Context: Teachers in Ontario in the Early 1900s

To help readers from outside Canada understand the context of my analysis, I will first summarize key indicators of status distinctions—rooted in grade level of instruction and gender—among teachers in the province of Ontario. In 1910, the mean salary earned by secondary school teachers in Ontario was 130 percent higher than the mean salary earned by primary school teachers.Footnote ¹⁸ Primary and secondary school teachers were required to meet different certification requirements and attend different training institutions.Footnote ¹⁹ Secondary school teachers were expected to take an eight-month program of study that was delivered by the Ontario Normal College from 1897 through 1906, by faculties of education at the University of Toronto or Queen’s University from 1907 through 1920, and by the Ontario College of Education after 1920. Candidates seeking admission to such programs “had to possess senior leaving standing or a degree in Arts.”Footnote ²⁰ In contrast, primary school teachers could obtain term-limited certificates by spending fourteen weeks at one of fifteen provincial model schools, and could obtain permanent certificates by completing a ten-month program at one of seven normal schools. Admission to a model or normal school did not require postsecondary education.

Substantial differences in salaries, certification requirements, and training characterized primary and secondary teaching in Ontario through much of the twentieth century. Figure 1 shows that the wage gap between secondary and primary school teachers in Ontario declined over time but remained substantial through the 1950s.Footnote ²¹ Throughout these decades, the institutions providing training to primary and secondary teachers remained separate.Footnote ²² Prospective secondary school teachers attended the Ontario College of Education (after 1920) while prospective primary school teachers attended a normal school (model schools were discontinued in 1926).

Figure 1.

Salary premiums obtained by teachers, Ontario, 1914-1955.

Source: Data is based on statistics in Stager, Elementary and Secondary School Teachers’ Salaries in Ontario, 1900 to 1975, 17, table 5.

Educational requirements for certification as a primary school teacher were raised in 1927 and 1935 (at which time a First-Class Certificate required the completion of the equivalent of one year of university work), but were subsequently relaxed as a result of teacher shortages created by wartime conditions and a postwar boom in school enrollments. In short, stark differences existed—in salaries, certification requirements, and training—between the material experience of primary and secondary teachers in Ontario. Teachers themselves would have been aware of these differences, an awareness that would have likely rendered them receptive to messages such as those conveyed by Oates and subsequent QSSA presidents.

Gender was a fundamental component of these stark differences. Between 1910 and 1960, the number of full-time teachers employed by public elementary and secondary schools in Ontario increased from 12,016 to 49,292, and the proportion of those teachers who were female declined from 82 percent to 67 percent.Footnote ²³ Throughout these decades, the vast majority of secondary teachers were men and most primary teachers were women. The increase in the proportion of male teachers over time reflected the fact that the number of secondary teachers grew to become a higher proportion of all teachers.Footnote ²⁴ Given the gendered nature of the teaching corps, the salary premium earned by secondary teachers versus primary teachers was one enjoyed mainly by men. Further, as Figure 1 also shows, among primary school teachers in Ontario, male teachers consistently earned higher salaries, on average, than did female teachers. Finally, male and female teachers had substantially different levels of educational attainment. For Canada as a whole, from 1938 to 1960 the proportion of female teachers with a university degree remained stable at about 11 percent, while the proportion of male teachers with a university degree increased from about 30 percent to about 42 percent.Footnote ²⁵ Status distinctions—between secondary and primary school teachers, and between male and female teachers—were reflected in teachers’ professional associations. There were three major associations in Ontario during these decades: one for women teachers, one for secondary school teachers, and one for male primary school teachers.Footnote ²⁶

Note that while the focus of this article is on the social history of teacher education in Canada, its observations are pertinent for other places. Notably, there are parallels between Canada and the US concerning the history of teacher education and professionalization.Footnote ²⁷ In her 2015 presidential address to the History of Education Society, Christine Ogren argued, “Exploring the history of teachers’ ‘summers off’ will enhance historical understanding of the teaching profession.”Footnote ²⁸ Ogren’s analysis of the professional development and cultural enrichment work undertaken by American teachers in the summer months relates directly to the focus of this article. She observes that scholars of sociology and education “say curiously little about the role of summer vacation in shaping teachers’ liminal social-class position,” and argues that “the three summer months were crucial to establishing the disjuncture between teachers’ economic status and social standing.”Footnote ²⁹ Just as in the US, teachers in Canada over much of the early twentieth century tended to have modest salaries despite relatively high levels of cultural capital.Footnote ³⁰

Context: Queen’s University, Teacher Education, and Summer School

Queen’s is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was established in 1841 through a royal charter issued by Queen Victoria, and until 1912 it was governed by the Presbyterian Church.Footnote ³¹ Overall enrollments at Queen’s grew from under five hundred in 1893 to over five thousand in 1960. To the early history of teacher education in Canada, Queen’s made two distinctive contributions. First, from 1907 through 1920, it had a Faculty of Education that delivered a professional training program for secondary school teachers. This initiative had relatively modest impact in terms of the number of teachers trained. Over the thirteen academic years in which Queen’s provided instruction through the Faculty of Education, an average of fifty-one students per year enrolled. Second, from the early 1890s through the 1970s, in-service teachers from across Canada took BA courses from the Queen’s extramural service.Footnote ³² Between 1893 and 1960, an annual average of 676 people enrolled extramurally in BA courses from Queen’s, and roughly 80 percent of those people were teachers.Footnote ³³ Therefore, one can estimate that Queen’s provided extramural education to an average of over five hundred in-service teachers per year between 1893 and 1960.

