History 349
Education and Childhood in Canada
Schedule of Classes - Fall 2008
2 September (Tuesday) Introduction
The first class will provide an overview of the course. We'll discuss assignments and course objectives.
4 September (Thursday) Overview
We'll preview topics and themes associated with the history of education and youth in Canada.
9 September (Tuesday) Imported Traditions from Western Europe
The educational ideas and policies of the Roman Catholic church and major Protestant denominations will be considered here. We'll also discuss the ideas and influence of philosophers and pedagogues like John Locke, Johann Pestallozi and Jean Jacques Rousseau.
11 September (Thursday) Imported Traditions from Great Britain
We'll discuss monitorial schools run by voluntary organizations like the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor. We'll look at the influence of prestigious English "public" schools like Rugby, celebrated in Thomas Hughes' novel, Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857); and we'll look at the role of Sunday schools in providing informal education to working-class children in Britain and in British North America.
16 September (Tuesday) Education & Childhood in 19th Century Canada
The earliest schools in Canada were established in New France in the 1630s and were maintained by Roman Catholic religious orders such as the Sulpicians and the Ursulines. But the education of children in New France was limited by a number of factors. Children in the English colonies had more educational opportunities.
We'll consider the influence of Horace Mann, secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, called "the father of American public school education,". We'll review the educational ideas and policies of Egerton Ryerson, Superintendent of Education in Canada West (Ontario). Ryerson, who was inspired by Mann and by educators in Europe, developed a public school programme that was imported to other parts of English Canada, notably British Columbia.
18 September (Thursday) The Politics of Education in Canada
In this country, as in most other countries, public education is a hot button topic. Indeed, questions relating to schools have provoked political firestorms and sometimes contstitutional crises. We'll review some important milestones and controversis, including the vexatious Manitoba schools question.
23 September (Tuesday) Foundations of the Public School System in British Columbia
We'll look at children in the colony of Vancouver Island (1849) and British Columbia (1858]. We'll consider the career of John Jessop, a disciple of Egerton Ryerson, and Jessop's role in developing a provincial public school after 1871. We'll look at his efforts to provide "schools for a scattered people" and a standardized, accountable system throughout the province of British Columbia.
25 September (Thursday) Pioneer Teachers & Teacher Training
The nineteenth century curriculum is revealed in documents such as the Course of Study for Common Schools, 1890 and the Summary of the Curriculum, c. 1898. We'll look at a teachers' qualification exam from the 1890s and events leading to the establishment of the Provincial Normal School for teacher training in Vancouver in 1901. (A second Normal School opened in Victoria in 1915). We'll discuss the advent of university-based teacher training (starting at UBC in 1956) and the origins of the British Columbia College of Teachers (1986). We'll also examine the plight of rural teachers in the last century.
30 September (Tuesday) Workshop on book reviews
In this session, we will review guidelines for writing book reviews. The book reviews are due on October 9th.
2 October (Thursday) Progressivism & the "New Education"
We'll look at the advent of the "New Education" in Canada. We'll see how the public school curricula in Canada was influenced by the ideas of John Dewey, the American educator and philosopher, and by programmes associated with "social efficiency" in Britain. Reformers were everywhere in the early 1900s - or so it seemed. Agnes Deans Cameron, BC's first female high school teacher and elementary school principal, said that every time she opened her classroom door, "someone with 'a mission' would fall in."
7 October (Tuesday) School & the State
During the early decades of the twentieth century, children were regarded as key components in developing an "efficient" society. In British Columbia, the public school curriculum was appropriated by social reformers who held a single view of the ideal community.
- Mona Gleeson, "Race, Class and Health: School Medical Inspection and 'Healthy' Children in British Columbia," Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2002): 95-112.
9 October (Thursday) Progressivism & the "New Education"
We'll discuss the essential parts and key proponents of the progressive curriculum - including home economics (advocates: Adelaide Hoodless and Alice Ravenhill) and manual training (advocates Sir William Macdonald and James Wilson Robertson). We'll review some of the fundamental parts of the progressive curriculum -- including manual training, home economics, physical training, nature study and elementary agricultural education. In British Columbia, John Wesley Gibson, Dr. H. B. King and the Minister of Education, Dr. G. M. Weir, were important players. We'll also consider the preoccupation with Character Education.
