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Unmaking and Remaking the “One Best System”: London, Ontario, 1852–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Michael F. Murphy
Michael F. Murphy*
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Extract

During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, publicly controlled common school systems took root in many parts of North America; the province of Ontario was no exception. Although antecedents in that province stretched back to 1816, during the 1840s, in particular, a series of school acts was passed to provide for the establishment and maintenance of common schools in rural and urban communities alike. These schools were financed by a combination of government grants and local taxation and managed by locally elected school trustees, while a fledgling provincial bureaucracy provided guidelines for the certification of teachers, the approval of texts, and the distribution of government grants. Within that framework, local people established public, state-funded schools, which gradually replaced earlier, more ad hoc forms of educational provision and which by 1850 provided most children with all the education they would ever receive. In most rural communities, the new state educational apparatus produced only a one-room school offering little more than the rudiments. On the other hand, many urban communities across Ontario constructed much more sophisticated systems, including graded primary schools, and central or union schools, which sometimes offered instruction in what would now be considered secondary education.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , Fall 1997 , pp. 291 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 The phrase the “one best system” is taken from Tyack's, David B. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). In addition to Tyack's book, see, for example, Wilson, J. Donald, Stamp, Robert M., and Audet, Louis-Philippe, eds., Canadian Education: A History (Scarborough, Ont., 1970); Katz, Michael B., Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America (New York, 1971); Cremin, Lawrence A., American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 (New York, 1980); and Houston, Susan and Prentice, Alison, Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto, 1988).Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Wilson, J. D., “The Ryerson Years in Canada West,” in Canadian Education, ed. Wilson, , Stamp, , and Audet, , 214–40; Houston, Susan E., “Politics, Schools, and Social Change in Upper Canada,” in Education and Social Change: Themes from Ontario's Past , ed. Mattingly, Paul H. and Katz, Michael B. (New York, 1975), 28–56; Gidney, R. D. and Lawr, D. A., “The Development of an Administrative System for the Public Schools: The First Stage, 1841–50,” in Egerton Ryerson and His Times , ed. McDonald, Neil and Chaiton, Alf (Toronto, 1978), 160–84; and Curtis, Bruce, Building the Educational State: Canada West, 1836–1871 (London, Ont., 1988). For more information about these themes, also consult, for example, Wilson, J. D., “Education in Upper Canada: Sixty Years of Change,” in Canadian Education , ed. Wilson, , Stamp, , and Audet, , 190–213; Gidney, R. D., “Elementary Education in Upper Canada: A Reassessment,” in Education and Social Change , ed. Mattingly, and Katz, , 3–21; Prentice, Alison, The School Promoters: Education and Social Class in Mid-Nineteenth Century Upper Canada (Toronto, 1977); Gidney, R. D. and Millar, W. P. J., “Rural Schools and the Decline of Community Control in Late Nineteenth Century Ontario,” in Proceedings of the 4th Annual Agricultural History of Ontario Seminar (Guelph, 1979), 1–18; Gidney, R. D. and Lawr, D. A., “Bureaucracy vs. Community? The Origins of Bureaucratic Procedure in the Upper Canadian School System,” Journal of Social History 13 (Mar. 1980): 438–57; idem, “Who Ran the Schools? Local Influence on Education Policy in Nineteenth Century Ontario,” Ontario History 72 (June 1980): 131–43; Gidney, R. D. and Millar, W. P. J., “From Volunteerism to State Schooling: The Creation of the Public School System in Ontario,” Canadian Historical Review 66 (Dec. 1985): 443–73; and idem, Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Montreal, 1990).Google Scholar

