Sunday, April 21, 2013

Chapter 4: Categorizing the Data -- Introduction

4 -- Categorizing the data --  Introduction

Introduction
  In this section, I look at the range of data and start to organize and group it. The groupings draw in the documents originally interpreted as elements only understood in relation to linear provincial and territorial histories. The categories pull the seminal 20th century documents from their linear provincial and territorial histories and situate the documents comparatively and horizontally, creating a kind of loose grid representing the Canadian public education policy story. 
   The documents are separated into four groups for the 20th century. I have identified “bridging” or linking documents, commission reports that seem to me to fill in the gaps between the sets in an important way. The first group covers the first half of the 20th century, mainly the “Early 20th Century Documents.” A bridge to the second grouping -- the post-war documents -- is Ontario’s 1950 Hope commission and it is included in this grouping. The second grouping is the 1960s set or “Post-war Documents.” A bridging document to the 1960s group and included with it is Quebec’s “Parent Report” completed in full by 1966. The third group is “1970s Documents.” This group, representing an ‘era’, closes with a bridging document -- the Northwest Territories’ 1982 report. The fourth group is “Late 20th Century Documents” covering documents produced in the mid-1980s and the 1990s. 
The four groups are:
  • Early 20th century documents
  • Post-war documents
  • 1970s documents
  • Late 20th century documents
   These categories are generally in agreement with the categories set out in “Prime Ministers of Canada” by D&P Baldwin, 2007. Wilfrid Laurier was Liberal prime minister between 1896 and 1911. Robert L. Borden was prime minister between 1911 and 1920. 1911 was the year the “Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education” was begun with Borden, Conservative prime minister in power. Presumably, since all the provinces were on board to participate in this national commission, change of government in 1912 is not going to derail such an important national commission. 
   The Baldwins categorize 1920 to 1948 as the “Time of Turmoil.” During this period, 1920 and 1921, Arthur Meighen was briefly liberal prime minister. William Lyon Mackenzie King was prime minister from 1921 to 1948 with the exception of 1926 where Meighen served as prime minister briefly. Additionally during the years 1930 to 1935 Conservative Richard B. Bennett served as prime minister.  Overall, the years from 1920 to 1948 were defined by William Lyon Mackenzie King. The first category for purposes of sorting Canadian public education policy documents is “Early 20th Century Documents.” This section essentially commences in 1911 the year the “Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education” was begun, and the year Borden becomes prime minister. In this category I include everything up to, but not including, Ontario’s 1950 Hope Commission, a document begun in 1945 but completed in 1950. It includes Saskatchewan’s 1918 report and British Columbia’s 1925 commission report.
   Considered against the Baldwins’ category “Time of Transition,” beginning in 1948 under Louis S. St. Laurent, the Hope Commission would represent what appears to be a significant post-war, time-of-transition era document. This category covers the years 1948 to 1968, aligning fairly well with my grouping “Post-war Documents.” During the “time of transition” Louis S. Saint Laurent was Liberal prime minister between 1948 and 1957, John George Diefenbaker was Progressive Conservative prime minister between 1957 and 1963, and Lester B. Pearson was Liberal prime minister between 1963 and 1968. Liberal prime ministers mark the beginning and closing of the ‘time of transition’ period, a seminal period in Canadian public policy development. The public education policy documents uncovered here are indicative.  I close my post-war documents section with a document I propose as a bridging document to a third era of the 20th century, Quebec’s “Parent Report,” completed in 1966. 1966 was the year the Parent Report Index was finished, but five volumes of the Parent Report were published as they were completed, with 1963 marking the most significant volume. The Parent Report is surely a transition era document and a indication of shifts to come in Canadian culture regarding Quebec culture and Quebec sovereignty.
    The Baldwins designate the years 1968 to 1984 the “Trudeau Era.” During these years Pierre Elliott Trudeau served as Liberal prime minister with only two interruptions. Charles Joseph Clark was Progressive Conservative prime minister in the years 1979 and 1980, and John N. Turner was Conservative leader in 1984. In terms of Canadian public education policy and categorizing the century’s productions, I open a third category with Newfoundland’s “Warren Commission” document, a document completed in 1967. This is a little outside the Trudeau Era category marked to 1968 and the beginning of his prime ministerial reign, but the documents following belong without doubt to the “Trudeau Era.” These are documents such as Ontario’s 1968 Hall-Dennis, Alberta’s 1971 Worth, New Brunswick’s 1973 MacLeod-Pinet.  I close the section entitled “1970s Documents” with the outlier 1982 Northwest Territories document. This agrees by a difference of two years with the Baldwins’ category “Trudeau Era.” 
    “Contemporary Canada” is the final category the Baldwins propose, a category that includes early 21st century Canada. Between 1984 and 1993 Martin Brian Mulroney was Progressive Conservative prime minister. Kim Campbell was briefly Progressive Conservative prime minister in 1993. Jean J. Chretien is Liberal prime minister into the turn of the 21st century, 1993 to 2003. My section, “Late 20th Century Documents” opens with a discussion of a 1984 description of Canadian public education structure to UNESCO as a part of their review of the effects of information technology on world wide education. The section includes Yukon’s 1987 First Nations’ report, Ontario’s 1987 “Radwanski Report,” British Columbia’s 1988 “Sullivan Report,” and Alberta’s 1993 “Toward 2000 Together” report.  In terms of 21st century analysis of public education policy, there is a tendency to identify public education policy post-1984 as significantly changed and changing. In the Baldwins’ categorizations, “Contemporary Canada” is still evident in 2007, since Harper is a turn of the century prime minister. The late 20th century documents are written in a political frame revealing equal weight between Liberal and Conservative prime ministers. Each political party served 13 years and this is the only category where equal weighting occurs. Up until the recession in October 2009, the scholarly position debated, certainly in the years following 1984, the Keynesian economic model.  The model was argued as redundant. Government regulation recommended as part of the Keynesian model as well as Government spending during times of recession interfered with the logic of the market, where the “invisible hand” of the market was more reliable than government regulation. The political cry was the “failure of the welfare state” and in terms of public education, provincial public education policy scholars looked to their provincial public education policies to assess the impact of the “failure.” 
   Certainly in Canadian terms if one looks at the weighting in the years between 1900 and 1948, the Liberals were in power for 33 years while the Conservatives were in power for the remaining 15 years. For the two categories identifying two separate eras of documents, the “Post-war Documents” and the “1970s Documents,” (1948 up to 1984, spanning 36 years) the Liberals were in power 29 years, the Conservatives 7. In the final era beginning mid-1980s identified in this research as following the 1982 Northwest Territories document, an era beginning in 1984 according to change in government (the end of the “Trudeau Era”), the Conservatives and  Liberals ran the country in equal value. During this period, however, a shift to the right was experienced world-wide (i.e., Thatcher in the UK, and Regan in the U.S.). The Liberals shifted right under Jean Chretien and the Reform Party in Canada was enjoying increasing power with the left NDP slipping. In terms of Canadian federal politics then, the final era in Canadian public education policy of the 20th century was significantly different in terms of Liberal and Conservative federal influence from the previous post-war period. It is only against an understanding of what public education policy looks like nationally through the lens of the various and diverse commission reports, as selected, that an analysis of the final era of the 20th century might be attempted. 

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