Beginning in 1910, an on-campus summer school in Kingston became an integral part of the BA program at Queen’s—largely by serving extramural students who could satisfy their residency requirement by attending four summer sessions.Footnote ³⁴ It is the students at this summer school—the vast majority of whom were in-service teachers—who are the focus of this article. Given my analytical focus on the construction of boundaries of professional status and given well-documented relationships between gender and the history of teacher professionalization, some notes about the gender composition of the summer school student body and the sorts of positions sought by summer school graduates help contextualize the subsequent narrative.

The gender composition of the student body at Queen’s Summer School was reported from 1920 through 1941 and again from 1953 through 1960. During these thirty years, a total of 12,810 students enrolled (an average of 427 per year). Of these students, 5,943 (46 percent) were female. Women constituted a lower proportion of the summer school student body (between 41 percent and 44 percent) during most years in the 1930s, but otherwise enrollment in the summer school was characterized by gender parity.Footnote ³⁵ This was not the case when it came to the numbers of men and women serving in executive positions with the QSSA, which was established in 1914, open to all enrolled students, and focused on promoting the summer school and organizing extracurricular activities. Each summer, members of the QSSA held a general meeting and elected an executive committee: president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, social convenor, music convenor, and athletic convenor. Before 1941, QSSA executive positions were dominated by men. In those years, just one QSSA president, and 12 percent of the convenors, were women. In contrast, from 1941 through 1959, eight women served as QSSA president, and women filled 52 percent of convenor roles.Footnote ³⁶

Insight into the shifting representation of men and women on the QSSA executive is provided by assessing the evolution of the types of professional positions to which summer school participants aspired. In the 1910s and 1920s, participants at Queen’s Summer School aspired to obtain either leadership positions (e.g., public school inspector or secondary school principal) or teaching roles in prestigious schools (such as urban high schools, collegiate institutes, normal schools, and postsecondary institutions). In both 1917 and 1919, the Bulletin profiled positions obtained by people having attended summer school at Queen’s. Those profiled included three public school inspectors, two principals at model schools, seven high school principals, five teachers at collegiate institutes, three teachers at urban high schools, and five teachers at postsecondary colleges.Footnote ³⁷ Throughout the 1920s, the Bulletin regularly contained testimonials from people in coveted positions who attributed their success to Queen’s.Footnote ³⁸ In 1931, Gordon Duffin, the QSSA secretary-treasurer, boasted that despite the existence of four universities in Ontario, “60 percent of the Public School Inspectors in the province are Queen’s graduates.”Footnote ³⁹

In the 1910s and 1920s, participants at Queen’s Summer School typically aspired to become secondary school teachers or educational administrators. This changed in the 1930s, reflecting the increasing educational requirements, noted above, for certification as a primary school teacher. In 1936, William MacClement—the director of the Summer School from its inception until his death in 1938—informed readers of the Bulletin that a “permanent teaching certificate” could now be obtained by in-service elementary school teachers through work at Queen’s Summer School: “Having an interim First Class Certificate, with satisfactory reports of teaching experience, a teacher may apply for a permanent certificate when he has added a University course of five classes.” MacClement explained that teachers who did not desire a degree would be allowed to register for courses bearing credit to their permanent teaching certificate even if they did not meet the full entry requirements for the BA program.Footnote ⁴⁰ Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Queen’s administrators regularly wrote in the Bulletin, explaining to in-service teachers how they could meet various certification requirements through completing courses at summer school.Footnote ⁴¹

After the mid-1930s, some participants at Queen’s Summer School continued to aspire to become secondary school teachers or educational administrators, but others aspired to obtain an array of professional certificates, some of which did not require the completion of a BA. The evolving professional aspirations of summer school students were reflected in the way the Bulletin profiled graduates. Rather than profiling distinguished—and typically male—graduates, as was the case in the 1910s and 1920s, the Bulletin in the 1930s and 1940s contained long lists of those who had recently graduated with a BA after having completed all or most of their courses through extramural and summer work.Footnote ⁴² In the 1950s, such lists were replaced with group photographs of recent graduates—many of whom were women. In short, boundaries of professional status became more complex over the history of the Queen’s Summer School. Initially, professional status was restricted to those holding positions of authority as educational administrators or teaching positions in secondary schools. In the 1940s and 1950s, such status boundaries became more complex as the educational attainment of elementary school teachers increased.

