The invention of public school was a long time ago. Before public education in pre confederation Canada there were very few people that that were educated at an adequate level. This paper will go over many topic about public education in pre confederation Canada including some influential people that helped out with how the public school systems got up and running. Those individuals include Egerton Ryerson, the first chief superintendent of common schools in Upper Canada, Patrick Thornton, superintendent of the district of Gore, and J.W Dawson, author of books and principal of Mcgill university. Another topic included is what school was like in general, the kinds of schools there were, separations of the schools by gender and ethnicity. Then finally the last topic is classes; within that topic includes the classes you had to take, and then goes over a textbook written by J.W Dawson.
There were many people that influenced the making of public education in Upper Canada back before confederation. Egerton Ryerson, Patrick Thornton, and J.W Dawson were just a few to name that made an impact on public education.
Egerton Ryerson was a man born and raised in Upper Canada. Ryerson had many accomplishments throughout his career, some being principal of Victoria College in 1841, in 1836 founded the Upper Canada Academy, then in 1844 was appointed Chief Superintendent of the Common Schools. While he was Chief Superintendent before opening any schools he traveled all over the world to places like the states, England, and 8 other European countries to find facts and gather informations about education. Once he gathered his information Ryerson went to the legislature to make a report about public education and how it should be government funded and open to everyone should be welcome to come regardless of economic status. While getting the schools started he had teachers trained to specific standards to be able to teach the students to a certain standard.
The next influential figure is Patrick Thornton. Patrick Thornton was the Superintendent of the district of Gore in the late 1840s, District of Gore is now the modern day Hamilton, Ontario area. Thornton was a very strict individual when it came to education, he would refuse to grant certificates to students that lacked punctuality. He wanted students to be competent when they left school. In the Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada page 287 Thornton was quoted saying “It is a matter of regret that the old parrot system of repeating words without attaching ideas to them, does still in too many instanced prevail; and the dregs must remain till some of the old formal teachers are off the field.” reading this makes a person think that Thornton really wanted to make a difference in the world of education.
The final influencer is J.W Dawson, full name John William Dawson was gentlemen from Nova Scotia and an author and principal at McGill University. Dawson was an author of many educational material including the textbook First Lessons in Scientific Agriculture for Schools and Private Instruction that will be reviewed later in this paper. He also publish many things in Botany, Zoology, Archaeology, Agronomy, and linguistics. He was a very passionate man about education, while at McGill University before he got appointed as principal of the University he did many things to change the campus for the better one of them being that he cleaned up the campus at his own expense. Once he got principalship of the University in 1855 he continued to make positive changes to the University he reinvented McGill taking on tasks like indexing the library, teaching, all while keeping up with his administrative duties. When making all these changes to the University the Board of Governors noticed and that’s why he was was given the “reins” (mcgill.ca) of the University. As quoted in a write up on Dawson in the McGill University website the was the “man who made McGill” he realized students lacked the education to make them university material, so he founded the McGill Normal School to train teachers to teach people well enough for university. He helped McGill get away from the old world models of teaching because he wanted to make a lasting impact on all the individuals that attended university.
In 1846 Canada pass the Common School act which took for the most part education out of private hands. When Egerton Ryerson did his report to the legislature about school being government funded there was a tax assessment done on the residents to cover the construction of schools and the policies were guided by the locally elected school commissioners, but this made the poorer community members resent the new levy. Once the schools got going education was still only being enjoyed by the minority of people. In the Hamilton area, where Patrick Thornton was the superintendent, not quite half of the population between the ages of 5 and 16 were attending school, and crept to around 40% of children between the ages of 7 and 13 attended after the schools got running, but there were the people that could afford private tutors or schools abroad like seniors of the Hudson Bay Company traders with aboriginal wives sent their children abroad to britain schools. For the people that went to school it was linked to individual accomplishment and social improvement, also better education bettered democratic responsibility and economic dynamic.
There were plenty of separations in the school during this time. Separations that include parochial school, private school, public school, gender, indigenous and non-indigenous. Parochial schools were the schools that followed a religious setting, private schools were religious schools but also included specialty schools, and public schools were just general learn all kind of schools.
Separation of gender in schools was quite the norm during this period, and looking at the image below is the Ground Plan, Education Offices and Normal School and Model School. By looking at this particular image you can see that girls and boys shared the schools like we do now, but they have their own separate sides of the building except for the front half of the school where the offices and theatre were.
One other big separation was the residential schools between indigenous and non-indigenous individuals. Ryerson wanted to have everyone educated including the indigenous people in canada, but wanted them to be separate from non-indigenous people to convert them to Christianity so then they could take in the Euro-Canadian culture. To help this culture cleanse they also separated the indigenous from there families to be sent to school for education and cultural conversion. These indigenous students were taught religion, the english language, and would be taught in agricultural subjects to train the students into farming. They would also study academic subjects like history, geography, writing, music, book-keeping and agricultural chemistry just like other schools. Residential schools were still overseen by the government but were run by religious organizations in hopes that it would help with the assimilation.
Finally classes that were taken in schools there were numerous classes individuals would have to take in order to reach the adequate level of education they need. Those classes would have included, writing, reading, history, geography, sciences, maths, and more. One subject that was studied on the boys side of school was agricultural science, J.W Dawson wrote a textbook on the subject as mentioned before called First Lessons in Scientific Agriculture for Schools and Private Instruction. In this textbooks gives detailed lessons about agricultural science, it lays out many units in the 14 chapters to be able to understand what scientific agriculture is. Each chapter has anywhere from one to fourteen units in them ranging from the science of the plants and the chemicals in the plants, to the plants themselves, to the practical uses of the course.
Education as been around for a long time, even before the common schools act was passed there was still a school system that was on going but Egerton Ryerson just made it accessible for everyone. There are many similarities between now and then since the education system has also grown a over the years. The influential people has changed, but we still look up to people like Egerton Ryerson that started it all, and we still have separated schools that are separated by gender and religion but we separation is by choice not by force, but the most similar thing is the classes that were talking we still all have to learn the same things but we now we have adapted it with the technology that has been developed since pre confederation. In conclusion to everything, public education has come along way since Ryerson started it.