Zaslow, Morris

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

436 HISTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL HISTORY were more and more children sent to school in the course of the century? What role did the family play in education at the end of the century? These questions are answered by presenting a representative sampling of documentary material from both public and private sources. In addition to legislative debates and reports of local and provincial school officials, we read excerpts from contemporary trea-tises on childrearing, from sermons, diaries and family correspondence, records of philanthropic societies, newspaper advertisements and letters to the editor. As we proceed through the book and the century, public documents gradually replace private ones, as the debate over the means and ends of education passes from the family to the clutches of the state educational bureaucrats. Creeping institutionalization sets in. · One cannot quarrel with the focus on the nineteenth century. As the editors state in their introduction, "in the history of childhood, the nineteenth century was the century of schooling." By the end of the century "public schooling had become the uniform experience of the vast majority of the children of Canada" (pp. 1-2). Yet some questions remain unanswered. Was this experience as "uni-form" in French-speaking as in English-speaking Canada? Was schooling promoted for similar reasons on the prairie frontier as it was in the established East? Family School & Society also has an urban emphasis. " If the nineteenth century was the crucial time," say Prentice and Houston, "the cities of Canada were the crucial places'' in terms of ideas on schooling and the development of school structures. "The small one-room [country] schools ... gradually came to be seen as undesirable relics of the past with little to recommend them to parents and children" (p. 2). Agreed, as long as it was provincial educational officials doing the recommending. But rural parents and rural trustees dug in their needs and for the most part successfully maintained their one-room schools for another one hundred years. The editors might have devoted more attention to the ques-tion of how and why the family role in education persisted longer in the country-side. These criticisms aside , Prentice and Houston have made a valuable con-tribution to both Canadian education and Canadian history. Family School & Society compels the contemporary educator to put the role of schooling in proper perspective. "As contemporary critics... take issue with the assumption that education can only - or best - take place in schools, we are relearning some-thing that in a way everyone has known all along, namely that education and schooling are not necessarily the same thing. " The book also demands that Canadian historians pay attention to the role of the school in shaping nineteenth and twentieth century society. · * * * Robert M. STAMP, University of Calgary. TREVOR H. LEVERE and RICHARD A. JARRELL, editors. A Curious Field-book : Science and Society in Canadian History. Toronto: Oxford University Press , 1974. "Just as a uniquely Canadian ethos exists in other areas of intellectual en-deavour, so is there one in science. Our initial assumption ... is that Canadian science - or, more precisely, science as it has been practised and developed in the territories and provinces that constitute contemporary Canada - has been COMPTES RENDUS - BOOK REVIEWS 437 and is unique." This ambitious proposition has governed the choice and arrange-ment of the 79 selections offered in this book , spanning a period of three centuries from 1616 to 1919. While the claim is hard to substantiate without discussing the achievements of other countries , the book furnishes an interesting and con-vincing record of the issues that accompanied the development of the physical sciences in Canada. It reflects the rise of organizations and of institutions for train-ing scientists and conducting scientific work. It demonstrates the emergence of a class of mainly native-born and locally-educated professional scientists and ed-ucators working in Canada. It also indicates a slow shift in interest from the purely utilitarian , wealth-getting aspects of 'applied science' towards concern with national scientific goals and with progress of researches in 'pure science.' These themes emerge in the article-length General Introduction which provides a useful com-prehensive outline of the principal persons , writings and other developments as-sociated with the advance of scientific work in Canada. The short introductions to the major sections of the book intended to furnish backgrounds to the individ-ual items are not always adequate in resolving the questions that particular pieces are bound to raise in the minds of readers. Inevitably, too, the value of certain of the included items may be questioned . The presentation is both chronological and thematic, the sele.:tions being grouped in four major categories. The first of these offers several short, rather perfunctory pieces from the era of New France, while the period from 1760 to 1840 is entirely ignored, as though there was nothing worth quoting from this long, formative stage of British North American development. For practical pur-poses the documents begin with excerpts from the Durham Report. The three remaining parts traverse the years from 1840 to 1919 in parallel, each following a mainly chronological sequence under the titles : "Government, Science and Ex-ploitation: The Utility of Science", " The Social Role of Victorian Science'', and "Science, Education and Research". There is some overlapping and the boundaries between