ly and socially the major undertaking of every community." This problem is the more difficult because our communities have as yet hardly begun to realise the significance and the value of professional equpiment in the teacher. Nor have the great majority of those engaged in the work been able to appreciate the situation. The equipment for the work of teaching, the most important in the community, is for the most part meagre, and the Lature of the employment is casual and temporary. The work provides a stepping-stone for careers lucrative and more in the public eye. It is not recognized as a profession in the same way as are law, medicine or the church. It has not hitherto offered a career. "All of these elements unite to place the teacher in marked dependence upon local provision and circumstance; individual initiative is discounted and reliance is placed upon a more or less readily regulated supply of passive minded instructors." more The first duty of the Department of Education in this connection is to see to the academic training of the candidates. The regular professions have hitherto required the successful completion of a three years' high school course as the minimum equipment for entrance. Hitherto we have been satisfied to accept for training students who have taken only a two years' course. During the past year, however, the Advisory Board took a long step in the right direction by demanding that candidates for the Normal school must have completed grade XI. This regulation will come into effect on July 1, 1916, and means that the entrance requirement for teaching is now equal to that demanded by the best professional schools. Another advance made during the twelve months has been in the lengthening of the third class Normal course from eleven to fifteen weeks. A year's training course has also been provided which enables the holder of a second or first class nonprofessional certificate to complete all his normal training at one time, without being required to go out and teach on the lower grade certificate. These changes have also made possible the enriching of the content of the Normal school curriculum. More attention than formerly will be given to academic. review, and the formal study of sociology will be included in the course. This necessity for formal review of academic subjects is made necessary by the fact that the high schools, as has been stated in former reports, are apt to neglect the regular reviewing of the work of the grades. This neglect is due partly to a certain feeling on the part of the secondary teacher that he can hardly be expected to consider such elementary subjects as reading and writing. A committee appointed by the high school teachers of the province has laboured during the year over the whole question of the high school curriculum, and this committee in its report on time allotment has made provision for this regular review throughout the whole high school course. The report, which includes certain recommendations which must first be dealt with by the University Council, has not yet been adopted owing to the desire of that body to carefully consider the whole question before taking any action. Meantime the Normal school is endeavouring to make some provision to meet the necessities of the case. We are dependent chiefly upon the high schools for the academic training of our teachers, and we look to the Normal school to provide their professional equipment. Another difficulty arises, however, as soon as the graduates of these institutions take their places in the schools. With few exceptions they are young. Their professional training has not in any case extended over more than a year. Their outlook on life is none too wide. Their means do not permit of the pleasures of travel or of the extensive purchasing of books. What can be done to stimulate their growth and to broaden their general and professional interests? The summer schools are doing their part. The number of teachers in attendance is steadily increasing. One hundred and six were present during the summer of 1914. Courses were offered in dress-making and millinery-cooking will be added next year-in woodcarving and construction, in forging, in drawing, basketry and design, as well as in nature study, elementary agriculture and school gardening. We wish to express our appreciation of the very valuable services of Mr. W. J. Warters, director of technical education in Winnipeg and Professor Triggerson of the University of Manitoba. The success of the summer school is largely due to their efforts. The Winnipeg School Board with its usual public spirit and generosity opens the doors of the Kelvin Technical School to the classes. In a few years' time we will have in the province a very considerable number of teachers well qualified to construct classes in manual training, domestic science and scientific nature study. The fact still remains, however, that the rank and file of our people go out to their work insufficiently equipped. Our schools attract few of the graduates from our University. This is not as it should be. If a professorship of education were established there, and if students were permitted to graduate with a major or a minor in that department, as is possible in some of our eastern universities such as McGill, graduates who had elected that option might be permitted to teach, provided suitable arrangements could be made for properly supervised practise teaching during the late spring and early fall. Teachers of this type would speedily prove an influence in their communities and would stand on a par with other professional workers. Such a scheme would not interfere in the least with our present plan of normal training, and it would bring a class of very desirable workers into the service of schools of the better type. There is perhaps no way in which the University could render more useful service to the province than by the creation of a faculty of education. The head of such a department could take charge of a correspondence course for inspectors and principals, leading perhaps to the degree of B. Paed., he could arrange reading courses for teachers, and he would be available as a speaker at educational gatherings. With a three years' high school requirement for entrance to the profession, a year's course in the Normal school and provision for two or three years of properly supervised professional reading and study at the close of the Normal school period, we could in time build up a corps of workers whose influence in the schools could not be estimated. Side by side. with these, and preventing any deadly uniformity in method, the graduates in education from the University would be at work. A generous rivalry between the two classes of teachers would go far to further the interests of the schools. After having made provision for the proper training of our teachers we should be able to ensure to successful practitioners a reasonably permanent tenure of office, a living salary, a pension and, in rural districts, a residence. The first three requisites are already assured in the capital city of the province. In other cities and in the larger towns the vision and public spirit of the school boards have provided the first and second. The Manitoba Educational Association has been devoting a good deal of study to the matter of teachers' pensions, and a goodly number of our rural school districts, chiefly in French, German and Ruthenian communities, have made provision for teachers' residences. If we as a community believe, as we say we believe, that education is the major undertaking of the state, we must take steps to secure efficient workers to make the undertaking successful. The conditions outlined above, and nothing short of them, will make possible the proper staffing of the schools. During the year just ended 452 students completed their third class training, of whom 12 took the eighteen weeks' special course provided in the Brandon Normal school. This course proved a distinct success, but it will not be repeated, owing to the fact that our whole scheme of training has been recast, as indicated above. Next term Brandon will be a second class centre and the full year's course will be put on there. The Winnipeg Normal school has been filled during the year. Two hundred and six teachers attended the second class |