Bruce Curtis

Alison Prentice's 1977 groundbreaking monograph The School Promoters is a revisionist account of public education’s emergence. This latest edition includes a foreword and appendices by editors Bruce Curtis, Jennifer Henderson, and Mythili Rajiva, offering updated analysis and primary documents that deepen the understanding of Egerton Ryerson’s role in shaping Ontario’s educational system. Using a wide range of archival and published sources, The School Promoters provides a lucid account of the preoccupations of the White, mostly middle-class reformers connected to Ryerson, who were responsible for the advent of public education in Ontario as part of their concern with the future of Canadian society. This edition situates Prentice’s analysis of class domination within the context of settler-colonialism, exploring how education worked as a project for genocide as well as a means of social discipline. In particular, the editors expose how the proclaimed universality of public education was contradicted by the reformers’ logic for targeting paupers and Indigenous peoples with religious schooling. A reparative reading of Prentice's influential work, The School Promoters: Egerton Ryerson and His Circle, Second Edition highlights the relevance of this groundbreaking social history to contemporary analysis of Canada.

Alison Prentice's 1977 groundbreaking monograph The School Promoters is a revisionist account of public education’s emergence. This latest edition includes a foreword and appendices by editors Bruce Curtis, Jennifer Henderson, and Mythili Rajiva, offering updated analysis and primary documents that deepen the understanding of Egerton Ryerson’s role in shaping Ontario’s educational system. Using a wide range of archival and published sources, The School Promoters provides a lucid account of the preoccupations of the White, mostly middle-class reformers connected to Ryerson, who were responsible for the advent of public education in Ontario as part of their concern with the future of Canadian society. This edition situates Prentice’s analysis of class domination within the context of settler-colonialism, exploring how education worked as a project for genocide as well as a means of social discipline. In particular, the editors expose how the proclaimed universality of public education was contradicted by the reformers’ logic for targeting paupers and Indigenous peoples with religious schooling. A reparative reading of Prentice's influential work, The School Promoters: Egerton Ryerson and His Circle, Second Edition highlights the relevance of this groundbreaking social history to contemporary analysis of Canada.

Although pony-like in stature (measuring no more than thirty-eight inches at the shoulder), miniature horses nevertheless resemble small, well-proportioned horses with refined features. As pets or show horses, for driving, as well as therapy and guide animals, miniatures are ideal whether kept in limited space or on larger property. With stunning photographs by Bruce Curtis, The Book of Miniature Horses is as delightful an introduction to this fascinating breed as the horses themselves.

Ruling by Schooling Quebec provides a rich and detailed account of colonial politics from 1760 to 1841 by following repeated attempts to school the people. This first book since the 1950s to investigate an unusually complex period in Quebec’s educational history extends the sophisticated method used in author Bruce Curtis’s double-award-winning Politics of Population. Drawing on a mass of archival material, the study shows that although attempts to govern Quebec by educating its population consumed huge amounts of public money, they had little impact on rural ignorance: while near-universal literacy reigned in New England by the 1820s, at best one in three French-speaking peasant men in Quebec could sign his name in the insurrectionary decade of the 1830s. Curtis documents educational conditions on the ground, but also shows how imperial attempts to govern a tumultuous colony propelled the early development of Canadian social science. He provides a revisionist account of the pioneering investigations of Lord Gosford and Lord Durham.

Ruling by Schooling Quebec provides a rich and detailed account of colonial politics from 1760 to 1841 by following repeated attempts to school the people. This first book since the 1950s to investigate an unusually complex period in Quebec’s educational history extends the sophisticated method used in author Bruce Curtis’s double-award-winning Politics of Population. Drawing on a mass of archival material, the study shows that although attempts to govern Quebec by educating its population consumed huge amounts of public money, they had little impact on rural ignorance: while near-universal literacy reigned in New England by the 1820s, at best one in three French-speaking peasant men in Quebec could sign his name in the insurrectionary decade of the 1830s. Curtis documents educational conditions on the ground, but also shows how imperial attempts to govern a tumultuous colony propelled the early development of Canadian social science. He provides a revisionist account of the pioneering investigations of Lord Gosford and Lord Durham.

Original, fresh and relevant this is a theoretically-informed practical guide to researching social relations. The text provides a mixed methods approach that challenges historical divisions between quantitative and qualitative research. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach to social science research, drawing from areas such as sociology, social psychology and social anthropology. Explicitly addressing the concerns of emergent researchers it provides both a 'how to' account of social research and an understanding of the main factors that contextualize research by discussing 'why do' social scientists work this way. Throughout the twelve comprehensive chapters procedural (how to) accounts and contextual (why do) issues are usefully applied to major themes and substantive questions. These key themes include: (1) Research design (2) The practices of research and emergent researchers: Beyond ontology, epistemology and methodology (3) The impact of technology on research (4) Putting the research approach in context. A superb teaching text this book will be relished by lecturers seeking an authoritative introduction to social research and by students who want an accessible, enriching text to guide and inspire them.

Original, fresh and relevant this is a theoretically-informed practical guide to researching social relations. The text provides a mixed methods approach that challenges historical divisions between quantitative and qualitative research. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach to social science research, drawing from areas such as sociology, social psychology and social anthropology. Explicitly addressing the concerns of emergent researchers it provides both a 'how to' account of social research and an understanding of the main factors that contextualize research by discussing 'why do' social scientists work this way. Throughout the twelve comprehensive chapters procedural (how to) accounts and contextual (why do) issues are usefully applied to major themes and substantive questions. These key themes include: (1) Research design (2) The practices of research and emergent researchers: Beyond ontology, epistemology and methodology (3) The impact of technology on research (4) Putting the research approach in context. A superb teaching text this book will be relished by lecturers seeking an authoritative introduction to social research and by students who want an accessible, enriching text to guide and inspire them.

Inspired by recent developments in social theory and based on extensive archival research, this book provides the first systematic analysis of the developing knowledge capacities of the state in Victorian Canada. No government can intensively administer citizens about whom it knows nothing. The centralization of knowledge in the form of official statistics was an important dimension of state formation. The census of population was the leading project for the production of social intelligence. "The Politics of Population" provides a detailed account of the political and social context in which census-making developed in Canada. It deals with census-making as a political project, investigating its place in and impact on party politics and ethnic, religious, and sectional struggles. It also looks closely at census-making as an administrative practice, identifying the main census managers and outlining the organization of five attempts at census-making between 1842 and 1850, before following in detail how census-making finally unfolded between 1852 and 1871. Curtis examines parliamentary debate and governmental reports, but he also follows census enumerators into the field and traces how what they saw was worked up into 'official statistics.' Theoretically, the manuscript engages in a critical dialogue with work in the history of statistics, studies of state formation, social studies of scientific knowledge, and work in the field of 'governmentality.' Winner of the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, awarded by the Canadian Historical Association, and the John Porter Prize, awarded by the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association.