what particular methods peculiar to Scottish schools were in use on the Miramichi.
29
In general, the trustees who reported in 1842 complained of poorly qualified teachers, expressed the opinion that the schools of the country could not be advantageously conducted until a more respectable class of teachers should be procured, and declared that this could not be done without some Central Training School.
30
Besides these reports, there was available to the Assembly of 1842 a series of letters to the County Boards of Education, written in 1841 by the Provincial Secretary, W. F. Odell, but inspired by the Lt.-Governor's enthusiasm and desire for information. One of these letters asked the Boards to recommend a better mode of local remuneration to teachers than the existing one of board and washing, and sought the reactions of the county bodies to the possibility of having a house and plot of land attached to each school to assist in the maintenance of the master, and to furnish an opportunity for the instruction of the boys in improved methods of husbandry.
31 It is interesting to discover that nearly a hundred years before the school curriculum of New Brunswick was modified to meet the needs of children in rural areas there was talk of teaching agriculture in the schools. The emphasis then, however, seems to have been on the benefits to agriculture, whereas the modern emphasis is social and civic as well as economic. In another letter, Odell said that he had been directed by the Lieutenant-Governor to intimate that the practice of employing females in charge of schools where the children of both sexes were instructed was extending rapidly in England, and that His Excellency wished to be informed if respectable women between the ages of twenty-five and forty could be found to undertake the charge of the parish schools, and would come to Fredericton for the necessary training when the Normal School should be established. A third letter referred to the success of a Normal Training system in England and the West Indies.
32
The Journal of 1842 informs us that in addition to these reports and letters another document dealing with education was available for the information of such legislators as had ears to hear. This was a commentary by Alfred Reade, Colebrooke's Secretary, on the Reports of the Trustees. Again the necessity of an institution for training teachers was stressed, and the obstacles in the province, in the way of any plan having in view competency and respectability on the part of teachers, were discussed. The first of these obstacles was the insufficiency and uncertainty in the mode of remuneration. The surest way, said Reade, to lower the value of education in the eyes of the people was to pay teachers a sum inadequate to the wants and necessities of any respectable person. To do this gave the masses the idea that education was of secondary importance since its professors were worse paid than people in any other trade or occupation, and produced a feeling that no one would occupy himself in teaching if he could make his living in any other way. Thus the teacher was regarded as a needy adventurer and his character lowered in the eyes of scholars and parents. Other obstacles were the mode of payment, the variety of text books, the irregular operation of schools, and the ugliness and discomfort of the school buildings. Reade also sympathized with the trustees for the expense, inconvenience, and loss of time which school visitation entailed, and said that the trustees should be allowed travelling expenses. He also expressed uneasiness over the fact that the trustees' reports revealed an absence of all religious in-
struction in many schools. Finally, the question raised in the previous autumn in one of Odell's letters, namely, the formation of agricultural schools, received some comment. The Trustees and County Boards of Education generally, Reade thought, did not favor the idea, being under the impression that parents would consider that their children were much better employed on their own farms. In a new country, observed Reade, the value of instruction in improved methods of husbandry was not appreciated.
33
Thus we see that although the bulk of the population may have been, as Colebrooke thought, in no position to understand the gravity of the educational situation, the Legislature of 1842 did have before it considerable information which might have prompted immediate action. How thoughtfully all these reports and letters dealing with various aspects of education were read, or listened to, by members of the Assembly we do not know. At any rate, no action was taken during the sessions of 1842 and 1843, which were both agitated by constitutional and financial disputes. But in 1844 the House voted £ 500 to the Lieutenant-Governor, to institute an efficient inspection of the parish schools and all other schools receiving pecuniary aid from the public treasury.
34 His Excellency and other advocates of reform were hopeful that the facts such an enquiry might reveal would lead to constructive measures of reform. Colebrooke wrote to Stanley that the inspection was being made with a view to amending the school law which expired in 1845, adding: “At which time I hope that the defects of the schools will be so generally ascertained and acknowledged that local interests will not prevail against the adoption of an improved system, and the establishment of a model and training school which would be an essential preliminary.”
35 Possibly, however, there were individuals who yielded to the Governor's wishes for an enquiry merely because such an investigation would require time, and would, therefore, push further off into the future the necessity of decision on the larger question of a normal school.
The report of the Inspectors, James Brown, S. Z. Earle, and John Gregory, was presented to the Assembly during the session of 1845, and is of considerable length. Later it was published in pamphlet form.
First, the Inspectors noted that the Parish Schools received £ 12,000 annually in the form of Treasury grants. This sum, in comparison with the amount granted for the encouragement of the common schools in the United States and in the Sister Colonies of New Brunswick, was exceedingly generous, but if reports and official documents might be believed, the youth of New Brunswick were far behind theirs in the elementary and useful knowledge upon which the well-being of a free people materially depended.
36
Regarding the state of school buildings, the report described some appalling conditions. In one school, in operation for six months, there were no pens, ink, paper, slates, pencils, or desks, Benches were the only furniture, and they were four to six inches too high. In another school, inspected on the
eighteenth of November, there were fifteen broken panes of glass, and the children were shivering. Another was apparently the kitchen of a private dwelling. Not more than eight schools, including the Grammar Schools, were provided with even a good-sized map of the world.
37
That part of the Inspectors' report dealing with teachers and quality of teaching furnished evidence convincing enough, surely, to impress the most doubting of Thomases with the need of a normal school. A number of the teachers, according to the report, could not dictate words for spelling without hesitation. Many knew neither the names nor the uses of punctuation marks. Some did not profess to teach any Arithmetic, and many who did were very deficient. For instance, several were unable to make up the average attendance of their scholars. The number of those who claimed to give instruction in English Grammar, Geography, Bookkeeping, and Mathematics was great in proportion to the number actually capable of teaching these subjects. Many teachers were reported as not being in the custom of attending to the meaning of what they read, and a number read imperfectly. Of one teacher, who had been seventeen years in a district, the report said: “The teacher's education is defective and his teaching without method” . One teacher did not know the difference between a vowel and a consonant. A number of teachers, (females presumably), were reported as better qualified to teach needlework than any literary branch of school education, being incompetent to teach Spelling, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. It was observed in a number of schools that the teachers engaged personally in sewing and knitting. In many schools the pupils read words only, having no idea of the sense or of the punctuation. In many schools Reading and Spelling were the main subjects taught. One teacher claimed that he had lost pupils by insisting on their learning Arithmetic and Writing. In Writing, the disposition was to have the pupils follow set lines. As a consequence they failed to learn punctuation, the commencement of paragraphs, and the use of capital letters.
38
While one may doubt the suitability of the Book of Revelations as a reading lesson, nevertheless, the way in which the lesson was handled by one teacher is astonishing indeed. This teacher had selected as a reading lesson the seventh chapter of Revelations, beginning: “And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth” . When prompted by the Inspectors, the teacher was unable to tell the children to whom the “I” referred, what it was John saw, and what the angels were said to be doing. The Inspectors were told by a trustee of a school where the teacher had taught before that the pupils there were more deficient after eighteen months than before they entered the school.
39 From all these circumstances the Inspectors were forced to conclude that many teachers were incompetent because of lack of scholarship; others had little or no knowledge of human character, and were destitute of the faculty or energy to enable them to enforce
obedience, and at the same time retain the goodwill of their pupils; still worse, many lacked the faculty, zeal, or will to communicate instruction in a manner suited to the capacities and conditions of their pupils.
40
When discussing the schoolbook question on an earlier page we noted that this board of inspection found a variety of books, but of inadequate number and quality. Frequently the New Testament was used for reading lessons, but mechanically, as in the illustration just given. However, in some cases, where expounding was attempted, the Inspector who commented on the circumstance thought it were better to have none. It was speaking at random, and was no doctrine of which he had ever heard. Religious instruction, he thought, was therefore better left to Sunday Schools and ministers. In many schools the Catechism was recited. Not infrequently the Catechisms of two or three opposing sects were taught in the same school—a source of annoyance to intelligent teachers.