The QSSA Bulletin and Its Presidential Messages

In October 1915, the QSSA published its first Bulletin, positioning it as an “official organ” and as “an advertising medium” through which the association would encourage “teachers and others” to attend summer school.Footnote ⁴³ The 1915 Bulletin was a sixteen-page booklet that identified QSSA executive committee members, listed formal regulations and conditions associated with attendance at Queen’s Summer School, and employed various strategies to encourage potential students to enroll. Such strategies included: photographs and narrative descriptions of botanical and mineralogical excursions held in 1915; descriptions of career advancement achieved in the field of education by Queen’s graduates; lists of students having passed courses at Summer School 1915; a description of the educational and leisure-time advantages of summertime in Kingston; and encouraging advice regarding the feasibility of completing a BA through extramural and summer work. The QSSA distributed five thousand copies of the Bulletin in October 1915 and February 1916 to teachers across Canada, encouraging them to enroll in the 1916 Queen’s Summer School.Footnote ⁴⁴ After its first year, the QSSA published the Bulletin annually in February or March.

Beginning in 1919, each Bulletin contained a “message” from the QSSA president.Footnote ⁴⁵ Of the forty-one presidents who served between 1919 and 1959, twenty-six (63 percent) resided in Ontario while nine resided in Quebec, and two resided in each of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. The fact that the Bulletin published messages from QSSA presidents for a period of forty years provides unique insight into the evolution of the ways that teachers communicated to other teachers about pursuing higher education. Messages from QSSA presidents were carefully crafted and served two functions. Explicitly, they were centerpieces in annual publications designed to promote the enrollment of teachers from across Canada in Queen’s Summer School. Implicitly, they performed boundary work—symbolically distinguishing more and less professional teachers. By analyzing the evolution of QSSA presidential messages, one learns something about how teachers promoted higher education to other teachers and about how teachers themselves contributed to the construction of status boundaries between teachers—boundaries that evolved in concert with processes of professionalization.

Since the purpose of the Bulletin was to encourage people to enroll at Queen’s, it is no surprise that virtually all messages from QSSA presidents mentioned one or more characteristics of Queen’s that would distinguish it as an excellent place to study. Friendliness was prominent among these characteristics. Nearly one-third of QSSA presidents mentioned the friendly atmosphere of Queen’s, with several calling the institution “the friendly university” or “the friendliest campus.”Footnote ⁴⁶ A similar proportion of QSSA presidents mentioned features relating to the quality of academic programs—variety of courses offered, excellence of instructors, and attention paid to the interests of individual students. The strong reputation of Queen’s was also prominent in messages from QSSA presidents, roughly half of whom claimed that the Summer School attracted large numbers of students from across Canada and beyond. Numerous presidents also highlighted non-academic advantages of Queen’s, such as the beauty of the campus, the attractiveness of Kingston, and the high quality of recreational facilities.

While claims regarding the advantages of studying at Queen’s were nearly ubiquitous—and would be expected from people writing for a publication dedicated to attracting students to enroll there—other aspects of presidents’ messages changed systematically over time. Throughout the 1920s, QSSA presidents regularly positioned attendance at the Summer School as a means of promoting progress in society and strengthening the foundations of the teaching profession in Canada. After 1930, references to progress and professionalization virtually disappeared, apart from references made, in the context of World War II, to education as a means of protecting democracy. In the 1930s, two claims were most prominent in messages from QSSA presidents: that attending summer school would lead to career and financial benefits; and that attending summer school was an avenue for personal growth and development. By the 1940s, claims about careers and personal growth became more subtle, and messages from QSSA presidents focused primarily on the claim that coming to Queen’s was an enjoyable and profitable way to spend one’s vacation. I now examine how, and why, such messages changed so dramatically over a relatively short period.

Progress and Professionalization

Messages from the QSSA president began in 1919 with Oates’s missionary zeal, and for a decade successive presidents encouraged teachers across Canada to attend Queen’s Summer School for the betterment of society and the strengthening of the teaching profession. In 1922 and 1924, QSSA presidents argued that progress in society was integrally linked to the professionalization of teaching. Mr. P. H. Sheffield of Nelson, British Columbia, claimed:

Mr. W. J. Brown of Toronto argued that attendance at Queen’s Summer School was a means for teachers in Canada to strengthen their collective status vis-à-vis other professions:

Sheffield highlighted the trajectory of the medical profession to encourage teachers to pursue further education: “Two or three generations ago, it is true, any one who had a few boxes of pills and a couple of thick books could set up as a doctor, but changing times have brought ever increasing periods of training for the medical student, and the doctors themselves, as well as society, have reaped the benefit.” He argued, “A profession, it has been said, is an occupation which one enters after a long period of preparation. If one were to judge the teachers of Canada by such a standard, then for many of us teaching is still only a job.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Brown added that individual teachers would benefit from investing in credentials: “Slowly, but surely, Boards of Education are beginning to recognize the consequent superior qualities and attainments by rewards of higher salaries and promotions to positions of educational control.”Footnote ⁵⁰

In 1925, Mr. Orvill Ault from Ottawa wrote that world leaders were working to construct a “new era” in which the “stage of national moral development” would be called “modern” rather than “primitive.”Footnote ⁵¹ Ault wrote that Canadians

Here, with rhetorical flair, Ault argued that “doing one’s duty” as a teacher meant improving one’s credentials: “If you are already … seeking academic advancement, acquiring for yourself greater professional qualifications, you are answering the nation’s call as truly in the new era as our soldiers did at the close of the old.” To convince readers of the wisdom of enrolling in summer school, Ault argued that “doing one’s duty” would lead to personal benefits:

Here, one sees a proselytizing message—enlisting others as servants of progress and professionalization—joined with a message entreating teachers to consider their own interests and invest in further education to advance their careers.

