Cole, Adam Josh
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Children, Liberalism and Utopia: Education, Hall-Dennis and Modernity in Ontario’s Long 1960s Adam Josh Cole A thesis submitted to the Department of History in conformity with the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada September, 2015 Copyright © Adam Josh Cole, 2015 !ii Abstract In 1968, Ontario’s Department of Education released a report entitled Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario, which quickly came to be called the “Hall-Dennis Report” or simply “Hall-Dennis” after the names of its chairmen, Emmett Hall and Lloyd Dennis. The Report urged Ontarians to accept a new vision of education, one in which students were no longer organized in classes, their progress no longer measured by grades, and their experience no longer characterized by the painful acquisition of subjects but rather by a joyous and open- ended process of learning. The Report marked a significant moment not only in the development of Ontario’s educational system but in Canadian cultural history. In its outline of a new, “democratic” system of education for Ontario, one that it associated with the highest ideals of progress, liberalism, and humanism, Hall-Dennis revealed not only the high ambitions of liberal utopianism in the 1960s, but also suggested the extent to which its proponents sought to tame the forces of radicalism and maintain the pre-existing socio- economic order, albeit under the daunting and increasingly fragmenting circumstances of high modernity. !iii Acknowledgements To draw on a hoary old sixtes cliché: “what a long, strange trip it’s been.” In a sense, this project started as I entered public school in the late-1970s after a blissful year as a Montessori student. After that short progressive sojourn, I found the larger public school system to be utterly alienating, and I rejected it utterly in turn. Never did it cross my mind that I would have anything to do with it after my particular ordeal ended. I was exactly the kind of student that Hall-Dennis – at their most utopian – were trying to excite through education reform. After graduating from high school, my interest in learning fired up immediately. No longer shackled to the “traditional” school, I couldn’t get enough. Then – taking a route less-travelled -- I entered Huron University College at the age of twenty-five, and discovered history as a subject in which my mind could roam freely, and in which my multifarious interests could find a focus. By the time I entered graduate study in Queen’s University’s Department of History, I ironically settled on the history of education, perhaps as means of understanding an institution that had shaped me deeply, for better or worse. And then the most extraordinary thing happened. After years of raging against the iron cage of public schooling (Ivan Illich’s incendiary book Deschooling Society was a favorite of mine at this time), I gradually, through my studies, came to seeing the school – at its best – as a fount of individual fulfillment and the collective good. In short, I became something of a utopian when it came to education. I hardly lost my conviction that at its worst, the school was and is a means of social and economic control. This is undeniable – particularly in these dark, neoliberal times we live in. But what I gained in turn was an appreciation of the other side of the coin -- education as a means of equipping children and young people with the critical and creative tools to beat back that darkness, so that they could o make the world a better place for themselves and their own children. In short, the writing of this thesis was a profoundly educational experience for me. What could be more appropriate than that considering the subject matter under consideration? I have much thanks to give. Thanks to the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Toronto, and Queen’s University for financial support over the course of this project. Thanks to Michael Gauvreau for urging me to study the history of education in the first place. Thanks to Je& McNairn for his always incisive comments. He made me think about this scholarly endeavor in new ways. Thanks to Rosa Bruno-Jofré who has become not only mentor to me, but a dear friend as well. Thanks to Ruth Sandwell and Jane Errington for expected and valuable suggestions and critiques during the defense of this thesis. Thanks to the Honourable Bill Davis who was kind enough to grant me a sparkling and informative interview. Special thanks to my supervisor, Ian McKay. These days, Ian always gets the credit he so richly deserves for his extraordinary scholarly output. He gets credit for his extraordinary work as