Tending the Student Body: Youth, Health, and the Modern University by Catherine Gidney Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2016 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 5 avr. 2021 21:39 Ontario History Tending the Student Body: Youth, Health, and the Modern University by Catherine Gidney Karissa Patton Volume 108, numéro 1, spring 2016 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1050621ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1050621ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) The Ontario Historical Society ISSN 0030-2953 (imprimé) 2371-4654 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer ce compte rendu Patton, K. (2016). Compte rendu de [Tending the Student Body: Youth, Health, and the Modern University by Catherine Gidney]. Ontario History, 108(1), 138–140. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050621ar https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/onhistory/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1050621ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1050621ar https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/onhistory/2016-v108-n1-onhistory03908/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/onhistory/ 138 ONTARIO HISTORY Catherine Gidney’s Tending the Student Body is one of her many works on the history of youth culture and education in Canada. This book in particular explores the history of medicine, the history of ed- ucation, and the history of youth through an examination of the establishment and evolution of university health programs in Canada from the turn of the twenti- eth century to the 1960s. Gidney uses the history of physical activity, athletics, and university health services to examine “the changing ideals of student formation as well as the nature of the university itself ” (13). In doing so, she uses age, class, and gender in her analysis of how notions of morality and citizenship shaped the devel- opment of health programs on Canadian campuses. Gidney’s book is divided into two sec- tions, separated chronologically and topi- cally. The first section, which includes the first five chapters of the book, focuses on the establishment of student health systems from the early twentieth century to the 1940s and investigates the ideologies that influenced such systems. In her first and second chapters, Gidney introduces the development and increasing importance of student health programs. First she tracks evolution of such health programs to the 1940s when most Canadian universities either had already implemented, or were advocating for, health services and physi- cal training. She argues that the increasing presence of health programs signify the conceptual link of students’ health, stu- dents’ morality, and students’ success. In the second chapter she briefly describes the ailments and infectious diseases that oc- curred on campuses across Canada during the first half of the twentieth century, and explains that administrators’ preoccupa- tion with aliments and disease was indica- tive of their role as in loco parentis as well as their attempt to protect their university’s resources and reputation as a healthy and safe institution. The third and fourth chapters of the book analyze how post-secondary admin- istrators conceptualized “health” from the 1920s to the 1950s. In Chapter Three Gidney argues that the creation of Physical Tending the Student Body Youth, Health, and the Mod- ern University by Catherine Gidney Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. 304 pages. $34.95 Soft Cover. ISBN 9781442615960. $75.00 Cloth ISBN 9781442647879. $34.95 ebook (EPUB format) ISBN 9781442669437. (http://www.utppublishing.com) 139boOk reviews Training as part of university requirements played a significant role in imparting White middle-class gendered values and ideals on the student body, such as the masculine values of personal responsibility and de- velopment as well as the feminine selfless- ness and respect for authority. In Chapter Four Gidney examines the broader notion of health as it developed in the first half of the twentieth century and how these notions were implemented into univer- sity endeavours. For example, she explains that encouragement of healthy moral and physical practices for students such as hy- giene, fitness, and premarital abstinence was deeply entwined with ideological fears of moral and racial degeneration. The Fifth Chapter discusses the in- crease in work opportunities for women as dieticians, nurses, physical training in- structors, and deans of women that came with the growing concern of students’ health. Gidney focuses on the experiences of women professionals at Victoria Col- lege, University of Toronto in this chap- ter. She recognizes that while women still faced much discrimination in these new positions, the women at Victoria College used these professional opportunities to carve out a significant space for women within their own university. The second section of the book exam- ines how the systems for student health and the ideologies behind them developed from the 1930s to the 1960s. Thus, the last three chapters of the book examine the in- stitutional changes around health services and physical training within the univer- sity as well as the way in which these de- velopments paralleled organizational and ideological shifts in the universities them- selves. In Chapter Six, Gidney traces the development of health services alongside the decline of physical training on post- secondary campuses from the 1930s to the 1960s. She argues, however, that despite this decline in mandatory physical training students’ health remained strongly linked to morality and citizenship. Chapter Sev- en delves deeper into the shifts occurring in post-secondary institutions, focusing on the specialization of knowledge and how this shift in particular influenced shifting health priorities. Gidney use the examples of tuberculosis and mental health to outline the shift away from university administra- tors’ attempt at broader social and health reform of the early twentieth century to the increasing focus on medical experts’ pro- motion of preventative care and individual health from the 1940s to the 1960s. The Eighth Chapter discusses the discursive shift away from student health and charac- ter development to student health and per- sonality and the individual development of students. Gidney argues that the focus on citizenship and morality remained, but by the 1960s students had increasing control over their own programs and were left to determine how their choices would influ- ence their own citizenship. Gidney acknowledges that, due to the abundance of archival material at their ar- chives, Victoria College, University of To- ronto, is featured prominently in the book. Her book begins and ends with the story of Dr. Edna Guest who wrote a report on the health of women students at Victoria College in 1931. She calls upon Guest’s story and the Victoria College as exam- ples frequently throughout the book. She also discusses programs at the University of Western Ontario and McMaster Uni- versity Additionally, she features a table of Physical Training at the University of Toronto in her Appendix that tracks male and female students’ participation in phys- ical training from 1921 to 1967. Gidney’s main purpose in Tending the Student Body is to illuminate how “concern 140 ONTARIO HISTORY Samuel J. Steiner’s The Search of Promised Lands: A Religious History of Mennon- ites in Ontario is a comprehensive account of the rich past of one of the province’s ear- ly settler groups. Steiner’s archival record is voluminous, yet he weaves the evidence together into a rich, cogent, and accessi- ble history of the Mennonites in Ontario. Drawing upon personal narratives, mu- nicipal records, the census, newspapers, and denominational records (to name a few), Steiner’s book explores the nuances of Mennonite origins in Upper Canada and follows those threads through to the near present. Steiner incorporates the themes of religiousity, assimilation, conflict, and iden- tity politics throughout his book to trace the fragmentation and realignment that constantly occurred within the denomi- nation in order to sketch the spectrum of Mennonite faith and practice in Ontario. The Promised Lands of the title pro- vide a rich metaphor for the way early In Search of Promised Lands A Religious History of Mennonites in Ontario by Samuel J. Steiner Kitchener, Ontario: MennoMedia, 2015. 880 pages. $69.95 Hardback ISBN: 9780836199086. $39.95 E-Pub. (www.mennomedia.org ) Mennonite, Amish and Quaker commu- nities sought a new life in North America upon which to build their faith. This prom- ise continued to animate settlement and emigration patterns as Mennonites from Pennsylvania traveled north to the Niaga- ra region, the Grand River valley, and the Huron Shores of present-day Ontario, or when other Mennonite communities im- migrated to Canada in the twentieth cen- tury from places like the USSR, Germany, Asia, or South America. Although not dissimilar from other immigration sto- about student health led to the creation of new sites through which administrators could exert their moral vision of the uni- versity and shape the student body” (9). In doing so, Gidney expands the understand- ing of the historical relationships between youth’s health, citizenship, and morality. Her history of how university administra- tors tended the student body in the past also sheds light onto the ways universities are tending the student body today. She exposes the current conceptualization of universities as moral communities where students are seen as “immature youth, to be guided to full adulthood” (190) and the university as their moral and intellec- tual guide. Karissa Patton University of Saskatchewan