The following year, Mr. J. Lewis Challinor of Chatham made a parallel argument—that social progress and personal gain would result from teachers investing in professional qualifications—through mobilizing a vocabulary of community service. He began his presidential message by claiming that “in the realm of business and professional life a new era is dawning. There is an inclination to abandon the self-centered interests which have animated so many in the past. Men are beginning to think and act in the terms of ‘Community Service.’”Footnote ⁵⁴ Challinor argued:

Challinor argued that the “logical way for a teacher to seek the highest degree of efficiency is to raise the standards of his qualifications, academically and professionally,” and he urged teachers to take advantage of extramural and summer school programs provided by Canadian universities: “The aggressive teachers will advance in their profession by drinking from the fountain of knowledge and thereby become more valuable as servants of the community.” As Ault had argued a year earlier, Challinor claimed that personal gain would accompany efforts to serve society. He wrote, “He profits most who serves best,” and he concluded his message:

In the first decade of the Bulletin, QSSA presidents regularly made claims relating to progress and professionalization. Oates, Brown, Sheffield, Ault, and Challinor displayed missionary zeal in their messages. They encouraged teachers to enroll in Queen’s Summer School through narratives of progress and professionalization, and through claiming that career advancement would accompany one’s service to society and profession.

In the 1920s, presidents of the QSSA consistently claimed that students at the Queen’s Summer School constituted a community of ambitious and industrious teachers, committed to progress in society and the professionalization of teaching. To readers who were already members of that community, such claims helped define the identity of the QSSA community in terms beyond the straightforward collective status of having enrolled in summer school. To readers who had not yet become members of that community, such claims defined a symbolic boundary and expressed an invitation. The content of the boundary was that members of the QSSA community possessed ambition, industriousness, and a commitment to social progress and the professionalization of teaching. The invitation was sometimes explicit, as when both Ault and Challinor invited readers to “join the ranks.”Footnote ⁵⁷ The invitation was sometimes implicit, as when Brown wrote: “Fellow teachers of Canada, can we afford to put off from year to year what is a clear-cut demand on us to keep abreast of the other walks of life? … Let us rather meet the call NOW—in 1922—and, by filling in our application for a Queen’s Summer School Arts or Commerce Course, embark on an undertaking which, when completed, will be valued as our greatest life achievement.”Footnote ⁵⁸

Such boundary work had a gender subtext. All the QSSA presidents in these years were men. The key themes of these years reflected hegemonically masculine concerns: ambition, industriousness, progress, and professional status. While the presidents used gender-neutral language in their messages, other components of the Bulletin—such as the testimonials frequently printed in these years from male QSSA graduates working as school inspectors and principals—hinted that QSSA presidents shared the gender assumptions explicitly stated by Director MacClement in 1928: “Although in the teaching profession in Canada women far exceed men in numbers, still, as would be expected, the men in greater numbers consider it advisable to seek higher academic qualification.”Footnote ⁵⁹

Career Advancement and Personal Development

The year 1929 was an inflection point in terms of the QSSA presidents’ messages to the Bulletin. While five out of six surviving presidential messages published before 1929 positioned attendance at Queen’s Summer School in terms of contributing to collective movements, subsequent messages were rooted in appeals to the individual self-interest of teachers. Such appeals initially focused on career advancement and financial gain, then later focused on personal growth and self-development.

In 1929, Mr. R. D. Webb of Calgary, Alberta, encouraged readers to focus on self-interest with a message provocatively entitled “Think It Over.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Webb began by estimating that just 6 percent of the tens of thousands of teachers in Canada were college graduates. He then stated, “Let us contrast the position of the 6% with that of the 94%.” Regarding the relatively privileged, Webb claimed, “Those with degrees occupy positions in the city and town High Schools, or are principals of the big city Public Schools. From this class inspectors, Normal School instructors, and other administrative officers are chosen. Their salaries are higher than those of the other teachers and their work more pleasant.”Footnote ⁶¹ Regarding the less privileged, Webb wrote: “The 94% teach under trying conditions. Salaries are often poor. Many of the school buildings are unsanitary and drab. Life in rural districts and small towns tends to become monotonous… . The teacher gets into a rut and dies a mental death. The outlook for the 94% is not very promising if they are content to remain in that class.”Footnote ⁶² Webb wrote that most Canadian teachers could not feasibly take four or five years away from work to complete a degree, and argued, “Queen’s University offers a way out.” He described how extramural and summer school study at Queen’s was providing “an avenue of escape” for many teachers but lamented the fact that the number of teachers taking advantage of such opportunities composed “a small fraction of the whole.” Webb concluded his message by cajoling his readers:

Webb’s message to the 1929 Bulletin marked a clear departure from those of his presidential predecessors; he made no appeal to social progress but rather presented his readers with a stark description of divisions within the population of teachers—and encouraged his readers to join the privileged category of teachers by completing a degree from Queen’s.

