From ‘evil influence’ to social facilitator: representations of youth smoking, drinking, and citizenship in Canadian health textbooks, 1890–1960

Abstract

One route to uncovering schooling’s goals for an improved citizenry is to track certain subjects of the compulsory curriculum. In this case, health is investigated, and especially its messages on smoking and drinking. First introduced as scientific temperance instruction (in the 1880s), renamed hygiene (from about 1910), then as health (from the mid‐1920s), and expanded to encompass as well physical education and personal development from the mid‐1940s, health curricula were an important vehicle for turning impressionable youth into personally and socially responsible citizens. An explication of the Ontario (Canada) health curriculum between 1890 and 1960 provides an insight into the changing official prescription of the good citizen. It also shows how changed notions of health in the modern age are from the 19th‐century antecedents, and, especially, how self‐interest has become central to that definition. Accordingly, the lessons around smoking and drinking have moved from these products being an ‘evil influence’ to one of social facilitation.

Keywords:

• character education
• citizenship education
• health education
• Ontario education
• textbook analysis

Acknowledgement

I thank Tim Cook and Ken Montgomery for their important research support for this paper; the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, for its support of my research into Canadian anti‐tobacco campaigns; and Kathleen Imrie, Special Collections Librarian at the Hodgins Room, Ontario Institute of Education of the University of Toronto, Canada.

Notes

1. E.g. Clark (1995), Davis (1992), Montgomery (2005a), Osborne (1980, 1998–1999, 2001), and Sodonis (2005).

2. For an insightful analyses of the role played by health discourses in the construction and constitution of the idealized Canadian child’s body in this period, see Gleason (2001).

3. In their tightly argued analysis of Christianity’s on‐going influence in the new social welfare network, Christie and Gauvreau (1996) demonstrate the pivotal nature of the 1920s in re‐fashioning notions of social reform.

4. For more explanation of temperance ideas, and especially those of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the largest non‐denominational women’s organization devoted to health and hygiene, see Cook (1994, 1995b).

5. Only elementary school textbooks were authorized for health instruction in Ontario until the mid‐1940s, when textbooks recommended for grades 9 and 10 were also listed in Circular 14, the government‐produced list of acceptable textbooks for all subjects in Ontario’s schools.

6. For smoking, see Cook (2001), and Rudy (2005). For drinking, see Noel (1995), Cook (1995a), and Gusfield (1996).

7. For tobacco, see Cox (1989), Cunningham (1996), Kruger (1996), Tate (1999), and White (1988).

8. See also Gately (2002), Greaves (1996), Hughes (2003), Segrave (2005), and Tinkler (2003).

9. See Epstein (1981: 107), Heron (2003, 2005), Rorabaugh (1979: 189), and Warsh (1993).

10. See, e.g. Nattress (1893), the authorized textbook for Ontario from 1893.

11. For example, see Watson (n.d.), published about 1895. Following chapters on the skeleton and nutritional needs of the body, Watson devotes a long chapter to ‘Alcohol’ (pp. 84–95), but nothing separately to tobacco.

12. See also Henderson and Fraser (1897).

13. The same information was repeated in textbooks over the next several decades; see, e.g. Solandt (1933: 86). Solandt’s textbook was recommended for use in grades 7 and 8 from 1934.

14. Several other provincial departments of education produced films in 1921, including Alberta and Saskatchewan. This suggests the existence of a federal programme with grants to support citizenship education on film.

15. National Library Archives Canada, films produced by the Ontario Department of Education, all 1921. For example, ‘Hot Lunches for Rural Schools’ and ‘The Educational Playgrounds’.

16. The same argument continued to be used throughout this period:

It has been found that there is a 10% loss in muscular energy 1 hour after a person drinks 2–6 ounces of whisky. Thus it appears that athletic ability is affected by even moderate amounts of alcohol. (Phair and Speirs 1958: 318)

Note the inappropriate alcoholic drink of reference: even during the 1950s, whisky was assuredly not the drink of choice of young men, athletes or otherwise.

