Experts and exiles: organic intellectuals,education, and the “Indian Problem” in postwar Ontario,Canada

Abstract

This article brings the Italian activist and thinker Antonio Gramsci’s theory of organic intellectualism and the Canadian historian Ian McKay’s theory of liberal state-formation to bear on the “Indian Question” – or how best to yoke Indigenous children and young people to the modern Canadian state. From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, often violent and disease-ridden “Residential Schools” were the primary means to this end. In the 1960s, a new approach was sought by the province of Ontario, culminating in the landmark education reform document, Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario (1968). Gentler forms of progressive educational “normalisation” informed by social science were pursued by the committee as a means of generating consent to a Canada now redefined as a postwar “Peaceable Kingdom”. This ostensibly kinder strategy nevertheless carried the colonial assumptions of the earlier period into the later one. This was made clear to the committee during the report’s preparation by Indigenous intellectuals advising them on Indigenous issues. They saw this liberal-technocratic approach for what it was – a novel form of neocolonial pedagogical violence. Though they were largely ignored by the committee, their dissent is instructive (as is the committee’s resistance to it) and allows us to put the darker corners of Canadian progressive education into historical perspective.     

“Make the Education of the Youths Our Own Education”: Plato's Laches,a Dialogue for Educators

Through an exegesis of the dramatic elements of Plato's Laches, Brandon Buck and Rachel Longa argue that it is an especially valuable text to read with practicing and preservice teachers. Buck and Longa show how the dialogue illustrates three essential aspects of what education means and involves. First, they show how the dialogue foregrounds the often-obscured role of philosophical inquiry in addressing educational questions. Second, they show how the depiction of aporia in the Laches underscores the importance of uncertainty for the persistence of humanistic conversation, and thus for substantial engagement with core educational questions. Finally, they interpret Socrates to suggest that participation in humanistic conversation is not merely an incidental aspect of education as a profession, but rather precisely what it means to be an educator. In sum, Buck and Longa argue that the Laches illustrates the core idea that in order to educate at all, we must be deeply involved in the very questions that characterize humanistic conversation.     

‘Education and the working class’: a conversation with the work of Dennis Marsden and his contribution to the sociology of education

This paper is both a careful analysis of a seminal piece of work in the sociology of education, as well as a passionate plea to revisit with renewed urgency, the way in which education continues to fail unacceptably large numbers of working-class children. Through closely examining the work of Dennis Marsden (with his colleague Brian Jackson) in Education and the working class, the paper argues that this pioneering work done in working-class Huddersfield the 1950s, remains a stoic statement of what is wrong with working-class education, and is as rich in substantive and methodological insights as when it was written in 1962. By taking some biographical slices of key contemporary scholars, in particular Stephen Ball and Diane Reay, who have themselves been prolific scholars in this field, the paper speaks to the central arguments of Marsden’s unique work through their biographies, while establishing the distinctiveness of Marsden’s contribution to understanding social class within the wider field of sociology of education. The paper argues for a reinvigoration of the elusive search for the kind of authentic understandings of working class pioneered by Marsden, as the basis for an equitable and just schooling for working-class children.     

Action,Freedom, and Education: Refugees and a “New Beginning”

In the mid-2000s, large numbers of refugees from North Africa and the Middle East sought to reach Europe to escape persecution, war, and famine. Images of children, women, and men in inhumane conditions attempting to reach the mainland began to circulate worldwide. This phenomenon culminated in 2015 with the worst immigration crisis in Europe since the end of World War II. In this study, Vasco d'Agnese draws on Hannah Arendt's work to demonstrate that refugees, in embarking on their often excruciating journeys, represent the paradigm of acting, natality, and a “new beginning,” features that, for Arendt, characterize the human experience. Starting from this premise, d'Agnese presents two refugee stories and attempts to foreground their intrinsically educational nature with two aims. The first is that engaging with these stories may help transform the traditional view of refugees as vulnerable, suffering, and needy, and instead promote a view that acknowledges refugees' actions, their agency, and that does justice to the strength, determination, and resiliency they demonstrate in taking the actions they do. The second aim is to show how the renewal of natality represented by such stories serves as a foundation for a different engagement with education. If, as Arendt argues, education is first and foremost about preserving natality, the renewal of natality seen in these refugee stories is one of the best educational examples we may find. In refugee stories, the natality of education is, in a profound sense, actualized.     

