144 EDUCATION IN NOVA SCOTIA. 1766 at Harbor Grace, and a fourth in the following year at Sally Cove. Other schools were founded in 1778, 1790, 1798, 1810, 1811. These schools, with their lending libraries and gifts of Bibles and Books of Common Prayer to those who learned to read, had a marvellous effect on the population, and laid the foundation for the work of the Newfoundland School Society which Samuel Codner founded in 1823. The English Government of that date, awakening to the need for popular education, aided the Society by grants of land for school purposes, by gifts of money for school buildings, by grants for the salaries of teachers who were taken out to the islands on ships of war. The first school was open for the 'poor of all denominations" on September 20th, 1824, and was conducted under the monitorial system. The schools with the aid of the Colonial and Continental Church Society rapidly multiplied. The first grant in aid of education by the local Legislature was made in 1836. In 1842 there were sixty schools with 3500 scholars, and the future of education in Newfoundland was assured. Nova Scotia. 28. As early as 1749 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent six clergy and six schoolmasters to Nova Scotia. The schools were at first supported by the fees of pupils, but towards the end of the eighteenth century they were aided by small Government grants. The Provincial Legislature established a seminary at Windsor in 1788, and a grammar school at Halifax in 1789. King's College was incorporated in the same year and obtained a grant in 1790. In 1802 this college received the Royal Charter with an endowment of £1000 a year, but no member of the college was allowed to attend any place of worship where Divine Service was not performed according to the Liturgy of the Church of England. Grammar schools were established with grants by the local Education Act of 1811. In 1805 a movement in favour of undenominational education had been started, but the effort to found a STATE EDUCATION IN ONTARIO. 145 State-aided undenominational university at Picton failed. In 1814 and 1817 respectively schools on the systems of Lancaster and Bell were started and received Government aid. An attempt to establish free education made in 1825 was unsuccessful, but the principle of the admission of a certain number of free scholars was adopted in 1841, and general free education was introduced in 1864. Altogether Nova Scotia is an interesting instance of the early introduction of effective State-aid and of wide-spread interest in educational questions. 29. In the case of Ontario, more detailed information might well have been given in the reports as to the early history of education. We are told, however, that four grammar schools were founded in December, 1798, and were endowed by the Government with waste lands; that, from the earliest settlement, schools were established; and that a University was founded as early as 1827. In 1844 the elementary schools were placed upon a comprehensive basis, and in 1876 they were brought under the control of the Minister of Education. Ontario. Jamaica. 30. The complaint as to a dearth of early information in the case of Ontario may be made with greater force in the case of Jamaica. The report tells us that there were two or three elementary day schools for children of free parents previous to 1820. Information might well have been given as to important earlier efforts promoted by the State. The extremely early date of those efforts make them important and justify some references to them here that are not contained in the report. In 1695, among the Acts of the Assembly passed in the Island of Jamaica, was "An Act for erecting and establishing a Free-school in the Parish of St Andrew" on land given by Nicholas Laws of that parish. The Act runs as follows:-"That it shall and may be lawful to make and establish on the said Land a Free-school, for the Abiding, Dwelling, and necessary Use of one or more School1 Acts of the Assembly, 1681-1737, No. 62. 1 146 JAMAICA EDUCATION ACTS, 1695, 1736. masters and Ushers of the Religion of the Church of England, for the instructing (without Charge) of Youth, in Reading, Writing, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arithmetick, Merchantsaccompts, and the Mathematicks." "Youth" included "the Children of the Parish of St Andrew and Kingston, and the Children of all such as shall settle to the Value of Five Pounds per Annum, or pay Fifty Pounds current Money of Jamaica, for the Improvement and Advancement of the said School." The appointment of the school-governors, after a period, was invested in the Governor of the island. It seems probable that this school was both privately endowed and aided by the Government. Whether this is so or not we have here an undeniable example, at a very early date, of State intervention in education, and it must be remembered that this was at a time when general education in England was at a very low level. The Assembly at Jamaica passed a further Act in 1736' for erecting and establishing in Kingston a free school under the will of John Wolmer of Kingston. These instances did not involve any compulsory system, but they show an interest by the State in education in unusually early days. