CJE Vol. 16, No. 1

Transcription

CJE Vol. 16, No. 1

Contents /
Table des matières
Articles
Claire Beauchemin
et Viateur Lemire
1
L'abandon scolaire:
valeur prédictive d'un instrument
Jean Barman
12
Deprivatizing Private Education:
The British Columbia Experience
Tim Sale
& Benjamin Levin
32
Problems in the Reform of Educational
Finance: A Case Study
James U. Gray
& Ronald N. MacGregor
47
A Cross-Canada Study
of High School Art Teachers
Kieran Egan
58
Relevance and the Romantic
Imagination
Geoffrey B. Isherwood
72
College Choice: A Survey
of English-Speaking High School
Students in Quebec
Ronald W. Morris
82
Limitations of Quantitative Methods
for Research on Values
in Sexuality Education
Patricia M. Canning
93
Profiles of the Abilities
of Preschool Aged Children in
an Isolated Northern Community
Research Note / Note de recherche
Jo-Ann L. Stewart
& Sidney J. Segalowitz
103
Differences in the Given Names of
Good and Poor Readers
Book Reviews / Recensions
Bernard Lefebvre
106
L'enseignement secondaire public des
frères éducateurs (1920–1970): utopie
et modernité par Paul-André Turcotte
Teresa L Richardson
108
Learning Works: Searching for
Organizational Futures: A Tribute to
Eric Trist, edited by Susan Wright and
David Morley
John J. Bergen
111
Choice of Schools in Six Nations, by
Charles L. Glenn
Romulo Magsino
113
Philosophical Issues in Education: An
Introduction, by Cornell Hamm
LeRoi B. Daniels
115
Achieving Extraordinay Ends: An
Essay on Creativity, by Sharon Bailin
Alexander D. Gregor
117
Who's Afraid of Liberal Education?/
Qui a peur de l'éducation générale?
edited by Caroline Andrew and
Steen B. Esbensen
119
Publications reçues
L'abandon scolaire:
valeur prédictive d'un instrument
Claire Beauchemin
université laurentienne
Viateur Lemire
université de montréal
Dans quelle mesure le questionnaire intitulé L'école, ça m'intéresse? conçu par le
ministère de l'Éducation du Québec (1983), a-t-il permis le dépistage de décrocheurs
chez des élèves de l'école secondaire en Ontario? Tel est le sujet d'une recherche
longitudinale menée de 1983 à 1987 auprès d'un échantillon d'élèves de quatre écoles
secondaires de langue française du moyen nord de cette province. L'analyse des
résultats témoigne en faveur de l'utilité de l'instrument; cependant, il convient de noter
que seulement 54% des énoncés du questionnaire utilisé dans sa forme originale sont
associés de façon significative au décrochage scolaire: le présent article analyse la
valeur prédictive des différents énoncés.
Les données recueillies indiquent que l'instrument utilisé dans sa forme originale a
une valeur prédictive globale de 74%, avec un taux de réussite très élevé pour les cas de
poursuite des études (88%), mais avec un taux très faible pour les cas d'abandon
scolaire (26%). En plus de proposer un seuil critique de dépistage adapté aux élèves
franco-ontariens, les auteurs présentent différentes utilisations possibles de l'instrument
et cela, en fonction des résultats enregistrés dans l'application de diverses analyses
statistiques. Ces nouvelles utilisations permettent d'accroître l'efficacité du
questionnaire en prédisant mieux (jusqu'à 80%) les cas d'élèves qui abandonnent leurs
études (75%) et de ceux qui les poursuivent (81%).
A Quebec Ministry of Education questionnaire (L'école, ça m'intéresse? 1983) was
intended to detect the intention to leave school. Our longitudinal research showed how
far this instrument was accurate in predicting drop-outs in four northern Ontario
French-language secondary schools between 1983 and 1987. Results show that the
instrument is useful, although only 54% of the questionnaire's propositions are linked at
statistically significant levels to premature school leaving. Our study analyzes the
predictive value of various propositions in the questionnaire.
We found that the instrument, in its original form, had a global predictive value of
74%, with a very high 88% rating for prediction of continuation of studies, and a very
weak rating of 26% for dropping out. We propose a critical threshold of detection
1
REVUE CANADIENNE DE L'ÉDUCATION 16:1 (1991)
2
CLAIRE BEAUCHEMIN ET VIATEUR LEMIRE
suited to Franco-Ontarian students and we list various uses for the instrument suggested
by our statistical analyses. Our suggested uses lead to an increase in the instrument's
ability to predict (ranging as high as 80%) drop-outs (75%) and continued school
attendance (81%).
