The bureaucratization of creativity, the British Arts and Crafts Movement and its impact on Ontario education, 1880-1940

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis focuses on the cultural influences undergirding the construction and development of technical education in Ontario between 1880 and 1940. Specifically, it examines the ways in which the British Arts and Crafts Movement's social-aesthetic philosophies and practices were embraced by English-Canadian technical education advocates. Arts and Crafts ideas were adopted in large part to fight the encroaching dehumanization of industrialization and urbanization. This groundswell of discontent within the tightly-woven aesthetic communities of British-born and Anglo-phile patriots across Canada was expressed in an on-going critique of contemporary Art and design. Adherents strove to construct a classed, racialized, and gendered moral rhetoric which represented technical education as an "noble artisanal calling." In the wake of societal, industrial, and urban transformation and the decline of the apprenticeship system, the new technical worker became an important part of Canada's economic policy, and according to Arts and Crafts advocates, the resurrected artisan of old. Artisanal procedures and production became defining features of the technical education rhetoric and curriculum. As a case study this dissertation examines the Art Department at Central Technical School (CTS) in Toronto, in particular its artist-teachers, curriculum, mandate, and its dynamic relationship to educational, business, and cultural communities. Fundamental issues arise, such as the nature of artistic production in Ontario schools, the cultural and educational impact of "Art" on national identity, and the capacity of individuals and groups to impose and redefine intellectual premises and educational structures at critical historical junctures. Within this broader context, the thesis focuses on a series of incidents involving artist-teacher Peter Haworth of CTS's Art Department where many of these issues came to a head in 1931 and percolated for a generation thereafter. Haworth was charged by local stained glass companies with unfair business practices for allegedly using student assistants, school supplies, and taxpayers' property to undertake his own, private artistic commissions. Of particular importance is the role of the Toronto Board of Education in negotiating with these contradictory educational visions.Ph.D