Burke, Sara Z. (1997). Seeking the Highest Good: Social Service and Gender at the University of Toronto, 1888-1937. Reviewed by Theresa M. Richardson

Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas

Burke, Sara Z. (1997). Seeking the Highest Good: Social Service and Gender at the University of Toronto, 1888-1937. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-0782-1/0-8020-7146-5. $55.00/$17.95 Pp. 194. Reviewed by Theresa M. Richardson University of South Florida January 6, 1998 Sara Burke received the prestigious John Bullen Prize for the best doctoral thesis awarded by the Canadian Historical Association for Seeking the Highest Good. The award is well deserved. The research is exemplary, the analysis rich and insightful. Burke's work also has a characteristic of all fine history. It is multilayered, commanded by a specific question with biographical details and events in a particular time and place which shed light on the broader trajectory of history showing how cultures (knowledge and experience), are transmitted across time and space. At the simplest level, Seeking the Highest Good is the history of the University of Toronto University Settlement, which was established in 1910 in response to a perceived crisis in urban poverty and spurred by an injunction from university President Robert Falconer to seek the "highest good" through social service. On a more complex level, University Settlement was the outcome of an emergent social ethic which combined moral imperatives with scientific research which Burke terms the "Toronto ideal." The origins of the Toronto ideal trace back to the transfer of British idealism to Canada. The settlement movement in Britain, initiated by the founding of Toynbee Hall in 1884, was in response to the rise of an educated middle upper class in England and their response to the impoverishment of the general population due to industrialization and urbanization. At Balliol College, Oxford University, Arnold Toynbee and later T.H. Green combined moral philosophy with social reform initiatives to argue that the duty of citizenship of young college men seeking salvation should be expressed in self-sacrifice by sharing their education with those less fortunate in work associated with poor relief. University Settlement in Toronto was created under the auspices of the Department of Political Economy, established in 1888 under W. J. Ashley, a graduate of Balliol College where he imbibed the philosophy of T. H. Green and became familiar with ideas leading to the founding of Toynbee Hall. The "Toronto ideal" was subsequently forged by Ashley, his successor John Mavor and social philosopher E. J. Erwick. The struggle to establish University Settlement and define its role draws out the intersection of gender and evangelical religion in the formation of the formal disciplines of the social sciences in Canada and elsewhere. Toynbee Hall was established with a distinctly masculine ideal. The settlement movement as it expanded in Britain and the United States early became feminized. Examples in the United States include Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago and Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement in New York City. In these cases, the settlement movement led to the formation of professional social work characterized by hands-on empirical research and eventually case work as a methodology. In Toronto, the original masculine definition prevailed and the controversy over policy was at first less on gender (women were excluded) than on religion. Conflicts between evangelical Christian concepts of missionary work and salvation, as depicted by the YMCA, were juxtaposed with the aspect of Toynbee Hall and W. J. Ashley's interpretation of masculine settlement work as the need for young men to engage in empirical research and social problem solving for the sake of spirituality and moral growth but without the evangelical supernatural elements of recruiting the poor for salvation in the next life. The University Settlement was not able to maintain the Toynbee Hall model. The feminization of social work and rethinking of its objectives around World War I led to the differentiation of Political Economy from social work with the founding of the Department of Social Work in 1914. As social work became a largely feminine discipline, as it had elsewhere, its status at the University of Toronto was reduced. These events help explain the politics of the social sciences in Canada where the discipline of sociology, for example, has been slow to develop. Burke makes major contributions in this work to the history of social thought in fully six areas of interest to scholars in Canada, the United States and Britain. First, Burke contributes to our understanding of the settlement movement specifically in each of the above contexts as well as in a comparative sense. Second, Burke contributes to the history of the professions and early development of the social sciences in particular. This includes the differentiation between political economy, political science, economics, sociology and social work. The central advancement here is in the discussion of the conflict between an emphasis on science and empiricism and moral imperatives for social reform. Third, the gender issues which are described provide an analysis of the way that the prestige hierarchy of subjects and methods intersect with the gender of the practioner. The feminine status of social work relegated it to a semi-profession as it was feminized in status. Specifically this sheds light on the Canadian context of Toronto where resistance to feminization was bolstered by the "Toronto ideal." Fourth, the role of religion was central as evangelical Christian ideology was confronted by the charity organization movement and middle class idealism about social reform with its focus on empiricism and scientism. Fifth, Burke contributes to the history of higher education at the University of Toronto and also in the United States and Britain in developing the intersection between charity, social reform movements and university based social science research. This involves the politics of fields of study and ideas which are rearranged by each unique contextual configuration of individuals and agendas. Finally, Burke contributes to the history of ideas and biography. Her descriptions of individual actors in this story illuminates not only the central figures of W. J. Ashley, John Mavor and E. J. Erwick but Robert Falconer, Harold Innis and William Lyon Mackenzie King, among others. This is a great book and a significant contribution. It is highly recommended not only for those interested in Canadian history but for its insights into events in Britain and the United States as well.