La prévention du décrochage scolaire est récemment devenue une question
d'ordre politique en Ontario. En effet, 33% des élèves de la province
abandonnent leurs études avant d'avoir terminé leur 12e année. Le gouvernement s'est donc engagé à réduire ce taux et ce, au cours des cinq
prochaines années. Divers projets ont été mis sur pied dans le but d'y parvenir:
conférences, ateliers de sensibilisation, projets de recherches, programmes de
maintien et de réintégration. D'autres initiatives verront vraisemblablement le
jour.
À l'automne 1983, la Direction générale du développement pédagogique du
ministère de l'Éducation du Québec (MÉQ) faisait paraître une nouvelle
version du questionnaire de dépistage des décrocheurs scolaires, L'école, ça
m'intéresse? (Ministère de l'Éducation du Québec [MÉQ], 1983). Dès sa
parution, nous avons obtenu des autorités compétentes l'autorisation de
l'utiliser auprès d'un échantillon d'élèves franco-ontariens de l'école secondaire. Vu l'intérêt de ce questionnaire au Québec, nous voulions, dans un
premier temps, en mesurer la valeur prédictive auprès de notre échantillon.
Cette première étape, qui s'est déroulée en 1983–1984, nous a permis
d'identifier un certain nombre de décrocheurs potentiels.
Nous avons, dans un second temps, assuré un suivi de tous les répondants au
cours des trois années suivantes, soit de 1984 à 1987, afin d'évaluer la valeur
prédictive de l'instrument. Plus précisément, il s'agissait de vérifier, d'une part,
si les élèves identifiés dans le groupe des décrocheurs potentiels allaient, de
fait, abandonner leurs études et, d'autre part, s'il y aurait des décrocheurs parmi
les autres répondants.
Il convient d'effectuer des analyses approfondies dans le but d'évaluer la
valeur prédictive des énoncés et des dimensions du questionnaire. Ayant
identifié la valeur respective des divers éléments, il devient alors possible de
proposer une utilisation de l'instrument auprès d'une population d'élèves de
l'Ontario.
Dans les pages qui suivent, nous présentons une analyse descriptive des
données recueillies auprès de notre échantillon. Nous complétons cette étude
par l'examen des corrélations entre les dimensions du questionnaire. Nous
concluons par une étude de la valeur prédictive globale de l'instrument.
2
L'ABANDON SCOLAIRE
3
L'INSTRUMENT DE DÉPISTAGE
Le questionnaire L'école, ça m'intéresse? préparé par le MÉQ, contient 52
énoncés. Ces derniers sont regroupés à l'intérieur des huit dimensions
suivantes: les caractéristiques familiales, le sentiment d'isolement, les projets
scolaires, le rendement scolaire, la confiance en soi, l'absentéisme, le besoin de
soutien des enseignants et l'intérêt pour l'école.
L'analyse des réponses au questionnaire permet d'obtenir des renseignements
de deux ordres. D'une part, un résultat global identifie les décrocheurs
potentiels; ce sont ceux qui obtiennent un résultat supérieur à 25. Plus le score
se rapproche de 52, plus la probabilité d'abandonner les études est grande.
D'autre part, nous obtenons des renseignements du même ordre pour chacune
des dimensions, en ce sens qu'un seuil critique nous est suggéré chaque fois.
L'ÉCHANTILLON
Notre échantillon comprenait 370 élèves inscrits en 8e, 9e, 10e et 11e année.
Pour diverses raisons, nous avons cependant dû éliminer un certain nombre de
répondants. Ainsi, les questionnaires des élèves qui s'étaient mal identifiés, de
ceux qui avaient déménagé ou de ceux qui avaient omis des réponses n'ont pu
être retenus pour fins d'analyse. Au terme des quatre années, nous avons pu
traiter 238 cas. Parmi ceux-ci, 57 élèves ont abandonné leurs études et 181 les
ont poursuivies.
L'ANALYSE DESCRIPTIVE
L'analyse descriptive des résultats a été effectuée à partir de deux techniques
2
statistiques. Nous avons eu recours au test x afin d'établir si la distribution des
réponses s'avérait différente chez les élèves qui abandonnaient leurs études et
chez ceux qui les poursuivaient. Nous avons aussi utilisé le test t de Student
afin de vérifier si les moyennes différaient de façon significative entre les deux
groupes d'élèves pour chacune des dimensions. Ces analyses ont été réalisées à
l'aide du logiciel SPSS/PC, version 2,0. Les deux techniques ont permis de
vérifier la valeur prédictive des 8 dimensions et des 52 énoncés du
questionnaire. Nous avons fixé le seuil de signification à moins de 0,005.