41
The reasons listed by the Inspectors for the poor general state of the parish schools were those which the details of their report had revealed, viz., apathy of the people, incompetence of the teachers, the limited amount of that part of the teachers' income derived directly from the people and the unsatisfactory mode of payment, defective apparatus and books, inadequate buildings, and imperfect supervision and control. Among the remedies which the Inspectors suggested was the diffusion of information on the object and power of education, through the increase of professional intelligence of teachers, and the benevolent co-operation of the clergy and the press. They also advocated a training-school in Fredericton that teachers might be instructed in the conduct and management of schools; and a model school, where they might obtain practical experience. If intelligence were to be introduced and maintained in the profession, there must be increased emoluments. The Inspectors hoped that the principle of assessment would soon be adopted, and they recommended the introduction of suitable uniform books. They thought that the powers of the trustees should be expanded, and that provision should be made for an inspection to aid them in their duties. Finally, they suggested that a provincial Board of Education should be constituted of the Governor in Council, with powers to establish a Training School, to recommend books, appoint Inspectors, and prescribe forms of school registers and returns.
42
Turning from the Parish Schools to the special schools of the province which were investigated by the Inspectors, we find that these schools received good reports. The Fredericton Infant School, in its third year of operation at the time of the report, was described as experimental so far as the province was concerned, and tribute was paid to Lady Colebrooke and other ladies, whose benevolent exertions were responsible for the origin and principal support of the school. The Inspectors thought that in an educational scheme such a school might be regarded as preparatory, only, to the reception of knowledge, by regu-
lating the habits and dispositions of young children.
43 We may presume that Lady Colebrooke knew something of the Infant Schools in England, but whether or not she and the ladies who assisted her were acquainted with Pestalozzian ideas, as was Robert Owen, the founder of this type of school,
44 we have no way of knowing.
The Inspectors were able to commend the discipline and general efficiency of the Madras Schools, but one of the Inspectors doubted if the pupils derived all the benefits which the system was intended to confer, owing to the practice of the monitors of propounding the appointed questions, reading the answers from the formulae, and afterwards calling on their classes to recite from memory the answers as read.
45 Here was one man who realized the mechanical nature of the instruction given in the Madras Schools.
Sackville Academy, which owed its foundation in 1842 to the philanthropy and Methodist zeal of Charles F. Allison, was given a good report by James Brown, the Inspector who visited that young institution. He mentioned particularly the oral instruction and use of maps which he found in practice, and also the fact that the pupils were accustomed to putting their own geometry figures and arithmetic exercises on the board, and demonstrating them. He concluded that the Wesleyan Academy was, perhaps, the very best educational institution in the province.
46
For some reason the Baptist Seminary at Fredericton was overlooked by the examiners, although, like the Wesleyan Academy and the Church of England Madras Schools, it received a provincial grant. However, the compiler of the Abstract stated that it was examined in the course of the year by Messrs. the Honorable Saunders and Wilmot and the Reverend Mr. Brooke, and had received a favorable report. The granting of provincial aid to this school seems to have set a kind of precedent for legislative aid to denominational schools other than Anglican. Evidently the Baptists had had to fight custom and Church of England monopoly in order to get the financial support they finally did receive, for an item in the Chatham Gleaner of April 2, 1839, told of the meeting of the New Brunswick Baptist Educational Society at Fredericton, and their protest against the continued rejection of an appeal for a grant to their seminary. The grant, the item went on to say, was passed each year in the House of Assembly, but was rejected by the Legislative Council on the grounds that their principle was against giving money in aid of religious or literary institutions for the dissemination of their own peculiar tenets. The article proceeded to deny that the Baptist Seminary taught Baptist tenets, and pointed out that the province annually bestowed £ 2200 on King's College, although it was Episcopalian, and £ 400 a year on the Madras Schools, although they taught the Anglican Catechism.
47 Finally, in 1842, the Council gave way, and the
Baptist Seminary was granted the sum of £ 250.
48
Thereafter, for many years, this institution received an annual grant, and from that time forward we find a particularly large variety of schools, many of them denominational, receiving provincial aid. While this was distinctly fairer than the earlier custom of subsidizing Anglican institutions and ignoring others, it furnishes another illustration of the haphazard way in which the Assembly appropriated the public money for local and sectional uses, and shows that the idea that state aid should mean a measure, at least, of state supervision and control developed but slowly in New Brunswick. However, one must admit that in this connection New Brunswick had company, for we are told that in America the colonial practice of granting public subsidies to educational institutions more or less under the control of religious groups was not abandoned until the middle of the nineteenth century.
49
While the Inspection instituted in 1844 was supposed to cover all schools receiving provincial aid, for some reason the Inspectors limited their report on the Grammar Schools to a few brief paragraphs. But in 1846 a committee of the House, consisting of Brown, Earle, Rankine, Wilmot, and Wark, was appointed, and their more lengthy report on these schools was presented to the Assembly during the session. If anything, the Grammar Schools were criticized more severely than had been the Parish Schools. The Inspectors said that undoubtedly the intention of the Legislature, in endowing the Grammar Schools, had been to establish a superior school for each county, wherein might be taught those higher branches of learning not available in the ordinary schools. The Inspectors were therefore surprised, they said, to find that the endowment of £ 100 per annum had been drawn for the support of several Grammar Schools which were not conducted according to the intention of the Legislature, and were actually inferior to many of the Parish Schools. Figures were submitted in the report showing that in seven Grammar Schools of the province only a few pupils were being instructed in the branches of education specified in the Grammar School Act of 1829. Only the Grammar Schools of Saint John and Northumberland Counties were reported as being in an efficient state. To remedy the existing evils the Inspectors recommended immediate legislation. Under the law, as it was, the only requirement for obtaining the provincial grant was that the trustees certify there was a school house, a competent master, and £ 50 subscribed by the inhabitants. A number of amendments were now suggested relating to average attendance, number of pupils enrolled in the higher branches, and masters' and trustees' reports, suggestions all designed to elevate the standard of the Grammar Schools, with a threat of forfeiture of part of the grant if efficiency were not maintained.
50 At last the idea was evolving in connection with even those favored institutions, the Grammar Schools, that financial support should entail supervision and responsibility for efficiency.
One cannot read the school reports of 1845 and 1846 without a feeling of curiosity about general intellectual conditions throughout New Brunswick one hundred years ago. Was the depressed state of education in particular but one facet of a society insensitive to things cultural, or had the school system, ossified by custom and tradition, and weighted with the indifference of certain sections of the population, merely failed to catch up with a nascent, yet vigorous, intellectual life? From such investigation of the subject as has been possible in this study, an affirmative to both questions cannot be entirely rejected. Indifference to education can hardly be interpreted as anything else but an indication of a society culturally poor because of economic stringencies, geographical isolation, or materialistic ideals. We observed earlier that much of New Brunswick society was still in the pioneer stage during this period, or was barely emerging from it. Generally speaking, the material aspects of civilization are the first to commend themselves to a society just beginning to reach out beyond bare existence toward richer living, while the cultural graces and adornments, totally neglected during the pioneer stage, are slow to gain appreciation, especially appreciation in the form of any considerable expenditure of that material wealth which may have come to be regarded as the symbol of progress. There will always be individual exceptions to this, of course, and even national exceptions, Scotland being a case in point, but it does seem that in New Brunswick, whatever the reasons, the great bulk of the population, rural and urban, was characterized by intellectual lethargy.
On the other hand, there were certain elements in the provincial society with which such books, music, and lectures as were available found acceptance. One thinks of the capital, centre of the official and Family Compact classes, but we are told that official life at Fredericton, as at Halifax, was gay, rather than intellectual,
51 due to the entertainments of the royal Governors and the presence of military officers who imparted “a degree of taste, etiquette and gentlemanly deportment.”
52 In 1830, however, there was a subscription library, offering a variety of entertaining and standard works,
53 and always the presence of King's College contributed an intellectual tone. Yet, in truth, that institution, graduating a scanty number of students annually at what seemed to the province a great cost, seems to have stood rather aloof in an academic world of its own, blindly preparing, it may be, to help nourish that later curious flowering which has made the names of Roberts and Carman known throughout Canada. Of the professors at King's in the forties and fifties, James Robb appears to have made the greatest contribution to the life of the province. He was for many years connected with the Fredericton Athanaeum,
54 a literary and scientific society. In 1849, encouraged by Lieutenant-Governor Sir Edmund Head, he gave a course of lectures in Fredericton on agricultural chemistry.
