British influences on Toronto, the city and its culture, that still survive to the present day

[the lemur]

Went to a girls-only private school and we had a house system, prefects and called the principal a "headmistress" (until the mid-90s, anyway, when the title became "Head of School"). However, that's fairly typical of CIS (Conference of Independent Schools) institutions across Ontario.

Interesting. Incidentally, the house system, prefects, head boy/girl, etc. are found in state schools in the UK as well.

Are there non-private schools in the GTA that have uniforms, outside of the TCDSB?

 

[the lemur]

Another was grade 13/OAC which was like the British A levels.

In the sense that you could go on to do A-levels ('advanced') after doing O-levels ('ordinary'), i.e., a two-stage school leaving process. But not in terms of academic level ...

 

[wild goose chase]

I didn't realize that grade 13 was similar to the British A levels.

What about AP courses... is that similar to the A-levels/OAC too?

I wonder if there was any conscious policy to move away from British ways of doing things in the Canadian education system and towards American ones.
For example, standardized tests like the EQAO ones and Ontario literacy test seem to have come about in the 90s and 00s, with the EQAO somewhat resembling US-style metrics of "measuring student success", though such testing in general seems far less prevalent and lower stakes than is stateside (where some students might take them almost every year in elementary school, if I'm not mistaken).

 

[the lemur]

I didn't realize that grade 13 was similar to the British A levels.

What about AP courses... is that similar to the A-levels/OAC too?

I wonder if there was any conscious policy to move away from British ways of doing things in the Canadian education system and towards American ones.
For example, standardized tests like the EQAO ones and Ontario literacy test seem to have come about in the 90s and 00s, with the EQAO somewhat resembling US-style metrics of "measuring student success", though such testing in general seems far less prevalent and lower stakes than is stateside (where some students might take them almost every year in elementary school, if I'm not mistaken).

Having received most of my secondary education in the UK and then attended university here, I've never really had the impression that what my university classmates had gone through in Grade 13/OAC was much like the O/A-level system at all, both in terms of rigour and content. The system I went through no longer exists in the same form - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCE_Ordinary_Level_(United_Kingdom) - but two major differences are that 1) graduating high school in Canada and the US means getting passing grades in coursework over an academic year, whereas the UK system was based on exams for individual subjects (so you could leave school with x number of O and/or A levels out of y attempted subjects - it was the ones you passed that counted, not your overall performance) and 2) the O/A system began in the 1950s, and I imagine any lingering British influence on Canadian secondary education was gone by the end of WW2 at the latest.

AP is, from what I understand of it, similar to A levels in that there was an assumption that you were doing it to get into university rather than find work or do vocational training after high school.

 

[King of Kensington]

3-year degrees used to be the norm in Ontario when we had grade 13/OAC and in some other jurisdictions you could get these credits counted as university-level work.

In Britain, specialization occurs to a much greater degree than in North America. You covered the "broad liberal arts" stuff in secondary school and you just focus on your subject. Though apparently now that's starting to change - as more Brits are studying in America and now some universities are starting to offer American-style liberal arts education.

Here's a comparison between education at Yale and Oxford (breadth vs. depth):

http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2010/04/23/whats-better-oxfords-depth-or-yales-breadth/

U of T until the 1960s had in its honors program a very specialized education somewhat similar to the British approach.

 

[wild goose chase]

In some ways though closer to the US, we're still kind of in between the American-style culture of breadth and the British-style culture of specialization for universities -- for example, many American students can come in with an "undecided" status in their first year or even later, taking some time to decide their major, while I think this is possible in Canadian, or at least some Ontario universities too, I think it's far less common. Having many Gen Eds as requirements for students aside from the courses needed for their majors do exist here, but are less of a deal than stateside. And of course, it's well-known that the US has many more non-grade or non-academic criteria to get into university to begin with -- eg. not just grades and the SAT, but essays, extra-curricular things, volunteer work done in high school etc. I notice Canadians don't really have to stress as much and plan really far ahead about applying for college/university than Americans generally -- the "helicopter" parent also seems to be more a US thing too.

Also, some aspects of US college culture -- for example, fraternities and sororities, "college towns", college sports, etc. seem less prominent north of the border, though probably still more present, than in the UK where it barely exists if at all. Then again McMaster University was one of the schools that was partially an inspiration for the movie Animal House, which is one of the archetypal depictions of American college culture in film.