La valeur prédictive des dimensions et des énoncés
La présentation des résultats respecte l'ordre dans lequel les dimensions
figurent dans le questionnaire de l'élève. Le tableau 1 présente les résultats
4
relatifs au caractère significatif ou non des énoncés en tant qu'items à valeur
prédictive auprès de notre échantillon. Le tableau 2 contient les résultats
relatifs au caractère significatif ou non des dimensions. La première dimension
du questionnaire (dimension A) porte sur les caractéristiques familiales,
c'est-à-dire ``des caractéristiques de base de la cellule familiale (cohabitation
des parents et de l'élève, nombre d'enfants dans la famille, scolarité des
parents . . .)'' (MÉQ, 1983, p. 5). L'examen des données permet de constater
que la dimension A ne contribue pas de façon significative à la prédiction de
l'abandon scolaire et cela, tant du point de vue des six énoncés que de la
dimension (t=0,56).
L'ABANDON SCOLAIRE
5
TABLEAU 1
Analyse des 52 items du questionnaire
Énoncés
x2
p
Énoncés
x2
p
1
12,33
0,0004*
27
9,61
0,002*
2
1,22
0,27
28
8,80
0,0003*
3
10,32
0,002*
29
19,30
0,0001*
4
3,64
0,06
30
6,17
0,02*
5
25,43
0,0001*
31
4,92
0,03*
6
3,93
0,05*
32
0,69
0,4
7
5,80
0,02*
33
0,93
0,3
8
4,84
0,03*
34
1,97
0,2
9
32,32
0,0001*
35
1,45
0,2
10
2,06
0,15
36
1,28
0,25
11
5,36
0,03*
37
1,04
0,3
12
13,58
0,0002*
38
0,53
0,46
13
12,33
0,0004*
39
7,67
0,006*
14
5,79
0,02*
40
0,11
0,74
15
7,74
0,006*
41
12,75
0,0004*
16
5,60
0,02*
42
3,18
0,07
17
9,52
0,002*
43
18,09
0,0001*
18
3,27
0,08
44
6,19
0,02*
19
0,0006
0,98
45
6,03
0,02*
20
0,45
0,5
46
1,73
0,18
21
0,002
0,97
47
5,43
0,02*
22
0,19
0,7
48
11,94
0,0005*
6
23
1,34
0,25
49
1,62
0,2
24
0,09
0,75
50
2,88
0,09
25
2,63
0,1
51
10,35
0,002*
26
13,07
0,0003*
52
3,24
0,07
*p<0,05
La deuxième dimension du questionnaire (dimension B) traite du sentiment
d'isolement de l'élève et les six items ``visent à indiquer jusqu'à quel point
l'élève se sent seul et bien dans sa situation. Un élève en situation d'abandon
aura souvent l'impression d'être solitaire et isolé'' (p. 6). Un seul énoncé s'avère
significatif; il s'agit de l'item 45 où l'élève dit ne pas être heureux de façon
générale. En outre, l'analyse de l'ensemble des énoncés de cette dimension
démontre que celle-ci ne contribue pas de façon significative à la prédiction de
l'abandon scolaire (t=2,13).
La troisième dimension (dimension C) porte sur ``les projets que l'élève a par
rapport à ses études'' (p. 7). Six des huit énoncés de cette dimension s'avèrent
significatifs.
L'ABANDON SCOLAIRE
7
Tableau 2
Analyse des 8 dimensions du questionnaire
Dimensions
Abandon
Moyennes
Non Abandon
t
p
A
2,60
2,51
0,56 0,60
B
1,87
1,42
2,13 0,34
C
2,99
1,86
4,15 0,0001
D
2,35
1,30
6,38 0,001
E
2,45
1,55
5,41 0,001
F
2,52
1,7
3,69 0,001
G
3,72
2,57
3,79 0,001
H
3,03
2,11
3,57 0,001
Ainsi l'élève, décrit dans les situations suivantes, montre un comportement lié
au décrochage scolaire: il ne croit pas aller plus loin que l'année en cours dans
ses études (item 3); il quitterait l'école dès maintenant si ses parents lui
permettaient d'abandonner ses études (item 11); il dit se sentir assez prêt à aller
sur le marché du travail (item 15); il affirme ne pas être assuré de terminer ses
études secondaires (item 16); il préférerait avoir un emploi plutôt que de rester
à l'école (item 28); et il n'aime pas aller à l'école (item 48). L'analyse globale
des énoncés démontre que cette dimension contribue de façon significative à la
prédiction de l'abandon scolaire (t=4,15).
La quatrième dimension (dimension D) évalue l'effet du rendement scolaire
de l'élève en reflétant ``la perception que l'élève a de son rendement scolaire.
[Les énoncés] touchent à la capacité de travail et à la réussite scolaire'' (p. 8).
