pupil, and to bring into play their best mental faculties. But there can
be no doubt that the success of the system rests in a very great measure
on the effort that has been made to improve the status of the teacher.
The schoolmaster is no longer a man who resorts to education because
everything else has failed. He is no longer one of that class of
'adventurers, many of them persons of the lowest grade,' who, we are
told, infested the rural districts of Upper Canada in olden times,
'wheresoever they found the field unoccupied; pursuing their speculation
with pecuniary profit to themselves, but with certainly little advantage
to the moral discipline of their youthful pupils.' [Footnote: Preston's
'Three Years in Canada' (1837-9), p. 110, Vol. ii.] The fact that such
men could be instructors of youth, half a century ago, is of itself a
forcible illustration of the public indifference to the question of
popular education. All the legislation in Ontario, and in the other
provinces as well, has been framed with the object of elevating the
moral and intellectual standing of a class on whose efforts so much of
the future happiness and prosperity of this country depends. On the
whole, the object has been successfully achieved, and the schoolmasters
of Ontario are, as a rule, a superior class of men. Yet it must be
admitted that much can still be done to improve their position.
Education, we all know, does not necessarily bring with it refinement;
that can only come by constant communication with a cultured society,
which is not always, in Canada, ready to admit the teacher on equal
terms. It may also be urged that the teacher, under the system as now
perfected, is far too much of an automaton--a mere machine, wound up to
proceed so far and no farther. He is not allowed sufficient of that free
volition which would enable him to develop the best qualities of his
pupils, and to elevate their general tone. Polite manners among the
pupils are just as valuable as orderly habits. Teachers cannot strive
too much to check all rudeness among the youth, many of whom have few