17. The 1920s textbook offered an environmental analysis of these products, citing the many ‘indirect’ effects. These included spending too much on alcohol and tobacco and too little on proper housing, food, and education, and the general weakening of the system, giving rise to opportunistic illness. See, e.g. Fraser and Porter (1925: 103).

18. This is not to say that young men or women who did not fit the model of Canadian youth were entirely ignored. Rather, they were ignored as smokers. For example, Solandt (1933: 84–85) addresses girls on general health issues, as do later texts, including particularly Phair and Speirs (1958: vii), which notes ‘that 70% of a girl’s health interests in Grade Ten revolve around concern for her personal appearance’, and yet nothing appears in the book on the girl smoker or her appearance‐related reasons for choosing to smoke.

19. For his extended and insightful discussion of a number of parallel minor vices, including smoking, drinking, swearing, illicit drugs, gambling, and sexual misbehaviour, see Burnham (1993), especially the introduction (pp. 1–22).

20. Even pre‐war textbooks noted the health dangers of smoking and alcohol to young men. See, e.g. MacMurchy and Auden (1911: 7–8), which offers children a wide range of briefly stated ‘rules of health’, from ‘Never touch alcoholic liquor, except under a doctor’s orders’, to ‘Never swallow cherry stones, etc.’ or ‘Do not smoke, at any rate till you are 21 years old. Infinite harm is done to heart and nerves by premature smoking’. However, the link with cancer was untraced.

21. At the same time, various anti‐tobacco texts had made the link between smoking and cancer far earlier than 1964, though their assertions lacked the credibility of the scientific and medical communities. See, e.g. ‘General Grant and Emperor Frederick of Germany, who were both great and good men, nevertheless smoked so much that it gave them cancer of the throat from which they died’ (Guerber 1932: 227).

22. Medical authorities could easily be found who linked disease with smoking, especially in males; see, e.g. Goldsmith (1929), especially ‘Medical men speak’ (pp. 47–53). However, although the 1919 Report of the US Surgeon‐General had put the case of the probable relationship between smoking and cancer, the link was only accepted by the US medical establishment in 1964.

23. For example, in Solandt’s textbook (1933: 94–111), an entire chapter is provided for ‘The battle against disease’, with a major section devoted to combating disease, and another to curing. In neither does ceasing smoking or drinking make an appearance. On cancer, it notes, ‘Very little is known about the cause of cancer. The disease occurs mostly in middle‐aged and old people, and unless the growth is removed early by surgery it will kill the patient’ (p. 111).

24. In Shacter et al. (1951b), e.g., no line is drawn between these adolescent concerns and tobacco use. See especially pp. 110–122.

25. See also Phair and Speirs (1958: 334–339). For an almost identical message, see Nicoll et al. (1958: 177–178).

26. As in all cases, however, there are exceptions to this rule. The popular US textbook, For Healthful Living (Jones et al. 1950), frequently reprinted, continued with the old grouping with such narcotics as heroin, marijuana, and opium, and allows two paragraphs to tobacco (pp. 44–45). A second frequently reprinted textbook by the same authors, Your Health and You (Jones et al. 1949), intended for the pre‐adolescent student, groups tobacco with other drugs, and is so careful in its claims that it is patently unconvincing to either boys or girls. For example, ‘It may make the heart beat faster and over‐work. It may have a bad effect on the throat and lungs. It may affect the nerves of young people. Tobacco may take away a person’s appetite for proper foods. Then the person would lose weight and strength’ (pp. 295–296).

27. ‘The classification of alcohol with habit‐forming drugs like morphine or opium is also misleading. These drugs bring about physical changes in the body tissues which create a craving for the drug. Alcohol does not work in this way’ (Phair and Speirs 1951: 325–326).

28. For 2001, see Canadian Survey (2001).