J. George Hodgins

“ His answer was: "Efficiency is the highest economy. If the springtime of life is wasted, life's greatest opportunities are wasted. The taxpayer must be made to pay for the common intelligence of the people." As a result of all this courage—may I not call it heroism—in the defence of sound principles of education he placed his native Province in the van of all the States of America and all the Colonies of the British Empire. Well may we to-day assemble to do honor to his memory. Not only Ontario, but Canada, owes much to his breadth of mind, his sagacity and his tremendous force of character. ”

“ Our school system is his true memorial.
I have already said that it is a meet and a becoming thing for a nation to honor the memory of its public benefactors. The nation that ceases to cherish and manifest a grateful remembrance of those who have devoted their energies to the promotion of its welfare and spent their lives in its service, gives evidence of deterioration and decay, gives evidence that it is on the down grade of national existence. ”

“ Our aim should, therefore, be to make that system commensurate with the wants of our people, in harmony with the progressive spirit of the times, and comprehensive enough to embrace the various branches of human knowledge which are now continually being called into requisition in the daily life of the farmer, the artizan, and the man of business. In no department of social and national progress have our neighbors made greater advances, or prided themselves more justly, than, in that of free popular education. ”

“ We should rather seek to draw lessons of instruction from the noble example of the devotion to education on the part of our British colonial progenitors, whose descendants have shed such a lustre of heroic self-sacrifice and patriotism on the history and exploits of the United Empire Loyalists of the thirteen colonies. To the Americans they have left a rich legacy from the colonial times in such universities as Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton—of which the descendants of the expatriated Loyalists, no less than those of the victorious revolutionists, are so justly proud. ”

“ We are a young country, placed in close proximity to a large and wonderfully progressive people. In the good providence of God, we are permitted to construct on the broad and deep foundations of British liberty, the corner-stone of a new nationality, leaving to those who come after us to raise the stately edifice itself. Apart from the vital Christianity of our people, what more lasting bond and cement of society in that new nationality, than a free and comprehensive system of Christian education for the youth of the land, such as we have sought to establish? ”

“ Among those present were men who have attained to eminence in every department of public life, and it was but right that they should pay the tribute they did to the memory of him who was the founder and for many years the head of the greatest of all departments. There were men present who for years were associated with Dr. Ryerson in his great work; men whose characters were to a great extent moulded by his example, and men whose ambitions have been wakened and whose purposes have been inspired by the contemplation of his achievements. ”

“ That the Province has made enormous strides in population, wealth, intelligence and importance, during the last thirty years, admits of no doubt. Our forests have disappeared, an improved system of agriculture has followed, manufactories have sprung up, railways have connected every county, a daily press has become an established and indispensable institution, the telegraph has economized time by practically annihilating distance, while numerous inventions and discoveries have created new wants, and supplied as rapidly as they have made them. ”

“ Yet, after all, their schools seemed to me to be good schools on bad or imperfect systems; they seem groping in the dark, no instruction in the past to guide the future, no beacon light, no council of wise men to guide them, more than we have, upon the subject of common schools. Our schools want in character, they want respectability, they want permanency in their character and in their support.... ”

“ With such charming prospects before us, with what alacrity and delight can we approach the subject of education to make liberal, permanent and efficient provision for the education of all the youth of Upper Canada, to cause 'the blind to see, the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak,' and, above all, to make certain and extensive provision for the support of schools for teachers and tutoresses."... ”

“ Now, in the United States a custom prevails unknown to or unpractised in any other nation; in all other countries morals and religion are made the basis of public instruction, and the first books put into the hands of children teach them the domestic, the social and religious virtues; but in the United States politics pervade the whole system of education; the school books, from the very first elements, are stuffed with praises of their own institutions, and breathe hatred to everything English. ”