a teacher. His many students understand that one cannot be separated from the other. Thanks to my parents Lori and Mark, and to my brother Aaron. Not only did I get my love for culture and learning from my family, but they have never wavered in their support for me during this at times arduous task. Thanks to friends old and new: Rebecca Coulter, Colin Read, Doug Leighton, Sarah Ghabrial, Mike Ferguson, Derek Kaskew, Ben Giles, Mike Weare, Mike Rider, Gavin Clydesdale, Kevin Raymond, Marisha Caswell, Jared MacKinnon, Jordan Sinnett, and Dave Sinnett. Thanks to !iv my in-laws Betty Martin and Al Martin, who are teaching me all about the pleasures of rural life, and hardly ever call me a “city boy” anymore. Most of all, I thank my beautiful and brilliant wife and intellectual sparring-partner, Danyal Martin. Not only does she believe in education more than anyone I know (she has four university degrees to prove it!), but she also, less wisely perhaps, believes in me as well. None of this would have been possible without her insight, love, and support. Ooops. I almost forgot: thanks to our cats Yorick and Desdemona, who never met a book, computer screen, or work-situation that they didn’t desperately want to obstruct. !v Table of Contents Chapter One Children, Schools and Modernity in Postwar Ontario 1 Chapter Two Progressive Conservatism and Progressive Education 52 Chapter Three The “Learning Circus”: Public Consultation and Hall-Dennis 80 Chapter Four ‘A Theory of Pegs and Gaps’: Expert Presentations and Research Reports 125 Chapter Five The Curriculum of the Future 184 Chapter Six Global Village, Global Classrooms: Hall-Dennis on the World Stage 226 Chapter Seven Reading Living and Learning, 1: The General Framework of Educational Modernity 286 Chapter Eight Reading Living and Learning, 11: The Specifics of Passive Revolution 351 Chapter Nine To Dream the Impossible Dream: The Demise of Liberal Utopianism in Education 408 Bibliography 450 !vi List of Abbreviations ABBE Association for Better Basic Education AO Archives of Ontario, Toronto CMA Canadian Manufacturers’ Association CUE Culture, Understanding, and Enrichment project of the New York State Education Department CUSO Canadian University Service Overseas ETV Educational television FWTAO Federation of Women Teachers’ Associations of Ontario IEA Indian-Eskimo Association of Canada K-6 From Kindergarten to Grade Six K-12 From Kindergarten to Grade Twelve LAC Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa Living and Learning Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario, Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario (Toronto: Ontario Department of Education, 1968). NDP New Democratic Party OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OEO Office of Economic Opportunity [United States] OGTA Ontario Geography Teachers’ Association OISE Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto OTF Ontario Teacher’s Federation !vii RG Record Group SEF Study of Educational Facilities, created by William Davis in 1965 to undertake the design and manufacture of pre-fabricated schools VoW Voice of Women !viii List of Figures [All from Living and Learning; none of the illustrations is titled in the original] All figures are located between pages 350 and page 351. Fig. 1 Children’s Faces as a Divisional Marker Living and Learning, p.47 Fig. 2. Ghostly Presences: The Founding Fathers of Educational Theory Living and Learning, p.66. Fig. 3a. Urban Desolation: Anonymous Crowds Living and Learning, p.36 Fig. 3b. Urban Desolation: Alienation in an Apartment Block Living and Learning, p.31. Fig. 4. Alienation and ETV. Living and Learning, p. 160. Fig. 5. The Education System as Machine, I. Living and Learning, p.54. Fig. 6. The Education System as Machine, II. Living and Learning, p. 146. Fig.7. Lines as Punishment. Living and Learning, p.56. Fig.8. Cultural Deprivation in the North, I. Living and Learning, p.100. Fig.9. Cultural Deprivation in the North, II. Living and Learning, p.40. Fig.10. Practical Activities in the Classroom. Living and Learning, p.58. Fig. 11. Spelling as Fun. Living and Learning, p.120. Fig. 12. The Joy of Appropriate Technology. Living and Learning, p. 115. !ix Fig. 13. The Modern Classroom. Living and Learning, p.125. Fig. 14a. The School as Cultural Centre, I. Living and Learning, p. 90. Fig. 14b. The School as Cultural Centre, II. Living and Learning, p.21. Fig. 15. The Joy of a Birthday. Living and Learning, p.51. Fig. 16a. Children’s Art as an Expression of Happiness, I. Living and Learning, inside front cover. Fig. 16b. Children’s Art as an expression of Happiness, II. Living and Learning, p. 72. Fig. 17. The Romance of Nature. Living and Learning, p.22.