Renaming Ryerson

Vincent J. Curtis

19 July 2017

There is a movement afoot to have Ryerson University change its name on account of the false allegation the man after whom it is named, Egerton Ryerson, was responsible for the residential schools for Canadian aboriginals.  Blaming Ryerson for residential schools is like blaming Friedrich Nietzsche for the excesses of Adolf Hitler.

For those not familiar, Ryerson University is based in Toronto, Ontario, and Egerton Ryerson was a 19^th century giant of education in Upper Canada, Canada West, and, after confederation, Ontario.  Egerton Ryerson was a political reformer, educator, and protestant clergyman.  He was the founder of the public school system of Ontario, and Ryerson University stands on the site of the school he founded to educate teachers.  In 1847, Ryerson wrote a report that recommended the establishment of residential schools in Canada West for the purpose of teaching adult aboriginal Indians the arts of farming land.  The concept of residential schools was derived from the best examples of schools in Britain: Eton and Harrow, and lives on today in Upper Canada College, Ridley College, Robert Land Academy, and Hillfield-Strathallen College.  Ryerson had been working on behalf of aboriginals in the Toronto area as early as the 1820’s.

Ryerson died in 1882, before the Federal residential school system for aboriginal children was even established, and was in no way responsible for it.

It would be an egregious example of ignorance parading about as avant garde political correctness to erase Ryerson’s name from the university in Toronto that bears his name on account of his alleged connection to the Federal residential school system for aboriginals.  But it would be delicious example of the mal-education that passes off as forwardness at that institution presently.

Ryerson had nothing to do with residential schools, but what does that matter?

Nowadays, students at that university and most others are taught that there is no such thing as absolute truth.  According to the tutelage of progressivism there can a truth for me and a truth for you.  Truth is whatever works.  If you can persuade enough people of something, then that becomes the truth – so far as they are concerned.  To say to them otherwise is a sign of your white privilege, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, anti-intersectionalism, alt-rightism, or some other deplorable attribute.

To remove Ryerson’s name from the university would be a case of the progressive movement eating one of their own.  Lovely.  And a sign of impenetrable ignorance.  Double lovely.

The Democratic Party disavowed itself of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson on the ground that they owned slaves.  Disavowing Ryerson on entirely specious grounds is the next logical step for progressivism – insofar as logic and truth possess objective meaning to progressives.

To remove Ryerson’s name from the university that bears it means that all those graduates in grievance studies will get their diploma from a school whose name they are ashamed of – The University That Dare Not Speak Its Name.  Nameless U.

Try getting a job with one of those – a diploma in uselessness, and even the bearer is ashamed of it.

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