Paul Axelrod - The Promise of Schooling: Education in Canada, 1800-1914

THE PROMISE OF SCHOOLING:
EDUCATION IN CANADA, 18001914

The Promise of Schooling explores the links between social and educational change in the complex and dynamic period between 1800 and 1914, when Canadian society and its school systems were forged. It raises and seeks to answer a number of questions: How extensive was schooling in the early nineteenth century? What lay behind the campaign to extend publicly funded education? What went on inside the Canadian classroom? How did schools address the needs of Native students, blacks, and the children of immigrants? What cultural and social roles did universities serve by the beginning of the twentieth century? And how were schools affected by the economic and social pressures arising from the Industrial Revolution?

The book contends that educational authorities built and reformed schools in ways that were not always consistent with their idealistic visions. Economic constraints, political expediency, and the agendas of ordinary citizens all influenced the life of the Canadian school in an era marked by dynamic social change.

Drawing from an abundant scholarly literature published over the last two decades, this study seeks to expose readers to the richness of the field of educational history. Written for a broad audience, it also hopes, by providing historical context, to stimulate informed discussion about educational issues.

(Themes in Canadian Social History)

Paul Axelrod is a professor in the Division of Social Science at York University. His previous publications include Making a Middle Class: Student Life in Canadian Universities during the Thirties and Scholars and Dollars: Politics, Economics, and the Universities of Ontario, 19451980.

THEMES IN CANADIAN SOCIAL HISTORY

Editors: Craig Heron and Franca Iacovetta

PAUL AXELROD

University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1997
Toronto Buffalo London

Printed in Canada

Reprinted 1999, 2001, 2003

ISBN 0-8020-0825-9 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-7815-x (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Axelrod, Paul Douglas

The promise of schooling

(Themes in Canadian social history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-0825-9 (bound). ISBN 0-8020-7815-x (pbk.)

1. Education Canada History 19th century.
I. Title. II. Series.

LA411.7.A93 1997 370.97109034 C90932435-9

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Virtually all young Canadians today embark upon a program of extended schooling, but this was not always the case. In the early nineteenth century, only a minority of young people registered to be students in formal schools, and even fewer attended school on a regular basis. While some schools were publicly subsidized, most depended upon tuition-fee income and private sponsorship in order to survive. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Canadas educational landscape had been dramatically transformed. Publicly funded, free elementary schooling was now the norm, and the majority of young people were sent to school because the law and their parents required them to attend. Secondary schooling, though still inaccessible to most adolescents at that time, would eventually become a regular part of their educational experience. While universities would continue to serve a select constituency, their intellectual and social roles had also been notably modified by the turn of the century.

This book attempts to describe and account for major developments in the history of Canadian schooling up to the beginning of the First World War. It raises and seeks to answer a number of questions. How extensive was schooling in the early nineteenth century? What lay behind the campaign to extend publicly funded education? What went on inside the Canadian classroom? How did schools address the needs of Native students, blacks, and the children of immigrants? What cultural and social roles did universities serve by the beginning of the twentieth century? How were schools affected by the economic and social pressures arising from the Industrial Revolution?

In previous generations, the story of Canadian schooling, from the elementary to the post-secondary levels, was told simply and enthusiastically. Educational visionaries, committed to the scholarly enrichment of their communities, championed the cause of public schooling. Their unstinting efforts bore fruit, and by the end of the nineteenth century, several years of formal education had become the norm for Canadian youth, a prerequisite for the continuing progress of society and the enlightenment of its population.

This study contends that the traditional account of the development of schooling in Canada is not so much incorrect as incomplete. The growth of public schooling should be understood not only as the product of individual enterprise, but as the result of social changes that swept through society in the nineteenth century. As they directed educational policy, school promoters were themselves shaped by the environment in which they lived. The schools they sponsored sometimes encouraged change and sometimes resisted it. This book explores the social context in which educational policy was formed and implemented. It probes, too, the unanticipated consequences and limitations of educational reform.

This study also pays attention to some educational players who were not commonly included in earlier historical accounts focusing on the ideas and accomplishments of educational-policy makers. Parents, teachers, and students also sought, and at times played, an important role in shaping the life of schools and universities. The relations between them and educational authorities were dynamic and complex, and this volume hopes to capture something of that interaction.

Women, visible minorities, and ethnic communities were all affected by educational changes introduced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But they were perceived and treated differently from other students in the educational mainstream. Even as schooling became available to more and more Canadians, gaps remained between the opportunities available to the relatively privileged and to the less advantaged. As they do in other areas of Canadian social history, the themes of gender and social class figure prominently in the annals of Canadian education.

Indeed, as readers will quickly discover, this book is indebted to the work of other historians. In the past two decades, scholarly research in the history of Canadian education has flourished. With energy and sophistication, academics have explored various aspects of this subject from a variety of perspectives, and this book aims to expose readers to the richness of the published literature. Many, though by no means all, of the scholars in the field are mentioned in this text, which also, on occasion, attempts to give readers a flavour of the historiographical debates that have informed their work. Virtually every theme raised in this book merits more exploration than the space available here has allowed, and I hope that those who are so inspired will pursue their study of these subjects. References listed at the end of the book ought to prove helpful in this regard.