Seeking the Highest Good

In Seeking the Highest Good, Sara Burke provides an appraisal of the social thought of a succession of influential academics at the university, from W.J. Ashley, the first professor of political economy, and his successor, James Mavor, to the social philosopher E.J. Urwick - the men who forged and preserved into the late 1930s the distinctive 'Toronto ideal.' Uniting the idealist reform impulse with empirical social analysis, the 'ideal' determined the framework for the university's participation in voluntary and professional social services and provided the basis for the curriculum of the Department of Social Service in 1914. Burke describes how the supporters of the Toronto ideal became involved in an ongoing struggle to defend their authority against the challenges presented by the female-dominated profession of social work. Burke reveals that, although women far outnumbered men on the staff of University Settlement and in the enrolment of the Department of Social Service by the 1920s, their lack of access to power in the university meant that their participation in social service was devalued by the rest of the academic community. Burke's study uncovers the process by which the ethical beliefs of British idealism became meaningful for a large number of students, faculty, and alumni, and how, once popularized, they became incorporated into the institutional structure of the university.