60 REPORT OF THE SCOTTISH COMMISSION 



movement. In the view of Professor Robertson, if the school 

 trustees in rural areas were to be stimulated by example, the example 

 must come from the towns ; therefore, by his advice, Sir William 

 Macdonald founded throughout Canada manual training centres 

 at twenty-one places, attended by 7000 children, and costing 3600 

 dollars per month for teachers' salaries during three years. At the 

 end of that term the local authorities were free to continue the 

 schools if they pleased. The result of this effort was most gratifying. 

 In every case the local authorities took over the schools and added 

 to them. In Nova Scotia more than twenty school centres of the 

 Macdonald type have arisen, built and conducted by means of local 

 funds. In Ontario, where three Macdonald centres were started, 

 there are now over forty. 



A start in the newer education having been made in the towns, 

 and the method proving a success, the country was likely to follow, 

 provided that the new method proved suitable to the country con- 

 ditions. In the country, provision for nature study, elementary 

 biology, and elementary agriculture was the most desirable change 

 in the curriculum. Professor Robertson and Sir William Macdonald 

 adopted two methods of introducing the new teaching ; first, by 

 providing school gardens, and second, by consolidating rural schools. 



School gardens were attached to each of five schools in each of 

 five provinces. A trained instructor was put in charge of every 

 group of five, giving one day every week to each school in his circuit, 

 and spending his time in the instruction of the teacher as well as 

 of the pupil. Those gardens have been a great success ; and without 

 losing sight of their purely educational objects, most useful lessons 

 have been learned of the advantages of using selected seed, of the 

 methods of protecting crops from insect and fungoid diseases, and 

 of the benefits of rotation of crops. One or two of the concrete 

 results from these school gardens may be briefly noted. At a school 

 garden in Prince Edward Island the children reaped 32 per cent, 

 more wheat from a plot sown from selected seed than from a plot 

 sown from unselected seed, and when barley followed clover, 

 the extra yield was 17 per cent, more than when barley 

 followed a cereal. As remarkable as these results on crops, 

 are the effects on the children themselves. In Ontario uniform 

 examinations for entrance to high schools are held in July. In 

 1906, in Carleton county, in schools without gardens 49 per cent, 

 of the candidates were successful ; from five schools with gardens 

 71 per cent, of the pupils were successful. Thus it was shown that 

 the work with the hands and in the garden increased, rather than 

 diminished, the capacity for book work at the desk. 



Consolidation of Rural Schools 



In spite of everything that can be done for it, the rural school 

 must remain inefficient in a sparsely settled district. It is too 

 small and badly equipped, its teacher is almost always underpaid, 

 and is therefore discontented, or a mere bird of passage. The 

 remedy is to consolidate a number of rural schools into one larger 



