Egerton Ryerson and Education in Upper CanadaPutman, J. Harold (John Harold)
History
Egerton Ryerson and Education in Upper Canada
Putman, J. Harold (John Harold)
Education -- Ontario; Ryerson, Egerton, 1803-1882
It was a part of a Grammar School inspector's duty to examine the pupils
who had been admitted by the Grammar School masters and reject any who
were too immature or were insufficiently prepared. Dr. Young complains
strongly in his Report of 1865 of the poor teaching of English grammar.
In some cases he had to reject more than half those admitted. He found
pupils wholly unable to parse such easy sentences as: "The mother loved
her daughter dearly," "John ran to school very quickly," "She knew her
lesson remarkably well."
It is doubtful whether the Grammar School Bill of 1865 made any real
improvement in the schools. Without denying that some of them were doing
a good work, and that as a force in the national life they were
fostering some love for higher education, it is safe to assert that they
were not very closely related to the real needs of the people. Their aim
was narrow. Their very name shows this. There was a crying need in the
country for schools that would give an advanced English and scientific
education with classic and modern languages to those who wished to
pursue university studies. But the most of the Grammar Schools aimed
only at a study of Latin and Greek, and indeed the Grammar School
legislation and the regulations of the Council of Public Instruction had
made a certain number of Latin pupils one of the conditions upon which a
Grammar School might receive a public grant.
The Act of 1865 soon showed some disastrous tendencies. It did not check
the desire to form unions between Grammar Schools and Common Schools, as
such unions made it easier to levy a rate in support of the union
schools, and thus comply with the conditions upon which Grammar Schools
received grants. The clause in the new Act making average attendance the
basis of attendance, together with a regulation of the Council of Public
Instruction which counted only Latin pupils in making the grant, led the
head masters of union schools to draft every available pupil into the
Grammar School departments[109] and put them all, boys and girls, into
Latin. Often they were not prepared for such work and got no real
benefit from it. They wasted their time and lost the benefits of a sound
English education which a good Common School would have given them.
Hundreds of boys and girls who had no foundation for a classical
education, and who had no prospect of ever advancing far enough to
receive any solid knowledge of Latin, were making a pretence of studying
it in order that the school might draw a Government grant. Ignorant
parents raised no objections, thinking perhaps that Latin possessed some
charm which would be an "open sesame" for the future advancement of the
boys and girls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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