55 In 1850 he
took the leading responsibility for a Provincial Society for the encouragement of agriculture, and in this connection visited many parts of the province and gave many lectures.
56 At considerable expenditure of time he compiled in 1849 an Almanac, in which he inserted much information about the province, such as tables of tidal changes, rates of duty, revenue returns, and lists of the executive and legislative departments of the government. In the preface to this work he declared: “In a colony like this, where as yet food for the mind is but scantily supplied, care ought to be taken that the poor settler, who often has no other library than his Bible and his almanac, should find in the latter something more nourishing than the chaff of Astrology, Alchemy and Divination” .
57 In 1851 he prepared a scientific work in the form of lessons in elementary chemistry and botany. We do not find, however, that this was adopted as a text, as was Professor Johnston's Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry.
58 In noting that Sir Edmund Head, when thanking Robb for this “paper of utility” , ventured to wonder if it were not beyond the comprehension of children in the common schools,
59 we feel like suggesting that it was probably beyond the understanding of many of the teachers as well. On the other hand, although it may have been used but little in the schools at the time, it must have added to the sum-total of influences which, more and more, were directing attention to the new world opened up by science.
We have already noted that Gesner and Johnston contributed to the scientific knowledge of New Brunswick. Doubtless other transients in the province did too. To what degree the shipping merchants and lumber kings contributed to provincial learning and culture is not readily apparent. Since they were able to send their children abroad, or to educate them at home by means of private tutors, it is not surprising that they do not seem to have agitated themselves over the poor state of the common schools. We are tempted to think that, as “quality” , living in semi-manorial state after the fashion of Joseph Cunard on the Miramichi,
60 the majority afforded to the rank and file pleasing glimpses of an enviable world of comfort and elegance, rather than one of learning and literary culture. It may, however, be no coincidence that during the heyday of the lumber industry on the Miramichi the Northumberland County Grammar School was well reported, there were several advertisements of ambitious-sounding private schools, and the Miramichi Gleaner could report a number of intellectual and social activities. There was a Young Men's Debating Society in Chatham in 1837, scheduled to discuss at one of its meetings three features of the British Constitution—the liberty of the press, representation of the people in parliament, and trial by jury. We note a Dancing Academy in Newcastle in 1837, a course of phrenological lectures in Chatham in 1841, a singing class in 1844—terms ten shillings a quarter—and a Mechanics' Institute in 1846, which
included the Honorable Joseph Cunard as a member of its body corporate.
61
With the introduction of the subject of Mechanics' Institutes we must turn our attention again to Britain, since those institutions came to New Brunswick from the Mother Country, where the slow development of the idea of state-supported education for all provided ample scope for a motley of educational agencies.
The earliest movement towards special institutions for the industrial classes was philanthropic,
62 but other influences obtained besides that philanthropy which had promoted as many religious and educational societies during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Since the exploitation of humanity which had accompanied the Industrial Revolution provided even wider opportunities, than earlier, for measures designed to ameliorate the lot of unfortunates, the philanthropic aspect of Mechanics' Institutes cannot be completely discounted, but there were other aspects. The Industrial Revolution had focused attention on men, not only as human beings, but also as workers, whose efficiency might be increased through knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge. Besides this, the trend towards political democracy was emphasizing more and more the potential power of the masses, and the expediency of educating them for active citizenship. Thus the doctrine of education for all, formerly only the dream of philosophers and idealists, began to appear in the light of a practical safeguard, both social and national.
The history of the Mechanics' Institute can be traced from Birmingham and Glasgow. In the former city a Sunday Society was formed in 1789, for the purpose of keeping the members of the Sunday School together by means of lectures in mechanics and physical education. The Glasgow Mechanics' Institute was established in 1823, having grown out of lectures given by Birkbeck to meet the needs of the artisan classes. Shortly after, London and Manchester had similar institutions, and by 1850 there were 610 literary and mechanics' associations throughout Britain. The movement met with great enthusiasm, but we are told that it is doubtful if the Institutes always attracted the people for whom they were intended. Obviously, the artisan and lower classes lacked the educational foundation to profit by the institutions; in many cases the lectures must have been over their heads, and the fees for membership and classes beyond their means.
63
In New Brunswick, the majority of such Institutes were, of necessity, in small towns and villages. We may suppose, therefore, that the benefits were mainly social, moral, and in the interests of general education, rather than of assistance to industry. Several of the Institutes seem to have been associated with Temperance Societies, which were becoming popular at this time as part of the temperance movement which was sweeping the New England States. Records indicate that the earliest Mechanics' Institute in New Brunswick was the “Hillsborough Temperance Hall and Mechanics' Institute” , for the purpose of
disseminating temperance principles, and instructing mechanics in the different branches of science. In 1839 the Mechanics Institute of Saint John was incorporated, and in a few years there were groups at Chatham, Hampton, Dorchester, Woodstock, Newcastle, and other points.
64
From the reports of the Saint John Institute—the largest in the province—and from the titles and nature of the lectures delivered there, we can gain some idea of the aims and benefits of the movement in New Brunswick. An early report by the Board of Directors attributed to the authorities of enlightened and civilized countries, particularly Great Britain, a keen desire to promote the cultivation of the arts and sciences, and deduced that in British Colonies the spirit of the Mother Country would naturally extend itself. In any country, said the report, where Collegiate and Academy instruction could not become general, any system whereby useful information was given to all classes must be of the highest importance to the welfare and prosperity of the country, especially when the instruction given was calculated to act immediately upon the daily occupations of the several trades. The report acknowledged the avidity with which the humbler classes sought knowledge when it was offered at their very doors, and declared, significantly, that it was not necessary today to bring forward evidence of the importance of education to all orders of men. Facts were then submitted relating to the establishment and meeting-places of the society, which in 1841 numbered 560 on its membership roll. In view of the expense of the new hall the Legislature was solicited for a grant of £ 800. The report concluded with a tribute to the moral benefits of the Institute in providing a place of recreation for tradesmen, who used to spend their evenings in idle games or criminal indulgence, but were now attracted by the beauties of science and were daily becoming acquainted with those branches of knowledge upon which their prosperity and happiness mainly depended.
65 In response to the plea for financial aid the Legislature granted £ 500.
66
From the catalogue of the St. John Institute library, containing the constitution and rules, we learn that an entrance fee of 10s. and a yearly subscription of 15s. were required for membership. Members were entitled to vote at general meetings, were eligible for office in the Institute, had the use of the library and reading-room, might visit the Museum of Curiosities, and attend the annual course of lectures which were given gratuitously on literary and scientific subjects by qualified gentlemen. In the interests of harmony questions involving religious and political controversy were inadmissable at any meeting.
67 Press reports of various dates inform us that such literary subjects as “The Common School System of New England” , “The Old World and the New” , “The Press” , and “State Support in Religion” were lecture topics, and in science the mysteries of heat, light, gas illumination, and electricity formed subjects of addresses. We note that on several occasions lecturers used their
opportunities to recommend taxation for schools,
68 or to correct misconceptions concerning such a method of school support.
69
It may be that lectures were sometimes delivered for the self-display of the speakers or for the edification of the learned sponsors of the programme, but, on the whole, Mechanics' Institutes, as an early form of adult education, contributed to the social and intellectual life of the communities where they functioned. From the standpoint of the development of educational theory, the establishment of such associations was significant as illustrative of the growth of the idea of education for all classes. The Saint John body continued until 1890,
70 but long before that date the majority of Mechanics' Institutes in the province seem to have lapsed, or deteriorated into literary or temperance societies, or mere social clubs.
If we may take the community described in Mrs. Beavan's interesting little book, “Pioneer Life in New Brunswick” , as a typical section of New Brunswick one hundred years ago, we must conclude that there was little, aside from the services of the church, to stimulate the thinking of country people at that time. Actually this particular area on the lower Saint John must have been above the average, for it started a library. Speaking of this, Mrs. Beavan wrote: “The dwellers of America are more enlightened now than in those old times when dancing and feasting were the sole amusements, so a library was instituted and formed by the same means as the church had been—a load of potatoes, or a barrel of buckwheat being given by each party to purchase books with . . . . Aught that bore the name of Chambers had a place in our collection, and the busy fingers of the little Edinburgh 'devils' have brightened the solitude of many a home on the banks of the Washademoak.”
