✨ Report of the Inspector of Schools
147
constituted at the mouth of the Grey, and other townships on the West Coast may shortly be expected to apply to have the benefits of the provincial system of education extended to them. Claims, more or less well founded, have also been preferred by those residing in the interior of the province. But most, if not all, of the schools in these new districts will necessarily be small at first, and, on that account, comparatively costly. It has, however, been justly held to be one of the best points of the present system, that it assists the numerically weak, and renders possible the establishment of schools in neighborhoods so poor and so scantily peopled that private enterprise would not, in all probability, reach them for many years.
It has been a standing reproach against the system of Government aid adopted in the mother country that the bulk of the public grant is absorbed by the large towns, where good schools would have been established independently of any such assistance, while the struggling village school, where help is really required, receives comparatively little. If a stranger wished to learn what were the real benefits conferred by our present system of education upon the population at large, I should hardly appeal to our crowded town schools, well conducted as they undoubtedly are.
I should prefer pointing to our remoter country schools,—planted in neighborhoods where no professional, and probably few educated men are to be found—where no place of worship is to be seen—and where the provincial school and the newspaper seem to be the sole agents at work in preserving an infant community, engaged in a constant struggle for bare subsistence, from relapsing into barbarism.
I have the honor to be,
Sir,
Your obedient servant,
W. C. HODGSON,
Inspector of Schools.
Nelson, August 1st, 1867.
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Nelson Provincial Gazette 1867, No 33
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
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Publication of the Report of the Inspector of Public Schools
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🎓 Education, Culture & Science1 August 1867
Education, Schools, Inspector of Schools, Nelson, Provincial system, Government aid, Rural education
- W. C. Hodgson, Inspector of Schools