The Ontario educational association: transnational networks and curriculum reform in the early twentieth century

ABSTRACTOriginally founded in 1861 as the Teachers’ Association of Canada West (TACW), the Ontario Educational Association (OEA) was a fixture on the education scene in Ontario for one hundred twenty-five years until its dissolution on November 28, 1985. This article traces the early development and maturation of the OEA to focus on its involvement in curriculum reform undertaken by Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments in the early twentieth century. As a non-state entity, the OEA nevertheless had close ties to and received financial support from the state. It regularly advised the Department of Education on matters related to education and contributed to the building of the educational state. The annual conventions of the OEA attracted transnational participation and provided a space for educationists to exchange knowledge as well as form networks and alliances to advance their interests in education. This article locates the formation of OEA as part of the phenomenon of association that Alexis de Tocqueville identified in nineteenth century America. While mid-nineteenth century Ontario was not America, it was nevertheless a liberal capitalist society and the concept of desiring to act in political self-interest for what was deemed good for education and society underlay the creation of the Association. De Tocqueville’s focus on the importance of political associations was linked to understanding the capacity of liberal democracies to govern in the nineteenth century. This approach makes possible to understand the OEA as a site where processes of building and governing the educational state were enacted through association.KEYWORDS: Associationsubjectioncurriculum reformhistory of educationde Tocqueville AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank Professor David Levine at OISE/University of Toronto, who provided encouragement, helpful insights and suggestions during the writing of this article. The authors have benefitted from helpful feedback offered by the journal’s editors and anonymous reviewers.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 In 1867 it became the Ontario Teachers’ Association (OTA) and in 1873 the name was lengthened to the Ontario Teachers’ Association for the Advancement of Education, only to revert to the former name Ontario Teachers’ Association in 1881.2 Thomas Popkewitz, “Curriculum history, schooling and the history of the present”, History of Education 40, no. 1 (2011): 15.3 Ibid., 3.4 Department of Education Annual Report of the Minister of Education (hereafter Annual Report), 1901, p. xiv.5 After the initial citation, references to Minutes/Proceedings between 1861 until 1894 will be referenced as Minutes and as Proceedings from 1895 onward.6 It may be argued that the Journal of Education for Upper Canada founded by Egerton Ryerson in 1848 and published until 1877 was another means by which education theories, knowledge and opinions circulated in Canada West. However, this is not comparable to the Association as a profoundly social space where educationists met in person to interact, discuss, debate and exchange knowledge about education.7 Edwin C. Guillet, In the Cause of Education: Centennial History of the Ontario Educational Association, 1861–1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960). In 1945, Guillet succeeded John Dearness (1852–1954) as the official historian of the Association.8 Ibid., xvii.9 Harry Smaller, “Gender and status: The founding meeting of the Teachers’ Association of Canada West 25 January 1861”, Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 6 (1994): 201–218. Smaller focused on the exclusion of women and controversies surrounding who could be a member of the Association.10 R.D. Gidney and W.P.J. Millar, Professional Gentlemen: The Profession in Nineteenth Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 234.11 Ibid., 235.12 Nancy. J. Christie, “Psychology, sociology and the secular moment: the Ontario Educational Association’s quest for authority, 1880–1900”, Journal of Canadian Studies 25 (1990): 119–142.13 Kate Rousmaniere, “Go to the principal’s office: toward a social history of the school principal in North America”, History of Education Quarterly 47 (2007): 1–22.14 Susan Houston and Alison Prentice, Schooling and scholars in nineteenth century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 335.15 Robert Stamp, The Schools of Ontario, 1876–1976 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 52.16 Ibid., 64.17 Jason Ellis, A class by themselves?: the origins of special education in Toronto and beyond (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019), 39.18 Theodore Christou, Progressive Education: Revisioning and Reframing Ontario’s Public Schools, 1919–1942 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2012), 32.19 See note 1 above.20 Minutes, 1892, 9.21 Minutes, 1893, Index.22 Houston and Prentice, Schooling and Scholars, 38. This school was supervised by a Methodist missionary.23 Ellis, A class, 255n176.24 Alexandra Giancarlo, “To ‘Evaluate the Mental Powers of the Indian Children’: Race and Intelligence Testing in Canada’s Indian Residential School System”, Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 34 (2022): 1–19.25 Smaller, “Gender and