The established research on the origins of the Ontario school system emphasizes the educational ideas of prominent public men who advocated for school reform in the mid-nineteenth century. In this research, scholars focus on official educational records and correspondence among the political and social elite. The initial educational legislation enacted by colonial leaders in Upper Canada is dismissed as largely irrelevant to the school movement of the mid-nineteenth century.
This thesis broadens the analysis of the origins of the Ontario school system by shifting attention back to Upper Canada and by considering the ideas about schooling that were exchanged in a broader public sphere through colonial newspapers, published pamphlets, and petitions. By systematically analyzing the expanding print media of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the educational history of Upper Canada can be seen from a vantage point broader than that of colonial elites or the well-known school promoters. One key conclusion of this study is that print media enabled the emergence of government-aided schooling as a central topic of discourse in Upper Canada. The movement for government-aided schooling in Upper Canada began in earnest during the first decades of the colony's existence. In other words, the intellectual roots of the school movement of the mid-nineteenth century took hold by the 1830s.
Upper Canada was not an equal society, and the official political discourse on education, centralized in the colonial legislature, was a restricted discourse; however, through print media a broader range of participants from various corners of the colony took part in a public discourse concerning educational development. Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, an increasing number of inhabitants, although disconnected by geographic, social, and economic barriers, voiced desires for government-aided schooling that converged in the central meeting place of print media and impacted the official making of educational legislation. Despite varying opinions on the means and ends of government-aided schooling, there was widespread agreement about its need by the 1830s; the debate was no longer about whether government-aided schools were desirable, but rather about what specific kinds of schools would be established. It was this agreement that framed the policy debate among the school promoters of the mid-nineteenth century.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/29794 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Di Mascio, Anthony |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 294 p. |
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