Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

George G. Ambury is an associate professor of adult education at
Queen’s University.

This work follows a chronological descriptive approach to
historiography, beginning with an account of education in the early part
of the nineteenth century. The researchers found that, even then, most
children received an introductory level of education in reading and
arithmetic, and possibly a number of other subjects, depending on the
values of the community and its view of the role of the common school.
Some education seemed to be provided regardless of sex, heritage, or
social class. (The book does not deal with aboriginal education.)
However, those aspiring to see their children, especially their sons,
climb the social ladder, sought a superior education. Classical studies
were, of course, seen as the root of a sound education and as the
foundation for mental development and more-practical learning.

With central funding, beginning in 1841, came centralized
standard-setting. Ryerson, as chief superintendent of education, began
to attempt to shape the grammar schools into his image of a proper place
of learning. Occupational status of the household head continued to be
the most significant predictor of participation in schooling—hardly
surprising given that Ryerson, like most of his peers, saw occupational
and social differences as divinely ordained, not as something to be
challenged by education. Attempts to reform grammar school education in
1853 and 1865 aimed to raise standards and exclude the less worthy,
including girls.

The authors conclude that Ryerson was not nearly as important to the
development of Ontario’s high schools as is commonly held. “Ryerson
. . . succeeded only where his policies were congruent . . . with the
interests and wishes of the local people, and not otherwise.” The high
school of the 1880s, they feel, remained largely unchanged into the
middle of the twentieth century, when it still acted as a vehicle for
both social reproduction and social mobility for the middle classes.

Inventing Secondary Education is well researched and competently
presented. Thorough footnoting, the supplementary data in the
appendices, and the illustrations make this work useful to the scholar
and interesting to the casual reader.