status”, n5. Smaller noted the National Teachers Association was founded in Philadelphia in 1850 and was renamed the National Education Association in 1870.26 Robert Alexander, Some Recollections of the early history of the Ontario Educational Association (Toronto: Morang & Company, 1904), 11–3. Alexander proposed that a similar organisation be formed in Canada West after returning from the 1860 annual meeting of the National Teachers’ Association in Buffalo. There were local teachers’ association such as the North York Teachers’ Association; however, there wasn’t a provincial association.27 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2, trans. Henry Reeve, rev. ed. Francis Bowen (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), 337. De Tocqueville used the term tutelary power to describe the paradox of democracy.28 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Volume 1, trans. Henry Reeve, rev. ed. Francis Bowen (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), 199. De Tocqueville defined association as “the public assent which a number of individuals give to certain doctrines and in the engagement which they contract to promote in a certain manner the spread of those doctrines”.29 de Tocqueville, Democracy, Volume I, 89. De Tocqueville observed that, “[I]n no other country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used or applied to a greater multitude of objects than in America”.30 de Tocqueville, Democracy, Volume 2, 118.31 Barbara Cruickshank, “Revolutions within self-government and self-esteem”, in Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities of government, ed. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 249.32 Ibid., 242.33 Ibid., 246.34 Ibid.35 Bruce Curtis, Building the Educational State: Canada West, 1836–1870 (London, ON: Falmer Press & Althouse Press, 1988).36 Bruce Curtis, “Preconditions of the Canadian State: Educational Reform and the Construction of a Public in Upper Canada, 1836–1847”, Studies in Political Economy 10 (1983): 114.37 Smaller, “Gender and status”, 212. The main participants were probably school superintendents, principals and members of the Normal School staff.38 Ibid., 209. There were approximately 4,000 teachers in Canada West during this time.39 “School Teachers’ Association: Annual Meeting Separate Coloured School Holidays”, The Globe, 4 August 1864, 2.40 Minutes, 1866, 15–6. A synopsis of report of delegate J. B. Dixon was included in the Minutes of 1866.41 Guillet, In the Cause, 37. This was reported by Guillet.42 Eckhardt Fuchs, “Educational science, morality and politics: International educational congress in the early twentieth century”, Paedagogica Historica 40, no. 5–6 (2004): 759.43 Minutes, 1876, 11.44 Robert Stamp, “Ontario at Philadelphia: The Centennial Exposition of 1876”, in Egerton Ryerson and His Times, ed. Neil Diamond and Alf Chaiton (Toronto: MacMillan of Canada, 1978), 302.45 Smaller, “Gender and Status”, 201–18.46 Jane Donawerth, “The Bibliography of Women and the History of Rhetorical Women to 1900”, Rhetoric Society Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1990): 403–14. Randall and her publications are listed among the women prominent in the field.47 Minutes, 1866, 15.48 “The First Day: Toronto Again Captured by the Americans, Twelve Thousand in the City”, The Globe, 15 July 1891, 4.49 “Evening Meeting: Another Great Demonstration in the Mutual Street Rink”, The Globe, 16 July 1891, 9.50 “Canada’s Pedagogues, The Dominion Educational Association Organised”, The Globe, 18 July 1891, 17.51 Houston and Prentice, Schooling and Scholars, 337. Curtis, “Educational State”, 356. Curtis stated that the 1871 Act resulted in “the increasing solidity of administration and by increasing density of administrative relations”.52 The first Deputy Minister of Education was Dr. John George Hodgins (1821–1912), a Ryerson loyalist who served as Deputy Minister of Education from 1876 to 1890.53 Minutes, 1876, 8–10.54 Minutes,1877, 8.55 Minutes, 1880, 7.56 High school Head Masters, inspectors and principals of public and model schools.57 John E. Bryant, “The Advisability of a change in the Administration of the School Law, by the Appointment of a Chief Superintendent of Education and a Council of Public Instruction, in lieu of a Minister of Education”, Minutes, 1883, 28–36.58 Ibid., 37.59 Ibid., 7.60 Ibid. Bryant commented that Crooks was forced to resign due to “prostration” and was allegedly diagnosed as “insane” and sent to England to recover.61 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 123.62 “School Teachers’ Association: Annual Meeting Separate Coloured School Holidays Conversazione”, The Globe, 4 August 1864, 2.63 Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 61. See also Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2010).64 Ian Hacking, Representing and Intervening, Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 149.65 Minutes, 1866, 13.66 Guillet, In the Cause, 48.67 Minutes, 1871, 3.68 J.E. Bryant, “Education in the Twentieth Century: A Criticism and a Forecast”, Proceedings, 1892, 50–78; N.W. Campbell, “Should the Public School Programme be Revised?”, Proceedings, 1895, 362–73. James Grant, “Our Public School Curriculum”, Proceedings, 1896, 407; and James Mills, “Our Public School Course of Study and Training as a Preparation for the Duties and Responsibilities of Life in