3 For the United States, see, for example, Schultz, Stanley K., The Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 1789–1860 (New York, 1973); Kaestle, Carl F., The Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973); Ravitch, Diane, The Great School Wars, New York City, 1805–1973: A History of the Public Schools as Battlefield of Social Change (New York, 1974); and Troen, Selwyn K., The Public and the Schools: Shaping the St. Louis System, 1838–1920 (Columbia, Mo., 1975). For Canada, the best work, although not a study of an urban school system per se, remains Davey, Ian E., “Educational Reform and the Working Class: School Attendance in Hamilton, Ontario, 1851–91” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1975). Harold Silver has made the point that scholars should select communities that are exemplary rather than typical. See his Education as History (New York, 1983), 293–304. For those unfamiliar with the Ontario educational context, some explanation of the terms used in this article may be in order. “Common schools” refers to institutions that received state as well as local tax support; any pupil could attend a common school. “Separate schools” means those schools that after 1850 were reserved for Protestants, Roman Catholics, or blacks; they received a government grant but did not share in the municipal assessment. Common schools in London, as of 1852, were free to pupils, as were separate schools beginning in 1858. “Grammar schools” were given state financial assistance for the teacher's salary only, and fees, usually expensive, were charged on a per pupil basis. London's Union School, erected in 1849 and opened in 1850, and not long thereafter renamed the Central School, was a graded school, offering what would now be defined as both elementary and secondary subjects. Ward schools, located in other parts of the city, taught only reading, writing, and arithmetic.Google Scholar

4 London was situated in the territory called Upper Canada until 1840, Canada West between 1840 and 1867, and Ontario after 1867. Egerton Ryerson, the chief superintendent of education for Canada West, singled out London's accomplishment in his annual report for 1850, declaring its Union/Central School to be a “noble example” of a large central school. See Canada West (Ontario), Annual Report of the Normal, Model, Grammar, and Common Schools in Upper Canada (sic), for the year 1850 … with an Appendix, by the Chief Superintendent of Schools (Toronto, 1851), 310 (hereafter Annual Report of Schools). Also see the report of a Hamilton common school board committee that journeyed to London to appraise its common school system. Ibid., 195–96.Google Scholar

5 See, for instance, the relevant printed reports of the board of common school trustees for the city of London (hereafter London Board Annual Report); and “London Board of Education Minutes, 1848–1922,” The University of Western Ontario, D. B. Weldon Library, J. J. Talman Regional Collection, microfilm M317, esp. the minutes from 1855 to 1857 (hereafter London Board Minutes).Google Scholar

6 For an introduction to the history of London and southwestern Ontario, see, for example, Landon, Fred, “London in Early Times,” and “London in Later Times,” in The Province of Ontario: A History, 1615–1927, ed. Middleton, Jesse E. and Landon, Fred (Toronto, 1927), 2:1044–64 and 1065–83; Miller, Orlo, “The Fat Years and the Lean: London (Canada) in Boom and Depression, 1851–61,” Ontario History 53 (June 1961): 73–80, esp. 74–78; Armstrong, Frederick H. and Brock, Daniel J., “The Rise of London: A Study of Urban Evolution in Nineteenth-Century Southwestern Ontario,” in Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Ontario: Essays Presented to James J. Talman (Toronto, 1974), 80–100; and Armstrong, Frederick N., The Forest City: An Illustrated History of London, Canada (Northridge, Calif., 1986). Scott, Benjamin S., “The Economic and Industrial History of the City of London, Canada, from the Building of the First Railway, 1855 to the Present 1930” (master's thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1930), 56–57. Google Scholar

