The Educational System in Ontario

Throughout this history course, we covered a wide spread of topics, whether it was Indigenous people and how they impacted Canada, slavery, the gold rush, education, and overall, Pre-Confederation Canada. However, the most intriguing topic we covered in class, for me personally, was education and how it has differed from Pre-Confederation Canada to today. Whether we were learning about residential schools or the educational system in Ontario, the information they both hold was eye-opening. Usually learning about education and the different aspects of it is not very exciting for more people, however, it provides a deeper appreciation for schooling and the educational system for people like me, who want to become teachers in the future. Along with everything else in history, the idea of schooling came from someone, in each of the documents I have chosen to support my ideas about the educational system, they cover how school came to be a part of everybody’s life journey.

Since the document “Public Schools, City of Toronto Report of the Past History and Present Condition of the Common or Public Schools of the City of Toronto” was written in order to establish rules and regulations in the public school system, the chairman and the secretary of the school board mention in the document they wrote for the new city public schools that, “Before submitting, for public information, the statistics of the City Public Schools, for the year of 1858, it has been thought advisable, as this is the first occasion when a compendious report has been published, that the past should be referred to, before noticing the presenthistory of our schools
”[1]Do the school boards today follow this idea of looking back on old mistakes, or ideas and build off them in order to better the school system? The four articles I chose to support my statements throughout this paper, touch on the ideas of the rules that were enforced in the school system as well as different impacts they have on the students, parents and staff. The rules and regulations that are covered in the documents I chose, also outline a lot of the same topics and issues many schools struggle with today. One of the more influential problems schools dealt with then and now, is attendance, “unexpectedly, though, every proposed response to the question of school attendance has raised at least as many issues as it has resolved.”[2]Students in elementary school are not the intended audience schools need to target when it comes to cutting class, they are too young to fully understand what it is. However, middle school, high school and university students understand what they are doing when they decide to not attend class. Those ages are the most common to skip class because it is either seen as “cool” or like most university students, there is a lot going on in other classes, therefore skipping class seems like a logical reason to not attend the class. There are many ways the people on the school board could diminish the problem of students cutting class, as stated in the article written by the chairman and the secretary of the school board, “Under the original School Law, viz., that of 1843, the first step taken towards improving the Common Schools of the Province, was to secure, as far as possible, the services of properly qualified Teachers; and a board of Examiners was appointed by Government to examine and grant certificates, and licenses to teach, to duly qualified Teachers.”[3]By hiring teachers who are qualified to work in the educational system, the board of education is limiting problems they had in previous schools because the new staff had a better idea of the rules, and what is seen as right and wrong. In saying that, the new teachers that are being hired will also be better up to date on the new rules and regulations and will be more careful when enforcing and following them. Whereas an older teacher who has worked in the system for a much longer period of time will have a harder time becoming exposed to the idea of new rules, because trying to switch the rules you’re working by can be difficult, let alone enforcing them in your everyday life.