In 1931, Mr. A. R. Davidson of Walkerville started his presidential message by describing the evolution of teaching as an occupation: “During the past few years many changes have taken place in the teaching profession throughout Canada. New principals and supervisors have been appointed, many who were teaching in the Elementary Schools have entered the secondary, and a few have become Inspectors or Directors of Education.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Davidson then asked, “Why did these teachers receive promotion when hundreds of others who had been in the profession much longer, were passed by?” He answered, quoting Benjamin Disraeli, “The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.” Davidson asked his readers, “When the day for promotions come WILL YOU BE PREPARED?”Footnote ⁶⁵ He claimed, “It is not too late for every teacher who has the desire, to improve his or her qualifications,” and he stated, “Queen’s University throws out the challenge to every unprepared teacher in Canada.”Footnote ⁶⁶

While Webb and Davidson stressed the connection between summer school attendance and career success, Mr. G. W. Richardson of Ottawa appealed, in 1934, to prospective students’ interest in personal growth. He asked, “What is life?” and responded: “My view is that real living is an art and that the ideal life is exemplified in a radiant, altruistic personality. Such a personality is not the offspring of circumstance. It is developed through mental training and discipline, through experience, and in association with others.”Footnote ⁶⁷ Richardson claimed that attendance at Queen’s would help people in their quest for self-development:

Richardson’s focus on personal growth was shared in the presidential message written by Mr. Carter Storr of Ottawa in 1937. Storr began his message by arguing that the phrase “time marches on” presented “a challenge to us who, faced with the great adventure of living, wish to develop ourselves to the highest degree of efficiency.” He claimed that one’s environment influences one’s personality and told readers: “Our problem then for the summer is to attempt to place ourselves where we may have the opportunity of greatest personal development.” Storr concluded that Queen’s and the QSSA had both contributed “their share in attempting to form that ideal environment where the student may progress educationally, socially, physically and aesthetically.”Footnote ⁶⁹ The next year, Mr. George Croskery of Ottawa also claimed that attending Queen’s promoted one’s growth as a person: “Education has to do with man’s efficiency as a human being. Its ultimate values must be measured in terms of conduct and character. It is because of its contribution to this all-round development that Queen’s has an ever-growing Alumni of loyal sons and daughters.”Footnote ⁷⁰ In short, while QSSA presidents in the 1920s focused on collectivist themes of social progress and the professionalization of teaching, their counterparts in the 1930s focused on individualist themes of career development, financial gain, and personal growth.

Why did the content of these messages shift so dramatically in such a short period of time? Both political-economic and institutional factors were important. Figures 2 and 3 identify key macro-level developments that influenced how QSSA presidents communicated with other teachers about investing in higher educational credentials.

Figure 2.

Unemployment rates in Canada, 1921-1960.

Source: Table D124-133, in Statistics Canada, Historical Statistics of Canada (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1983), https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-516-x/sectiond/D124_133-eng.csv.

Figure 3.

Annual salaries ($CAD) of Ontario teachers compared with those employed in the manufacturing sector in Canada, 1917-1953.

Sources: Table E41-48, in Statistics Canada, Historical Statistics, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-516-x/sectione/E41_48-eng.csv; and Stager, Elementary and Secondary School Teachers’ Salaries, 17.

In the 1920s, unemployment in Canada fell to historic lows, and the salaries of teachers in Ontario increased both in absolute terms and in comparison to those employed as salaried personnel (i.e., “white-collar” supervisors and office workers) and as wage earners (i.e., “blue-collar” production workers) in the manufacturing sector across Canada.Footnote ⁷¹ The focus of QSSA presidents on progress and professionalization made sense in the 1920s, in light of a robust overall national economy and relative salary gains being made by teachers vis-à-vis both white-collar and blue-collar workers. Such circumstances changed dramatically with the Great Depression. National rates of unemployment skyrocketed to over 19 percent by 1933 and remained high until 1941. Salaries in the manufacturing sector fell earlier than those of teachers, but over the course of the 1930s average salaries of teachers fell even more than those of people employed in white-collar and blue-collar work.Footnote ⁷² Under such circumstances, the focus of QSSA presidents in the 1930s upon career development, financial gain, and personal growth made perfect sense, as did the sudden absence of messaging about social progress.Footnote ⁷³

Comparative salaries and unemployment rates help explain the shift in how QSSA presidents tried to convince teachers across Canada to enroll in summer school before and after 1929. A second key factor was the normalization of summer school attendance in the career pathways of Canadian teachers. When the QSSA was formed in 1914, only the University of Toronto and Queen’s offered summer schools in Canada. The University of Toronto established a “Teachers’ Course” in 1905, scheduling lectures in the late afternoon and evening, and offering an annual summer session so that in-service teachers could pursue a BA on a part-time basis. However, to the frustration of University of Toronto administrators, the Teachers’ Course floundered in its first fifteen years of operation, with an annual average of less than thirty-five students enrolling.Footnote ⁷⁴ In the early 1920s, Queen’s was the preeminent provider of extramural and summer school courses to teachers across Canada, and the only university providing a feasible degree-completion pathway to in-service teachers not residing in the metropolitan Toronto area. Since few Canadian teachers enrolled in university-based summer schools in the 1920s, QSSA presidents mobilized discourses of progress and professionalization to encourage teachers to do something that was out of the ordinary. However, by the mid-1930s there were a dozen Canadian universities providing summer school instruction to in-service teachers.Footnote ⁷⁵ Thus, messages of career development, financial gain, and personal growth would have made more compelling reasons for teachers to choose Queen’s over alternative institutions.

