140 RUKAL LIFE IN CANADA 



paid teachers with one or two pupils to a class. In 

 Manitoba during the year 1910 there were 62 districts 

 operating schools with an enrolment of 10 or less, the 

 total enrolment being 321, averaging 5.1 per school. 

 These districts spent $35,707, which means that the edu- 

 cation, such as it was, cost $111 per child, based on the 

 average attendance. In marked contrast with these 

 figures are those of the city of Winnipeg, where the cost 

 per pupil was $34, and this included a full collegiate 

 course, together with manual training and domestic 

 science for children in the grades, and school buildings 

 as complete as any in Canada. The era of consolidated 

 schools must come. These will secure an abler, better 

 qualified teaching force; equipment for carrying on 

 work of a vocational nature; the numbers of pupils 

 needed to carry on organized play, the grading of pupils, 

 and an adequate school programme; and the housing 

 and other facilities requisite for the social, recreational 

 and cultural activities of an organized social centre. 



There is a pitiful lack of appreciation of country 

 values. One of these is the beauty of nature ; the love 

 of animals is another ; the privacy and freedom of life 

 another ; environment essentially healthful and creative 

 another. But such values are countless, wide as 

 human life itself and varied as its needs. Even in the 

 new industrial life farm values stand easily first. In 

 "he factory the mechanic tends one operation of one 

 machine; on the farm a man must master all opera- 

 tions of a score of machines. One becomes a machine- 

 tender ; the other an artisan and engineer. 



But these values are unappreciated. Few of those 

 who are freeborn heirs of the country are awake to the 

 charm of the fields. A farmer may be grandly master 