“ As a people we have done no more than, probably not so much as, we ought to do, with the view of placing educational facilities within the reach of every child born or brought into the Province, but we have, nevertheless, ventured and effected more than has been attempted in many older and more wealthy lands. We have the consciousness of having done our duty, according to our lights. In our long-settled sections of country the school-house bell is within the hearing, or the school-house itself is within sight of nearly every family. ”

“ In a reply to a resolution from the Council of the County of Norfolk, in 1851, Dr. Ryerson thus referred to this subject:—
"There is no poetry in the establishment and development of a public school system; it is a matter-of-fact-work from beginning to end; and its progress, like the growth of body and mind in an individual, is gradual, and is the joint result of time and labour. I am happy, however, to know that our school system has already become so far developed in its principles, objects and character as to command the attention and almost unanimous approbation of the country. ”

“ It is only by the united and concerted action of all three, the executive skill, the zeal and energy of the teachers, and the popular sympathy and support that we can hope to secure the full benefit of our school system on the one hand; and on the other, show ourselves worthy of the heritage that has been handed down to us by those who have gone before us. ”

“ Before we proceed to observe the manner and record the results of its practical working, it is proper to premise that it is a purely permissive, not a compulsory system, and its adoption by any municipality is entirely voluntary.... Entering a Canadian school, with American impressions fresh upon the mind, the first feeling is one of disappointment. One misses the life, the motion, the vivacity, the precision—in a word, the brilliancy. But as you stay, and pass both teacher and pupils in review, the feeling of disappointment gives way to a feeling of surprise. ”

“ But the man who leaves his impress on the institutions of his country, exercises an influence that [18] is permanent in its action, pervasive in its power, and, within the range of these institutions, is universal in its beneficence. Every amelioration of these institutions is an abiding good, shared in by all who come within their sphere of operation. It becomes the common heritage of all.
Such was the impress made, such still is the influence exercised by the individual to whose memory and life-work we have met this day to do honor. ”

“ He was possessed of a profound conviction that mind is the great creative power by which all resources of nature are to be turned to account. He had no idea that material good is a good at all only as it is a means for the development of the moral and social possibilities of the individual and of the nation. He did not argue, as many others in the country did, that since the area of the Province is vast, its population widely scattered, its forests waiting to be felled, its lands to be cleared and drained, therefore the organization of an efficient school system was a thing of the far future. ”

“ With all its imperfections our system of public education in an eminent degree commands the affectionate regard of our people and the admiration of strangers. While Ontario was not the first of our Canadian provinces to organize a free system of public schools, and while she has not maintained intact the principle which lies at the basis of the common schools, the grandeur of the outline of our system and the general completeness of its details are, I believe, unsurpassed by those of any other system on this continent or throughout the empire. ”

“ Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament and Municipal Councils had to be indoctrinated with the new education. The press had to be directed, and the whole people educated to receive with favor a school system which ignored well established theories and deeply founded prejudices. Even popular indignation had to be set at defiance, and amid misrepresentation and calumny the master builder had often to do his work and to await the verdict of posterity for the vindication of his wisdom and foresight. ”

“ The system of popular education in Ontario has opened a free school to every child in the land, and proclaimed his right to its advantages; it has planted a school house in nearly every neighborhood, and in hundreds of instances, made the school house the best building in the neighborhood; it has superseded the topers and broken-down characters, so common as teachers of a former age, by a class of teachers not excelled in morals by the teachers of any other country, and who, as a whole, compare favorably in qualifications with those of any State in America ”

“ I have noticed, also, I think, both among trustees and parents, a growing conviction that not only the efficiency of the teacher, but, also the discipline and spirit of a school, the progress of children in their studies, their proper training, and their successful education, are far more intimately connected than it was one time imagined, with the style and character of the schoolroom in which the work of instruction is carried on, and with the kind of school accommodations provided for and enjoyed by pupils. ”

“ In his struggles in this direction, neither seduced by friends, nor cowed by enemies, nor damped in his ardour by the vastness of the undertaking—turning neither to the right hand nor to the left—he has raised to himself a "monumentum perennius ære," and has bequeathed to us and posterity a system of public and high school education second to none anywhere, and, making some deduction for possible mistakes incident to our weak humanity, a system almost as perfect as we in this generation are perhaps capable of generally acquiescing in." ”

