Making a Middle Class: Student Life in English Canada During the Thirties

Alexander D. Gregor is Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and a
professor of higher education at the University of Manitoba.

It is one of the continuing ironies of higher education that the
institution that has taken on its role and mission to scrutinize and
criticize all aspects of society leaves itself virtually unexamined.
Moreover, and perhaps partly in consequence of this reluctance to
scrutinize the scrutinizer, much of what we assume we know about the
Canadian university really falls into the category of unsubstantiated
conventional wisdom. Axelrod, one of Canada’s leading historians of
higher education, has here made a substantial contribution to replacing
assumption with knowledge. An important addition is made as well to our
social history and to our understanding of the Depression. Making a
Middle Class is lucidly written, with sufficient anecdote both to
illustrate and to interest. The reader is also provided with a useful
discussion of the methodology and theory underlying the study.

The book’s central thesis involves the unshakably middle-class
character of the institution during the 1930s. It did not become, as
conventional wisdom would have it, the privileged preserve of the upper
class during this period of economic strictures. (In this thesis,
Axelrod is positing a three-class social structure.) In examining the
university—its curriculum, its faculty, its administration, and most
particularly its student body—he paints a culture and institution
fundamentally in harmony with the middle-class ethos surrounding it, and
quite contentedly dedicated to preparing graduates able to fit into and
contribute to that ethos. Not surprisingly, given this orientation,
women and members of religious and ethnic minorities found the
university a less than completely comfortable environment.

Although the study clearly limits its focus to English-speaking
students in Canada, Axelrod does provide some suggestive comparisons to
the situation in the United States—suggesting, for example, that
Canadian students showed considerably less disposition toward political,
economic, and social radicalism. Interesting as well are the comparisons
made to French-speaking students, along with the various regional
contrasts Axelrod is able to identify. This book represents a major
contribution to the field.