71 Incidentally, Mrs. Beavan's remarks on education were corroborative of the Report of 1845. She referred to the evils of “boarding around” . The teacher had no fixed home, no place for his books, no chance to study, “for the log-house filled with children and wheels is no fit abode for a student” . The master, moreover, might well hesitate to correct a child in school if he was to meet sour looks and a poor supper at the end of the day. Sometimes female teachers, Mrs. Beavan said, paid for their board in some quiet home out of their cash salary, and gave up that which they could otherwise claim from the people.
72 In commenting on attitudes to education, Mrs. Beavan observed that even when parents were anxious for 'larning' for their children, they had not yet enough of it to appreciate the value of an education. “The schoolmaster” , she added, “is not yet regarded as the mightiest moral agent of the earth and in this country, where
operative power is certain wealth, he who can neither wield an axe or scythe may be looked on with a slight shade of contempt.”
73
From these scattered glimpses of New Brunswick life at the middle of the last century, we arrive at the tentative conclusion that, culturally, society was largely uncultivated, but by no means everywhere content to be so. Here and there were little pockets, veins, and layers of spiritual soil either ripe for the planting of culture or already nourishing a modest growth. This means that in addition to the Lieutenant-Governors and enlightened reformers and legislators like Wilmot and Brown, besides interested parents like John Gregory, besides the clergy and the press, there were many people, less vocal and less in the public eye than these, who were anxious to see the status of teachers raised, the common schools improved, and the educational experiments and achievements of other countries given such trial as the province could afford to make. Supporters in the Assembly, as well as opponents of the school legislation of 1846, 1847, and 1852, had a backing therefore, in the province at large.
The first of the legislative measures which resulted from the school inspections of 1845 and 1846 was in reference to the Grammar Schools. A number of interesting speculations occur to us when we consider why an act was passed relating to these schools before legislation was framed to establish a Normal School, and to improve the Parish Schools. First of all, there is the old suspicion that these schools had the support of powerful interests. The Church of England, by reason of an act amending the charter of King's College,
74 was beginning to lose its control of that institution, but there is evidence that its grip was still strong on at least some of the Grammar Schools, even after the Act of 1846. We find that among the criticisms of the Grammar School at Saint John which were set forth in an Editorial in the Courier in 1852, the complaint was made that the constitution of the Board of Directors was unpopular, because it was too sectarian.
75 A few months before this, the Courier had published a letter from “An Admirer of its Principles” , asking if the College and Grammar Schools were to remain as “class seminaries” for the benefit of a few, yet supported out of funds provided by the many. The writer went on to say that the Grammar Schools did not meet the wants of the Community, and, right or wrong, were regarded as “class schools, mere appendages to the College at Fredericton, or designed to be such” . That they were under Episcopalian influence was all too apparent, said the critic. The letter concluded with the statement that if it was expected that parents of all denominations should support the Grammar Schools, then everything within and around them that savoured of sectarianism must be removed.
76 In view of these charges, it may be that Anglican and Family Compact influences turned the first attention of the Legislature to the Grammar Schools. There is a flaw in this argument, however, for when institutions operate in the interests of any group, that group naturally wishes them to remain as they are. It is possible, therefore, that the
Grammar School Act of 1846 was sponsored by those persons who opposed Anglican and Family Compact influences, but if this were so, why was it that in 1852, six years after the Act, those influences were still strong enough to give rise to the complaints we have just noted? Perhaps the simplest explanation of the priority given to Grammar School legislation at this time lies in the fact that the recent inspection had revealed the woeful extent to which many of these schools were masquerading as secondary schools. When, therefore, at this same session James Brown introduced a measure for the establishment of a Normal School,
77 some of the members who helped to defeat it may have felt that the reform of the Grammar Schools should come first. Others may have found in legislation relating to the Grammar Schools an excuse for postponing the controversial question of a training school. Moreover, the session of 1846 was much occupied with railway legislation, the question of a retiring pension to Judge Botsford, and a discussion of the Lieutenant-Governor's action in expending money from the surplus civil list without the consent of the Legislature.
78 Then, too, this was the last session of the existing House, so that members may have had an eye to the safety of their seats. Consequently, it was easier, and perhaps more expedient, to amend the Grammar Schools than to launch a plan which seemed costly and revolutionary to many people. Finally, resentment engendered against Lieutenant- Governor Colebrooke, because of his action in 1845 in appointing his English son-in-law, Alfred Reade, to the office of Provincial Secretary, may have again helped to postpone Colebrooke's cherished project, even although the Assembly was itself partly to blame for Colebrooke's mistake.
79 One wonders if Gesner may not have had this whole episode in mind when he wrote in 1847: “It is a common remark in this Province and Nova Scotia that it is vain to cultivate the higher branches of learning, so long as the Home Government bestows the principal offices and best pecuniary situations in the Colonies to persons from the Mother Country, who are sent out to fill them. That this feeling has operated against education there can be no doubt.”
80 This statement may not be very significant, for the feeling referred to may have been used as a mere excuse for educational backwardness resulting from other causes. If so, the excuse became invalid when Lord Stanley, after the Reade episode, conceded that public offices should be filled from among the natives or settled inhabitants of the Province.
81
The Act of 1846, in amendment of the laws in force relating to Grammar Schools, enacted that in every Grammar School there should be an average number of fifteen scholars over ten years of age in daily attendance, and that there should be taught, in addition to Orthography, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, English Grammar, Geography, and English Composition, such advanced subjects as Ancient and Modern History, Natural History, Natural
Philosophy, Mathematics, the use of globes, and the Latin and Greek languages. The teachers were to keep a register of the daily attendance and to make a return to the Trustees twice a year. The Trustees were to inspect the school at least every six months, and to incorporate in the teacher's report information about the teacher, the books and apparatus, the branches of education taught, the size and fitness of the building, the suitability of the furniture, the nature and extent of the religious instruction, the mode of discipline, the manner of teaching, and the general condition of the school. This report and the teacher's register were to be forwarded semi-annually to the Provincial Secretary for the information of the Government. If any school appeared deficient of the prescribed requirements, the Lieutenant-Governor, on the advice of his Council, might reduce the annual allowance to such Grammar School to a minimum of £ 50. This threat was significant as showing an assumption of supervision by an authority higher than the local Board of Directors, who, through incompetence or lack of interest, had allowed many of the Grammar Schools to fall far short of the responsibilities imposed on them by the Act of 1829.
82 Not until 1861, however, was this supervision strengthened further by placing the Grammar Schools under the Board of Education, while the Parish Schools were supervised by the Board of Education after 1847, and inspected by official inspectors after 1852. Thus until 1861 the Grammar Schools remained largely under local management and supervision.
In the election of 1846 three vigorous proponents of political reform were elected, Wilmot, Fisher, and Ritchie, but on the whole the temper of the Legislature of 1847, in its opposition to drastic changes, differed little from that of the previous House.
83 Wilmot remarked in the course of the session that “little countries make little mechanics and little statesmen” .
84 The actual occasion of the remark was a discussion on intercolonial trade restrictions, but, taken out of its context, the observation is not devoid of general significance. However, although the Legislature was not yet ready to deal seriously with the assessment principle in relation to education, it could hardly evade any longer the subject of provision for teacher training, especially in the light of the report of 1845 and of the Lieutenant-Governor's warning that the country would suffer irretrievable loss, if timely provision were not made for the training of teachers and the regulation and inspection of Parish Schools.
85 Moreover, it was obvious that the influx in 1846 and 1847 of large numbers of destitute and largely illiterate Irish immigrants had increased the task of education and rendered imperative the establishment of more, and better, schools.
The Parish School Act of 1847 was drafted by James Brown and chiefly supported in the House by Wilmot and Brown.
86 Its chief provisions dealt with a Training and Model School to be established by a newly con-
stituted Board of Education. We have noted that for some years previous to this act the doctrines of central supervision and pedagogic training had been advocated in New Brunswick, among those who were pressing for reforms, and we have observed the part played by Lieutenant-Governor Colebrooke in the circulation and popularization of the idea of a Normal School, but in our absorption with provincial affairs we have neglected to note the development of these principles in those wider fields from which influences gradually filtered, directly or indirectly, into New Brunswick.