Quatre des cinq énoncés s'avèrent significatifs. Ainsi, les indicateurs de cette
dimension liés à l'abandon des études sont les suivants: l'élève est d'avis que
ses résultats scolaires sont insatisfaisants (item 5); il croit que ses capacités de
concentration et d'attention pendant les cours sont ``plus ou moins'' bonnes
8
(item 6); il situe son rendement scolaire sous 59% (item 9); il a peur de ne pas
réussir l'année scolaire en cours et préférerait abandonner l'école plutôt que
d'échouer (item 17). Par ailleurs, dans l'ensemble, les énoncés de cette
dimension contribuent de façon significative à la prédiction de l'abandon
scolaire (t=6,38).
La cinquième dimension (dimension E) du questionnaire porte sur ``la
confiance de l'élève face à sa capacité de réussir ses études'' (p. 9). Tous les
énoncés de cette dimension s'avèrent significatifs. Les situations décrites
ci-après s'avèrent donc liées au décrochage scolaire: l'élève croit ne pas réussir
durant l'année en cours (item 26); il n'est pas sûr de réussir ce qu'il entreprend
(item 27); il n'a pas confiance dans ses talents scolaires (item 31); il pense
avoir des échecs dans au moins deux matières (item 43) et il dit mieux réussir
dans ce qu'il fait en dehors de l'école que dans les matières scolaires (item 47).
L'analyse globale des énoncés nous permet d'affirmer que, dans l'ensemble, les
items de cette dimension sont significatifs (t=5,41).
Une sixième dimension (dimension F) cerne le phénomène d'absentéisme
chez l'élève et décrit ``certaines attitudes et certains comportements relativement à la fréquentation scolaire. Un élève en voie d'abandon manquera des
cours sans raison et sera sensible aux stimulations extérieures (salaire)'' (p. 10).
Pour la moitié seulement des six énoncés, nous enregistrons des données
significatives. En somme l'élève, décrit dans les situations suivantes, fait
montre d'un comportement lié à l'abandon des études: il supporte difficilement
les règlements et les façons de faire de l'école (item 7); il avoue avoir manqué
ses cours plusieurs fois pour des raisons que les autorités de l'école ne jugent
pas valables (item 12) et il affirme qu'il manquerait l'école moins souvent si on
le payait pour y aller (item 41). Dans l'ensemble, les items de cette dimension
s'avèrent significatifs (t=3,69).
La septième dimension (dimension G) décrit ``la qualité de la relation qu'un
élève a avec ses enseignants et le personnel de l'école. Un élève en situation
d'abandon se perçoit comme très éloigné de ses enseignants et de ce qu'ils font
dans leur enseignement'' (p. 11). Pour cinq des huit énoncés de cette
dimension, nous enregistrons des données significatives. Nous sommes donc
amenés à conclure que les situations décrites ci-après sont liées au décrochage
scolaire: l'élève estime que ses relations avec le personnel de l'école sont plus
ou moins bonnes (item 8); il est d'avis que ses relations avec les enseignants
sont plus ou moins bonnes (item 13); il affirme que la plupart des enseignants
ne savent pas rendre leurs cours intéressants (item 39); ses enseignants ne
semblent pas le comprendre (item 44) et il est d'avis que la plupart de ses
enseignants ne réussissent pas vraiment à lui donner le goût d'apprendre (item
51). En outre, l'analyse globale des énoncés démontre que cette dimension
L'ABANDON SCOLAIRE
9
s'avère significative (t=3,79).
La huitième dimension (dimension H) porte sur l'intérêt de l'élève pour
l'école et les huit énoncés de cette dimension ``visent à cerner l'intérêt que
l'élève a pour ses études et pour sa vie scolaire'' (p. 12). La moitié de ces
énoncés s'avèrent significatifs auprès de notre échantillon. Les indicateurs de
cette dimension liés à l'abandon des études sont les suivants: l'élève n'aime pas
aller à l'école (item 1); il considère que les cours inscrits à son horaire ne
l'intéressent pas du tout (item 14); il n'aime pas les matières qu'il doit étudier
(item 29) et il affirme ne pas aimer l'école en général (item 30). L'analyse
globale des énoncés démontre que cette dimension contribue de façon
significative à la prédiction de l'abandon scolaire (t=3,57).
Au terme de notre analyse, nous pouvons conclure que toutes les dimensions
contiennent un ou des énoncés à valeur prédictive auprès de notre échantillon,
sauf la première qui traite des caractéristiques familiales. Il est également à
noter que la deuxième dimension portant sur le sentiment d'isolement de
l'élève s'avère non significative lorsqu'elle est considérée globalement. Quant
aux six autres dimensions, la moitié au moins de leurs énoncés s'avèrent
significatifs. Nous avons trouvé, sur un total de 52 au départ, 28 énoncés
significatifs en tant qu'éléments de prédiction. Lors de l'analyse de l'ensemble
des énoncés des huit dimensions, les six dernières se sont avérées
significatives.