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, education had fallen on evil times. As we have seen, elementary education previous to 1820 consisted of two or three day schools for free children. Between 1820 and 1834 there were founded seven Church of England schools for the children of free parents and 40 schools of various denominations for slave children. The slaves were emancipated in 1834, and the British Government, with a compassion that with greater justice might have been shown to the unemancipated children of Manchester and Preston, expended in 1835-6 about £50,000 in the erection of school houses. State-aid for distant colonies. At this date about the same sum in all had been expended by the State on elementary educa- 1 Acts of the Assembly, 1681-1737, No. 373. EDUCATION IN BRITISH GUIANA. 147 facts indeed about colonial education is the early aid that was given by a home Government that allowed its own children to grow up under mental, moral and physical conditions too appalling for description. Well fostered, the work in Jamaica grew apace. In 1837, 12,580 children were on the books of 183 elementary day schools, with an average attendance of 777 per cent., while there were 139 Sunday-schools with the names of 20,870 scholars on the books, and 95 evening schools with 5304 scholars; and all these in addition to 124 private schools. From 1837 to 1842 there was a yearly State grant from England of £30,000, and a gradually diminishing grant was made until 1846, whilst a further source of revenue was found in Lady Mico's Trust, which in 1836 was converted by the Court of Chancery from the extinct purpose of redeeming Christian captives in Algeria to the laudable object of educating emancipated negroes in Mauritius, Jamaica, and other West Indian Islands. In spite of continual protection the tropical growth of education in Jamaica withered very rapidly. It was cursed from the first with the monitorial system, and took no deep root. Mr Lowe's method of examination was, however, introduced in 1867, and under sound economic conditions education revived. British 31. Some reference must be made to British Guiana. As early as 1808 the London Missionary Society sent a teacher to this remote Colony. In 1824 a proposal to establish free schools for boys and girls received some support. In 1830 there was a Government grant for education of £150, and in 1838 the Legislature voted a considerable sum for schools. At an early date the British and Foreign Bible Society established a school at New Amsterdam, while about 1836 six undenominational schools were founded out of Lady Mico's converted Trust. Teaching in the various schools was bad-an inevitable 148 DUTCH EDUCATION IN CAPE COLONY. concomitant of the monitorial system. Government grants in aid of secondary education began in 1844, and Queen's College, Georgetown, a Church of England grammar school, was incorporated by ordinance in 1848 and received grants until 1876. 32. We now turn to Cape Colony. It is here, the reports tell us, that we find the earliest trace of any Cape Colony. Colonial system of elementary education. It must, however, be pointed out that the Dutch South African schools of the seventeenth century were in no sense comparable with, nor so early in date as, the highly-developed educational systems brought into existence in the New England States in the same century, while we may reasonably doubt if education. in the true sense of the word really existed at the Cape before the beginning of the eighteenth century. The rule of the Dutch East India Company at the Cape practically lasted from 1652 to 1806. As early as 1656 a school was established at Cape Town for the instruction of slave children from the West Coast of Africa. The instruction was intended to include reading, writing, the casting of accounts, and religious training. The school lasted only a few weeks, but was revived in 1661. A second school was opened in 1663 with 17 pupils, namely, one Hottentot, four slave children, and twelve Europeans. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught. Poor children were instructed for "the love of God." The first school at Stellenbosch was opened in 1683; the cost of building was chiefly borne by the Council of Policy. In 1690 an infant school was opened at Cape Town, and in 1700 a school was founded at Drakenstein. These beginnings are hardly comparable with the work carried on at the same date in New England, where, as we have seen, a carefully elaborated scheme of elementary and secondary education had been placed upon the Statute Book as early as 1650, and were, as we shall see, far behind the system of education carried on in the Isle of Man in the beginning of the eighteenth century. |