Canada's Council

From India to Canada came swart, white-bearded Sir Rabindranath Tagore. From London came the British Broadcasting Co.'s Education Director J. C. Stobart. From-Czechoslovakia came interpreters of the famed-"Sokol movement" for national physical education. Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan sent representatives. So did Australia and New Zealand. No U. S. educators were officially present, although two were invited from the Adult Education Association; but their absence in no way diminished the grand manner or the importance of the meeting last week in Victoria and Vancouver of the Canadian National Council of Education.

In the U. S. great but humdrum is the National Education Association. To its meetings come no representatives of foreign countries. And, except when a U. S. President addresses the N. E. A., its activities are ignored by the laity, unnoticed by most newspapers.

Contrastingly, Canada's N. C. E. is a shrewd publicist. In 23 Canadian cities and towns are its committees, busy, responsible. No educators may serve on these. Thus is the laity made education-conscious, made to share Canada's educators' responsibility and work.

Not unlike the U. S. educational system is Canada's. To each province, as to each U. S. state, is left the administration of public grade schools, high schools, colleges. But Canadian colleges cling to English form and traditions, resemble Harvard, Yale, Princeton rather than the Universities of Michigan, Nebraska, California.*

Last week's N. C. E. meeting was broadly devoted to "education and leisure." Said Major Fred J. Ney, N. C. E. executive secretary, prime mover of the convention: "The real purpose of this conference ... is to develop a keener appreciation-of the educational problems common to the whole of Canada. .... A more special purpose is to draw the widest possible attention to certain aspects of our western civilization which are crying out for consideration. . . . The older countries [invited to the convention] offer something of a challenge to the voice and speed of our western civilization. . . ." The contributions were not startling. Rabindranath Tagore deplored the constitutional western tendency to material thinking. India's Laurence Frederic Rushbrook Williams, educator, stressed Empire thinking. Of most interest to U. S. citizens was the suggestion that U. S. cinemas be prohibited or strictly censored because of their sex motifs. Also suggested: prohibiting or curtailing sale of sensational U. S. newspapers and magazines in Can ada, abolition of-U. S.-made comic strips, substitution of Canadian. /- The Canadian National Council of Education is only ten years old. It was born in the Rotary Club of Winnipeg. Its father was Winnipeg. Manufacturer W. J. Belman; its godfather, Vincent Massey, now Canadian Minister to the U. S. (see page 11).

* Best known Canadian institutions are the Universities -- Toronto, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Ottawa, McGill, Queen's, Trinity, Victoria, Laval, Dalhousie. /- Approximately 200 U. S. magazines and 30 newspapers are sold regularly in Canada. For U. S. magazines Canada spends some $15,000,000 yearly; for British magazines, some $50,000.