Box 2
Diversity in the educational experiences of children in 1921

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In the late-19th century, interest in public, non-denominational schooling began to grow in many parts of Canada. As affordable farmland became scarcer, public schooling represented an opportunity for children from large farming families to learn other skills and possibly increase their chances of economic security in adulthood.^{Note 1}

Beginning with Ontario in 1871, the provinces and territories began introducing compulsory school laws, including minimum age requirements for a child to remain at school.  School attendance and literacy were far from universal among children at that time and were linked to parental background and place of residence.^{Note 2} Yet children increasingly followed different educational paths than those of their parents at this time of transition towards universal education.

The 1921 Census reported that, in that year, 74.7% of children aged 7 to 14 who had illiterate parents were literate themselves.^{Note 3} In comparison, 92% of children with literate parents were themselves literate. Additionally, children living in rural areas were slightly less likely to attend school (88.4%) than children living in urban areas (95.1%).^{Note 4}

Notes

1. Oreopolous, P. 2006. Canadian compulsory school laws and their impact on educational attainment and future earnings, Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE, no. 251.
2. Gossage, P. and D. Gauvreau. 2007. “Canadian Fertility in 1901: A Bird’s Eye View”, Household Counts: Canadian Households and Families in 1901, editors E.W. Sager and P. Baskerville, University of Toronto Press, pages 59 to 109.
3. The definitions of literacy and illiteracy are not precisely documented in the 1921 publication, The 1901 Census questionnaire, published by the Canadian Families Project, provided census enumerators with check boxes for the categories “can read” and “can write”, which presumably could be used to categorize the literacy of individuals.
4. 1921 Census of Canada, Volume III, Table 40, Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 98-1921.