Despite significant shifts in the content of QSSA presidents’ messages to the Bulletin, the boundary-signaling function of those messages remained. In the 1930s, QSSA presidents claimed that students at the Queen’s Summer School constituted a community of ambitious teachers committed to personal growth, professional development, and both career and financial success. As had been the case in the 1920s, presidents actively invited readers to join that community—as noted above in Webb’s exhortation to “think it over” and Richardson’s conclusion, “The rest is up to you.” Davidson wrote, “Let me urge you to join the happy group of Summer Students at Queen’s this summer,” and Croskery concluded his message by telling readers, “You will be proud of your membership in the ‘Queen’s Family.’”Footnote ⁷⁶ In the 1930s, QSSA presidents symbolically marked the boundaries of professional status in straightforward terms: professional teachers were those who possessed credentials, gained promotions, earned more money, and were committed to ongoing personal and professional development. Enrolling at Queen’s was positioned as a choice that would enable readers to join the community of professional teachers.

A Great Summer Holiday

Appealing to teachers’ self-interest was central to the Bulletin message crafted by the only woman to serve as QSSA president before World War II. In 1930, Ms. Gwen Killingbeck of Lachine, Quebec, wrote, “Queen’s has still another ground for claiming a position of outstanding influence in the educational life of Canada in the fact that so many of her graduates are holding important positions.”Footnote ⁷⁷ She merged this observation about career development with the argument that personal growth was an important outcome of one’s work at Queen’s. About the “sense of steady achievement” that accompanied extramural study, she wrote:

Killingbeck emphasized that teachers did not have to sacrifice the joys of their summer vacation to pursue personal growth and career advancement:

The notion that spending one’s summer at Queen’s would be “enjoyable and profitable” became nearly ubiquitous in subsequent messages from QSSA presidents. Of the twenty-eight surviving presidential messages to the Bulletin published between 1931 and 1959, twenty-three explicitly claimed that students at Queen’s Summer School would experience both an enjoyable vacation and the opportunity to pursue professional advancement. Of the five messages that did not feature such claims, those published between 1941 and 1943 were written in a context wherein expressing an intention to have an enjoyable vacation would have been politically incorrect, and those from 1936 and 1958 focused on appeals to notions of “Queen’s spirit” and the “Queen’s family.”

It is not surprising that QSSA presidents would promote the summer school by extolling the pleasant atmosphere and enjoyable activities available to students. Making the summer school experience an enjoyable one through organizing extracurricular activities was a core mission of the QSSA. What is interesting in the evolution of presidential messages to the Bulletin is the way that appeals about enjoying one’s summer displaced other claims over time. Themes of progress and professionalization dominated QSSA presidents’ messages in the 1920s. Themes of professional advancement, pecuniary benefit, and personal growth were prominent in the 1930s. While such themes did not completely disappear in the 1940s and 1950s, they were overshadowed by claims that coming to Queen’s would enable teachers to enjoy an excellent vacation.

The notion of coming to Queen’s for a good holiday became central to presidential messages in the mid-1940s. In 1944, Ms. May Mead of Regina, Saskatchewan, rhetorically compared Queen’s to the biblical Garden of Eden, “where all was beauty and light and joy.”Footnote ⁸⁰ She argued that “we all” knew places “which bring laughter, peace and contentment to our souls,” and she explained why Queen’s was one such place:

The next year, Mr. Walter Lavender of Kirkland Lake claimed that “happy diversions” would “blend perfectly” with academic work: “There will be six weeks of delightful companionship in numerous social activities, spiced with hours of relaxation on the tennis courts, on the ball fields, in the swimming pool or in merely roaming around the spacious campus that overlooks beautiful Lake Ontario.”Footnote ⁸² In 1947, Ms. Dorothy Taylor of Windsor assured prospective students, “You will enjoy the varied programme of intellectual, social, athletic and musical activities on the beautiful campus amongst the stately buildings and traditions of Queen’s. Come and share the pleasant times that await us.”Footnote ⁸³ Mr. Howard Stutt of Outremont, Quebec, invited prospective students to join “in spending the six best weeks of 1948 at Queen’s.” He explained:

Clearly, by the latter 1940s QSSA presidents filled messages to the Bulletin with claims regarding the enjoyable experience that awaited prospective students.

