16. Art Education in a Manly Environment: Educating the Sons of the Establishment in a Nineteenth-Century Boys’ School1

F. GRAEME CHALMERS

16. ART EDUCATION IN A MANLY ENVIRONMENT: EDUCATING THE SONS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT IN A NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOYS’ SCHOOL1

There has been a widespread assumption in education “that male school-leavers were destined for the factory floor, the board room or the professions” (Griffin & Lees, 1997, p. 5). To date more histories of nineteenth-century art education have focused on those “destined for the factory floor” than on those who would join the Establishment. In contrast, this historical case study documents and comments upon art and design education in an elite school that prepared boys for the board room and the professions where there was, at times, an uneasy relationship between artistic pursuits and the construction of dominant forms of upper-class masculinity. Architecture, surveying, and later in the century, art appreciation and photography found their places in the hegemonic masculinities that permeated both “official” and “hidden” curricula; whereas “ornamental drawing” was often seen as too feminine and contaminating and “industrial” art education was reserved for those boys who were not in the classical stream. Consequently, in an elite all-boys’ school which sought to empower [students] through the curriculum some forms of art were shunted to the sidelines where as in the 1850s the arts were tacitly used by some parents who paid an additional fee to “tame” and “civilize” those who would enter the Establishment.

THE SETTING

This study is situated in an elite boys’ school, founded in Toronto, in what was then Upper Canada, in 1829. In terms of prestige and reputation, Upper Canada College2 [UCC] has stood head and shoulders above the majority of other Canadian schools for boys for generations. From time to time its supremacy has been challenged from one quarter or another, but the fact remains that in the minds of a great many people Upper Canada College is the preeminent independent school in Canada, the school that more than any other is regarded as the cradle of the Canadian Establishment. (Gossage, 1977, p. 39) For example, 120 years ago, of the 225 boys on the school register, 130 were members of the “established,” somewhat Tory, Anglican (Episcopalian) Church, and

42 boys had a father who was a lawyer or a judge.3 One hundred and ten years later an alumni survey (quoted in Fitzgerald, 1994, p. xix) found nearly 30 per cent of UCC graduates working as stockbrokers, bankers, realtors, accountants, management consultants, and insurance and investment bankers. Another 28 per cent were loosely identified as “businessmen.”

ESTABLISHED MASCULINITIES

Victorian culture generated a number of different and often conflicting models of “manliness.” Dan Binova (2000) identifies several, sometimes art-related, masculinities that I found had little or no place at UCC, e.g., “The Dandy,” “The Dandy-Aesthete,” and “The Man in the Closet.”4 On the other hand, at UCC, I found the more hegemonic “Established” masculinities such as “Muscular Christianity,” “Imperial Manliness,” the “Post-Darwinian Man” and even “Middle Class Earnestness” to be well supported. These notions of manliness rarely suggested or implied involvement in artistic activity. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that very few men in the arts are included in James Fitzgerald’s (1994) hard hitting Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College. Arts administrator Mavor Moore, who attended the school in 1927 is reported as having hated it. Author/actor Robertson Davies, who attended into the 1930s was more laudatory. Musician/ composer Galt MacDermot, who attended from 1937 until 1942, was the principal’s son and recalls that each day his father played the piano. Despite a principal with an interest in music, musician John Gartshore, who attended during the same period, commented: “When people say ‘Look at all the winners UCC produces,’ I say ‘Look at all the losers it produces.’ I was made into a nobody by that place” (p. 61) and visual artist/musician Michael Snow stated “UCC wasn’t the happiest of times for me …’ (p. 73). In the late 1960s arts journalist David Gilmour was viewed as too rebellious to return to Grade 13. Architect Edward Sheng felt that there was no room for him at UCC. His negative feelings are representative of a small number of gay students who followed careers in the arts. Andrew Heintzman, a musician and publisher who left the school in 1986, states simply: “I was ecstatic when I left” (p. 327). Implying that it was more acceptable for younger boys in the lower grades to be involved in art, film producer Michael MacMillan, a student from 1967 until 1974, credits his interest in film to art classes at UCCs junior school. Today, with a more emancipatory endorsement of a variety of changing masculinities, UCC has embraced the International Baccalaureate curriculum and offers a strong visual arts program. Now as many graduates go on to study the arts each year as did in the whole of the first 70 years of the school’s history. Of the 49 traceable boys who won prizes for drawing or painting between 1839 and 1899 only one, A. Dickson Patterson, who in 1870 won a prize for drawing in chalk, became an artist, and the 1883 prize winner for chalk and pencil drawing became an architect. Most joined the Establishment. Eight prize winners became lawyers, and the boy who won second prize for ornamental drawing in 1853 became Canada’s Chief Justice.

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