Les corrélations entre les dimensions du questionnaire
Le tableau 3 présente les corrélations entre les dimensions du questionnaire.
Seule la dimension A (caractéristiques familiales) n'entre pas en corrélation
avec les autres dimensions du questionnaire. Elle se trouve en quelque sorte
isolée. En outre, ainsi que nous l'avons constaté avec le test t de Student, elle
ne participe pas à la prédiction de l'abandon, du moins dans l'échantillon
choisi.
Toutes les autres dimensions entrent en corrélation et cela, de façon
significative au seuil p<0,001. Un seul cas fait exception: il n'y a pas de
corrélation significative entre le facteur B, le sentiment d'isolement, et le
facteur F, l'absentéisme.
La corrélation la plus forte se situe entre le facteur C, les projets scolaires, et
le facteur H, l'intérêt pour l'école: elle atteint le niveau de 0,67. La seconde
corrélation en importance se situe entre le facteur H et le facteur G, le besoin
de soutien des enseignants et la troisième relie les facteurs C et G. On peut
donc s'attendre à trouver là plusieurs facteurs opérant de concert.
10
Tableau 3
Corrélations entre les dimensions du questionnaire
A
A
—
B
C
D
E
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
0,14
-0,04
0,05
0,03
-0,01
0,02
0,03
—
0,28*
0,22*
0,23*
0,12
0,35*
0,32*
—
0,37*
0,39*
0,46*
0,49*
0,67*
—
0,48*
0,38*
0,44*
0,44*
—
0,33*
0,41*
0,46*
—
0,45*
0,48*
—
0,62*
F
G
H
—
* p<0,001
Conclusion partielle
Les analyses présentées ci-dessus nous amènent à conclure que le recours aux
dimensions pour expliquer l'abandon scolaire ne donne pas de résultats
cohérents et cela, pour deux raisons. D'une part, le nombre d'énoncés
significatifs s'avère très irrégulier d'une dimension à l'autre; d'autre part, le
contenu des énoncés significatifs d'une dimension donnée ne correspond pas
toujours à la définition initiale de la dimension. Par conséquent, il serait
préférable d'utiliser les énoncés significatifs indépendamment de leur
association à une dimension. De fait, le dépistage de l'abandon scolaire devrait
être effectué à l'aide des 28 énoncés qui se sont avérés significatifs, du moins
avec une population semblable à notre échantillon.
LA VALEUR PRÉDICTIVE GLOBALE DU QUESTIONNAIRE
Au terme de trois années de recherche, l'analyse des résultats nous a permis
d'établir à 74% la valeur prédictive globale du questionnaire de dépistage. À
L'ABANDON SCOLAIRE
11
première vue, ce taux peut paraître assez bon étant donné les impondérables
qui jouent dans toute science humaine: en effet, l'on conçoit difficilement un
instrument dont la valeur prédictive s'établirait aux environs de 100%.
Toutefois, une étude des prédictions réussies auprès de notre échantillon
démontre que le questionnaire utilisé tel quel ne prédit pas aussi bien les cas
d'élèves qui abandonnent leurs études (26%) que les cas d'élèves qui les
poursuivent (88%). Cette disproportion dans les taux de prédiction pose un
problème puisque l'instrument doit permettre de dépister les décrocheurs
éventuels.
Une deuxième difficulté provient du critère québécois retenu pour faire le
partage entre les décrocheurs potentiels et les persévérants. En effet, au
Québec, l'on considère qu'un élève qui obtient un score de 25 points ou plus
doit être classé dans le groupe des décrocheurs potentiels. Or l'analyse des
données recueillies auprès de notre échantillon montre une moyenne de 21,03
chez les décrocheurs, alors qu'elle descend à 14,93 chez ceux qui persévèrent.
Nous sommes donc amenés à nous interroger sur les possibilités d'adaptation
de l'instrument afin d'accroître sa valeur prédictive auprès d'une population
d'élèves franco-ontariens.
2
L'application du x a permis d'identifier, parmi les 52 énoncés du questionnaire, 28 qui contribuent de façon significative à la prédiction de l'issue
des études. Il serait donc possible de se limiter à l'utilisation de ces 28 énoncés
auprès d'une population d'élèves franco-ontariens. Dans ce cas, le seuil
indicateur d'un décrochage éventuel devrait nécessairement être modifié.