7 Census of Canada, 1851–52 [Census of 1852], 1:68. Manuscript school returns have been used to establish London's population in 1855 and 1860. See “Annual Report of the Board of School Trustees for the City of London to the Chief Superintendent of Schools for Upper Canada, for the Year Ending 31st December, 1855,” Archives of Ontario (AO), RG2, F3B, box 40 (hereafter ARBCST); and ibid., 1860. It is difficult to determine the exact number of blacks in London at mid-century. Based on census data, about 185 blacks lived there in 1848. See Census of Canada, 1870–71, 4: 169. According to other sources, from 300 to 1,000, or slightly more, blacks resided in the community during the mid-1850s. See, for example, Dillon, Reverend M. M. to Ryerson, Egerton, 18 July 1855, AO, RG2, C6C, box 19; Landon, Fred, “Fugitive Slaves in London Before 1860,” London and Middlesex Historical Society Transactions (LMHS Transactions), part 10 (1919), 26–27; and Simpson, Donald George, “Negroes in Ontario from Early Times to 1870” (Ph.D. diss., University of Western Ontario, 1971), 752, 767. According to the Rev. John F. Coffey, M.A., priest of the London Diocese of London, about two hundred Catholics lived in London in 1850. See Coffey, , The City and Diocese of London, Ontario, Canada: An Historical Sketch: Compiled in Commemoration of the Opening of St. Peter's Cathedral, London, June 28th, 1885 (London, 1885), 7. By 1852, however, that total had grown to 1,179. See Census of 1852, 1: 68–69. In the mid-1850s, it may have reached a high of 5,000. See Pinsoneault, Bishop Pierre-Adolphe to the Bishops of Quebec, Montreal, Trois Rivieres, St. Hyacinthe, Bytown [Ottawa], Kingston, Toronto and Hamilton, 26 Jan. 1858, Diocesan Archives at London, Pinsoneault Correspondence, vol. 3. Nonetheless, later in the decade the number of Catholics had declined because in 1857 a directory recorded a Roman Catholic congregation “including suburbs [of] over two thousand.” See Railton, George, Railton's Directory for the City of London, C. W…. 1856–1857 (Railton's City Directory) (London, 1856), 17. For the theory and comparative method underlying the creation of socioeconomic profiles for nineteenth-century Londoners (lower, middle, and upper class), see Murphy, Michael F., “School and Society in London, Canada, 1826 to 1871: The Evolution of a System of Public Education” (Ph.D. diss., University of Western Ontario, 1995). The occupational classification scheme used in my thesis, and this article, was that developed by Michael B. Katz and Ian E. Davey for their study of Hamilton, Canada West, in 1852 and 1861. See Katz, Michael B., The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century City (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 343–48. Their first occupational group was used here as a proxy for the upper class, while their second and third occupational groups were used to coincide with the middle class. Their fourth and fifth occupational groups were treated as a surrogate for the lower class. As for London, by 1861 it had a small upper class (5.5 percent), a large middle class (58.6 percent), and a substantial lower class (31.4 percent). In this article, “respectable” refers to the upper- and middle-class components of London's society. “Elite” or “establishment” means a small group of approximately twenty upper-class families in London, who usually were wealthy, British, and Protestant (often Anglo-Irish).Google Scholar

8 According to data in the provincial annual school reports, the London grammar school received about fifty students annually between 1849 and 1852; see Annual Report of Schools, 1849 to 1852. For a good general account of the grammar schools, see Gidney, and Millar, , Inventing Secondary Education. “An Act to Amend the Law Relating to Grammar Schools in Upper Canada,” in Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada, ed. Hodgins, John George (Toronto, 1903), 10:140–43. No girls attended the London grammar school in the second half of the 1850s; see “Half-Yearly Returns of the Board of Trustees of the London … Grammar School … to the Chief Superintendent of Schools,” 1855–1860, AO, RG2, G1B, box 10. No pupil registers for the London grammar school prior to 1855 have survived. However, based on quarterly reports for two London common schools where the classics were taught in the 1830s, and other sources, perhaps 65 to 85 percent of the boys enrolled in this school before mid-century were from upper-class families. Most of the remaining pupils were from middle-class backgrounds. In the mid-1850s, however, 59 percent of the household heads of grammar school students were middle class (compared to 61 percent of the population), 32 percent were upper class (compared to 6 percent), 1 percent were lower class, and 8 percent were unclassed. See Murphy, , “School and Society,” chs. 2–4.Google Scholar

9 Grammar School Inspector's Report (hereafter GSIR), 1856, AO, RG2, G1A, vol. 1.Google Scholar

10 Egerton Ryerson to the Rev. W. F. Clarke, secretary of the board of grammar school trustees, County of Middlesex, 9 Feb. 1854, AO, RG2, C-l, letterbook “K,” no. 616. The London town/city council continually ran a deficit in these years. See History of the Google Scholar

County of Middlesex, Canada (London, 1889; reprint, Belleville, 1972), 245–46. Rev. Benjamin Cronyn to Ryerson, 21 August 1854, AO, RG2, C6C, box 18; Rev. W. F. Clarke to Ryerson, 3 February 1855, AO, RG2, C6C, box 18; “The School Convention for the County of Middlesex … in the City Hall London on the 1st Feb., 1860,” AO, RG2, C6C, box 28 Google Scholar

11 GSIR, 1855, 1860. See the annual returns of the London grammar school trustees between 1855 and 1860.Google Scholar

12 McCutcheon, F. W. C., “The London Grammar School and the Collegiate Institute,” LMHS Transactions, part 10 (1919), 31. “Union School Soiree,” Canadian Free Press, 15 Apr. 1852.Google Scholar

