176 THEISLAND ACADIANS

Professor J.-Henri Blanchard paints a fairly accurate picture of the amount of time allotted to the instruction of French in the Acadian schools. His observations of 1937 are valid for almost the entire 1890 to 1945 period:

The French curriculum in the sixty-two schools in Acadian localities is limited to instruction in reading, grammar, dictation and a bit of composition. A few rare schools teach the history of Canada in French. In some schools French is used for arithmetic and geography, but as a general rule these subjects are taught in English. In most schools even beginners are introduced to the different subjects by means of the English language.

In several schools where French is encouraged more, the pupils learn to read French. They start learning English at the end of their first year, after which the languages are taught concurrently. Ordinarily in these schools the morning lessons are devoted to French reading and the afternoon ones to English reading. (TR)*’

Due to numerous obstacles even this curriculum was not always respected. First of all, a shortage of francophone teachers meant that some districts were obliged to hire teachers with little or no knowledge of French. Inspector Joseph Blanchard pointed out in 1902 that schools in that predicament did not obtain very satisfactory results: “Imagine a teacher with no French and children with little or no English, and you can form an idea of the thoroughness of the work done**”. In 1926, for example, seventeen of the sixty-three teachers responsible for Acadian classes were English-speaking’*. Another obstacle resulted from the fact that many Acadian teachers were poorly qualified to teach French since almost all their training had been in English. It was not surprising, therefore, that the teaching of the Acadians’ mother tongue left much to be desired. Inspector J.-Wilfred Arsenault sounded the alarm in his report of 1936: “I have concluded that, unless our present system of teaching French and preparing teachers for our Acadian Schools is immediately revolutionized, the French Acadian Schools of our Island will soon be French in name only*®”.

Acadian communities began to take more and more interest in the upkeep of their schools. Matters concerning the cleanliness, appear- ance and furnishing of schools would often be discussed at the Acadian Teachers’ Association conventions and at regional assemblies. During the 1890s Acadian schools started celebrating Arbor Day, a school holiday instituted in the province in 1885*’. On that day pupils would