Page:Carnegie Flexner Report.djvu/344

326 At this moment the needs of the Dominion could be met by the four better English schools and the Laval department at Quebec. Toronto has practically reached the limits of efficiency in point of size; McGill and Manitoba are capable of considerable expansion. The future of Kingston is at least doubtful. It could certainly maintain a two-year school; for the Kingston General Hospital would afford pathological and clinical material amply sufficient up to that point. But the clinical years require much more than the town now supplies. Its location—halfway between Montreal and Toronto, on an inconvenient branch-line— greatly aggravates the difficulties due to the smallness of the community. The rapid development of the Northwest Territory will undoubtedly hasten the growth of the Winnipeg school; other institutions will in time be established nearer the Pacific coast as the country grows in population.

The legal standard in the Dominion has not thus far been high; but it has practically been elevated a year by the general movement to prolong the course to five years. Meanwhile, the high quality of instruction offered by McGill and Toronto to students ho enter on less than a four-year high school education proves that our trouble in the United States has been at bottom not less one of low ideals than of low standard Indeed, where ideals are low, there are no standards; and where ideals are high, the standards; even though low, is at any rate so definite that it furnishes a sure starting-point towards a clearly apprehended goal. The low standard school in the United States has had no such starting-point and no such goal.