Report Of The Commission Of Inquiry As To The Ontario Agricultural College And Experimental Farm 1893

How has the Ontario Agricultural College contributed to Canadian education? What role has the college played in the development of agriculture since it was founded in 1874? This history of Canada's oldest agricultural college revolves around these two questions. It shows that the college's mandate has changed in its attempt to serve both education and agriculture. The Ontario Agricultural College was established to enshrine science in farming, but it also became the testing and extension arm of the provincial ministry of agriculture. Direct government control for ninety years provided financial resources not enjoyed by other post-secondary schools, but the results sometimes proved of greater benefit to agriculture than to education or science. Swept into the University of Guelph when it was created in 1964, the college rethought its role. It emerged as a centre for advanced scientific inquiry, for global agricultural programs, and for understanding rural societies. The controversies surrounding these changes and the evolving nature of agriculture and science are brought out fully in this account of the past century and a quarter.

This is a comprehensive primary reference to a rich and often neglected storehouse of information on Canada's educational background. As the boundary between full-fledged royal commissions and other official governmental inquiries is not always clear -- and many legislative committee inquiries and special department of education investigations have been as significant in educational development as regular commissions -- Goulson has included all major ministerial-level governmental inquiries in Canadian education between 1787 and 1978. More than 300 inquiries are included, among them general, special interest, judicial, legislative, parliamentary, and other governmental committees. The information provided for each includes the type of commission or committee, its size, chairman, purpose, dates of appointment and reporting, and primary source references, as well as a selection of its major conclusions and/or recommendations. Official governmental records and documents including the Reports themselves, Legislative Journals, House Debates and Hansard, Sessional Papers, Statutes, and Department of Education records were used as the resource base. This volume will be of specific interest to teachers and students of the history of education, and most educators, no matter what their fields, will find it useful.