Patrice Milewski

The scientisation of schooling in Ontario, 1910–1934

This paper analyses the science of education that was formed in Ontario between the years 1910 and 1934. It is substantiated through the use of archival material such as curriculum documents, statutes, annual reports, the published proceedings of the Ontario Educational Association (OEA) and a close reading of the Science of Education manual published in 1915. This study examines how a science of education was defined discursively and put into operation through a series of political choices, institutional practices, and the agency of individuals in the education hierarchy. As a formative event in the history of schooling in Ontario, the emergence of a science of education in the early twentieth century defined the limits of a new terrain of pedagogic knowledge that sought to define a broad range of normalisations in teacher practice, pedagogy, methods, and the knowledge archive of the school system. This article considers how a science of education gave rise to new institutional forms and defined a terrain of knowledge that was used to identify and speak about students in new and different ways.

‘The Little Gray Book’: Pedagogy, Discourse and Rupture in 1937

In 1937, the Ministry of Education in Ontario published a document entitled Programme of Studies for Grades 1 to VI of Public and Separate Schools that became known amongst teachers as the ‘little gray book’. The curriculum and pedagogy in the document enunciated a rupture or mutation in pedagogical discourse that broke with previously existing pedagogies. These changes resulted in the creation of a new knowledge archive in the system of schooling that defined what could be said about teaching, learning, children and schooling for the better part of the twentieth century. It also formed the terrain for the production of new educational subjects and subjectivities.

Positivism and Post-World War I Elementary School Reform in Ontario.

Following the end of World War I, the Ontario Department of Education initiated a series of reforms aimed at both elementary and secondary schooling. This article examines the reforms that were made to elementary school curriculum and pedagogy. These were initiated within the context of a call for a general reconstruction of education and society as a response to the tragic consequences of World War I. They were also based on a series of denunciations that identified scientific materialism, the unity of science and psychology, as the principal causes of war. In numerous public declarations, the religious, political, and education elite of the province expressed their belief that scientific materialism and the unity of science posed an obstacle to the development of education in the province. Although these reforms were the result of a political assessment that fervently rejected scientism, they were, in fact, underpinned by a positivist science that entailed processes of counting, measuring, and sorting to build a system of state-directed human capital formation. This article considers the nature of the scientific knowledge that underscored elementary school reform and assesses whether it represented a significant departure or simply a reconfiguration of knowledge and techniques that ensured the state’s ability to govern and administrate.

Medico-Science and School Hygiene: A Contribution to a History of the Senses in Schooling.

This article takes as its inspiration Ian Grosvenor’s conjectural essay presented for the symposium “Historiography of the Future: Looking Back to the Future” held at the International Standing Conference for History of Education (ISCHE) 33 in July 2011 in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. It contributes to a sensory history of schooling by examining how the problematisation of schoolchildren’s eyesight in school hygiene manuals noted by Grosvenor was, to a large extent, made possible by the deeper transformations that occurred in science in the mid-nineteenth century. These included changes in scientific practices and techniques, the invention of new instruments and the emergence of new “scientific selves” that were, in large part, linked to the emergence of objectivity as a scientific ideal. The “objective view” and practices associated with the ideal of objectivity combined with the predominant style of statistical reasoning reinforced the truth claims of senses research by preeminent European scientists. In turn, it made credible and legitimated the findings that resulted when new scientific techniques, methods and instruments associated with the ideal of objectivity were applied to investigations of schoolchildren’s eyesight in the mid-nineteenth century. Medico-scientific investigations that began by first identifying aspects of schooling that caused harm to the sense of sight were later expanded into multiple hygiene(s) and made possible a broader discourse of school hygiene elaborated in the school hygiene manuals that proliferated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The extent to which precepts of school hygiene underscored the reform of pedagogy and the materialities of schooling suggests that the results of these investigations were profound and far-reaching.

Historicizing health and education: Investigations of the eyesight of school children in the early nineteenth century

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical roots of the modern relationship between health and education. The author draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Georges Canguilhem to make the case that the transformation of medical knowledge in the early nineteenth century created new ways knowing that was the foundation of a modern relationship between health and education. Design/methodology/approach Using the archives of ophthalmology, the author demonstrates how new medical knowledge and scientific methods were the basis of investigations of the eyesight of school children in the early nineteenth century. These investigations reflected the nineteenth century scientific ethos that placed a premium on techniques such as counting, measuring, statistical reasoning, and empirical observation to form the grounds of legitimacy of an autonomous “objective” knowledge. The modern relationship between health and education was an instance of a generalized medico-scientific interest in the health of populations that utilized the methods of empirical positivist science whose speculative interest was aimed at defining the normal. Findings Scientific investigations of the eyesight of school children in the early nineteenth century contributed to the formation of an anatomo-politics of the body and a biopolitics of population through a “medical mathematics” that defined a relation between eyesight, health and education. Originality/value This study illustrates how sources such as the archives of ophthalmology can broaden and deepen our understanding of the relation between health and education.

Perilous times: an oral history of teachers’ experience with school inspection in the 1930s

School inspectors and school inspection were integral features of the elementary public school system in Ontario from the 1840s until the practice was abandoned in 1967. From its earliest beginnings and subsequent development, school inspection and school inspectors were established as an important institution of the educational state. By regulation every teacher in the province could expect a twice-annual unannounced visit from a state-appointed male school inspector – more frequently if difficulties arose. This study explores teachers’ experiences of school inspection and inspectors during the 1930s by drawing on the oral history accounts of 17 women and four men who taught elementary school in various regions of the province.

Educational reconstruction through the lens of archaeology

This article examines the educational reconstruction that was undertaken by the Department of Education in Ontario during the first years of the twentieth century. It draws on Foucault’s method of archaeology to identify how schooling reforms comprised a discontinuity in pedagogic knowledge. This mutation created the conditions of possibility for the formation of different kinds of subjects and subjectivities. The analysis identifies how Froebelian philosophy and the addition of subjects such as art and nature study to the elementary school curriculum led to new ways of knowing children. It also outlines how these new domains of knowledge were linked to the emergence of a range of new objects, technologies, strategies, and kinds of subjects (people) related to schooling. The conclusion considers the deeper meanings of modernity that were intended by these reforms and the paradoxes that may have resulted.

Teachers' institutes in late nineteenth-century Ontario

Teachers’ institutes for public elementary school teachers in Ontario began to be implemented in the middle of the nineteenth century as a result of the efforts of Egerton Ryerson Superintendent of Schools for Canada West as Ontario was then known. They were based on similar practices that Ryerson had observed on an educational tour in 1845 during which he visited the United States, the British Isles and a number of western European countries including Germany. After initial failures, the passage of the landmark School Act of 1871 provided the context for educational state officials to redouble their efforts to have teachers regularly attend teachers’ institute meetings to further their professional development. After a series of revisions to the regulations and the appointment of a director in 1885, incidents of teacher absence began to be documented and reported to central state authorities. This resulted in a variety of disciplinary actions that culminated with the temporary suspension of Luella Dunn’s – a teacher in rural Ontario – teaching certificate. Using the evidence available in the reports of inspectors, teachers’ institute agendas, newspaper accounts and the annual reports of the Minister of Education, the author attempts to show that Luella Dunn and other teachers who ran foul of the regulations were produced as individuals through the effects of power. Through the regulations and procedures that defined their operation, teachers’ institutes became important sites for the elaboration of pedagogy. In this role, the author will explore how teachers’ institutes were a means for instilling what Minister of Education George Ross (1883–1899) termed a “self‐culture” of the teacher.