While here and there, mostly in Prussia, there were a few Teachers' Seminaries before the time of Pestalozzi, it was not until he had made his contribution that there was anything worth training teachers for, since children learned from books, often books in the form of a Catechism, and the teacher merely heard the memorized answers.
87 In various schools, and later at Yverdon, Pestalozzi drew about him other teachers interested in improving instruction, and his Institute became the first modern normal school.
88
We have seen that Prussian pedagogues had shown great enthusiasm for Pestalozzi's methods, and that the Prussian state, as part of a process of national regeneration, had created vernacular schools, had reorganized and redirected secondary education, had founded the University of Berlin, and had established a number of Teachers' Seminaries or Normal Schools. Other countries were slower in assuming state control, although in Revolutionary France the State definitely took over the control of education from the Church, and philosophers and enthusiasts formulated many plans to provide for the educational needs of the common people. In 1802, that organizing genius, Napoleon, appointed a Director of Public Instruction to draw up an organizing law. This law made secondary and special education the function of the state, but left primary education to the communes to be provided as they saw fit, such primary schools as were established to be, however, under the supervision of the central authority. In 1810 a Superior Normal School began to offer a two-year course to graduates of the Lycées or secondary schools. During the Restoration period from 1815 to 1830, this system of public instruction continued almost unchanged, except that a number of elementary normal schools were created. In the reign of Louis Philippe, thinkers such as Thiers and Guizot turned their attention to the extension downward of the system of public instruction, and in 1831 Victor Cousin was sent to Prussia to study and report on the whole system of elementary education, teacher training, and administration, which had done so much for Prussia. On the basis of Cousin's report, the Law of 1833 made the maintenance of primary schools obligatory on every commune; provided for higher primary schools in towns and cities, additional normal schools, and a corps of Inspectors; and required of primary teachers normal training and state certification. This, in brief, was the state of educational organization in France in 1848
89 when New Brunswick opened its first Normal
School. New Brunswick, however, was destined to move forward between that date and 1870, while France was to experience 'reaction' in education, as well as in government, during that interval.
Before we turn our attention to developments elsewhere, we should note two features of both the French and Prussian systems. First, although in both Prussia and France the state assumed a large degree of control and supervision of the common schools, it gave them little financial aid. In France the communes were responsible for these schools,
90 and in Germany, not until the twentieth century did the State contribute substantially to the expenses of public education.
91 This was in contrast with New Brunswick, where the state gave comparatively generous aid long before it exercised supervision and control. Secondly, the democratic ideas of Revolutionary thinkers in France, and of liberal minded educational leaders in Prussia, failed to prevail against the influence of caste. In Germany, the Volksschules were designed to create an intelligent, patriotic, but obedient rank and file, while the other schools were for the official and directing class of society.
92 As for France, we are told that the system of primary education established by the Law of 1833 was intended to serve the needs of an inferior social and political class.
93 In both France and Germany there were but few transfer points from the schools for the masses to the schools for the leaders.
England was influenced neither by the extreme nationalism which moved the German people nor by the romantic liberalism of French Revolutionary philosophers. It did have to yield, however, to the influences of the Industrial Revolution and the political changes which followed. After the Reform Bill of 1832, the state began to recognize the expediency of educating its masters, the people, but the question was: “By what means?” Nonconformists and the advocates of a national system rejected the idea of Church control. On the other hand, state control and maintenance implied a secular system, and this all creeds rejected. Private munificence had helped in the spread of education, but, at best, it could be only a limited and precarious means of providing education on a national scale. Compromise was inevitable. The State gave aid, but distributed it through existing religious and philanthropic societies. In 1832 the Government appropriated £ 20,000 for grants to the National School Society and the British and Foreign School Society. In 1839, following the report of a Select Committee on Education, a Committee of the Privy Council on Education was created to superintend the application of grants. The President of this Council, Dr. Kay-Shuttleworth, wished to establish teacher-training Colleges where the religious instruction should be non-sectarian, but the National Society opposed this so bitterly that the Committee gave up the plan and distributed appropriations between the two great Societies, for the establishment of training colleges.
94 These Societies had a number of training in-
stitutions already, as part of the system of monitorial instruction in which they specialized. When, however, the Committee of Council insisted on the right of inspecting the schools to which grants were given, and began to lay down the conditions on which aid should be granted, the thin edge of the wedge of state control was inserted.
As the mechanical character of the monitorial system came to be recognized, Dr. Kay-Shuttleworth advocated as a substitute the pupil-teacher system of Holland. In 1846 a Minute of the Committee of Council made provision for a supply of pupil-teachers who were to be apprenticed to schoolmasters, and to be given special instruction over a long period by them. Each pupil-teacher was to receive a stipend, increasing with length of service, and each master a stated sum for each pupil instructed.
95
In 1847 Lord Macaulay, defending in Parliament a Minute of the Committee of Council proposing the nationalization of education, declared that it was the duty of the state to provide for the education of the common people as an exercise of self-protection, and warned of dangers if progressive tendencies were not heeded. So strongly entrenched, however, was the voluntary system, and so little did the English people know or heed progress elsewhere that further action of significance had to wait until after the passage of the Reform Bill of 1867.
96
When Colebrooke, as Governor of an English colony, applied to the Mother Country for assistance in the promotion of a Normal School, he was applying to a country which, as we have seen, had as yet no state system of education and no state normal schools. However, Dr. Kay-Shuttleworth, as we have noted, favored non-sectarian training schools. In 1844 when the Colonial Secretary referred to Kay-Shuttleworth some of Colebrooke's correspondence on the question of a training school, Kay-Shuttleworth wrote a letter, which, although containing no very profound opinions, was in definite encouragement of Colebrooke's idea.
97 Moreover, the Imperial Authorities were doubtless quite aware of the fact that in New Brunswick the question of a state normal school was not complicated as in England by the rivalries of strongly entrenched religious and educational societies. As far as can be seen, the Colonial Office and the Committee of the Privy Council seem to have been ready to co-operate in obtaining a headmaster for whatever kind of normal school the provincial authorities might see fit to establish, but not to the extent of paying part of the master's stipend. Colebrooke again, as in 1842, suggested that since so many immigrants from the United Kingdom would profit by the schools of New Brunswick, Her Majesty's Government might, until 1850, augment the grant of the New Brunswick Assembly in order that the services of a person of superior qualifications should be secured,
98 but this request, as before, went unheeded.
From observations by Colebrooke and by the Inspectors in the report
of 1845, we may conclude that there were persons in New Brunswick who had some knowledge of educational developments in the United States. The problem of educational organization in America was not so much the harmonizing of Church schools and old educational foundations with a new state system as it was that of awakening interest in education and arousing willingness to pay for it.
99 Without a Prussian monarch to impose a compulsory system for reasons of state, the idea of universal free education had to be evolved gradually, in a democratic manner, under the leadership of men and women with vision and patience.
100 As in England, a number of semi-private philanthropic agencies, such as the Sunday Schools, the Lancastrian movement, and Infant School Societies, by founding schools helped to build up an interest in education. Gradually various political, social, and economic forces produced conditions which made state, rather than church, control and support of education desirable and expedient. The growth of manufacturing and of cities made the task of education too great for the home, the church, and philanthropic societies. Eventually, too, the spirit of the Declaration of Independence became partially realized in Jacksonian democracy, and resulted in full manhood suffrage in all the states. By 1825 democracy in the United States had arrived at a stage not reached in Britain until 1867. Public men, labor unions, Governors, began to urge the establishment of tax-supported schools. By 1850, non-sectarian, tax-supported, state directed common schools had become an actuality in almost every Northern State.
101
While we cannot concern ourselves here with the details of the struggle for this achievement, it is impossible to overlook the work of Horace Mann and Henry Barnard. The former, as Secretary of the first State Board of Education in Massachusetts (1837), annually organized a campaign to explain to people the importance of general education. It may be said that “he not only started a great common school revival in Massachusetts which led to the regeneration of the schools there, but one which was felt and which influenced development in every Northern State . . . . No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, and free, and that its aim should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends” .
