Full Description
Alison Prentice's 1977 groundbreaking monograph The School Promoters is a revisionist account of public education's emergence. This latest edition includes a foreword and appendices by editors Bruce Curtis, Jennifer Henderson, and Mythili Rajiva, offering updated analysis and primary documents that deepen the understanding of Egerton Ryerson's role in shaping Ontario's educational system.
Using a wide range of archival and published sources, The School Promoters provides a lucid account of the preoccupations of the White, mostly middle-class reformers connected to Ryerson, who were responsible for the advent of public education in Ontario as part of their concern with the future of Canadian society. This edition situates Prentice's analysis of class domination within the context of settler-colonialism, exploring how education worked as a project for genocide as well as a means of social discipline. In particular, the editors expose how the proclaimed universality of public education was contradicted by the reformers' logic for targeting paupers and Indigenous peoples with religious schooling.
A reparative reading of Prentice's influential work, The School Promoters: Egerton Ryerson and His Circle, Second Edition highlights the relevance of this groundbreaking social history to contemporary analysis of Canada.
Contents
Introduction
Bruce Curtis, Jennifer Henderson, Mythili Rajiva
[Text of the original The School Promoters: Education and Social Class in Mid-Nineteenth Century Upper Canada by Alison Prentice]
Appendices with Commentary and Notes: Bruce Curtis, Jennifer Henderson, Mythili Rajiva
A. Report of Dr. Ryerson on Industrial Schools, 1847
B. General Recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Affairs of Indians in Canada (Extract), 1847
C. Draft of Bill, Relating to Vagrant and Neglected Children in Cities and Towns, 1862 and Memorandum on the Draft of Bill for the Further Promotion of Education in the Cities and Towns of Upper Canada, in Regard to Vagrant and Neglected Children. By the Reverend Doctor Ryerson.