14 October (Tuesday): Review for mid term exam
We will review course material and discuss the kind of questions that students will be asked to consider on the mid-term exam.
16 October (Thursday) Mid term exam
21 October (Tuesday) Mid Term Review and Lessons in Living [1944 NFB film]
We'll review the mid term exam and discuss strategies for preparing for the final exam. Then we'll look at a 1944 film that celebrates many of the hallmarks of progressivism, including co-operativism and the consolidation of rual school districts. Lessons in Living was made in Lantzville by one of Canada's most distinguished documentary film directors. The film features real pupils, real teachers, real parents, and a real school inspector (the formidable Dr. Plenderleith). But it also features some myth-making and inventions.
23 October (Thursday) Cultures & Identities
As noted earlier, schools were often used as vehicles for social and cultural assimilation. In this session, we'll discuss the school experiences of immigrant groups (Chinese, Japanese, Doukhobors) and First Nations.
Jean Barman, "Schooled for Inequality: The Education of British Columbia Aboriginal Children," in Jean Barman, Neil Sutherland, and J. Donald Wilson, eds., Children, Teachers & Schools in the History of British Columbia (Calgary: Detselig Enterprises, 1995), pp. 57-80 [handout].
28 October (Tuesday): Kindergarten
In this session we will discuss the influence of Friedrich Froebel, founder of the kindergarten movement, and the success of James Laughlin Hughes in promoting kindergartens in Canada. We'll discuss the growth of kindergartens in British Columbia and look at the first provincial kindergarten curriculum.
30 October (Thursday): Better Babies & Fitter Families
Parents used to enter their infant children in "better baby" competitions held at country fairs and exhibitions (like the PNE in Vancouver). The competitions celebrated maternity, but also reflected a contemporary regard for eugenics.
- Gerald E. Thomson, "'A Baby Show Means Work in the Hardest Sense:' The Better Baby Contests of Vancouver & New Westminster Local Councils of Women, 1913-1929," BC Studies, No. 128 (Winter 2000/2001): 5-35.
4 November (Tuesday): Infants & Experts
In this session, we'll look at the role of childcare "experts" and the challenge they posed to "ordinary" parents. We'll also look at the controversy surrounding Canada's most famous children, the Dionne Quintuplets.
6 November (Thursday) High School Culture
High schools became increasingly important as social institutions and defining places of teen-age culture. In this session, we'll look at key components of high school culture, including sports teams, activity clubs and romance.
- Cynthia Comacchio, "Inventing the Extracurriculum: High School Culture in Interwar Ontario," Ontario History, vol. 93, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 33-56.
11 November (Tuesday) Remembrance Day
Class cancelled so that students can commemorate Remembrance Day and participate in Remembrance Day activities.
13 November (Thursday) The Baby Boom Generation
The education system, family life, social attitudes and values were influenced profoundly a cohort of children who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. In this session, we'll look at the impact and legacy of the baby boom. We'll also consider popular attitudes towards sex education.
- Mary Louise Adams, "Constructing Normal Citizens. Sex Advice for Postwar Teens," in Robert Adamoski, Dorothy E. Chunn and Robert Menzies, eds., Contesting Canadian Citizenship. Historical Readings (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002): 273-292.
18 November (Tuesday) Effective Living
In this sessioin, we'll discuss controversies relating to a 1950s "family values" course called Effective Living.
20 November (Thursday) Your schooling & childhood
You're invited to discuss your recollections of childhood and schooling. Do your experiences relate to any of the themes and topics that we have considered in this course?
25 November (Tuesday) TBA
27 November (Thursday) Last day of Classes: Review and Overview
In this session we'll draw together the various threads of documentation, interpretation,
and discussion that have informed previous classes in order to provide a summary of the
course.