Through the 1950s, QSSA presidential messages to the Bulletin consistently emphasized the inherent joys of spending one’s summer at Queen’s. Ms. Olive Delaney of Belleville explained, “Musical evenings, a variety of sports, picnics, dances and boat trips are arranged for your pleasure. There is no need to spend a dull summer at Queen’s. If a combination of education, creative recreation and a summer vacation has an appeal, join us at Queen’s. You will find life there that is full, interesting, and rewarding.”Footnote ⁸⁵ The next year, Mr. Angus MacMillan of Quebec City claimed that at Queen’s, “there are opportunities for both work and recreation, and the summer is not only enjoyable, but profitable”; he concluded his message with, “We invite you to join us and share the pleasant times that lie ahead.”Footnote ⁸⁶ Such invitations were repeated throughout the decade, by QSSA presidents such as Mr. Donald Kenwall of Penetanguishene—“we extend a cordial invitation to join with us for a summer of profit and pleasure on the friendliest campus”—and Ms. Catherine Spennato of St. Catharines—“you will be welcomed joyfully and invited to join in every part of diverse and rich life. Do come—We would love to have you and I believe you would love Queen’s too.”Footnote ⁸⁷ At the end of the decade, Ms. Margaret Walkom of Belleville wrote, “Once again the time has arrived to decide how you are going to spend your summer vacation. For a pleasant, relaxing and infinitely rewarding summer why not choose to attend Queen’s Summer School and join the ranks of those who are ‘combining business with pleasure’?”Footnote ⁸⁸ Queen’s Summer School was positioned, by successive QSSA presidents in the 1950s, as an opportunity to have a good time while building one’s professional credentials.

In these messages, one sees the continuation of the boundary-signaling strategy from earlier decades, in which readers of the Bulletin (“you”) were invited to join the QSSA community of teachers (“us”) at summer school. What had changed were the normative commitments that defined the character of that community. Members of the QSSA community were not positioned as holding commitments to social progress or the professionalization of teaching. They continued to be committed to personal and professional development, and to career and financial success, but such commitments had become taken for granted—noted through terms such as “profitable summer” rather than through extended discussion on the part of QSSA presidents. Notably, membership in the QSSA community was marked by having discerning taste in how to spend one’s summer holidays, in knowing how to mix business with pleasure, how to combine enjoyment and profit. A professional teacher, then, was still one who possessed credentials, gained promotions, earned more money, and was committed to ongoing personal and professional development. In these latter decades of the QSSA Bulletin, however, a professional teacher was also someone who knew how to make best use of the summer holiday period.

It is important to note that women achieved relative gender parity in the role of QSSA president in the decades in which presidential messages to the Bulletin shifted attention from hegemonically masculine concerns of social progress and career success to more traditionally feminine concerns of planning one’s leisure time, participating in social events, and enjoying pleasant companionship. In terms of hegemonic gender norms, the symbolic content of the boundary signaled by QSSA presidents’ messages to the Bulletin became feminized during the same years in which nearly equal numbers of women as men served as QSSA president.

As was the case with the shift in messaging of QSSA presidents from the 1920s to the 1930s, the new rhetorical focus on enjoying a great summer holiday in the 1940s and 1950s reflected political-economic trends summarized in Figures 2 and 3. During the Second World War and the decade that followed, the rate of unemployment in Canada was relatively consistent, at around 2 percent. Between 1941 and 1954, the average annual salary of female and male public school teachers in Ontario increased by 180 percent and 154 percent, respectively. This rate of growth significantly outstripped that of average Canadian blue-collar and white-collar workers, whose salaries increased by 143 percent and 122 percent, respectively. High school teachers in Ontario experienced, on average, more modest salary increases during this period (108 percent), but their remuneration remained significantly higher than that of the average white-collar worker in Canada. In an era of remarkably low unemployment and the strengthening of most teachers’ salaries vis-à-vis other Canadians, QSSA presidents’ focus on enjoying one’s holidays while building one’s professional credentials likely would have been an appealing one for many teachers.

Another factor behind the shift in presidential messaging in the QSSA Bulletin was the unprecedented increase in numbers of in-service teachers across Canada completing university courses and degrees. Between 1940 and 1965, the proportion of Canadian teachers holding university degrees increased from 10 percent to 17 percent for women and from 30 percent to 50 percent for men—an increase of over two-thirds for both genders.Footnote ⁸⁹ Given the large increases in the number of teachers employed in Ontario during these years (reflecting the postwar “baby boom” and subsequent growth in school enrollments), this meant that unprecedented numbers of teachers were completing university degrees. The shift in rhetoric—from summer school as the pathway to a successful career to summer school as an enjoyable vacation—reflected the fact that the completion of university courses and degrees was becoming increasingly common among in-service teachers. Rapidly increasing numbers of teachers possessing a university degree made it possible for QSSA presidents to take for granted their readers’ interest in obtaining higher educational credentials and to focus instead on convincing them to attend summer school at Queen’s (rather than elsewhere) on the strength of the outstanding social and recreational opportunities provided by the QSSA.

