The State of Tutelage in Lower Canada, 1835-1851

The Rebellion of 1837 prompted a re-examination by British Whigs and Radicals of Lower Canada’s educational and administrative policies and practices. The author points out that for both groups, this meant placing the colonial population under more extensive relations of tutelage as an antidote to revolution. Their analysis connected reform of governmental institutions, inspection and investigation of local conditions, and common schooling with a host of other attempts to reconfigure social solidarities in the colony and to reconstruct the colonial state. The author explains that it was proposed to create a system of elementary schools supported by state grants and property taxes as a means of creating responsible and dutiful citizens. These schools would be managed by elected officials and reviewed by a hierarchy of authorities. An alliance of imperial officials, Anglophone capitalists and reformers, and often grudgingly and ambivalently sections of the Francophone petite bourgeoisie, attempted to translate this analysis into practice in the decade of the 1840s.

History of Education Quarterly

Vol. 37

no. 1

25-43

1997

en