DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF Education in Upper Canada FROM THE PASSING OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL ACT OF 1791 TO THE CLOSE OF THE REVEREND DOCTOR RYERSON'S ADMINISTRATION Chapter 1, page 1, 16 should be transposed to follow line 19. 12, 205, Foot note, Line 9 for Alexander Lachlin, read Archibald McLachlin J. GEORGE HODGINS, I.S.O., M.A.. LL.D. OF OSGOODE HALL, BARRISTER-AT-LAW, EX-DEPUTY MINISTER OF EDUCATION; HISTORIOGRAPHER TO THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF ONTARIO. PREFATORY NOTE TO THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME. By a singular coincidence, a four-fold movement against the administration of the Education Department took place in the years 1857 and 1858, -to which years the educational records of this Volume relate. This four-fold movement consisted of, First: A series of hostile Letters by the Reverend J. M. Bruyère, addressed "to the Newspaper Press', and endorsed, and highly commended, by the Right Reverend Doctor P. A. Pinsoneault, Bishop of London, U.C., against the Public School System of the Province, and particularly against certain features of the Public School Library System. Second: The efforts of Mr. Angus Dallas, in several Letters to the Toronto Newspapers, (and in a pamphlet), addressed to the Honourable John A. Macdonald, in which he sought to show that the Public School System of Upper Canada was an utter "failure", and that its Normal School was "an expensive fraud". In these Letters, signed "A Protestant", he proposed to substitute for the Provincial School System, one which he considered to be more practical, as well as one framed more in harmony with the constitutional precedents and practice in such cases. Third: The combined Appeals by Petition, to the Provincial Legislature of a majority of the Booksellers of Upper Canada against the Operations of the Educational Depository, in regard to its mode of supplying the Schools with Public Libraries, Maps, Apparatus and other School Material. Fourth, and most important, was the alleged project of the BrownDorion Government of the day to substitute the Irish National School System for that then in operation in Upper Canada. The various Chapters of this Volume are mainly devoted to a series of elaborate answers, by the Chief Superintendent of Education, to these varied movements against the Upper Canada School System and its Administration by him. In dealing with the movement in favour of the substitution of the Irish National System for that in operation in Upper Canada, the Chief Superintendent pointed out what appeared to him to be the insuperable objection against the adoption of the Irish National System, which embodied in itself the principle of absolutism, and permitted of no form of freedom in local action, in carrying out its details. He also showed that in the Irish National System there was no escape from the scheme of a dual system of Schools, as the "Non Vested" Schools in that Country were either Roman Catholic, or Protestant, Separate Schools, (in more than one form,) while the Schools "Vested" in the Commissioners were the only ones, which, in a very restricted sense, were "National", and were, as such, required to have the word "National" placed over the School House Doors. In dealing with the statements and scheme of Mr. Dallas, the Chief Superintendent pointed out that, in order to make it appear that a change of 141670 [ iii. ] |