102 Equally important for Connecticut and Rhode Island was the work of Henry Barnard.
103 Both Mann and Barnard were closely associated with the spread of the normal school idea. The first state Normal School in the United States opened in Massachusetts in 1839. In a short time two others opened in the same state. Horace Mann's support of the Normal School idea had much to do with the success of these institutions. By 1860, there were eleven state and six private Normal Schools in eight of the American states. Closely related were the Teachers' Institutes organized by Henry Barnard in
Connecticut in 1839 to offer summer courses for teachers in service.
104 For these Institutes Barnard devised a travelling model school to give demonstrations in the art of teaching.
105
It has been said that the educational reforms achieved in the United States by 1850 were in method and expansion rather than in spirit.
106 Of necessity, both Mann and Barnard were practical organizers and evangelists, rather than theorists, but they were familiar with the newest and best theories of their day. Barnard had spent two years, (1835 - 1837), in Europe, studying schools, especially the work of Pestalozzi's disciples.
107 He published the first American account of Froebel's kindergarten and translated the writings of Comenius, Rousseau, and Pestalozzi for the use of teachers.
108 Mann studied the educational value of physiology and hygiene, supported the introduction of music, opposed the use of harsh school discipline, and visited Europe “in the search for germinal ideas” .
109 Cousin's report on Prussian education was translated and widely read in the United States, and its principles adapted to American needs, when Horace Mann became Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education.
110
Before concluding this brief sketch of some of the educational advances made in the United States previous to 1850, we should note that advocates of agricultural and technical instruction had appeared, and several experiments along those lines had been made with private funds. There was also the growth of interest in the special training of defectives and delinquents. In short, “every essential feature of modern public education was either worked out or fairly anticipated in the United States by the middle of the nineteenth century” .
111 In these developments, America borrowed from other countries but did not slavishly copy. While American reformers learned much from a study of Prussian pedagogy, and profited greatly by the example of efficient German administration, they rejected the rigidity and regimentation of the Prussian system as totally out of harmony with the democratic ideal of America.
112 Moreover, in contrast with the English and German two-class systems, secondary education was regarded as a continuation of elementary education, and not as the peculiar perquisite of the higher classes
113in other words, the basic lines of development were laid for an educational ladder, complete from the primary grades to the university.
What Horace Mann did for New England, Egerton Ryerson did for Upper Canada, or Canada West, as it was called after 1841. As in New Brunswick, early education in Upper Canada was controlled by the Anglican Church and served the interests of an exclusive Family Compact group. Dissenters, to escape the Anglican monopoly of culture, were driven to establish sectarian
colleges of their own, and to agitate for a state-supported, non-sectarian system of common school education.
114 Among those most interested in the question of the Clergy Reserves were the Methodists under the leadership of their eloquent preacher and editor, Egerton Ryerson. The views of this denomination on political questions were so displeasing to the Family Compact that more than once Bishop Strachan accused them of having preachers who were ignorant men, and of American origin and sympathies.
115 When the Methodist Conference in 1831 sent a memorial to the King refuting certain statements made by Bishop Strachan, the Governor, Sir John Colborne, read them a lecture, accused their preachers of secular interference, and told them pointedly: “The system of Education which has produced the best and ablest men in the United Kingdom will not be abandoned here to suit the limited views of the leaders of Societies who perhaps have neither experience nor judgment to appreciate the value or advantages of a liberal education” .
116 When, however, the Rebellion of 1837, Durham's Report, and the Union Act of 1841 had cleared the way for the development of a non-sectarian state system of education, Ryerson was made the first Superintendent in 1844. Having visited other countries, and having studied the best features of the existing systems in New York, Massachusetts, Ireland, and Germany, Ryerson proceeded to reconstruct the provincial system, but without sacrificing provincial individuality.
117 At the time when Ryerson took office there were a number of model schools in the province, but these made no provision for training in the art of teaching—they were merely better schools. In 1847 he succeeded in having the Toronto Normal School founded.
118 When, therefore, New Brunswick educational reformers looked to Canada West in 1847, they saw there the basis of a splendid system of elementary education, with a non-political permanent official as its executive head, the assessment principle for the support of schools in operation on a voluntary basis, and a system of teacher training definitely established. Everywhere Ryerson, like Horace Mann, was inspiring enthusiasm for education and arousing a willingness to pay for it.
On an evening in 1845 when the hall of the Mechanics' Institute of Saint John was the scene of a lecture on Education by the Reverend Mr. Wishart, those present heard the speaker commend the results in Nova Scotia of two things—the establishment of a central educational body and the use of a tax on property for the support of schools.
119
The province of Nova Scotia resembled New Brunswick more than did any of the countries whose educational conditions we have briefly examined. In size the two provinces were nearly equal, and in geographical features and economic history there were many points of likeness. In Nova Scotia too, as in New Brunswick, the Anglican Church had attempted to control education, and
the ruling classes favored the English system of private schools for the well-to-do and assisted schools for the poor. But Nova Scotia's population included two elements which, while not lacking in New Brunswick, in that province exercised much less influence. These were pre-Revolutionary New England stock and Scottish immigrants in sufficiently large numbers to stamp the life of the whole province. Perhaps for these reasons the champions of a public school system, who favored the education of rich and poor side by side “in true democratic fashion” and looked for inspiration to the examples of Scotland and Massachusetts,
120 obtained for the assessment principle an early place on the statute books, as we have already observed, and contrived to keep it there. However, since it was only permissive, its use was infrequent, and in 1832 there was a retreat when an enactment prohibited taxation for schools without the approval of the General Sessions of the Peace, and a two-thirds majority of the inhabitants of the local area.
121 In 1838 a Committee of the Assembly studied the educational systems of Scotland, Massachusetts, and Prussia, but, although recognizing the virtues of all of these, concluded that the people of Nova Scotia were not yet ready for compulsory assessment, free schools, and adequate teacher-training.
122 In the hostility of the people of Nova Scotia to compulsory contributions for schools, and in the hesitancy of the Legislature, we find a marked resemblance to New Brunswick attitudes. Similarly, too, the teachers of Nova Scotia were poorly paid and often incompetent. Actually, progress in the two provinces proceeded at much the same rate. Nova Scotia achieved a Chief Superintendent in 1850, while New Brunswick established the same office in 1852. In the matter of a Normal School, New Brunswick was first, Nova Scotia not establishing such an institution until 1854. One possible explanation of this delay lies in the existence in Nova Scotia of a number of schools which served as partial substitutes for a provincial Normal School, or vied with each other for provincial aid in training teachers. Among these was an Academy at Boulardarie, opened in 1839 on the principles of the Glasgow Normal School by Alexander and Mrs. Munro, emissaries from that school. Not long afterwards, the management of the Royal Acadian School at Halifax petitioned the Assembly for aid to convert their school into a normal school, and the trustees of an Academy at New Glasgow likewise appealed to the Assembly for special aid. In 1845 the Central Board of Education recommended the conversion into a Normal School of the Royal Acadian School, since that institution was free of sectarian influence, and possessed a substantial building; but in 1847 a Committee of the Assembly reported adversely on the possibilities of making this school fit and suitable for the purpose. This Committee favored having a number of seminaries for training teachers, but the first Superintendent of Education, J. W. Dawson, after studying the schools of New York, New England, and Upper Canada, believed that an efficient Normal School, as in New York and Upper Canada, was preferable to several of inferior capabilities.
Eventually, he had the satisfaction of seeing a provincial Normal School opened at Truro in 1855.
123
Just as much in Nova Scotia's educational system was eclectic,
124 so it was in New Brunswick. This province borrowed ideas and doctrines, texts and teachers; gathered inspiration and encouragement; and followed examples, from many sources. But everything was trimmed to fit the provincial purse and to conform to modest ideas of progress. In the last analysis, one has the impression that New Brunswick chose to institute central supervision and to establish a Normal School, not because the province was shaken by new ideas and was dedicated to progress, but because the practical problem of poor schools and poor teachers had to be solved somehow, and the experiences of other countries indicated that the advances mentioned might prove to be a solution of the problem in New Brunswick. It took many more years to convince the “slow moving mass” of the people that the problem required a still more practical step in the form of general assessment for schools.
