We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
In sharp contrast to the lively debates provoked by several articles and a major monograph in the 1970s, the history of literacy, narrowly conceived, has attracted relatively little attention from Canadian scholars in the 1980s. Much of the work which has been done is preoccupied with questions of sources and methodology.
1. The matter of conflict over the language of instruction continues to interest Canadian scholars, although most of those working in this field do not point directly to questions of literacy as such. Two recent works include Gaffield, Chad, Language, Schooling, and Cultural Conflict: The Origins of the French Language Controversy in Ontario (Kingston, 1987); and McLeod, Keith A., “Politics, Schools, and the French Language,” in Shaping the Schools of the Canadian West, ed. Jones, David C., Sheehan, Nancy M., and Stamp, Robert M. (Calgary, 1979), 59–83.Google Scholar
2. Alexander, David, “Literacy and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland,” Acadiensis 10 (Autumn 1980): 3–34, quote on page 33.Google Scholar
3. Philip McCann, W., “Culture, State Formation, and the Invention of Tradition: Newfoundland 1832–1855,” Journal of Canadian Studies 23 (Spring/Summer 1988): 86–103; idem, “The Newfoundland School Society, 1823–55: Missionary Enterpise or Cultural Imperialism?” in “Benefits Bestowed”? Education and British Imperialism, ed. Mangan, J. A. (Manchester, 1988): 94–112; idem, “Class, Gender, and Religion in Newfoundland Education, 1835–1900,” Historical Studies in Education 1 (no. 2, 1989).Google Scholar
4. Verrette, Michel, “L'alphabétisation de la population de la ville de Québec de 1750–1849,” Revue d'histoire de l'amérique française 39 (Summer 1985): 51–76; the review of sources largely follows work by Greer discussed below.Google Scholar
5. Verrette, , “L'alphabétisation,” 60. “nous constatons que dans un premier temps se développe la lecture, phase de déchiffrage du code qu'est l'alphabet, ensuite vient l'apprentissage de l'écriture, où les gens apprennent transcrire avec le code alphabétique les mots du vocabulaire; en commençant par les plus simples et ceux qu'ils entendent le plus souvent. Dans ces conditions, quoi de plus normal que d'apprendre à écrire son nom avant toute chose.”Google Scholar
6. I develop this argument at length in Curtis, Bruce, “The Speller Expelled: Disciplining the Common Reader in Canada West,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 22 (Nov. 1985): 346–68, and in Building the Educational State: Canada West, 1836–1871 (Barcombe Lewes, East Sussex, 1988), ch. 6.Google Scholar
7. Love, James, “Cultural Survival and Social Control: The Development of a Curriculum for Upper Canada's Common Schools in 1846,” Histoire sociale/Social History 15 (Nov. 1982): 336–62; compare Curtis, B., “Schoolbooks and the Myth of Curricular Republicanism: The State and the Curriculum in Canada West, 1820–1850,” Histoire sociale/Social History 16 (Nov. 1983): 305–29.Google Scholar
8. Johnston, A. J. B., “Education and Female Literacy at Eighteenth-Century Louisbourg: The Work of the Soeurs de la Congrégation de Notre-Dame,” in An Imperfect Past: Education and Society in Canadian History, ed. Donald Wilson, J. (Vancouver, 1984), 48–67.Google Scholar
9. L'imprimé au Québec: Aspects historiques (18e–20e siècle), ed. Lamonde, Yvan (Quebec, 1983).Google Scholar
10. And further research on the Saguenay region is in progress under the direction of Gérard Bouchard at SOREP (Société inter-universitaire de recherche sur les populations) at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi.Google Scholar
11. For the material on the Woodstock Reading Society, see the excellent Local History Collection, Woodstock Public Library, Woodstock, Ontario. In a related vein, Curtis, Bruce, “Preconditions of the Canadian State: Educational Reform and the Construction of a Public in Canada West, 1837–1846,” Studies in Political Economy 10 (1983): 99–121.Google Scholar
12. In this collection Castling shows that Hamilton's book was one of those sent to settlers in the Red River Colony at Lord Selkirk's expense. Notice also as Boyce, Gerald, Hutton of Hastings: The Life and Letters of William Hutton, 1801–1861 (Belleville, Ont., 1972) shows, the daughters of this improving gentleman farmer, school superintendent, and later secretary to the Board of Registration and Statistics, read Hamilton with delight.Google Scholar
13. Other recent contributions to library history include Yvan Lamonde's methodological article, “La bibliothèque de l'Institut canadien de Montréal (1852–1876): Pour une analyse multidimensionelle,” Revue d'histoire de l'amérique française 41 (Winter 1988): 335–62; Curtis, Bruce, “ ‘Littery Merrit,”’ ‘Useful Knowledge,’ and the Organization of Township Libraries in Canada West, 1840–1860,” Ontario History 78 (Dec. 1986): 284–312; Blanchard, J., “Anatomy of Failure: Ontario Mechanics' Institutes, 1835–1895,” Canadian Library Journal 38 (1981): 393–400; Eadie, J. A., “The Napanee Mechanics' Institutes: The Nineteenth-Century Ontario Mechanics' Institute Movement in Microcosm,” Ontario History 68 (Dec. 1976): 209–21. Blanchard provides an extensive bibliography of Mechanics' Institutes in McNally.Google Scholar
14. Parker, George L., The Beginnings of the Book Trade in Canada (Toronto, 1985).Google Scholar
15. See Lemire, Maurice, “Les relations entre écrivains et éditeurs au Québec au 19e siècle,” in L'imprimé, ed. Lamonde, , 207–24.Google Scholar
16. Parker, , Beginnings, 124.Google Scholar
17. Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader (Chicago, 1963); Webb, Robert K., The British Working Class Reader, 1790–1848: Literary and Social Tension (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
