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Playing the game: the education of girls in private schools on Vancouver Island

By the mid-nineteenth century academics began to replace the accomplishments in schooling for middle and upper class girls in Britain. Immigrants brought both models to Vancouver Island. Angela College, a religious school clinging to the past, represents the old; Norfolk House, an urban largely day school, and Queen Margaret’s, a country boarding school with some day students, illustrate the two types of the new, reformed schools. This study draws on personal accounts, archival records, and contemporary newspapers to show that parents chose private schools for reasons of ethnic preservation, upward social mobility, and dissatisfaction with local public schools. A comparison of the founding, governance, finance, buildings and grounds, curriculum, headmistresses and teachers, students, parents, and succession plans revealed similarities and striking differences. Parental preference for strong leadership, scholarship, and character-development enabled Norfolk House and Queen Margaret’s to survive; the lack thereof combined with poor management doomed Angela College to failure.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/1602
Date25 August 2009
CreatorsTrueman, Alice Mary
ContributorsRoy, Patricia
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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