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320 The way in which my Canadian friends opinions about Common Schools differed from those held everywhere in the United States, supplies a means for measuring the social & moral differences of the two people. Not one of the above objections, whatever weight it may have in Canada, has any weight at all in the United States. There the first thing that in thought about is making the Schools as suitable as possible for all classes, & this object is very largely attained, so that the Upper class need not, & do not hold themselves aloof from them. There, too, instead of noting both feelings & expressions of discontent, that a great number of the lower class in the town do not react? to the Schools, great efforts are made to bring them in, by varying, & adapting to their wants & habits, the character of the Schools, as is done at Boston & New York, & by getting as many people as possible to become volunteer workers [symbol or pen mark] in the effort to persuade such parents to send their children. I was, while at Washington, very much struck & interested by the account unclear Barnard, the Commissioner of Education gave me of the way in which this had been effected. And then as to the deadness? & inefficiency, which show themselves in the Public Schools in Canada, as such as competition with Private Schools causes; and American public & American parents wd not tolerate anything of the kind. And the American teachers themselves are so energetic & ambitious, that they wd be the last in the Community to succumb to such influences. The insufficient inspection the Canadian objectors complain of is a great unclear, but is very far from being an irremediable one. I 273