Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/863

Rh 781 of the remainder was granted to Upper Canada College, which assumed in Canada the functions of the great public schools of England, and still continues to hold its place at the head of the grammar or high schools of the province. In the earlier years of Upper Canada, the &quot; Clergy Reserves,&quot; set apart originally for the support of a &quot; Pro testant &quot; clergy, were appropriated exclusively by the ministers of the Church of England. Upper Canada became an archdeaconry of the diocese of Quebec ; and the venerable Archdeacon Strachan, whose first labours in Canada had been as master of the Cornwall Grammar School, became the leader both in ecclesiastical and educa tional matters, and&quot; ultimately a privy councillor, member of the legislative council, and bishop of the diocese of Toronto. He was a man of great energy and decision of character ; and under his guidance the lands set apart for the endowment of a provincial university were appropriated to the purpose, and a royal charter was granted by George IV. establishing at Toronto, or York, as it was then called, &quot; one college, with the style and privileges of an university, for the education and instruction of youth and students in arts and faculties,&quot; under the name of King s College. The bishop of the diocese became, ex ojicio, visitor ; and when at length the college was organized, it had its divinity faculty, and its professor of divinity, along with its daily religious services according to the use of the Church of England. The special denominational character thus given to the provincial university excited opposition, and led to the establishment of Queen s College, at King ston, under the control of the Church of Scotland, and of Victoria College, Cobourg, under the Wesleyan Methodist Church. To those have since been added Albert College, Belleville, under the management of the Episcopal Metho dist Church ; and Ottawa College, and Regiopolis College, Kingston, in connection with the Church of Rome. All of those possess university powers, either by Royal Charter, or by Acts of the provincial legislature. By subsequent enactments the constitution of King s College has been greatly modified. Its divinity faculty has been abolished, all denominational restrictions have been removed, and its functions divided between a university proper, modelled after the university of London, with a senate, on which devolves the fixing of the requirements for degrees, the appointment of examiners, and all other university work, as distinct from teaching. The latter is under the conduct and regulation of the professors, who constitute the council, of University College, and undertake all the duties of preparing the under-graduates for the university examina tions in arts and science. Other colleges and schools, both in the faculty of arts and in those of law and medicine, are affiliated to the university, and part of the funds at the command of the senate is appropriated for scholarships, to be competed for at the examinations in the different faculties. On the passing of the Act of 1853, by which the divinity faculty and professorship were abolished, a royal charter was obtained for the establishment of Trinity College, in connection with tho Church of England, with all the powers of a university The system of public instruction for Ontario has hitherto been carried out under the direction of a permanent officer, styled the Chief Superintendent of Education, with the advice of the Council of Public Instruction, originally nominated by the Crown, but latterly including repre sentatives of the universities, of the school inspectors, and the masters of high and piiblic schools. But by a recent Act of the Ontario Legislature, the functions of the Council of Public Instruction have been transferred to a committee of the executive council ; and the functions and duties of the chief superintendent are vested in one of its members, to be designated the Minister of Education. The intro duction of the representative element into the Council of Public Instruction was immediately followed by a conflict between that body and the officers of the department in reference to various proposed modifications ; and the changes now introduced aim at bringing the administration of the system of education more directly under the control of the people through their representatives. There are two normal schools for the training of teachers, one at Toronto, and one at Ottawa ; and it is proposed to establish others at Kingston and London. The high schools are divided into (1) collegiate institutes and (2) high schools for teaching classical and English subjects, and (3) high schools, in which instruction may be limited chiefly to English subjects. Of those there were 108 in all, including 8 collegiate institutes, in 1875, with an attendance of 8437 pupils. The primary schools for junior pupils are styled public schools. The school population, including those between 5 and 16 years of age, was returned in 1874 as numbering 50i,8G9. At the same date there were 4732 schools in full operation, with an attendance of 460,984 pupils. In all the above schools every feature of a denominational character is excluded. The collegiate institutes and high schools are under the control of trustees appointed by the county municipalities, and their maintenance depends on their share of the legislative grant and endowments, supple mented by the annual assessments of the city and county municipalities. The public schools are in like manner supported by legislative grants, and by assessments levied on the requisition of the school trustees in each school section. The essential feature of the whole system is that the people, directly or through their representatives, have the entire control of the schools, including the selection of the teachers, the fixing of their salaries, and the manage ment of the school funds. The one exceptional feature is the Roman Catholic separate schools. Any Roman Catholic can require his school-tax to be paid for the maintenance of the separate schools of his own church ; and with this fund, supplemented from other sources, there were, in 1875, 170 separate schools in Ontario, with an average attendance of 11,123 pupils, or of 22,073 on the school rolls. According to the proportion of the Roman Catholic population, this is less than a third of their children of school age. A large pro portion of the remainder attend the public schools. Masters of high schools are required to be graduates of universities, and to have had previous experience in teaching. Teachers of public schools must hold a normal school or other recog nized certificate of qualification. The principal features of the system of education thus brought into efficient operation have been modelled on those of the states of New York and Massachusetts, and on the normal schools of the Irish National Board of Educa tion. The systems of the other Canadian provinces, with the exception of Quebec, have been framed on this model. In the last-named province, where the great mass of the people are Roman Catholics, the education is in the hands of the clergy, and is avowedly carried on in connection with the Church of Rome. But dissentient or Protestant schools are recognized as a part of the public school system ; and the permanency of this state of things is guaranteed by a clause in the Act of Confederation, which excludes it from the interference of the general legislature. General Remarks. The position which Canada now occupies as a Dominion formed by a confederation of self- governing provinces, united under a central Government, with its own governor-genera], cabinet ministers, senate, parliament, and supreme courts of law, yet nevertheless remaining an integral part of the British Empire, and