From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario’s Schools by R.D. Gidney (review)

740 The Canadian Historical Review and ethnicity of Canadians and the physical characteristics of their dwellings. GILBERT STELTER University ofGuelph From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario's Schools. R.D. GIDNEY. Toronto: University ofToronto Press 1999. Pp. viii, 362. $24.95 R.D. Gidney is a central figure in the Althouse school, the education faculty ofthe University ofWestern Ontario in London. It has refused to race hither and yon with every new trend, but has stayed steadfast to a kind ofhumanistic conservatism - a tradition largely buried in our age of neo-liberalism. Gidney also practises the highest standards of historical scholarship, which were best shown in the classic he wrote with W.P.J. Millar, Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise ofthe High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario. The current book, From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario's Schools, deals with debates and changes in education from 1950 to 2000. (Little irony is implied by the title: Justice John Andrew Hope headed the key education investigation ofthe 1950s.) You will find here the major government battles with small school boards in the 1960s, teacher unions in the 1970s and 1990s, student unrest in the 1960s, and middle-class and upper-working-class taxpayers in the 1980s and 1990s. Major commissions are analyzed and put in context: Hope in the 1950s, Hall-Dennis in the 1960s, Radwanski in the 1980s, and the Royal Commission on Leaming in the 1990s. Unfortunately, for all its thoroughness and responsible tone in a field marked by profound self-righteousness and bitterness, the book does not probe beneath the debates and harangues to the more permanent changes which may be happening, and it does not get enough of the surface colour into its narrative. Having lived and taught through forty of the fifty years Gidney writes about, I am conscious that some profound changes have taken place and that an exciting and often tragic story has unfolded. Both these senses are missing in Gidney's book. I was first alerted to the issue ofdepth as I observed how editorializing functions for Gidney. As he describes the province's battles on one of the large topics - say, the extension ofCatholic funding to the later high school grades in 1984 - one side's view will be called 'propaganda' while another's will be termed 'predictable detractors.' I am not suggesting that a harsh bias keeps intruding in his narrative, but what purpose do these editorializings serve when no clear point ofview is evident? Is this just the story ofthe pendulum swings ofeducation - love and individualism one decade, toughness and high standards the next? With regard to Book Reviews 741 the problem of students performing in school in accordance with their class background (a fact proven by countless studies in Ontario and throughout the English-speaking world), is the problem gone from the schools when it disappears from the provincial education debates? These kinds ofquestions are not answered because Gidney presents no guiding theory about what goes on in a school system. Both the depth and the surface problems are thrown into relief by the last chapter ofthe book, 'Retrospect,' where we see that Gidney does in fact have some deeper ideas about what has happened in this halfcentury : he is fairly cynical about whether there is much new under the sun over these fifty years. On the surface narrative issue - that the book does not grab the reader, does not have enough heraldic stories, lacks arresting eloquence - the last chapter contains several extended passages that are among the most eloquent in all of Ontario's educational history writing. But let me remind readers that I describe Gidney's tradition as humanistic conservatism. This means that, with Harris on the scene, Gidney does not think the saviour ofthe world has arrived, nor does he think lo cometh the devil. These days we must often roll with such a stance and respect the responsible chronicling that goes with it. The heights and the depths are missing, but the golden mean has its own rewards. BOB DAVIS York University ...