Imagining institutions of man: Constructions of the human in the foundations of Ontario public schooling curriculum. Issue 1 (1st January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Knight, Hunter
• Is Part Of: Curriculum inquiry. Volume 49:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 90
• Page End: 109
• Publication Date: 2019-01-01
• Subjects: Sylvia Wynter -- Egerton Ryerson -- curriculum development -- curriculum studies -- critical theory; Education -- Curricula -- Periodicals; 375.0005
• DOI: 10.1080/03626784.2018.1552071
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0362-6784

Abstract

Abstract: In this essay, I analyse Egerton Ryerson's proposed curriculum for the first state-led mass public educational system in Ontario. Egerton Ryerson, Chief Superintendent of Schools in Upper Canada during the wide-scale proliferation of state schooling across Turtle Island, produced proposals for "universal" common schools, as well as proposals for residential schools for Indigenous students, segregated schooling for Black students and institutionalized schooling for disabled students and lower-class students. Following the work of Sylvia Wynter, I argue that these proposals within a supposedly universal system were not contradictory, but an organic production of Ryerson's educational philosophy. Ryerson's vision is organized by what Wynter terms Man, a representation for a story of the human that is overrepresented as the human itself. Through this story, claims of universal humanity are produced through the manifestation of categories of difference. In exploring how Ryerson's universalism is structured by this understanding of what it means to be human, we see how his writings on curriculum for his common schools presage his future proposals for the violent exclusion of those who are excluded from the category of Man. Ryerson's writings suggest that Ontario curriculum is historically founded in colonialism and imperialism (which construct the category of Man and its overrepresentation), with further implications for curricula throughout Turtle Island. This analysis points to how efforts to reform curriculum of its racist, ableist and classist roots need to rethink the very story of what it means to be human, which is wrapped up in the foundations of public education.