the subjects are vague, while the pieces do not always fit neatly into the categories; hence the central themes do not emerge as clearly as might be wished. Three-quarters of the space is devoted to selections dating from the fifty or sixty years following Durham's Report. Thus the focus is on a time of intense national self-confidence and optimism - at least in English Canada - that en-couraged full, wide-ranging discussions of past scientific accomplishments and future goals. Canadian intellectual life in that period was graced by such eminent scientists as H.Y. Hind and Sir William Logan, the educationalists Egerton Ryer-son, P.J.0. Chauveau and Charles Baillarge, and especially the scientist-educator-philosopher-cultural statesman Sir J . W. Dawson, who is represented by six pieces. These include the only selections on the major intellectual question of the age -the conflict between the dogmas of revealed religion and the findings of evolu-tionary science. Given that the book is a study in cultural nationalism, an example or two of Sir William Dawson's and others' forays into that topic might have been included. The collection tapers off after 1895; there are comparatively few documents, and these seem to lack the literary and philosophical qualities of their predecessors. The editors deserve the thanks of scholars for this pioneer effort that delves into the mass of little-known , widely-scattered writings on the characteristics and prospects of Canadian science, and that throws some light on sev~ral worthy Cana-dians whose work has been undeservedly neglected. Collections such as this, as the authors recognize, are essential for any meaningful discussion of whether Canada has made, or is making, a distinctive contribution to science that is worthy of study in its own right. The appearance of this volume, indeed, may even help 438 HISTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL HISTORY Canadian science to move towards becoming the unique force referred to in the editors' preface. · * * * Morris ZASLOW' University of Western Ontario. HUGH A. DEMPSEY, ed. - The Best of Bob Edwards . Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers , 1975. Bob Edwards merited rescue. For too long he has been regarded only as a teller of bawdy stories and an amusing alcoholic. Though the citizens of Calgary saw fit to name a school after him, I suspect that this reputation - not his lucid prose, not his crusades for social justice - won him the singular honour. The book is thus a rehabilitative undertaking, something Edwards himself would have appreciated . Like any collection of six hundred quotable items from a storyteller's repertoire, Dempsey's volume is not likely to be read from beginning to end, but it does provide entertaining browsing and, with the editor's excellent biographical sketch, will help to make a new image for Eye-opener Bob. Although I enjoyed the book, Dempsey's editorial decisions left me with one complaint. The selections are organized by topic - the fair sex, politics, religion, the famous Mr. McGonigle, show business - and, within these categories, apparently by balance and rhythm. Inevitably a matter of personal preference, the latter decisions raise problems. The quotations are identified only by number in the text ; the date of the newspaper issue, unaccompanied by an explanatory note on the circumstances, appears at the back of the book. Nowhere is chrono-logical order deemed appropriate nor is an index provided. Thus, the evolution of Edward's opinions on such topics as prohibition can be reconstructed only with difficulty. Statements which might be seen to advantage within the context of a particular election campaign or reform crusade are not so placed. The choice of topics for inclusion is, again , partly a matter of personal preference. The editor has included many references to superficially "popular" issues like relations between the sexes and political corruption. In my opinion he might have devoted more space to some of the specific political issues about which Edwards wrote. He was a strong defender of Alberta interests , for example, and, like present-day boosters, campaigned for changes in national economic policy and especially on behalf of secondary manufacturing in the West. His attitude to the World War was most interesting because he defended the "little guy" in the trenches in the early months , was sympathetic to labour opponents of registra-tion in late 1916, but by 1918 strongly supported the war effort and opposed the admission to Canada of Mennonites who would not fight to defend the nation. By his editorial decisions, then, Dempsey has given us less than the whole of Edwards' concerns, and has provided a book more suited to the needs of stu-dents of literature than students of social thought. Edwards is depicted as an in-dependent Conservative, a problem drinker, a crusader for honesty in public life, a defender of the " ordinary Joe," and one who found the opposite sex inexplicable but fascinating. His stand on specific public issues, it is implied, was less important. I suggest that, though Edwards never enjoyed the political influence of a Dafoe or a Bourassa, his writing belongs to the campaigns and excitements of that era. Moreover, his prose was no less sprightly when the topic was some weighty issue like freight rates or tariffs . 

Trevor H. Levere and Richard A. Jarrell, editors, A Curious Field-book: Science and Society in Canadian History

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/40894/37077

Trevor H. Levere and Richard A. Jarrell, editors, A Curious Field-book: Science and Society in Canadian History

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)