Inventing Secondary Education

Inventing Secondary Education is the first contemporary examination of the origins of the Ontario high school, and one of the very few which focuses on the development of secondary education anywhere in Canada. The authors chart the transformation of the high school from a peripheral to a central social institution. They explore the economic and social pressures which fuelled the expansion of secondary education, the political conflicts which shaped the schools, and the shifts in curriculum as new forms of knowledge disrupted traditional pedagogical values. By the late nineteenth century the high school had acquired a secure clientele by anchoring itself firmly to the educational and professional ambitions of young people and their families. Drawn from an enormous amount of empirical data derived from school records, census manuscript material, assessment rolls, and literary and biographical sources, Inventing Secondary Education enriches our historical understanding of schooling in nineteenth-century Ontario society and illuminates some of the roots of modern educational dilemmas.

The received view is that secondary education in Ontario is a result of Egerton Ryerson’s Education Act of 1871. But R.D. Gidney and W.P.J. Millar show that Ryerson and the Provincial Education Office responded to rather than directed policy in higher education. In fact, the system in place today is evidence of Ryerson’s failure to implement the programs he wanted.

“provides contemporary educators with hitherto unavailable tools to understand the historical context of their own professional activities … virtually none of the available historical literature has explored the development of secondary education. Inventing Secondary Education admirably, ably, and creatively fills that gap. It is a landmark study, unlikely to be equalled, let alone surpassed, in the foreseeable future.” Paul Axelrod, Division of Social Science, York University.