The three sources analyzed this week look at the challenges and shortcomings of progressive learning curriculums in Canada between the 1960’s and 1980s’. To do this, these sources use oral histories, direct quotes, and other primary sources to assess education in these time periods, and the effects progressive schooling had on students, teachers, and the community. Carol Anne Wien and Curt Dudley-Marling’s “Limited Vision: The Ontario Curriculum and Outcomes-Based Learning”, found in Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski’s, Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, explores how, despite the push for individualized learning, the progressive curriculums tended to to lump all students, regardless of their background, into one, and set general goals each must meet. Some students, often those with different cultures and new immigrants, fell behind the other students, as they had different literacy levels and education. Michael Marker’s  “‘It Was Two Different Times of the Day, But in the Same Place’: Coast Salish High School Experience in the 1970s” displays this inequality. His work looks into the effects of schooling on indigenous communities, mostly the community of Coast Salish. His main focus was on the native american teenagers and how they were disadvantaged in schools. Despite their growing role and respect in their communities at home, they were often marginalized and unfairly treated in the school system, which catered to white middle class students. Marker also discusses how their culture was ripped away from them at school, and in residential schools, and how they were made to conform to the new dominant anglo-saxon culture in order to succeed. To meet the requirements of school, which Wien and Dudley-Marling outline in their article, they had to assimilate to white culture. Wien and Dudley-Marling’s findings agree with Marker’s; the school curriculum was designed for the white middle class, and all students that did not fall in that category, but came from different backgrounds, culturally and ethnically, had to either adhere to the dominant culture, or fail. This was one of the largest disadvantages progressivism had. Though it claimed to be a more open way of learning, more tailored to the individual and accepting of Canada’s growing multiculturalism, it still disadvantaged Canada’s marginalized groups. This may not have been intentional, but have instead come from the need to maintain a way of testing and standardizing students and their learning. Schools, no matter how progressive, still had to follow a curriculum, and its students were expected to learn what was deemed most important, and to learn a certain level in a certain amount of time. The curriculum, as evaluated by Wien and Dudley-Marling, shaped the abilities of students and teachers alike, as they were confined to an outline of what to learn, and when. Nancy Janovicek’s  “‘The community school literally takes place in the community’: Alternative Education in the Back-to-the-land Movement in the West Kootenays, 1959 to 1980”, looks at the challenges posed by this rigid school system, and how some defied it. In Janovicek’s work she discusses the role of a couple “free schools” implemented in the Kootneys of British Columbia. These schools focused on learning through doing, and truly did was progressivism failed to: cater to individual. They were oriented to develop each student separately, teaching them what they would need to grow up well-rounded, and give them real life knowledge. There were no thresholds or standards to meet, instead they learned at their own pace. These schools were the result of parents, angry with a education curriculum they saw as confining and biased, and wanting something better for their children. Altogether, these articles bring up the question of how “progressive” was the new school curriculum? Despite its claims to be inclusive, creative and personalized, designed to teach relevant material that would prepare its students for the future, it failed to do all these things, especially in the cases of students whose education and culture differed from anglo-saxon middle class children. This adds to our understanding of Canadian history by displaying the often overlooked experiences of Canada’s marginalized groups. These articles display the hardships they encountered in a school system largely made to assimilate them. These articles also add to our historiography by further displaying how some communities overcome the challenges represented by the curriculum by coming up with their own. While progressivism did work in some respects, and under the right circumstances allowed children and teachers to flourish in their education, it disadvantaged and set back just as many others, if not more.     

Bibliography

Wien, Carol Anne and Curt Dudley-Marling. “Limited Vision: The Ontario Curriculum and Outcomes-Based Learning.” in Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski (Eds.), Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012: 400-412.

Janovicek, Nancy, “‘The community school literally takes place in the community’: Alternative Education in the Back-to-the-land Movement in the West Kootenays, 1959 to 1980,” Historical Studies in Education, 24, 1 (Spring 2012): 150-169.

Marker, Michael. “‘It Was Two Different Times of the Day, But in the Same Place’: Coast Salish High School Experience in the 1970s.” BC Studies 144 (Winter 2004/05): 91-113.

Image: Pearly Everlasting, taken by Katryna Barone