Ainsi, nous constatons que la moyenne se situe à 11,47 pour les cas
d'abandon scolaire et à 6,83 pour les cas de poursuite des études. La coupure
devrait donc s'effectuer entre les valeurs de 7 et de 11.
Lorsque l'on fixe le seuil à 8, 75% des cas d'abandon et 62% des cas de
poursuite des études sont dépistés. Ce dernier critère nous permet d'obtenir la
meilleure combinaison de prédictions valides; ainsi, quand un sujet obtient un
score de 8 (ou plus) sur 28, il convient de le suivre plus attentivement, car il
court de grands risques d'abandonner ses études. L'analyse discriminante ne
nous a pas permis de distinguer les items qui, ensemble, contribuent le mieux à
la prédiction, mais elle peut attribuer à chacun des 52 items une pondération,
même minime, même négative, pondération qui correspond à la part à laquelle
chaque item contribue, en combinaison avec les autres, à l'atteinte du critère
proposé. Les opérations se font grâce au programme DISCRIMINANT de
l'ensemble SPSS/PC+: pour chaque sujet, chacune des 52 réponses est affectée
d'un coefficient; la somme des réponses ainsi pondérées est évaluée en
fonction de l'ensemble des sujets et chaque sujet est classé d'office dans le
groupe abandon ou dans le groupe poursuite des études. La comparaison entre
12
l'attribution statistique à un groupe et l'appartenance réelle à l'un ou à l'autre
groupe nous montre que le calcul ainsi effectué fournit les meilleures
prédictions. Plus précisément, on arrive à déceler 75% des cas réels d'abandon
scolaire; par ailleurs, l'on prédit 81% des cas de poursuite des études. Enfin, le
taux global de prédiction s'élève à 80%, ce qui représente une nette
2
augmentation sur la prédiction faite à partir du x et une augmentation
intéressante par rapport à l'approche fondée sur les critères québécois. Outre
cette augmentation de l'efficacité globale de la prédiction, il importe de
souligner que le taux de prédiction devient plus proportionné entre les
décrocheurs et les persévérants. Cette dernière approche consiste donc à
classer un élève dans un groupe ou l'autre à partir des réponses du sujet et des
pondérations obtenues de la part de sujets antérieurs. Il va de soi que le recours
à cette approche s'avère non seulement plus efficace, mais encore permet de
gagner du temps, car le traitement des réponses des élèves est fait par
ordinateur.
L'utilisation des résultats de l'analyse discriminante suppose une
organisation technique complexe qui n'est pas nécessairement à la portée de
tous les organismes scolaires locaux: il faut à la fois posséder un ordinateur
assez puissant et pouvant utiliser le logiciel SPSS/PC. Un avantage pourrait
cependant en découler: si les données étaient traitées dans un centre, il serait
possible de réviser la valeur prédictive de chacun des items tous les trois ans et
d'ajuster les indices statistiques en conséquence.
LIMITES
Faute de fonds disponibles en vue des déplacements à des endroits éloignés,
l'échantillon de répondants a dû être limité à des élèves provenant d'écoles
autour de l'Université. Dans ces conditions, nous ne pouvons prétendre à la
représentativité statistique de nos données pour l'ensemble de la province.
Nous affirmerons donc exclusivement ce qui suit: si la population d'élèves de
l'Ontario était semblable à celle de notre échantillon, il y aurait intérêt à utiliser
le questionnaire ou à le modifier conformément aux conclusions qui se
dégagent de nos analyses.
Il convient de signaler que la technique de l'analyse discriminante suppose
que les données soient distribuées normalement; or nos données sont
dichotomisées et sont représentées soit par 1, soit par 0. Dans ce cas, la
fonction discriminante n'est pas optimale, mais elle peut donner d'assez bons
résultats: `Ìn the case of dichotomous variables, most evidence suggests that
the linear discriminant function often performs reasonably well'' (Norusis,
1986, p. B-31). Nous avons toutes les raisons de croire que l'analyse
L'ABANDON SCOLAIRE
13
discriminante fonctionnerait mieux avec un questionnaire où le sujet a le choix
entre cinq réponses distribuées selon un continuum.
Le questionnaire de dépistage, même modifié, comporte plusieurs limites
qu'il convient de noter. En effet, rien ne garantit que, de fait, un élève qui
atteint le seuil indicateur d'un décrochage scolaire (soit 8 énoncés ou plus)
abandonnera ses études: les parents, les amis, les enseignants ou d'autres
personnes pourront l'influencer dans un sens positif. Inversement, rien ne
garantit qu'un sujet qui n'atteint pas le seuil indicateur (soit moins de 8
énoncés) n'abandonnera pas l'école: le questionnaire ne garantit pas qu'il aura
les aptitudes nécessaires ou qu'il se trouvera toujours dans les conditions
optimales de réussite. De plus, le questionnaire repose sur la sommation
d'indices considérés tous comme équivalents; il n'est pas exclu qu'un seul
indice soit suffisant, chez un sujet donné, pour provoquer l'abandon des
études. Nous n'obtenons aucun renseignement sur l'importance d'un indice
chez un sujet, ni sur la signification d'un ``vrai'' ou d'un ``faux.''