13 Ryerson, to Fraser, John, President, London Branch Bible Society, 13 Apr. 1847, AO, RG2, C1, vol. 3; and Drew, Benjamin, The Refugee: North-side View of Slavery (Boston, 1856), 147. Canadian Free Press, 15 Apr. 1852. London Board Annual Report, 1859.Google Scholar

14 Murphy, , “School and Society,” 498–99. Railton's City Directory, 15–16. The CCSS's mission was to evangelize blacks and break down racial prejudice in Canada through their schools and clerical agents. London Free Press, 4 Jan. 1856.Google Scholar

15 For more information on the CCSS schools in London, see Cooper, J. I., “The Mission to the Fugitive Slaves at London,” Ontario History 46 (spring 1954): 131–39; Winks, Robin W., The Blacks in Canada: A History (Montreal, 1971), 227–30; Simpson, , “Negroes in Ontario”; Silverman, Jason H., Unwelcome Guests: Canada West's Response to American Fugitive Slaves, 1800–1865 (Millwood, N.Y., 1985), 84–86; and Stouffer, Allen P., The Light of Nature and the Law of God: Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877 (Baton Rouge, La., 1992), 148–49.Google Scholar

16 The white children, for the most part, were those of the British troops sent in 1838 to London to quell a rebellion in the area. They established a barracks just northeast of the community. These buildings were largely vacated in 1853, when most of the soldiers were redeployed to fight in the Crimean War. After that conflict, the troops were returned to London where they remained until 1869. Also see Cooper, , “The Mission,” 136. Railton's City Directory, 15–16. Fees of about one dollar per quarter were charged to parents who could afford the cost. Simpson, , “Negroes in Ontario,” 764–70; and Cooper, , “The Mission,” 137. According to Simpson, only about seventy-five of the students were black. In June 1855, Dillon claimed to have thirty Roman Catholic students; a month later, he raised the number to fifty, adding that, because of insufficient space, he was forced to refuse applications from seventy more Roman Catholic parents. See Dillon to Ryerson, 18 June 1855, AO, RG2, C6C, box 19; and idem, 18 July 1855, AO, RG2, C6C, box 19.Google Scholar

17 Cooper, , “The Mission,” 138. Apparently, the CCSS school received only blacks in these later years.Google Scholar

18 London's private schools, which were fairly evenly divided between the sexes, were significantly under-reported in these years (see table 1). London Free Press, 22 July 1861.Google Scholar

19 Some wealthy London citizens looked beyond their municipal boundaries to educate their children. For example, John Walsingham Cook Meredith, a prominent clerk, sent his first three sons to London's public schools. The third son also went to Woodstock College, while his four youngest sons were enrolled in London, Galt, and Toronto private schools. Elijah Leonard, Jr., on the other hand, enrolled his son, Frank, in the American Worcester School of Technology to obtain the skills necessary to run the family tannery. And in 1859, John Kinder Labatt sent his son, John, who had attended London's public schools and the Caradoc Academy, to Wheeling, West Virginia, to study under an English brewmaster who was located there. Information about the daughters of respectable families is scarce, but several girls probably attended private schools in places like Toronto, Hamilton, and Burlington. Moreover, one former Londoner sent his daughters to England for their schooling in the late 1850s. See Murphy, , “School and Society,” 229–30.Google Scholar

20 Regarding the activities of the Roman Catholic community, see ibid., chs. 2–4. For more on the separate school question at the provincial level, see, for example, the three volumes written by Walker, Franklin A., Walker, Franklin A., Catholic Education and Politics in Upper Canada, vol. 1 (Toronto, 1955); idem, Catholic Education and Politics in Ontario: A Documentary Study, vols. 2 and 3 (Toronto, 1964, 1986).Google Scholar

21 Farrell, John Kevin Anthony, “The History of the Roman Catholic Church in London, Ontario, 1826–1931” (master's thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1949), 33. Dillon, Willard Francis, “The Irish in London, Ontario, 1826–1861” (master's thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1963), 92. According to Dillon, the Sisters also admitted some poor children for free. Ibid. London Free Press, 30 Sept. 1857. London Board Minutes, 9 Jan. 1858; and “Annual Report of the Trustees of the Roman Catholic Separate School in the city of London … for the Year ending 31st December, 1858,” AO, RG2, F3F, box 1.Google Scholar