Education and the ‘universalist’ idiom of empire: Irish National School Books in Ireland and Ontario

This paper compares the founding of the elementary school systems of Ireland and Ontario in the nineteenth century. The systems shared a common set of textbooks that had originated in Ireland. Using examples from a number of these books, which were part of a series that had been specially prepared for the Irish national school system, founded in 1831, and information from archive sources on policy and administration in both countries, the paper argues that there was a common, ‘universalist’, imperialist ideology being promulgated in both systems. The article focuses on these ‘universalist’ principles rather than undertaking a detailed analysis of the textbooks.     

Educational borrowing as negotiation: re‐examining the influence of the American black industrial education model on British colonial education in Africa

This study explores the extent to which American educational ideas made an impact on policy‐making and practice of education in British African colonies between the two World Wars. The analysis re‐examines the apparent ‘borrowing’ of American black industrial education models for application in Africa. It is argued that, while the view that Americans were successful in handling racial conflicts by means of education at home carried strong symbolic meaning in the colonial political arena, the ideas themselves were not new. The paper focuses on the motivations and characteristics of the people involved in this political discourse and in transferring American and other models to Africa. By doing this, the paper draws attention to a more complex network of factors that were involved in the transfer of educational policies to British colonies in Africa.     

A new education for a new era: the contribution of the conferences of the New Education Fellowship to the disciplinary field of education 1921–1938

This article examines the role played by the conferences of the New Education Fellowship (NEF) in the emerging disciplinary field of the sciences of education between the two world wars. The NEF was a movement connecting lay enthusiasts for educational reform with major figures in the developing disciplines of psychology and education, such as Carl Gustav Jung, Jean Piaget and John Dewey. Use is made of Bourdieu's concepts of field, forms of capital and habitus to analyse the strategies of agents at the conferences and their relation to developments in the disciplinary field. The NEF is also considered from the perspective of social movement theory as a non‐class‐based movement of opposition. Seven international conferences on education are discussed plus others in South Africa and Australia. The themes are discussed and their social composition is analysed both in terms of the countries represented and the participation of members of the academy. The origins of the NEF are traced from the Theosophical Fraternity in Education and the leading roles of Beatrice Ensor and Elizabeth Rotten are considered in the framework of habitus. Discussion of the work of Ferrière, the third founder of the NEF, reveals a distinction between philosophical and moral conceptions of education and ones associated with positivism. The location of psychology in this binary is also revealed. Accounts of the conferences held in the 1920s reveal a strong commitment among the leaders of the NEF to the fostering of international understanding and a world consciousness through education and Support for the League of Nations. This and other elements of the NEF's ideology are characterized as a heretical discourse. Tensions between members of the academy and the other participants are highlighted and the heterogeneity of the audiences are identified as a source of strength as well as friction. The following section addresses the change of emphasis of the NEF in the 1930s in response to the worsening international situation and the involvement of leading figures from the academy. The NEF's position on research in education and the need to bring teacher training into the academy was made explicit at the conferences held in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. These involved bureaux of education research, which were financed by American foundations, and the combination of the NEF's network with this money is considered in terms of the field's development and the consequences for the competition for prestige and other forms of capital. The conclusion reviews the extent to which these conferences contributed to the development of the field and to the necessity for historical accounts of its development to take account of the dimensions analysed by Bourdieu's conceptual framework.     

