Page:The empire and the century.djvu/438

 same time provision was made to establish an 'object-lesson' consolidated rural school in each of the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Three of those schools are in operation, and a fourth is to be opened in May, 1905. A school board representing the whole area replaces the school boards of the several single schools merged into the central one. The children are conveyed from their homes to and from school in covered vans. The greatest distance of the routes is from 3½ to 6 miles. Some children over fourteen years of age attend, and children under five may be enrolled. All come more regularly. The average attendance has been increased by 70 per cent. at two of the consolidated schools, and by over 150 per cent. at another. Each of these consolidated schools has a school garden and Nature-study work, equipment for household science work in cooking and sewing, and manual training in woodwork. The Macdonald Rural Schools Fund meets, for a period of three years, the additional expense of the consolidated schools over the cost of the small rural schools. The school sections and other authorities contribute exactly the former expenditure. The school remains under the management of the local authorities, and the extra cost is met by the Macdonald Fund for three years, to enable the people of these five provinces to have this object-lesson and experiment in education.

Special Teachers.—To begin and carry on that work it was necessary that it should not be conducted in an amateurish way. I conferred with the educational authorities in the provinces, and got the names of one or two of their best teachers for the rural schools in each province. For New Brunswick I took the science master of the Normal School, a former country teacher, and another teacher who was eminently successful with a school garden of his own. I obtained suitable men from the other provinces. I made a class of these teachers from Canada, and sent them to the University of Chicago, where they had a Nature-study course under