The Board of Education which was instituted by the Act of 1847
125 was such in name only, for it consisted of the Lieutenant-Governor and Executive Council, “the usual arrangement in Tory Provinces” . There was a Secretary authorised at a salary of £ 100 a year, but no Chief Superintendent of Education or any equivalent, so that the Board lacked an agent wholly responsible for the advancement of education and capable of carrying out its policies. But at least the Act had created the form of a provincial educational body to which additions and improvements could be made.
The Board was empowered to establish a Training School at Fredericton, the master of which was to be paid no more than £ 200 a year. A Model School was to be attached to the Training School so that teachers in training might demonstrate their ability to teach. If the Board thought it expedient, subsidiary training schools might be set up at other points in the Province, where teachers trained at the Central Training School might teach other teachers and approved candidates. Students in training, after they had demonstrated their ability to teach, were to receive an allowance of ten shillings a week for the ten weeks of their training.
The framers of the Act evidently planned that teachers already licensed must be given the first opportunity of profiting by the Training School, for the Board could require as many licensed teachers to attend as it thought necessary. One can see reasons for this, especially in the light of the Inspection of 1845, but one can also see some of the disadvantages. In the first place, there was the difficulty of inducing veteran teachers to think fresh thoughts and to change their settled ways. Secondly, there was the resentment which many of these would feel at having to lose a term's teaching, journey to Fredericton, and be taught by a stranger, whose length of teaching service was less than their own and had been gained in a foreign country.
The master of the Training School was to train those who attended in the Art of Teaching, which was to include a thorough knowledge of communicating the rudiments and elementary branches of common school education, in a manner best suited to the capacities, ages, and conditions of the children of the Province. That the short space of ten weeks was deemed sufficient time which to do this indicates that the legislators of 1847 either had an eye to economy, or understood the art of pedagogy very imperfectly. In all probability both of these speculations are true, but there was in addition a practical reason for the length of the training course. Since the school year at that time consisted of four terms of ten or twelve weeks, a teacher could attend the Training School at the loss of only one term from his school.
In order to compel attendance at the Training School it was enacted that licenses should be issued only to teachers who had attended the institution, but the Board of Education could say when this clause should go into effect. As a matter of fact, an amendment in 1849 yielded ground on this point by providing that the Board of Education might grant licenses of the lowest grade to female teachers, in certain cases, without requiring them to attend the Training School, and further, might license untrained teachers in areas remote from the Training School. This concession. was the first of a number of regrettable compromises in respect to teachers' licenses which various conditions have necessitated in New Brunswick from time to time.
According to the Act of 1847 licensed teachers were to be classified in three divisions, based, one concludes, on knowledge rather than teaching ability. Teachers of the lowest class were to teach Spelling, Reading, Writing, and Simple Arithmetic; second class teachers, in addition to those subjects, were to teach English Grammar, Geography, and Book-keeping; and for teachers of the highest class further additions were Natural Philosophy,
126 Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Mensuration, Land Surveying, and Navigation. We are struck by the absence of History from the curriculum, and by the inclusion of Surveying and Navigation as an indication of the importance of lumbering and shipping in the provincial economy. In reality, the lofty requirements demanded by first class teachers seem to have been on paper only at first. We find in a Minute of the Board of Education, under the date of May 30, 1848, an admission that the Board was acting on the assumption that the entire qualifications required by the Act could not, at the time, be demanded without refusing first class certificates to all candidates. Under these circumstances, the Board had adopted the principle of granting first class certificates only in cases in which the certificate as to competency in teaching was satisfactory, and the teacher possessed knowledge in some one of the extra branches required from the first class of teachers.
127 This discrepancy between theory and practice may have been one of the reasons why the first Principal of the Normal School so strongly
advocated lower standards in theory, and a closer approximation in practice to the selected standards. Legislative grants to teachers of the three ranks were set at £ 30, £ 22, and £ 18 a year respectively, in contrast with the £ 20 a year which was granted to all teachers previous to the passage of this Act. However, the sum to be paid to the teacher by the inhabitants of a district was to be the same as before, £ 20 a year; was to be raised by subscription, and could be paid in board and lodging if desired—a provision which would counteract considerably the tendency of the Training School to elevate the profession.
The Act of 1847 continued the arrangement of the Parish Trustees, who, as earlier, were charged with a good deal of responsibility and authority. The Justices of the Peace were to be continued as the link between the schools of the Parish and the Provincial Secretary. There were the usual provisions regarding poor scholars and maximum grants to parishes and counties. Aside from those sections of the Act which related to the Board of Education and the Training School, the most interesting section is that which authorized the Board of Education to spend £ 1000 for the purpose of providing books and apparatus for the use of the Parish Schools. Investigating this subject of school texts, we find that the Inspectors of the Grammar Schools had stated in their report to the Assembly in 1846 that they had before them a series of School Books, prepared and published under the superintendence of the National Board of Education for Ireland. The Inspectors described these books as being of superior character and well suited to the needs of New Brunswick, and recommended that enquiry be made during recess as to the cheapest mode of obtaining a supply for the Province, whether by importation from Ireland or Canada, or by republication in New Brunswick.
128 We next learn that in 1847 Colebrooke sent Grey a resolution of the Executive Council expressive of a desire to obtain a selection of approved Parish School Books through the medium of the Committee on Education of the Privy Council. Later in the year Grey wrote that the books were on their way, and enclosed a letter from the Education Office, Dublin, relating to a selection of books, tablets, and maps, to which had been added twelve sets of books, sheets, and tuning forks for teaching Hullah's system of vocal Music.
129 When we enquire into this availability of Irish texts, we discover that a degree of progress, impossible at the time in England, had occurred in Ireland in the direction of a national system. In 1831, following a period of reports and commissions, an organized system under one head was announced, with a common curriculum as far as possible without proselytism. The central authority was to be a Board of Commissioners, appointed by the Crown, who were to maintain a register of qualified teachers, establish Model and Training Schools, provide for the regular inspection of schools under its control, and distribute the annual parliamentary grants. The religious problem presented difficulties, but eventually both the Protestant and Catholic Churches accepted the National System. Later, Catholic fear of Protestant proselytism
led to the introduction of separate religious instruction during school hours in districts exclusively Catholic, and the National Schools became to a large extent denominational.
130 This development, however, had not yet occurred at the time in which we are here interested. What we wish to note particularly is the effort of the National Board to solve the text-book problem, which, in 1830, was much the same as in New Brunswick. For a reading lesson one child might use the Bible, another the adventures of a highwayman, a third a 'loose' romance. The Board approved such books in use as it deemed worthy, and edited and printed others. These latter were distributed gratis or at half price, and with the assistance of the Inspectors were gradually introduced into the National Schools. They were uniform in character and well graded, and contained nothing inimical to Christianity, morality, and patriotism. “Their excellence found them ready sale in Great Britain and the colonies.”
131 These, then, were the books which were Ireland's gift to New Brunswick, figuratively speaking, at the very time when the province was providing a home for thousands of Irish refugees.
Notes
^1. Fitch, p. 35.
^2. Ibid., p. 36.
^3. Ibid., p. 35.
^4. P. A. of Canada, Can, Misc., Delancey-Robinson Papers, Vol. 1, Letters to Sir John Harvey, 1837.
^5. Ibid., Vol. 2, Letters to Sir John Harvey, 1838.
^6. New Brunswick: Journal of the House of Assembly, 1839, pp. 359, 360.
^7. Ibid., p. 359.
^8. P. A. of Canada, C0188, Vol. 9, Colebrooke to Stanley, Oct. 29, 1841, Disp. 73.
^9. New Brunswick: Journal of the House of Assembly, 1842, Appendix 59.
^10. Ibid., Appendix 58.
^11. Abstract of the Returns of the Inspection of Grammar and Parochial Schools in New Brunswick, 1844-1845, p. 15.
^12. P. A. of Canada, C0188, Vol. 8, Harvey to Russell, Jan. 6, 1841, Disp. 1.
^13. Ibid., Vol. 9, Colebrooke to Russell, June 21, 1841, Disp. 28.
^14. Ibid., Vol. 9, Colebrooke to Stanley, Oct. 29, 1841, Disp. 73.