 

[Johnny Au]

In some ways though closer to the US, we're still kind of in between the American-style culture of breadth and the British-style culture of specialization for universities -- for example, many American students can come in with an "undecided" status in their first year or even later, taking some time to decide their major, while I think this is possible in Canadian, or at least some Ontario universities too, I think it's far less common. Having many Gen Eds as requirements for students aside from the courses needed for their majors do exist here, but are less of a deal than stateside. And of course, it's well-known that the US has many more non-grade or non-academic criteria to get into university to begin with -- eg. not just grades and the SAT, but essays, extra-curricular things, volunteer work done in high school etc. I notice Canadians don't really have to stress as much and plan really far ahead about applying for college/university than Americans generally -- the "helicopter" parent also seems to be more a US thing too.

Also, some aspects of US college culture -- for example, fraternities and sororities, "college towns", college sports, etc. seem less prominent north of the border, though probably still more present, than in the UK where it barely exists if at all. Then again McMaster University was one of the schools that was partially an inspiration for the movie Animal House, which is one of the archetypal depictions of American college culture in film.

Rugby was invented in the namesake British university and that sport was the predecessor of gridiron football. Before the 20th century, prestigious British universities had their male students take up sports. Even Hogwarts had its students take part in athletic activities (primarily Quidditch).

 

[junctionist]

On a more essential level, we call it the "west end" and the "east end" as opposed to the "west side" and the "east side". "West end" sounds more British. "West side" sounds more American.

 

[Johnny Au]

Here, Smarties look like this:

and not this:

We call the latter "Rockets." The former is not available in the United States, except in specialty import candy stores.

 

[old boy]

Toronto FC felt a bit " British " at it's inception, but not sure about that now.

 

[the lemur]

Toronto FC felt a bit " British " at it's inception, but not sure about that now.

I think that was the point of the name.

 

[the lemur]

Rugby was invented in the namesake British university and that sport was the predecessor of gridiron football. Before the 20th century, prestigious British universities had their male students take up sports. Even Hogwarts had its students take part in athletic activities (primarily Quidditch).

That's almost correct - Rugby is an independent public (i.e., private) school, not a university. The sport invented there was what 'football' referred to until the Football Association was created, which led to the invention of 'association football', now known in the UK as just football or 'soccer' (even though many Brits disdain the term as an Americanism). Rugby is definitely the ancestor of CFL football, having been introduced even just a few years before Confederation. Soccer and rugby both inspired American football; rugby inspired Australian rules football (although rugby itself is well established as a sport in some parts of Australia) and one of the two forms of rugby is known in New Zealand as 'football'. Confusing!

 

[King of Kensington]

It seems that the Canadian upper class are more into all-boys/all-girls private schools than in the US.

 

[wild goose chase]

I didn't realize there was a major difference, outside of religious reasons, among Canada, the US and Britain in terms of preference for single gender schools.

I do notice that in terms of post-secondary education, there do seem to be noticeably more American historical women's colleges, often liberal arts colleges, than in other English-speaking countries (but that could just be me having heard of them more there, or that the US has more famous/well known institutions to begin with).

Don't know much about the history of when any of the English-speaking countries trended towards or made the switch from single gender to co-ed in the first place or if one of the countries, Canada, US, the UK etc. did it any earlier than the others (though then there's the old-fashioned (American?) label of female students as "co-eds", which has long fallen out of favor as a sexist term from a time when the "default" student was male, and which I've encountered mostly from older writings, and if at all, not really contemporary usage).

 

[wild goose chase]

I'm wondering again, if in the case of the education system or other systems, there was ever a consciously planned decision to move away from British norms and towards American ones or if we don't really look to either one as a model. I do suspect/wonder if at least trying to follow the US as leader ("The US is doing this, let's get with the times" thinking) was if even a small part, responsible for why certain attributes seem more and more American over time (eg. more standardized testing in elementary schools and metric-based ways of evaluating schools, more breadth requirements in universities) but there are things that of course I think we didn't or chose not to copy from the US (eg. no entrance test like the SAT) and I'm not sure if there ever was any strong support for such a thing.

I wonder if there's anything analogous to "globalization" for the education systems among countries -- if, at least among the English-speaking world, there's any move to make systems, norms, methods, curricula, etc. more alike so that people attending schools worldwide are more comparable with one another.