“ Robert McQueen, President of the Ontario Teachers' association, spoke as follows:—
Your Honor, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:
We are gathered here to-day to do honor to the memory of one to whom this country owes a debt of deep and lasting gratitude; and should I fail entirely to give expression to any thought worthy of the man or the occasion, I feel certain that all will be overlooked, when I simply utter the two words "Egerton Ryerson." He was a man of marked individuality of character, of energetic action, of great power of will, and tenacity of purpose. ”

“ Our American neighbors became fully alive years ago to the evils of the fluctuating and uncertain character of the prevailing system of educational administration in vogue amongst them. They saw that new and officially untrained men, of merely local experience and knowledge, were constantly being elected to take charge of the administrative department of the schools of a state. Such men were often able educators, but by no means experienced educationists, or masters of systems of education. ”

“ We have, at all events on this continent, many notable examples of distinguished honour being done to literary men, to men of science and to noted educationists. Any one who has visited the chief city of Massachusetts cannot fail to have seen, on the broad terrace in front of the capitol, a massive bronze statue to Horace Mann, the well-known Founder of the Public School system, not only of Massachusetts, but practically of the New England States. ”

“ Ryerson, a Review and a Study," says:—
"There is hardly a foot-length of our civilization on which he has not left his mark. For those who believe that, on the grounds of expediency, a government is justified in interfering with the ordinary working of the great human life-struggle, and so, in taking one man's money to benefit another man's children, that is to a majority so overwhelming as to come almost under the category of universal, as to be every one's belief—what system of general education can recommend itself more fully, or work more smoothly, than does his? ”

“ No more appropriate place could have been selected for its erection than here on the grounds of the department which is the creation of his genius, and in front of a building which stands a monument to the energy of its founder.
He will be but a poor student of the history of his country who has not yet learned from its pages the deep debt of gratitude which every Canadian owes to the man whose memory is held in most affectionate rememberance by all classes of the community. ”

“ One is, that every liberally educated man must be above manual labor, and must, therefore, enter one of the learned professions; and the other is, that all who do enter these professions do it, and have a right to do it, from personal and family interests, and not for the public good—whereas a liberal education ought not to unfit a man, whether in his physical constitution or his feelings, for active business in any honest employment; and neither ought men who enter any of the learned professions to excuse themselves from labor and privation for the good of the world. ”

“ Neither the sick nor the destitute have higher claims upon the public than the ignorant. The want of knowledge brings all other wants in its train; and if education be regarded as a charity, it is a charity of which the blessings are without alloy. It demands no jealous scrutiny of the claims of its applicants, nor does it require to be so stinted as not to multiply their number.—Rev. John Strachan, President, York, 5th February, 1829. ”

“ And yet when we have done all this, when we have committed his memory to the keeping of the bronze and granite now before us, I believe the judgment of those who know his work will be that all the monuments which mortal hands can erect, and all the eulogies which affection or admiration can prompt his contemporaries to utter, will be ephemeral and perishable compared with the educational edifice which his own hands builded or the intellectual life which of his own genius he imparted to his fellow countrymen. ”

“ The great difficulty attending any change in the present wretched system of education in the Province is to ensure the efficiency of that scheme which may be adopted in its room. To leave the supervision in the hands of the electors in each district, or to a few individuals appointed by them, probably themselves without education, would certainly tend to perpetuate the system of gross oppression to which teachers have been subjected, and to disappoint the reasonable expectations of the Government.... ”

“ It is a most hopeful sign, as well as an assuring and happy augury for the future of a country, when its patriotism takes the grateful and graceful form of doing honour to those who have aided in laying the foundation of its future greatness and prosperity. This, we all rejoice has been done by Ontario to-day in the unveiling of the statue of the distinguished founder of her educational system. ”