L'application du questionnaire suppose des précautions qui sont indiquées
par les auteurs du questionnaire et que l'on peut trouver traitées ailleurs
(Beauchemin, 1989).
CONCLUSION
Si les données recueillies auprès de notre échantillon d'élèves s'avèrent
représentatives de la population franco-ontarienne, l'efficacité de la prédiction
pourrait être accrue en utilisant le questionnaire sous la forme que nous avons
proposée.
Le questionnaire conçu par le MÉQ et adapté à la population francoontarienne nous paraît un outil extrêmement précieux, voire indispensable, si
nous cherchons à enrayer le décrochage scolaire. Beaucoup d'autres moyens
doivent être mis en oeuvre, tels l'amélioration du climat scolaire, la mise sur
pied de programmes plus souples permettant de répondre aux besoins
particuliers de certains groupes d'élèves. Cependant, il demeurera toujours
fondamental d'effectuer un dépistage auprès des élèves de la 8e ou de la 9e
année, ou les deux, de manière à ce que l'on puisse intervenir avant que
ceux-ci n'atteignent l'âge légal leur permettant d'abandonner leurs études.
14
La vigilance doit être accrue auprès d'une population minoritaire aux plans
linguistique et culturel et cela, dans la mesure où nous y enregistrons un taux
de décrochage scolaire particulièrement élevé. Conséquemment, dans les
efforts en vue de promouvoir l'épanouissement des futurs adultes francoontariens, l'opération dépistage s'avère des plus indiquée auprès de ce groupe
linguistique.
RÉFÉRENCES
Beauchemin, C. (1986). Le dépistage des décrocheurs scolaires. Revue canadienne
de l'éducation, 11, 152–173.
Beauchemin, C. (1989). Les indicateurs du décrochage scolaire. Dans C. Beauchemin (dir.), Faites qu'ils ne décrochent pas!— Give them a reason to stay! (pp.
37–43). Toronto: Conseil ontarien de recherches pédagogiques/Ontario
Educational Research Council.
Ministère de l'Éducation du Québec. (1983). L'école, ça m'intéresse? Québec:
Gouvernement du Québec.
Norusis, N.J. (1986). Advanced Statistics SPSS/PC+ for the IBM PC/XT/AT.
Chicago: SPSS Inc.
Claire Beauchemin est professeure à l'École des sciences de l'éducation, Université
Laurentienne, Chemin du lac Ramsey, Sudbury, Ontario, P3E 2C6 et Viateur
Lemire est professeur à la Faculté des sciences de l'éducation, Université de
Montréal, Case postale 6203, Succursale A, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3T3.
Deprivatizing Private Education:
The British Columbia Experience1
Jean Barman
university of british columbia
Until 1977 the state did not regulate private schools in British Columbia. Then
came provincial legislation. Today, not only must all non-public schools register
with provincial authorities but the overwhelming majority receive 50 percent of
the funding accorded local public schools. I here argue that family choice and state
control have grown in dialectical fashion. The expansion of choice, as evidenced
in higher enrolments and new private schools, has encouraged public oversight,
which has then acted to constrain the boundaries of choice. Today most private
schools differ little from their public counterparts as regards teaching methods and
basic curriculum. Private schools' philosophical and religious underpinnings,
supposedly the reason for their existence in the first place, have also come under
the scrutiny of public opinion and had to be balanced against growing recognition
of children's rights. What began as a single piece of legislation secured by a small
interest group has become an integral component of public policy. Private
education has been deprivatized.
Jusqu'en 1977, les écoles privées de la Colombie-Britannique échappaient à toute
réglementation gouvernementale. Puis une loi provinciale a été édictée. Aujourd'hui, non seulement toutes les écoles privées doivent s'enregistrer auprès des
autorités gouvernementales, mais la très grande majorité reçoivent 50 pour 100 des
subventions accordées aux écoles publiques locales. Le choix des parents et le
contrôle de l'État se sont développés d'une manière dialectique. L'élargissement du
choix, comme en témoigne un plus grand nombre d'inscriptions et d'établissements
privés, incite le public à être plus vigilant, ce qui a pour effet de limiter les choix.