22 See Murphy, , “School and Society,” 486–91; London Free Press, 12 Sept., 2 Dec. 1857; and “School Days of 1866–1870,” Lesslie Family Papers, AO, F551, container MU1720. Fifty percent of the men to call the meetings to form the separate school board were lower class; 44 percent were middle class; and 6 percent were upper class. Nonetheless, 63 percent of the trusteeships were held by middle-class individuals; 21 percent by upper-class persons; and 16 percent by lower-class residents. See Murphy, , “School and Society,” chs. 3 and 4.Google Scholar

23 See London Board Minutes, Apr.-Dec., 1855.Google Scholar

24 Murphy, , “School and Society,” 512–22. For example, two individuals, who chaired the school board between 1851 and 1860, were also councillors; five of the ten mayors between 1848 and 1860 were trustees or school board chairmen; the board secretary was also the city clerk during much of this period; and school board meetings took place at city hall. London Board Minutes, 2 and 16 Sept. 1856; ARBCST, 1857.Google Scholar

25 London Board Annual Report, 1858, 1859. According to the trustees' manuscript returns for 1858 and 1859, about 500 to 600 pupils between the ages of 5 and 16 were not in school. In 1860, trustees did not enter a figure in column 56 for the “number of children not attending any school whatever.” See ARBCST, 1860.Google Scholar

26 See, for instance, Prentice, Alison, “The Feminization of Teaching in British North America and Canada 1845–1875,” Histoire Sociale-Social History 8 (May 1975), 5–20. See London Board Minutes, 1850; and the ARBCST, 1855, 1857, 1858, 1860. London Board Annual Report, 1859, 1860. In addition to Boyle, the new teaching corps included several former, prominent private school teachers and a number of recently trained Toronto Normal School teachers. See ARBCST, 1855–1860.Google Scholar

27 London Board Minutes, 1855–1859. For more on this theme, see Curtis, , Building the Educational State. London Board Annual Report, 1857.Google Scholar

28 London Board Minutes, 14 Aug. 1857.Google Scholar

29 At Ward Schools nos. 2, 3, and 5, students studied the first three books of the Irish National Readers, Arithmetic, Geography, and Writing. At Ward School No. 7, they also received instruction in books four and five of the Irish Readers, plus English Grammar and Composition, Mensuration, Algebra, and Vocal Music. The more advanced pupils at the Central school, however, took English Grammar and Composition, Mathematics, Mensuration, Geography, Canadian History and Geography, History, Writing, Bookkeeping, Mechanics, Algebra, Geometry, Natural Philosophy, Vocal Music, Linear Drawing, Latin, Greek, and French. See London Board Annual Reports and the ARBCST, 1857–1860. Perhaps of even greater importance to middle- and upper-class families, a much smaller number of students studied the classics. For example, in 1859 eighty-two pupils took Latin and French, while only twelve students studied Greek. See London Board Annual Report, 1859, 1860. Annual Report of Schools, 1860. In 1860, of the 2,987 school-age children living in London, 2,265 were in the common schools, 413 in the separate schools, 58 in the grammar school, and 130 in the private schools.Google Scholar

30 Between 1857 and 1859, the number of boys studying Latin at the Central School doubled, while the number of boys and girls taking French quadrupled. Moreover, George G. Magee, the board chairman between 1855 and 1860, in his annual reports noted the impact of the city's financial difficulties on the schools, which led to “the rapid increase in the number of pupils, whose parents require for them a higher course of instruction than what is usual in common schools.” See London Board Annual Reports, 1857–1859.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., 1855–1858. London Free Press, 22 July 1861. Evidence also exists indicating that J. B. Boyle, the headmaster at the Central School, and most of the teachers in the common schools were opposed to racially mixed schools. See Howe, Samuel Gridley, Refugees from Slavery in Canada West (Boston, 1864), 30; and London Free Press, 10 Dec. 1862.Google Scholar

32 In 1859, Magee remarked that as the middle and lower classes in Western society continue to gain power they must be provided with a “careful and liberal education … that they may be prepared, as far as education can prepare them, for a wise and judicious exercise of those powers and privileges which must inevitably devolve upon them.” See London Board Annual Report, 1859.Google Scholar