In the article “Motherhood and Public Schooling in Victorian Toronto” by Christopher Clubine, the diaries of W.C Wilkinson, a hired truancy officer, are explored to give insight into how and why urban children were both compelled to come to school, and kept from it by their parents. Clubine uses the diaries to support his main argument that, while parents, especially mothers, wanted their children to attend school, the helping of the home and family economy always came first. This is displayed in Wilkinson’s many written encounters with mothers, whom he investigated when their children were found absent from school, who defended their child’s absence by stating that they needed the children at home for various tasks and chores. There were many instances where both girls and boys were kept home for a full day or half day to run errands, participate in the upkeep of the home, tend animals or gardens, and so on. Some children were even pulled from school after they passed the age required for them to be in it, aged seven to twelve, to begin work. As intimidating as truancy officers like Wilkinson seemed, they appeared to have a harder time convincing the mothers to keep their children punctual and from absence, than they had at scaring the children into going. As hard as the government pushed, the final say in whether the children of this time period would be attending school on any given day ultimately came down to the mothers. Though as pressures increased to keep children in school, both by the public system and Victorian ideals of the time, mothers were compelled to form their day around that of public education, and more and more children attended school, with the family having to deal with the absence of their contributions. This article does a good job at showcasing the forces that both stood for and against the push for widespread public education in Canada, and the changes that had to occur in the family dynamic to allow for an education centered life for children.

         The next article, “The Boys in the Nova Scotia Coal Mines: 1873-1923” by Robert McIntosh gives a rare view into the lives of the boys, aged anywhere from as young as ten to eighteen or twenty one, who worked in the mines. McIntosh chose to write this article to bring to light the stories and experiences of these young coal workers, which are normally overlooked by historians. This article shows how the mines, though they kept the young boys from school, where an area of learning themselves. The boys had various jobs, from surface work, sorting coal, and squeezing into tight places and opening trap doors for ventilation. They worked long days, often just as long as the older coal workers, and did so for little pay. They were limited by their age into what jobs were available for them, yet they knew they could work their way up, and that starting in the mines at a young age would give them the advantage. The miner boys were also thought of as bold, staging their own walkouts and speaking harshly to others, who were often older and in better positions. The boys knew how the mines operated and how life at the mines went. Again, like the previous article, it is shown how public education slowly took the boys from work and placed them into schools. The boys written about here, like the children in the last article, were crucial to the family economy, and the need for family survival kept these boys in labour, instead of school. It is seen again then, that the Victorian idealization of childhood, and the growing want by both the government and the public to have a better educated youth, resulted in various regulations restricting the age of workers in mines and made school more and more compulsory. This attributes to the general historiography of the time, that the push for widespread public education lead to the end of child labour.

          The third article, also taken out of the text Schooling in Transition edited by Sara Z. Burke and Patrice Milewski, “Teachers and Schools in Early Ontario” written by Harry Smaller relates to the the previous two articles in the way that it continues to portray how much say a parent had in the education of their child. While the previous articles describe how parents decided if and when their child would be attending school, based on their need for them to help out in the home or in the workforce, this article displays the role parents held in choosing teachers for their children. Teachers were often employed based on whether enough parents had a need for a teacher for their children. If there were enough children in the area, and enough parents wanting these children to be educated, then they would put out a call for a teacher. The parents would also determine whether the teacher would be a good fit, and would teach their children what the parents deemed worthy to teach. So ultimately it was parents who decided if a teacher was needed, and who it would be. This article also relates to the previous weeks readings which suggested the various reasons public education was coming into higher demand, with one common reason being that it was a way to teach children how to think and to inspire loyalty to their nation. This article touches on this fact, stating that especially after the social upheaval following the War of 1812, the government deemed it necessary to educate children and set them on a certain path and way of thinking, as a way to keep the people of Canada loyal.

Bibliography

Clubine, Christopher, “Motherhood and Public Schooling in Victorian Toronto,” in Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 115-126.

McIntosh, Robert. “The Boys in the Nova Scotian Coal Mines: 1873-1923,” in Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 126-139.

Smaller, Harry. “Teachers and Schools in Early Ontario,” in Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 24-36.

Image: Red Paintbrush, taken by Katryna Barone