There are also political views towards education and how it effects the students, Neil claims there are, “Two basic assumptions, therefore, emerge from the literature. First, that children can early acquire basic knowledge, values, and attitudes that influence their future behavior as citizens and political actors; and second, that all political regimes accept pre-adult political education and learning as a necessary prerequisite to their survival.”[4]In order to start a new school system from scratch, the board needed to include every detail, they could possibly think of. Children need to be taught the political aspect of life from a young age, otherwise, they will not grow to understand the value of voting and other political aspects. As a student who has never been taught about politics in school, there are some questions I have towards the political system and how it works. Being taught the real aspects of life, like politics, instead of algebra that will never be applied again in life, can change the outcome of many different situations that take place in the real world. McDonald states, “Ryerson believed that the education office could be used as an effective instrument to help abolish the differences and jealousies among the people of the new united province, while at the same time promoting agreement on those ‘great principles and interests’ that all should share in common. He also believed that this task, although enormous, could be accomplished in time by writing, speaking, and strictly controlling books and literature made available to the public at large, but particularly youth.”[5]When McDonald mentions, Ryerson’s hope for the diminishing of the ‘differences and jealousies’, he is touching on the idea of democracy in the educational system and how everything should have the same common grounds when it comes to the learning outcomes schools practice. After Ryerson was working hard in order for everyone to understand that organization and coherence are important when it comes to the educational system for both staff and students, the secretary and chairman included a section in their rules and regulations which stated, “a parent removing from one part of the City to another, to his annoyance found, upon sending his children to the school of the section he now lived in, that the teacher practiced a different system of instruction, and used textbooks altogether different from what the child had been accustomed to in the school it had just left; and besides this, there was a want of purpose and organization
”[6]This shows the staff of each school within the area that, all of the schools need to have a constant teaching curriculum that they all follow in order for the children to succeed. This also shows the parents that, no matter which school their child attends, they will be learning the exact same material as the next school over. This ensures that there are no biases or democracies towards the different types of families and their situations. Towards the end of the article “Public Schools, City of Toronto. Report of the Past History and Present Condition of the Common or Public Schools of the City of Toronto”, they document the learning averages of the male students and the female students in order to understand if the rules and regulations they are practicing are working or not. The chairman and secretary state, “Improvement in anything cannot be accomplished without an increased expenditure. Education, surely, is not to be the exception
the whole blame lies at the door of those for whom the benefits were provided, but who, nevertheless, are not sufficiently alive to the advantages of them; otherwise, in a populous city like Toronto, every school-room would be filled with anxious pupils, urged on to a regular and punctual attendance by equally anxious parents.”[7]This quote demonstrates the common problem that still surrounds schools all over the world today; if there isn’t enough money put into a school or the educational system, overall it won’t go as far as people want it to. The only people to blame for that would be the people who either benefit from it or don’t care enough, as Beard and Barber mentioned previously.

After looking through all of the articles that were chosen to help support the ideas I held towards this topic, I don’t believe schools are the same as they were in 1859, when they just opened because practicing rules and regulations constantly, becomes boring to most people. After a while of accustoming yourself to the new rules, it becomes a lazy, everyday thing for most people. As a child who was forced to move around a handful of times for my parents career, I learned that schools are not the same everywhere, they do not teach the same material, follow the same guidelines or participate in the same activities. There is also not enough money put into schools anymore, parents will pay the fees but anything extra the students want, they need to make up fundraisers for it, whereas back in 1859, parents would have bent over backwards for their children to get a good education. In today’s day, there are too many people with the mentality of not needing school in order to find a career, which stops them from graduating at high levels of any educational platform. In 1859, people still understood the values of working hard for what you want, which is why these rules and regulations were enforced on the education system.

 

Bibliography

Beard, J.G and Barber, J.A Barber. Public Schools, City of Toronto. Report of the Past History and Present Condition of the Common or Public Schools of the City of Toronto. Toronto (Ont.). Board of School Trustees. 1859, Toronto: Lovell & Gibson.

Gaffield, Chad. Children, Schooling, and Family Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century Ontario. (University of Toronto Press, 2016).

McDonald, Neil. Egerton Ryerson and the School as an Agent of Political Socialization. Schooling in Transition, University of Toronto Press, 2012.

Ryerson, Egerton. The Common School Acts of Upper Canada: and the Forms, Instructions, and Regulations for Executing Their Provisions: Together With the Circulars Addressed to the Various Officers Concerned in the Administration of the School Law.University of Toronto, Lovell and Gibson. 1853.

 

[1]J.G. Beard and G.A. Barber. Public Schools, City of Toronto. Report of the Past History and Present Condition of the Common or Public Schools of the City of Toronto. Lovell and Gibson, Yonge Street. 1859. Page, 9.

[2]Chad Gaffield. Children, Schooling, and Family Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century Ontario. University of Toronto Press. Page, 157.

[3]J.G Beard and G.A Barber. Past history and Present conditions. Page 9.

[4]Neil McDonald. Egerton Ryerson and the School as an Agent of Political Socialization. University of Toronto Press. Page, 39.

[5]Neil McDonald. Egerton Ryerson and Schools. Page, 41.

[6]J.G Beard and G.A Barber. Past history and Present conditions. Page 13.

[7]J.G Beard and G.A Barber. Past history and Present conditions. Page 75.