Abstract
CANADIAN education, as seen in the course of a four-months winter visit, was the theme of a paper read by Dr. F. H. Spencer, late chief inspector, Education Department, London County Council, before the Royal Society of Arts on November 11 last, and recently made available in print. Although the purpose of the visit was to lecture on English, not to investigate Canadian education, and Dr. Spencer disclaims any title to be listened to as an authority on this subject, his comparisons of school buildings, organization, teacher-training and university extension work in Canada and in England are enlightening, even though admittedly superficial. The most satisfactory of his impressions was of the prevalent enthusiasm for popular education, and the most unsatisfactory was of excessive regimentation alike in the primary and in the secondary schools. He was struck by the importance of the service rendered by the universities through their extension departments, and especially their correspondence courses, to remote but interested and ambitious students in the backwoods. The travels of the university extension tutors in the winter into such remote regions provide them with a stimulating adventure—an experience to which a counterpart has sometimes been found in Great Britain, for remoteness is not always to be measured in miles. In the course of the discussion following the reading of the paper, Prof. Krug of Mt. Allison, New Brunswick, observed that there have been few more worthy contributions to Canadian education and to Empire unity than the visit paid to Canada last year by a group of British school administrators and inspectors; a visit which made, he said, a really deep impression.
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Education in Canada. Nature 139, 664 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139664b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139664b0