Education,culture and politics: the evolution of Chinese education at The University of Hong Kong, 1911–1941

The University of Hong Kong (HKU), following its establishment in 1911, has assumed the mission of bridging British and Chinese cultures, to prepare European and Chinese elite youth for political and other professional careers, and thus to improve Britain’s cultural influence in competition with other western powers with regard to China. Dominated by its colonial character and pragmatic orientation, Chinese education at HKU was confined to no more than a supplementary subject at the initial stage. However, colonial crisis and cultural changes in the 1920s and 1930s, together with the endeavours of local cultural and commercial elites, made advanced Chinese education at HKU necessary and possible, and led to an independent unit for Chinese education and Chinese studies being established and strengthened. Organisational and curricular reforms before the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 led to further modernisation and solidified the structure of Chinese education at this university, laying the essential foundation for its post-war recovery and development. The evolution of Chinese education at HKU demonstrated well the subtle entanglements of education, culture and politics in a colonial context, through which coexistence and tensions between tradition and modernity, between China and the West, and between the imperial and republican intellectuals were also vividly revealed.     

Book Reviews: “Primitive Education,” a Confusion of Terms

Biography: Hernán Cortés, Conqueror Of Mexico by Salvador de Madariaga. The Macmillan Company. 542 pp. $4.00.

Jefferson by Saul K. Padover. Illustrated. Harcourt, Brace and Co. 459 pp. $4.00.

Education: An Introduction to Education by Velorus Martz and Henry Lester Smith. Charles Scribner's Sons. 485 pp. $2.00.

Children in a World of Conflict by Roy F. Street. The Christopher Publishing House. 302 pp. $2.50.

Handbook of Educational Psychology and Measurement by M. J. Nelson. The Dryden Press. 174 pp. $1.25.

Education in the United States by Edgar W. Knight. Second revised edition. Ginn and Company. 669 pp. $3.40.

Introduction to American Public Education by Chris A. DeYoung. 704 pp. $2.75.

Theories of Secondary Education in the United States by Joseph Justman. Contributions to Education, No. 814. Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University. Pp. viii plus 481. $3.00.

The Subject Fields in General Education. A Report of the National Commission on Cooperative Curriculum Planning. John J. DeBour, Editor. D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc. 239 pp. $1.50.

Fiction: Sugar in the Gourd by Evelyn Hanna. E. P. Dutton and Company. 313 pp. $2.50.

General Literature: Heirs to your Money and how to Protect Them by Nathaniel Fishman. Liveright Publishing Corporation. 133 pp. $1.50.

The Actor's Art And Job by Harry Irvine. E. P. Dutton and Co. 251 pp. $2.50.

Shall not Perish from the Earth by Ralph B. Perry. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1940. 159 pp. $1.50.

The Alert by Wilfrid Gibson. The Oxford University Press. (Imported from England, 1941.) 41 pp. $1.00.

Religion: Religious Crossroads by Radoslav A. Tsanoff. E. P. Dutton and Co. 384 pp. $3.75.

Social Studies: The Axis Grand Strategy. Blue Prints for the Total War. From original material prepared by Staff Officers of the German Army, Navy, and Air Force. Compiled and edited by Ladislas Farago, Editor of German Psychological Warfare. Farrar and Rinehart. 614 pp. $3.75.

The Roots of National Socialism by Rohan D'O. Butler. E. P. Button and Co. 304 pp. $3.00.     

Poor education,unemployment and the promise of skills: The hegemony of the “skills mismatch” discourse

Development discourse frames youth in the Arab world as lacking in the skills needed for employment and educational institutions as failing. The “skills mismatch” is offered as both the reason for unemployment, and evidence of the poor quality of education in the region. This paper undertakes a genealogy of the skills mismatch discourse, tracing how it became central to education development policy with a focus on Jordan.We show that this discourse lacks analysis of prevailing labor force dynamics and barriers to economic development, and serves to blame youth, educators, and local culture for the failures of economic restructuring.     

Alternative education on Prince Edward Island: a hybrid of ‘mainstream’ and special education

Alternative education programmes have acted as a disciplinary practice used by schools in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada, as a response to providing students, especially those identified with challenging behaviours, who do not fit into ‘mainstream’ schools.

