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Education and the Metaphor of the Family: The Upper Canadian Example

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Alison Prentice
Alison Prentice*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Atkinson College, York University
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Extract

The condition of the family was a subject that much preoccupied school promoters in Upper Canada. Like educators in other times and places they blamed the weaknesses of the family for many social ills; at the same time they put forth an idealized portrait of domestic relations as a major hope for social progress. Besides the usual vague complaints and exaggerated hopes, they also had some very specific anxieties about the family, among them two that were clearly associated with the spread of formal schooling and that occurred in many parts of the United States as well as in Canada. The first was the recurring suspicion that some kinds of schools, especially those controlled increasingly by the state, were gradually undermining family authority. The second, which is the subject of this essay, was intimately related to the first and concerned the education of children and adolescents away from home. How could schools and colleges replace the authority, affection, and advice normally provided by families, for these absentees from the domestic fireside?

Type
The Child, the Family, and the State
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 12 , Issue 3: Education and Social Change in English-Speaking Canada. , Fall 1972 , pp. 281 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. The theme of the family and the state and others referred to briefly in this essay will be considered in my doctoral thesis “The Social Thought of Mid-Nineteenth Century Upper Canadian Educators,” currently in preparation for the University of Toronto.Google Scholar

2. McLachlan, James, American Boarding Schools: A Historical Study (New York, 1970). For McLachlan, , it was “one of the major controlling metaphors in American social thought and popular culture” in the antebellum period (p. 115).Google Scholar

3. A helpful discussion of ideal as opposed to actual family patterns may be found in Levy, Marion J. Jr., “Aspects of the Analysis of Family Structure,” in Ansley, J. Coale et al., Aspects of the Analysis of Family Structure (Princeton, N.J., 1965).Google Scholar

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6. Ryerson, Egerton to Arch. Fletcher, January 15, 1846, Ontario Archives Education Papers: RG 2, C 1, Letterbook C, p. 17 [the Education Papers of the Ontario Archives are hereinafter re-referred to under Code and Series numbers as listed in the archives, RG 2, etc.].Google Scholar

7. Strachan, John, A Letter to the Rev. A. N. Bethune, on the Management of Grammar Schools (York, Upper Canada, 1829), p. 43.Google Scholar

8. “Minutes of the Board of Education for Upper Canada, 1823–1833,” February 23, 1831, RG 2, A, p. 152.Google Scholar

9. Circular of the Upper Canada Academy (Cobourg, Upper Canada, 1841), p. 15.Google Scholar

10. Dewar, Edward to Ryerson, Egerton, November 13, 1849, RG 2, C-6-C.Google Scholar

11. Joseph, H. King to Egerton Ryerson, July 12, 1850, RG 2, C-6-C.Google Scholar

12. For details of Strachan's early views and the Family Compact, see my article, “Strachan, John and Early Upper Canada, 1799–1814,” Ontario History 52 (1960):3, and Saunders, R. E., “What Was the Family Compact?” Ontario History 49 (1957):4.Google Scholar

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26. First Lessons in Christian Morals for Canadian Families and Schools (Toronto, 1871), p. 21; First Lessons in Agriculture; for Canadian Farmers and their Families (Toronto, 1871), pp. 171–72; and Elements of Political Economy; or How individuals and a country become rich (Toronto, 1877), especially p. 9.Google Scholar

27. Journal of Education for Upper Canada 7, no. 9 (September 1854): 148.Google Scholar

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35. Ibid., 10:64.Google Scholar

36. Ibid.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., pp. 64–65.Google Scholar

38. Ibid.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., 8:302; see also Headmaster of the Cobourg Grammar School to Hodgins, J. G., February-March 1859, and Master of the Barrie Grammar School to Ryerson, May 15, 1865, RG 2, C-6-C.Google Scholar

40. Minutes of the Board of Education, RG 2, A, p. 155.Google Scholar

41. Hodgins, , ed., Documentary History, 2: 4.Google Scholar

42. Circular of the Upper Canada Academy, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

43. A memorial from the students to Ryerson on his retirement as principal suggests that his residence among them was “anything but agreeable,” and at least one letter to him implies that he had complained at some length about the difficulties of his position. Memorial from Students of Victoria College, 1844, and Spencer, James to Ryerson, Egerton, January 9, 1843, Ryerson Correspondence, United Church Archives, Toronto.Google Scholar

44. Young, T. C. to Hodgins, J. G., June 3, 1847, RG 2, C-6-C; and Hodgins, , ed., Documentary History, 7: 99.Google Scholar

45. Council of Public Instruction Records, RG 2, B (3 vols.), contains many references to student discipline and staff inspection of boarding houses.Google Scholar

46. Toronto Normal School Register of Students, 1847–1873, RG 2, H.Google Scholar

47. McLachlan, , American Boarding Schools, p. 47.Google Scholar

48. Hodgins, , ed., Documentary History, 16: 288; and ibid., 17:178.Google Scholar

49. See for example Anonymous to Ryerson, February 21, 1849, and Yathy, Robert to Ryerson, March 26, 1849, RG 2, C-6-C.Google Scholar

50. Hodgins, , ed., Documentary History, 13: 65.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., 9:206.Google Scholar

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53. Hodgins, , ed., Documentary History, 8: 192.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., 12:224 and 267.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., 9:206.Google Scholar

56. Ibid.Google Scholar

57. Strachan, to Dr. Brown, December 1, 1818, in The John Strachan Letterbook: 1812–1834, ed. Spragge, G. W., (Toronto, 1946), p. 184.Google Scholar

58. Ryerson to Varden, May 20, 1847, RG 2, C 1, Letterbook C, p. 380.Google Scholar

59. Ryerson to Muir, September 6, 1859, RG 2, C-6-C.Google Scholar

60. Hodgins, , ed., Documentary History, 16: 5.Google Scholar

61. “The University Question in a Series of Letters,” Documentary History, ed. Hodgins, J. G., 16: 261–300, contains Ryerson's defense of denominational colleges.Google Scholar

62. The diversity of religious backgrounds was apparent from the beginning. Of 108 students who attended during the fairly typical 3d session (1848–1849) there were 6 Roman Catholics, 21 members of the Church of England, 42 Methodists, 20 Presbyterians, 6 Baptists, 2 Congregationalists, and 13 whose denominations were other or not given. Annual Report of the Chief Superintendent of Schools (1859), table M.Google Scholar

63. Hodgins, , ed., Documentary History, 15: 194.Google Scholar

64. The relationship of educational innovation to perceptions of social class in the mid-nineteenth century I hope to explore elsewhere. See note 1.Google Scholar