RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 153 



commission to report on the subject. The importance of protecting 

 and preserving health was the first consideration put forward by the 

 commission. It advocated more vocational training, conservation 

 of the interests of the rural population by education suitable to their 

 needs, training of the girls and women in the elements of the domestic 

 science and arts, and more participation by citizens in local adminis- 

 tration. It pointed out the importance of encouraging local initiative 

 and quoted Sir John Struthers, secretary of the Scottish Education 

 Department, who said that his department "would rather have a 

 thousand men and women in Scotland thinking and planning and 

 striving to make the courses of study and the education meet the 

 needs of their own communities than have 10,000 implicitly doing 

 what the department directed." 



The commissioners stated that, elsewhere, "experience showed 

 that it was an advantage to leave the initiative, the control and ad- 

 ministration of the general work of the school, largely in the hands 

 of the local authority. The central authority should co-operate by 

 putting at the service of the local body the full information which 

 it alone could possess and the benefit of inspection, counsel and advice 

 by experts." 



Proportion of Cost of Education Between Urban and Rural 



Districts 



The commission expressed the following opinion regarding the 

 cost of education: 



" The cities derive the most immediate benefit from the main- 

 tenance of industrial training and technical education, and are finan- 

 cially better able to support it than the small communities in towns 

 and villages and in rural districts. For both reasons a larger pro- 

 portion of the cost of industrial training and technical education 

 might and should be borne by cities than by smaller towns and rural 

 communities." 



The above would probably be true in any country, but is especi- 

 ally true in Canada, where the rural population is so scattered and 

 the production of the rural territory so necessary for the prosperity 

 of the cities. 



Education and Rural Industries 



The commission recommended that in smaller towns the pro- 

 vision at first should be in the nature of courses in industrial science, 

 drawing and calculation, with opportunities for constructive work 

 in wood, metals, textiles, foods or other materials appropriate to the 

 larger industries of the neighbourhood. Out of such classes would 



* Report of Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education, 

 1013. 