^15. Ibid., Vol 9, Colebrooke to Stanley, June 14, 1842, Disp. 60.
^16. New Brunswick: Journal of House of Assembly, 1845, pp. 338-341.
^17. P. A. of Canada, C0188, Vol. 9, Colebrooke to Stanley, March 25, 1843, Disp. 19.
^18. Ibid., Vol. 11, Head to Grey, May 20, 1848, Disp. 27.
^19. Ibid., Vol. 9, Colebrooke to Stanley, June 14, 1842, Disp. 60.
^20. Office of Executive Council of New Brunswick, Colebrooke's Letter Book, May 1, 1841-Jan. 13, 1843, (No volume no.), July 16, 1842, p. 310.
^21. P. A. of Canada, C0188, Vol. 9, Colebrooke to Stanley, Aug. 12, 1842, Disp. 78.
^22. Hannay (1), Vol. 2, pp. 77, 78.
^23. P. A. of Canada, C0188, Vol. 9, Colebrooke to Stanley, Aug.12, 1842, Disp. 78.
^24. Office of Executive Council of New Brunswick, Colebrooke's Letter Book, May 18, 1841-April 4, 1848, (no volume no.), Colebrooke to G. R. Young, Feb. 25, 1843, pp. 57, 58.
^25. New Brunswick: Journal of House of Assembly, 1842, p. 288.
^26. Ibid., Appendix 57.
^27. It is possible that the Trustees were referring in this report to the “free” scholars, whose parents were too poor to subscribe to the teacher's salary.
^28. New Brunswick: Journal of House of Assembly, 1842, Appendix 40.
^29. Since at that time instruction in classes was not yet general in New Brunswick, and the teachers tended to rely on texts in their teaching, it may be that class instruction and spirited oral teaching were meant.
^30. New Brunswick: Journal of House of Assembly, 1842, Appendix 54-68.
^31. Ibid., Appendix 84.
^32. Ibid., Appendix 85.
^33. Ibid., Appendix 68-82.
^34. New Brunswick: Journal of House of Assembly, 1844, pp. 301, 302.
^35. P. A. of Canada, C0188, Vol. 9, Colebrooke to Stanley, April 24, 1844, Disp. 28.
^36. New Brunswick: Journal of House of Assembly, 1845, p.136.
^37. Abstract of the Returns of Inspection of Grammar and Parochial Schools in New Brunswick, pp. 10, 13, 19.
^38. Ibid., pp. 2-4.
^39. Ibid., p. 4.
^40. Ibid., p. 18.
^41. Ibid., pp. 13, 15.
^42. Ibid., pp. 18-20.
^43. Ibid., pp. 17, 18.
^44. Cubberley, p. 343.
^45. Abstract of the Returns of Inspection of Grammar and Parochial Schools in New Brunswick, p. 16.
^46. Ibid., pp. 16, 17.
^47. Typescript in the possession of Louise Manny of Newcastle, N. B.
^48. New Brunswick: Journal of the House of Assembly, 1842, pp. 176, 256.
^49. Curti, p. 16.
^50. New Brunswick: Journal of the House of Assembly, 1846, pp. 229-232.
^51. Falconer, p. 792.
^52. Gesner, p. 161.
^53. Falconer, p. 793.
^54. Bailey, L. W., p. 3.
^55. Office of the Executive Council of New Brunswick, Head's Letter Book, 1848-1854, (no Vol. No.) Head to Robb, March 19, 1849, p. 189.
^56. Bailey, L. W., p. 5.
^57. Ibid., pp. 13, 14.
^58. New Brunswick: Journal of the House of Assembly, 1851, Appendix 67.
^59. Office of the Executive Council of New Brunswick, Head's Letter Book, Nov. 1850 Sept., 1854, (no Vol. No.) p. 105.
^60. Wright, p. 45.
^61. Typescript in the possession of Louise Manny of Newcastle, N. B.
^62. Hughes & Klemm, p. 56.
^63. Cyclopedia of Education (Paul Munroe ed.) Vol. 4, pp. 165, 166.
^64. Maxwell (1), pp. 52, 53.
^65. New Brunswick: Journal of the House of Assembly, 1841, Appendix 187-189.
^66. Ibid., p. 230.
^67. Mechanics' Institute, Catalogue of the Library with Constitution, Rules and Regulations, p. 6.
^68. The New Brunswick Courier, St. John, Vol. 7, No. 35, Jan. 27, 1849, p. 1.
^69. Ibid ., Vol . 8, No. 38, Feb. 16, 1850, p. 1
^70. A Mechanics' Institute Co. seems to have existed after that date. possibly to wind up affairs. For instance, we find that in 1896 W. A. Lockhart, auctioneer, advertised a sale by the Mechanics' Institute Co. on Feb. 8, 1896, of the leasehold property on Carleton St., with all its scenery and furniture. (Saint John Public Library, Scrap Book No. 10, p. 42.)
^71. Beavan, p. 129.
^72. Ibid., pp. 51-53.
^73. Ibid., p. 52.
^74. Hannay (1), Vol. 2, p. 99.
^75. The New Brunswick Courier, Vol. 10, No. 37, Feb. 28, 1852, p. 1.
^76. Ibid., Vol. IX, No. 42, March 15, 1851, p. 2.
^77. Hannay (1), Vol. 2, p. 104.
^78. Ibid., pp. 102-106.
^79. Only the year before, the Assembly of New Brunswick had supported Sir Charles Metcalfe, Governor General of Canada, on the question of the royal prerogative in making appointments. See Hannay (1), Vol. 2, pp. 88-93, 101.
^80. Gesner, p. 322.
^81. Hannay (1), Vol 2, p. 93.
^82. Fitch, pp. 48-50.
^83. Hannay (1), Vol. 2, p. 107.
^84. Fenety, p. 232.
^85. New Brunswick: Journal of House of Assembly, 1847, p. 8.
^86. P. A . of Canada, Canada Misc., Delancey-Robinson Papers, Vol. 14, "Report on Education in New Brunswick", April 12, 1848.
^87. Cubberley, p. 415.
^88. Ibid., pp. 297-299.
^89. Cubberley, pp. 324-332.
^90. Ibid., p. 331.
^91. Reisner, p. 200.
^92. Cubberley, p. 321.
^93. Reisner, p. 51.
^94. Hughes & Klemm, pp. 29-31.
^95. Reisner, pp. 252, 253.
^96. Cubberley, pp. 346, 347.
^97. New Brunswick: Journal of House of Assembly, 1845, p. 33.
^98. P. A. of Canada, C0188, Vol.10, Colebrooke to Grey, June 11,1847, Disp.52.
^99. Cubberley, p. 353.
^100. Beard, Vol. 1, p. 498.
^101. Cubberley, pp. 357-368.
^102. Ibid., pp. 379, 380.
^103. Ibid., pp. 380, 381.
^104. Ibid., p. 417.
^105. Ibid., p. 381.
^106. Morison and Commager, Vol. 1, p. 414.
^107. Cubberley, p. 380.
^108. Beard, Vol. 1, pp. 816, 817.
^109. Ibid., p. 816.
^110. Morison and Commager, Vol. 1, p. 409.
^111. Beard, Vol. 1, p. 815.
^112. Morison and Commager, Vol. 1, p. 409.
^113. Reisner, p. 413.
^114. Creighton, p. 220.
^115. Sissons (1), pp. 23, 82.
^116. Ibid., pp. 143-146.
^117. Hopkins, pp. 345, 346.
^118. Burwash, p. 173.
^119. Wishart, p. 6.
^120. Harvey (2), p. 15.
^121. MacKay, p. 523.
^122. Harvey (2), p. 15.
^123. Ibid., pp. 15-17, 27.
^124. Ibid., p. 15.
^125. 10. V. Cap. 56.
^126. Natural Philosophy seems to have been the term for elementary Physics and Chemistry.
^127. Department of Education of New Brunswick, Minutes of the Board of Education, 1847-1852, p. 30.
^128. New Brunswick: Journal of House of Assembly, 1846, p. 232.
^129. Ibid., 1848, p. 57.
^130. Hughes and Klemm, pp. 87-92.
^131. Ibid., p. 98.