Extracts from Official Reports on Education in Upper Canada in 1838.
I shall now give a few extracts from official returns illustrative of the state of education in the Province in 1838 and 1839, while these efforts of improvements were being made. They also show how entirely practical were the views of those who took an active part in educational affairs of the time, how keenly alive they were to the educational deficiencies of those days.
Other extracts from official reports and proceedings of the House of Assembly might be given to illustrate this part of the subject, but they would make this retrospect too long. They are all of a most interesting and instructive character, and well deserve publication in a connected form. They throw a vivid light upon the educational chaos which existed at the time. They also show how enlightened comparatively, as well as how darkened also, were the views of those who took part on both sides in the educational debates and proceedings of those years—especially during 1830,—1836, 1838 and 1839. What were then problematical theories and merely tentative schemes, are to-day educational truisms and successful fields of operation.
The growth of the schools under the fitful system which prevailed in Upper Canada from 1816 to 1842 was painfully slow. The number of what was called "schools" was small, and the quality of them, with rare exceptions, was exceedingly inferior. Anything beyond the three R's was generally taught by itinerants. Dr. Ryerson mentions in an autobiographical letter, as an example, that his knowledge of English grammar was derived entirely from the "lectures" of a peripatetic teacher of that subject. He also mentions several of his after contemporaries who acquired a knowledge of grammar and other special subjects in the same way. No one, as he said to me, ever heard in these days of the possibility of a "royal road to learning." It was hard work, of the hardest kind, and few ever dreamt of reaching a higher eminence than that of mastering the first two R's—Reading and 'Riting. Arithmetic was approached with caution, and its higher "developments" with consternation. How could such a state of things be otherwise when "transient persons" and "common idlers" were with rare exceptions, the kind of "teachers" employed. Education had no money value then, except in so far as it receded from a rate of payment to that of a day laborer or a pensioner.
The following are the extracts from the official reports:—