For Ryerson and the other school promoters, literacy and disciplined behavior went hand in hand in the education of the labouring class.

Conclusion

In summary, the theme of education--including literacy instruction --as a means of preventing or controlling the social disruption accompanying the rise of capitalist manufacturing was a prominent one in the common school movement of the mid-1800's in Upper Canada. However, while there is evidence that the new schools eased the transition in that they muted class conflict somewhat, 38 they could not ameliorate the poverty and exploitation which fueled the conflict. In Schecter's view,"the reformers practised self-deception, first thinking that capitalist progress was possible without the attendant dislocation and exploitation; second, in claiming that education would make this prospect possible. 39

According to Schecter:

For Ryerson and his colleagues the establishment of such a system was the means by which the state would save the bourgeoisie from itself.40

However, even if the new common school was primarily oriented to interests of elites, it also met some of the hopes and needs of subordinate classes, for whom access to public education had long been a democratic demand. 41 Marxist historian Stanley Ryerson emphasizes this aspect of the victory of the common school movement:

What was being undertaken was a response to both the industrial and the democratic revolutions: modern manufacturing required, and the working people sought, universal elementary education. "The knowledge required for the scientific pursuit of mechanics, agriculture and commerce must be provided to an extent corresponding with the demand and the exigencies of the country." This Judgement of Ryerson's expressed recognition of the imperatives of national democratic development as well as of bourgeois industrialism.42

In contrast with Ryerson's quite optimistic assessment, we may that the victory of the common school movement was a profoundly ambiguous development for the working class; it afforded access to free public education and literacy instruction--and so represented a gain--but at the same time brought about the more complete subordination of this class within the emerging industrial capitalist order.

Literacy Education and the Working Class

There was general support among the working class for extension of common schooling. For example, in 1872 the Ontario Workman argued that "a thorough and general system of education we consider to be one of the first duties of the state; to see what in all its branches it is placed as near as possible within the reach of every son and daughter of the land".43 However, during the mid-1800's, several spokesmen for the working class, including writers in the labour press, articulated an alternative perspective on literacy and education which departed in important ways from the one propounded by Ryerson and the other middle class educational reformers. It never achieved the influence over educational thought and policy that Ryerson's did, but it presented a critical challenge that was not easily ignored in a time of rising labour militance.