4.3d
Categorizing the Data -- 1970s Documents -- 1971 Alberta’s Worth Report
The Worth Report is also soaked thoroughly with visuals, but of more stylized form. There are less photographs and many more drawings and doodles. The design content seems less relevant to the text, and is annoying in its interruption of continuity of reading. Just inside the front cover of the report next to the contents is a huge full-page picture of a hamburger, hands placed around it with teeth open to bite into it. It is dripping with cheese and grease. The broad message conveyed, although one wonders if it was consciously intended by the commission, is that of consumption and also mass consumption. Alberta’s economic staple, the beef industry, is also ‘celebrated’.
The Worth report once cleaned and reduced to text is a very thorough treatment of issues concerning Alberta’s educational system and reform. In orientation it is much more pessimistic * in terms of the future than either the Parent or Hall-Dennis reports, but then by 1969, everything was busting forth chaotically in terms of student protest, women’s liberation, media and music and so on and this was anathema in a conservative province. The document emphasizes a policy of ‘recurrent education’. This particular policy refers to life-long learning, adult and continuing education, an approach to education which is now an integrated part of policy in terms of education. The Worth report proposes two potential choices for future action concerning education policy. These are presented as a ‘second-phase industrial society’ or a ‘person-centered society’.
Manzer (1994) proposes that the person-centered society in the Worth report is an example of ethical liberalism and locates the document in that tradition. Considered through a critical lens, the person-centered model is closer to reform liberalism in its emphasis, while the second-phase industrial society has elements that from a 21st century vantage point seem remarkably neo-liberal. For example, the person-centered society is humanistic in emphasis featuring in the document: 1) dominance of person-centered values which emphasize the goals of individual fulfilment and subordination of industrial systems to human needs; 2) high level of economic growth-distribution based on human needs and provision of economic security; 3) emphasis on participation with more sharing of power and decision-making among different levels of society (p. 31, original). In education, for person-centered society, the emphasis is on lifelong learning, new approaches/methodology, and more diversity with less emphasis on grades and credentials. (p. 31, original). In the second-phase industrial society the emphasis is on: 1) dominance of economic values which lead to goals such as continuing expansion of goods, increased consumption which subordinates individual needs to the requirements of industry and technology; 2) high level of economic growth-distribution of goods and services based on price system; 3) concentration of power in a highly professional and intellectual elite which form a network linking all major agencies and organizations in society. In education, for a second-phase industrial society, the emphasis is on its elite nature, behaviour control, vocational skills, with emphasis on grading and the importance of credentials. (p. 31,original)
The Worth report underlines the argument made by Ball (1998) concerning reform policy of the 1990s, that policy reforms are borrowed and augmented to create a bricolage resulting in a document that presents a tension between current trends in educational policy-making and a more conservative treatment (represented by the apparent deselected category of second-phase industrial society). It ‘borrows’ from a range of issues brought forth in the Quebec and Ontario reform documents (interestingly, the Quebec document is not cited). Quebec’s 1961-66 report integrates a high level of humanistic treatment aligning with the idea of the ‘person-centred society’. Worth Report also mimics the freedom and individuality represented in the design as well as in the content of Hall-Dennis.
The Worth Report was a Liberal-government product, a commission formed by the last Liberal government in power in Alberta. The dichotomy proposed by Worth, who was appointed under the Liberal government and was presumably Liberal (and also a journalist), appears to allude to differences between Conservative and Liberal positions. What is interesting is that viewed through this political lens, Alberta ultimately accepted in the following years particularly into the 1990s a second-phase industrial society, a Conservative orientation. The consequences of that choice are listed by Worth and have insinuated into Alberta in a tightening belt since the end of liberal democracy in Alberta 1971.(fn) Of note are the Worth’s description of “decision-making structures” in a second phase industrial society. These second phase industrial society structures produce “concentration of power through a highly professional and intellectual elite which form a network linking all major agencies and organizations in society.” The result early 21st century of implementing the second phase industrial society is indicated by a closing out of the freedom to critique government. Jeffrey Simpson’s editorial on his March 2008 speaking engagement experience in Alberta is an example. Simpson defines the Alberta system in the first decade of the 21st century as ‘totalitarian’. Another example of the second phase industrial society is represented in the category “education” where a Conservative shift in Alberta indicates 1) continued segregation of the education system from the mainstream of society; 2) strong reliance on behaviour control and behaviour-shaping approaches to education; 3) acquisition of specific vocational skills, and continuation of the importance of grading and provision of credentials. (The table referred to here was available at canadianeducationalpolicystudies.ca. And of course, the reader can also refer to the Worth Report in its original.) It was my experience as a PhD student at the University of Alberta that education policy was separated to such great degree from other Canadian systems that a Master’s student in education policy from another province was not considered of equal value but was considered of lesser value. In terms of education policy Alberta is isolating itself from Canadian examples in other provinces, is closing down and even excluding liberal or person-centred social values. A department such as U of A’s Educational Policy Studies is orienting on a one-to-one basis with the international community, with lessening concern, interest, and commitment to any Canadian values, values historically “liberal.” This is fully evident by 1993.
* For example, the report predicts, “The potential for massive social unrest and instability will increase appreciably until at least the last decade of this century. We will see a continuation of the age of undirected revolution which began in the early ‘60’s. Among the conditions that might trigger widespread social unrest are the widening of the major divisions in Canadian society; the possibility of oppressive law enforcement measures to constrain expressions of social unrest…” (p. 4).
Fn see Taft, Derailing Democracy in Alberta, 2006
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