It is important to note that the shift away from elaborate messaging about credentials, career success, and financial gain did not imply that QSSA presidents had stopped signaling boundaries of professional status through their messages to the Bulletin. As argued in the introduction to this article, professionalization is not limited to institutional, structural, or material changes. It also involves the construction of new systems of cultural meaning through which people understand themselves and others as being somehow alike or different because of their possession of professional status. In the 1940s and 1950s, QSSA presidents signaled boundaries of professional status through championing a discerning attitude in teachers’ use of the summer holiday period. Such boundary marking ran parallel to the mobilization of cultural distinction that Pierre Bourdieu described in his analysis of social class in France in the 1960s.Footnote ⁹⁰ Just as members of privileged social classes in these decades signaled their superior status through discerning tastes in the consumption of food and the appreciation of fine arts, so too did QSSA presidents signal their professional status through discerning tastes in how to spend the summer holidays.Footnote ⁹¹ While the presidents continued to link attendance at summer school with career development and material gain, their most prominent message in this era was one of employing one’s vacation time wisely. Apart from taking BA courses, summer school participants were encouraged to appreciate a wide range of cultural practices, including concerts, dances, tennis, swimming, boat cruises, and non-credit courses in painting, ballet, and drama. The list of recreational and social activities promoted by the QSSA paralleled the privileged cultural practices identified by scholars as integral to the marking of symbolic boundaries of social class in France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Canada.Footnote ⁹² Further, the predominance of holiday appeals in QSSA presidents’ messages in these decades reflected the importance of extracurricular activities to middle-class cultural norms that had been established by Canadian university students in the 1930s.Footnote ⁹³ Thus, while the content of QSSA presidents’ messages in the 1940s and 1950s had little to do with the institutional or material foundations of professional status, it was central to emerging cultural understandings, held by teachers themselves, about what it meant to be a professional teacher.

Conclusions: Signaling the Boundaries of Professional Status

The evolution of messages written by QSSA presidents documents shifts over time in how teachers encouraged other teachers to attend Queen’s Summer School. During the 1920s, QSSA presidents claimed that attendance would contribute to collective goals of social progress and the professionalization of teaching. During the 1930s, QSSA presidents claimed that attendance would further the individual self-interest of teachers by promoting career development and personal growth. In the 1940s and 1950s, claims regarding career development were softened and overshadowed by the notion that attending Queen’s Summer School would be an enjoyable way for teachers to spend their vacation. Note that this evolution did not erect iron-clad parameters around what could be written by QSSA presidents. Indeed, the earliest editions of the Bulletin contained references to the fun and financial advantages that would be derived from attending summer school, and the QSSA president in 1958 wrote about the connection between education and social progress. However, the observation that messages written by QSSA presidents began with missionary zeal and ended with holiday appeal characterizes the evolution of the predominant themes of these messages.

These shifts in presidential messaging about why teachers should attend summer school were not random; rather, they reflected major changes in Canadian society. In the 1920s, when few Canadian universities offered summer school programs and when few Canadian teachers possessed higher educational credentials, QSSA presidents deployed messages about social progress and the professionalization of teaching to encourage teachers to do something that would have been considered exceptional at the time. The overall strength of the Canadian economy in the 1920s, and the fact that average salaries of teachers rose in comparison to those earned by other Canadians in that decade gave narratives of progress and professionalization added credibility. Such narratives could not plausibly have been sustained in the 1930s, when economic depression devastated many Canadian households and led teachers’ salaries to lose ground vis-à-vis those of blue-collar and white-collar workers. In these difficult times, QSSA presidents conveyed messages about financial gain and professional and personal development to encourage teachers to come to Queen’s rather than another Canadian university—most of which had developed summer schools by the early 1930s. In the 1940s and 1950s, unemployment virtually disappeared in Canada, the average salary earned by teachers grew more quickly than that earned by other Canadians, and the number of in-service teachers pursuing higher education grew at unprecedented rates. QSSA presidents communicated messages about the inherent joys of spending one’s summer vacation in Kingston in a manner that both endeavored to differentiate Queen’s from other universities and promoted cultural practices associated with relatively privileged Canadians—practices that could more easily be celebrated in prosperous, postwar times.

Through annual messages to the Bulletin, QSSA presidents were not simply encouraging other teachers to attend summer school. They were also—through the structure of their communication, which remained consistent over a period of several decades—engaging in boundary work. Such boundary work signaled both mundane membership in the QSSA community and the evolving symbolic contours of professional status for teachers in Canada. In the 1920s, professional teachers were those who were ambitious, industrious, and committed to social progress and the professionalization of teaching. In the 1930s, professional teachers were those who possessed credentials, gained promotions, earned more money, and were committed to ongoing personal and professional development. In the 1940s and 1950s, professional teachers were those who possessed discerning taste in how to spend their summer holidays, who knew how to mix business with pleasure and how to combine enjoyment and profit. Notably, the content of the symbolic boundaries constructed by QSSA presidents began with hegemonically masculine values and evolved to include more traditionally feminine values.

This article has made two contributions to the history of teacher education and professionalization. First, it has constructed and explained a narrative of how teachers encouraged other teachers, over several decades in Canada, to spend part of their vacation pursuing higher education at summer school. Second, it has interpreted that narrative through the analytical lens of boundary work and shown that teachers themselves participated in the construction of professional status distinctions between teachers who did and did not possess higher educational credentials. These contributions decenter the study of power and foreground the importance of culture in a field of study that has been dominated by state-centric analyses of structural and institutional change. Teachers themselves were agents in the historical process of professionalization through higher education. They actively constructed meaning, and they helped shape symbolic boundaries that influenced how teachers thought about themselves in relation to other teachers.