Vicissitudes of Education in Upper Canada, 1830-1839.
For many years subsequently spasmodic efforts were made from time to time by progressive and earnest men in the Legislature to establish a system of schools. Enquiries were instituted and reports made, chiefly but not wholly, by the House of Assembly. A vigorous contest was maintained between that body and the Legislative Council on the subject. Bills were passed by the Assembly and rejected by the Council. The contest continued until the Rebellion occurred, and this event turned all men's thoughts into another channel for the time.
Of the able and zealous men who, almost single handed, fought the battle of elementary education in the Legislature, prior to the rebellion of 1837, I may refer to the efforts in this direction of Dr. Charles Duncombe and Mr. Malhon Burwell, who did good service in the cause, as also did Archdeacon Strachan, Hon. William Morris and others for higher education.
In the light of the growth and educational progress of to-day, the miserable condition of public education in the days of the educational pioneers to whom I have referred, can hardly be credited. And were it not on record in the proceedings of the Legislature, the statements there made would appear to apply to some other country rather than to ours.
There were in the House of Assembly in those days (as I have intimated) men of rare power and ability, who did noble service in the popular cause, and in behalf of general education. They passed school bills, founded on elaborate reports, year after year, only to see them defeated by a majority in the Legislative Council. This state of things continued for some years, and with disastrous effects on the intellectual life of the country. This fact is illustrated in the proceedings of the House of Assembly. For example: In a petition of the United Presbytery of Upper Canada, presented to the House in 1830, the signers say:—
"It is with deep regret that your petitioners (in their ministerial capacity, connected with a very large portion of His Majesty's subjects in this Province) are compelled to say that the state of education is, in general, in a deplorable condition."
The reason for this state of things is thus clearly set forth by the House of Assembly in an address to the Lieutenant-Governor, adopted in the same year:—
"We the Commons of Upper Canada, in Parliament assembled, most respectfully represent that there is in this Province a very general want of education; that the insufficiency of the school fund to support competent, respectable and well-educated teachers, has degraded common school teaching from a regular business to a mere matter of convenience to transient persons, or common idlers, who often teach school one season and leave it vacant until it accommodates some other like person, whereby the minds of our youth are left without cultivation, or, what is still worse, frequently with vulgar, low-bred, vicious or intemperate examples before them, in the capacity of monitors."