Monday, April 22, 2013

Chapter 4: Categorizing the Data -- Post-war documents -- Review of some of the 1960s group -- 1961-66 Quebec Parent Commission


4.2g

Categorizing the Data -- Post-war documents -- Review of some of the 1960s group -- 1961-66 Quebec Parent Commission


   The Parent Report represents a closing slice of the 1960s Canadian public education documents. A new group begins with Newfoundland’s 1968 Report directing us into the range of the 1970s documents. We turn to these after considering the weighty Quebec document of the 1960s, a seminal document in Canada, a report that reflects French civil government, a document of unprecedented humanistic orientation in Canadian public education policy productions.
   The Quebec Parent report was initiated in 1961 and various volumes were completed in the years falling between 1963 and 1966. The final index for the volumes is dated 1966 although by 1963 a significant portion of the document was completed. [fn1]
   The Parent Report is of a more traditional format, (comparing against the Hall-Dennis and Worth reports, for example). It is leaning to 1970s style in its humanistic orientation, its promise of “radical” change, but still maintains a 1960s format. There is dense text on each page of each volume with the paragraphs numbered for legal purposes. The design of the report makes it feel impenetrable. One of the advantages of transcription, is that it allows a text to be read for its literary value, for what the text may tell us about an important aspect of education policy change in Canada in the 1960s. The report is a very readable document and it has a certain style that appeals to the inquiring layperson.  There are elements of the document that seem completely evident at this time in Canadian history, but I believe this is a feature of changing social values. This document marks a point of integration of certain elements we now take for granted. The impact of this document, the degree of impression on the policy reader of the 1960s could well be underestimated from a 21st century vantage point. This would certainly be true if the Parent Report is considered from the perspective of religion. One of the key features of the Parent Report was an emphasis on humanism. It was not afraid to declare itself as radical and dedicated to extensive reforms in Quebec public education. The Parent Report is also a passionate reform education document.
   The report is very thorough in its review of the history leading to the reform intended to emerge from the commission’s work. The documents provide links to earlier commission reports appearing about the year 1945 across a number of systems. These post-war responses to education were also found in Britain and France. It could perhaps be argued that the 1960s reform documents are not post-war documents per se in light of the changes made through the 1940s commission formed regarding educational policy just after the war, but more investigation into post-war documents is required. On the other hand, the reforms made in the 1960s have provided the foundation to the educational systems as they predominantly appear now, and the reforms marked a shift which we can readily identify against the current mythologized reforms assumed to the era – child-centred education, modern methodology, larger administrative units (or centralization). One of the features of the 1960s documents was their standard presentation. Even though the Parent report didn’t attempt the same mass appeal through presentation (pictures, photographs, colour, alternative layout), the form in which the document is written appears to orient more to common consumption, leading the way for reports such as Hall-Dennis and Worth.
   The Parent report doesn’t look too much to other provincial examples, but it does consider trends in the United States, France, Germany, Britain and Sweden. In the Parent report we find a range of examples in a key reform document of the decade revealing exploration into international models of educational policy formation, utilizing the kind of policy bricolage Ball writes is germane to the 1990s. The Parent report does offer various comparisons with Ontario in terms of some aspects of finance, taxation, federal funding, and grants, though it places somewhat more emphasis on international rather than Canadian models.
   The history preceding the 1960s reforms is important because it established the conditions preceding the 1867 BNA Act and the constitutional arrangement. In fact, the 1960 Quebec Parent report refers to the BNA Act as limiting its ability to make reforms.
It is interesting to note that the 1851 legislation, sometimes referred to as the “freedom of worship” Act, which is the basis of religious liberty in Quebec and in Ontario, from the beginning was constitutional in character, and that this character was strengthened, as consequence of certain provisions in the British North America Act, to such an extent that neither one of the two provinces would seem today to have the power to repeal it without the consent of the federal Parliament. [(Vol. 4, p. 33) original document]
Early efforts at centralization of education administration in the provinces were hindered by a minority of Protestant Quebec who historically felt that their interests would not be represented due to political interference. From this a policy of establishing school representation outside of political influence was attempted. A Council of Public Instruction was formed in 1859 and two commissions for both the Catholic and Protestant contingents were formed, and even though both these commission were supported by government grants to about 25% of the budget, the two entities were not accountable to the government under a Minster of Education. One of the key reforms of the Parent report was to make accountability to a Minister of Education a feature of education in the province. Aside from the amount invested by the government, the two commissions also collected taxes based on property assessment. It would seem that at this time that education was financed at a much higher rate than it is now. It would perhaps work out to 40%, compared to the 18 to 25% that education takes from the budget these days.* This is interesting because there is a view that rising education costs were a consequence of the 1960s policy reforms. This is an example of how understanding early reform documents is important.
   Quebec was also faced with both horizontal and vertical barriers across the systems, existing within, as well as between, each commission’s jurisdiction. The baccalaureate which was prestigious and affiliated with humanities and liberal studies, involved more years of study, but was not equivalent to a Bachelor in the Protestant system. It was lagging behind in responding to technological and scientific change, and was privately financed, mainly through the church and patrons. There was no teacher training at the time, and the study proposed teacher training, articulation of the systems to respond to the new humanism, mass culture and shortage of teachers with a rising population in need of schooling becoming evident (Vol. 2, p. 4). The “activist school” was the new policy agenda especially for elementary education, reflecting the new interest in child-centered learning in developing the methods of progressive education. The Protestant system, being connected to public education systems in Ontario, were seemingly more advanced (the 1938 Quebec document on Protestant schooling in Quebec is headed by a commissioner from Scotland) and a rationalization of the systems within Quebec therefore provides a higher level of bureaucratic agreement with education systems outside of the province. 
   The 1966 Quebec document provides additional historical foundations concerning the quiet revolution. It put structural changes in place to support it. The 1966 Quebec document rationalized the public education system of a very powerful province with Ontario’s and thus with the rest of Canada. Considered on this account, the Parent Report is perhaps the most important public education policy document produced in Canada the 20th century. It establishes the structure necessary for inter-provincial ‘trade’ in intellectual culture and covertly supports a central public education system within a French-speaking province.. From this it is also possible to argue that a national definition of public education in Canada could bring Quebec back into the constitution since the matter of language and culture is integrally connected with a public educational system.
   What is most interesting in the Quebec story is the autonomy of the education commissions in terms of spending as late as the 1960s. Of course, a concern of the commission report was the rising cost of education, the lack of infrastructure, the need for new buildings to take care of the population explosion, the lack of libraries and laboratories as well as gymnasiums. The system was highly fragmented and the agenda of essential centralization was offset by a proposed policy of decentralization to the regions and localities.

* This is an important point that requires further data collection from annual reports across systems. In my research on the Northwest Territories, the education expenditure ranged from about 18 to 26 per cent from 1980 to 1998 (King, 1998).
Fn1 Also produced in 1966 was the Carrother’s Report which put into place a fundamental plank to public government in the Northwest Territories, this included the forming of a Department of Education. Alberta’s Lamothe Report of 1966 covers the problem of Catholic education and centralization and financing.


No comments:

Post a Comment