Main description:

In The Idea of Popular Schooling in Upper Canada, Anthony Di Mascio analyzes debates about education in the burgeoning print culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In it, he finds that a widespread movement for popular schooling in Upper Canada began in earnest from the time of the colony's first Loyalist settlers. Reviving the voices of Upper Canada's earliest school advocates, Di Mascio reveals the lively public discussion about the need for a common system of schooling for all the colony's children. Despite different and often contentious opinions on the means and ends of schooling, there was widespread agreement about its need by the 1830s, when the debate was no longer about whether a popular system of schooling was desirable, but about what kinds of schools would be established. The making of educational legislation in Upper Canada was a process in which many inhabitants, both inside and outside of government, participated. The Idea of Popular Schooling in Upper Canada is the first full survey of schooling in Canada to focus on the pre-1840 period and how it framed policy debates that continue to the present day.

Contents:

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 1 Between Vision and Impetus: The Deep Roots of Schooling, 1784-1799 20 2 From Educational Expansion to Educational Deadlock, 1800-1811 37 3 War and Schooling, 1812-1815 54 4 The Rise and Fall of Common Schooling in the Postwar Era, 1816-1824 66 5 Education and the Rise of Radical Political Thought, 1824-1826 87 6 Ecclesiastical Exclusivity Denounced: Religious Discourse and the Politics of Education, 1826-1828 104 7 Renewal or Regression? Educational Discourse in a Time of Political Discord, 1828-1830 124 8 Toward Mass Universal Schooling: Societal Reorganization in the Age of Movable Type, 1830-1832 142 Conclusion 158 Notes 173 Bibliography 205 Index 237