This article highlights the emergence of alternative education in PEI and brings to light the complexities underpinning how a child with challenging behaviour is viewed. Through the use of Foucauldian genealogical analysis and critical discourse analysis, this research centres on the discourse of ‘alternative education’ and problematises how alternative education programmes have been put in place as a solution to the problem of the child with challenging behaviour in ‘mainstream’ schools as constituted in the 1990s in PEI, Canada.

Using data generated from educational policies, government documents, and interviews with educators who worked in alternative placements and practitioners who worked with students identified as having problematic behaviour, I propose that alternative education programmes are hybrid programmes emerging from an overlapping of understanding from ‘mainstream’ education and ‘special education’.     

Adult education and the modern nation‐state: reflections on ’Social Commitment and Adult Education‘

This paper, which is situated within a discourse of inclusivity, is concerned with Higher Education's response to the needs of groups, such as working class adults with negative experiences of school, who are currently excluded from higher education throughout Europe. It argues, using illustrations from a case study, that there are a variety of organizational and pedagogical implications that must be addressed if participation is to be widened which relate to both individual ability and attitude and to institutional and situational barriers. It concludes that all universities have conceptions of equity which reflect ideological positions and influence the practice that is seen as acceptable. The dilemma facing those committed to social inclusion is that too much emphasis on the structural can imply that the efforts of individual students are of little consequence in determining success or failure. It is argued that a counter-balancing position is needed in which, whilst acknowledging the contribution of the student, course managers and institutions build structures to challenge the negative effects of inequality.     

TPACK and Pre-Service Teacher Mathematics Education: Defining a Signature Pedagogy for Mathematics Education Using ICT and Based on the Metaphor “Mathematics Is a Language”

National professional standards for teachers in Australia (AITSL, 2011) expect teacher education graduates to demonstrate technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK). Those standards have emerged concurrently with the development of a new Australian mathematics curriculum. Thus, the expectation is that graduates can demonstrate the use of information and communication technologies in mathematics teaching and learning. The authors argue that “signature pedagogy” (Shulman, 2005 Shulman, L. S. 1986. Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2): 4–14. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) is the use of a key metaphor which views mathematics as a language and suggests that mathematics should be taught and learned as any other language. This article provides a summary of the findings of an action research project involving two cohorts of undergraduate mathematics education students in an Australian university. Data collected was used to inform targeted changes to improve the technological pedagogical approach employed by the course team across two offers of the course to enhance student learning and align the course with the expectations for graduate teachers. The implications of this action research are provided to inform the design and implementation of pre-service teacher education courses with respect to the development of TPACK capabilities specifically in mathematics education.     

Education in the interregnum: an evaluation of Zygmunt Bauman’s liquid-turn writing on education

In his liquid-turn writings, Zygmunt Bauman has come to identify liquid modernity as a period of interregnum. Education has a central role to play within the contemporary interregnum by opening up a new public sphere for dialogue. However, the processes of liquefaction manifest themselves in conditions that severely limit a person’s ability to exercise their human agency. Bauman provides no indication of how the educators can escape the processes that limit agency, nor does he explain how educators can combat the seductive consumerism that students need to overcome before they can engage in a reconstruction of the public sphere.     

Gospel Values and Catholic Education: Revitalizing the Faith Community in a Culture of “Whatever”

The Second Vatican Council introduced a new narrative for Catholic school. Rather than serving a primarily catechetical purpose, Catholic schools were to share in the Church's evangelizing mission by embodying an ideal learning community in a manner rooted in Gospel values. This paper argues that Gospel values are not exported from the Bible and applied to Catholic schools. Instead, they emerge in the experience of teaching-learning as a humanly liberating activity in relation to the human reality of God's Kingdom realized in Jesus of Nazareth and explores revitalizing Catholic education through Gospel values, without at the same time being sectarian.