Sept 17, 2017
History 3510
Tracy Penny Light
Week One Analysis
As most know so much is constantly changing and society has moved so far forward, this is almost impossible not to notice with the way history is taught now. It’s amazing how many articles there are out there that can just prove the difference in time. But what is most amazing is the way specific things have changed like schools for instance. The three reading “Egerton Ryerson and the School as an Agent of Political Socialization,” “Reform, Literacy, and the Lease: The Prince Edward Island Free Education Act of 1852,” and “Hidden Workers: Child Labour and the Family Economy in Late Nineteenth Century Urban Ontario.” All describe how different school was when it first started in Canada.
It was noted that it was only because of one man that school was brought to attention as a main priority that he felt was necessary in Canada. This man was Egerton, he felt school/ education was necessary in a place in order for there to be organized government system. He also realized that adapting the education system from places in Europe made it easy to bring it over to Canada. This was also noted that it was a way of persuading people into thinking a certain way about politics. As education was a way of teaching about the politics and government that had been going on in their lives/ communities. But politics was all they felt was important which is an example of how it is different from now. With is being a way of getting people to think the way government wanted them to it made it easier to make school a free thing for everyone.
Now school wasn’t always free, for a while only the rich were allowed to go to school to be able to pay the teacher her salary. But once they found out at education was a way of teaching government issued topics made it so they wanted everyone to go to school. But it only slowly started to become free in some places. The maritime provinces are where it first became free. They made is possible by putting in a tax that everyone had to pay in order to go to school. But the free school wasn’t the best deal for some. Some people were losing money over it when settling in.
With this being a problem it made it so not everyone went to school and many children still had to work as it helped out the family in the poor times. Children didn’t have the same lives as kids to do as many of them started working at a very young age in order to make a living. But when school made it so it gave special training for kids who wanted to work in the future it made it more popular and students doubled in numbers.
So the main point of this is how school became important in young people’s lives and how it got to that. But the only question that came to mind when reading all this is, if money was so tight and kids had to work in order to help the family survive how did families survive when children were all able to go to school and they weren’t allowed to work anymore. This was never really answered but I’m sure they made small changes. As now it is a norm for children to go to school in order to get a job later in life. this all though showed me how and why education was brought to Canada and how education became free for everyone, as it does teach young one the necessaries of life.
Bibliography
McDonald, Neil, “Egerton Ryerson and the School as an Agent of Political Socialization,” in Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 39-56.
Robertson, Ian Ross. “Reform, Literacy, and the Lease: The Prince Edward Island Free Education Act of 1852.” in Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 56-71
Bullen, John, “Hidden Workers: Child Labour and the Family Economy in Late Nineteenth Century Urban Ontario.” Labour/Le Travail 18 (Fall 1986): 163-87.