this Country”, Proceedings, 1897, 267–74.69 Bryant, “Twentieth Century”, Proceedings, 1892, 68.70 Charles Hoffman, “The Depression of the Nineties”, The Journal of Economic History 16, no. 2 (1956): 137–64. See also Makoto Itoh, Value and Crisis: Essays on Marxian Economics in Japan (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980), 142. Itoh observed that this depression persisted from 1873 to 1896.71 Angus McLaren, Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885–1945 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990).72 Ibid., 48.73 Annual Report, 1903, xli.74 “Address of Hon. R. Harcourt”, Proceedings, 1903, 95 [emphasis added].75 Ibid.76 Department of Education, A Draft of Proposed Changes in the Public and High School Courses of Study and Organization and in the Departmental Examination System (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1903), 1–37.77 This included kindergarten, commercial, historical, classical, natural science, modern language, home science, and mathematical and physical sections.78 Department of Education, Draft of the Proposed Changes in the Public and High School Courses of Study and Organization and in the Departmental Examination System as Amended and reviewed by the Committee of Nineteen appointed by the Ontario Educational Association (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1904), 1–37.79 Annual Report, 1904, xviii.80 See Patrice Milewski, “Educational Reconstruction through the lens of Archaeology”, History of Education 39, no. 2 (2010): 277. This analysis suggested that, underpinned by Froebelian philosophy, the 1904 curricular and pedagogic reforms sought a shift in pedagogic knowledge that “produced children as particular kinds of knowers and as well as subjects to be known”.81 Popkewitz, “Curriculum”, 15.82 Thomas Alexander and Beryl Parker, The New Education in the German Republic (New York: The John Day Company, 1929), 107. For a focused study on Alfred Lichtwark see Karen Priem and Christine Mayer, “Learning how to see and feel: Alfred Lichtwark and his concept of artistic and aesthetic education”, Paedagogica Historica 53, no. 3 (2017): 199–213.83 Alexander and Parker, New Education, 106.84 Proceedings, 1904, 16.85 Minutes, 1876, 10. Seath strongly objected when the position of Chief Superintendent was abolished.86 Stamp, Schools of Ontario, 75.87 John Squair, John Seath and the School System of Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1920), 100.88 B. Anne Wood, “John Harold Putnam and the roots of Progressive Education in the Ottawa Public Schools, 1911–1923” (PhD diss., University of Ottawa, 1975), 15.89 Department of Education, Proposed Detailed Syllabus of work of each of eight grades of the Public School Course for Ontario: Presented to the Inspector’s and Public School Departments of the Ontario Educational Association, Easter 1909 (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1909).90 Proceedings, 1909, 36.91 Proceedings, 1909, 41.92 “President Ward’s Address”, Proceedings, 1910, 89.93 Ibid., 93.94 Ibid.95 Ibid., 89.96 Proceedings, 1910, 39.97 Proceedings, 1911, 39.98 Ibid.99 Department of Education, Regulations and Course of Study of the Public Schools of the Province of Ontario Amended and Consolidated 1911 (Toronto, L.K. Cameron), 1–47.100 Annual Report, 1904, 121–122. Minister of Education Harcourt noted that the inclusion of Constructive work in 1904 posited that “the making of new forms and combinations, the giving of definite expressions to ideas and mental images, the rendering of the inner outer, is the great Froebelian doctrine of creativeness”.101 Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 12.102 The almost 30 years of Progressive Conservative rule was briefly interrupted between 1919 and 1923 when the United Farmers of Ontario led by Premier Ernest Drury (1878–1968) held power.103 Patrice Milewski, “The Scientisation of Schooling in Ontario, 1910–1934”, Paedagogica Historica 46, no. 3 (2010): 341–355. This article examines how Teachers’ Manuals sought to define a science of schooling.104 Theodore Christou, “The complexity of intellectual currents: Duncan McArthur and Ontario’s Progressivist curriculum reforms”, Paedagogica Historica 49, no. 5 (2013): 678.105 Christou, Progressive Education, 46.106 Stamp, Schools of Ontario, 155.107 Patrice Milewski, “‘The Little Gray Book’ Pedagogy, Discourse and Rupture in 1937”, History of Education 37, no. 1 (2008): 91–111; Christou, Progressive Education, 124. Christou agreed with Milewski’s argument that the 1937 Ontario elementary school reforms represented a break with “previously existing pedagogies”.108 George Ross, “Addresses delivered at the Opening of the Convention”, Proceedings, 1899, 76.Additional informationNotes on contributorsPatrice MilewskiPatrice Milewski is an Associate Professor and Interim Dean of the Faculty of Education and Health at Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada. His research is focused on new ways of conceptualising and presenting the educational past and present by applying Foucaultian methods of historical inquiry to the domains of schooling and pedagogy.Annmarie ValdesAnnmarie Valdes is a Historian of Education and has a PhD in nineteenth-century history and education from Loyola University Chicago. Her research focuses on the history of knowledge, history of science education and women’s education.