Aujourd'hui la plupart des écoles privées ne diffèrent guère de leurs homologues
du système public pour ce qui est des méthodes pédagogiques et des programmes
de base. Les principes philosophiques et religieux des écoles privées—ceux-là
même pour lesquels elles auraient été créées—font, eux aussi, l'objet d'un examen
minutieux de la part du public, surtout à la lumière de la reconnaissance
grandissante des droits des enfants. Ce qui a d'abord été une loi édictée pour un
petit groupe d'intérêt fait maintenant partie intégrante de la politique générale.
L'enseignement privé est déprivatisé.
12
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 16:1 (1991)
DEPRIVATIZING PRIVATE EDUCATION
13
In 1977 British Columbia embarked on an educational policy virtually unique
in North America.2 Until then the province's private schools were unregulated,
subject to no external requirements apart from basic health and safety
standards applicable generally across the society. Then came provincial
legislation. Today, not only do the overwhelming majority of non-public
schools receive 50 percent of the funding accorded local public schools, but all
educational institutions must register with provincial authorities whether or not
they desire financial assistance. Private education has been deprivatized.
Although the British Columbia experience generated initial scholarly
interest, effects over the long term have not been analyzed.3 My argument is
that family choice and state control have grown dialectically. Government
funding, intended to expand the boundaries of choice for parents, did bring
higher enrolments and new schools. This in turn encouraged greater public
oversight, which has then constrained the boundaries of choice. I do not enter
the debate over the comparative merits of public and non-public education.4
BACKGROUND
Until 1977, private schooling in British Columbia was limited in its influence
to small minorities centred in specific social settings and geographical areas.
Over 95 percent of children attended local public non-denominational schools.
The provincial government concerned itself only with the public sector.
Private schools were not mentioned in the Ministry of Education's annual
reports, much less monitored. There were three distinctive groups of schools,
each of which for its own reasons helped form the lobby that from the 1960s
sought to persuade the provincial government to enact the crucial legislation.
The oldest group were Catholic schools whose beginnings went back as far
as did European settlement itself—to the mid-nineteenth century.5 Because the
Catholic church failed to secure legal recognition for its schools prior to
British Columbia's entry into Confederation in 1871, the schools acquired no
claim under the terms of the British North America Act to be financially
supported as alternatives within the public system, as occurred with Catholic
schools in some other areas of Canada. British Columbia's handful of Catholic
schools limped along as private institutions, continuing to believe, however,
that they were legitimately entitled to official recognition and public funding.
After the Second World War an increasingly assertive Catholic hierarchy took
direct action. Not only were dozens of new schools constructed across the
province to serve the one in seven British Columbians who was Catholic, but a
13
14
JEAN BARMAN
very public war of words was waged through repeated briefs and appeals to
the provincial government.6 The number of Catholic schools quadrupled
between the early 1950s and mid-1960s to well over 60, but, despite its higher
profile, the Catholic church was unable on its own to obtain any concessions
or assistance from the province.
A second group of non-public schools had origins going back almost as far
in time, to British Columbia's origins as a British colony.7 As around the
world, so in colonial British Columbia the Church of England established its
own private, elite schools which on Confederation also remained outside the
provincial system. The Anglican tradition was buttressed early in the twentieth
century as a consequence of extensive upper-middle-class British immigration
into British Columbia, which many newcomers perceived as still a British
outpost where they could educate their children in the same class-based
fashion as in Britain itself. Over a hundred private boys' and girls' schools on
the British model were established in areas of extensive British settlement,
many soon also acquiring students from among families of other backgrounds
who sought similar, supposedly superior status for their children. By
mid-century many of the three dozen or so schools still in operation had fallen
on hard times, unable to provide the costly physical amenities of the postwar
public system. At the same time schools continued to attract many offspring of
influential families, including those whose fathers were willing to use political
connections to ensure the schools' survival. This was particularly the case once
attention turned to the securing of financial support from the provincial
government.
It was the third principal group of private schools that spearheaded the joint
lobbying effort to obtain government support. Holland's devastation in the
Second World War brought many young people to areas of the world with
similar geography. Upwards of 20,000 settled in British Columbia's fertile
river valleys.8 Like their British predecessors, the Dutch brought with them a
strong commitment to private education. The unquestioned assumption in the
Netherlands was that each child would be schooled according to the family's
religious beliefs in a government-supported but denomination- ally based
institution. Many Dutch immigrants to British Columbia were Calvinists
committed to what they termed ``Christian'' schooling. Assisted by
missionaries from older settlements in the United States, they soon established
some two dozen Christian schools.9 These new British Columbians firmly
believed that government, be it in the old world or the new, had a
responsibility to fund their offsprings' schooling just as it did that of most other
children in the society.
By the early 1960s each of the three groups of schools realized that, on their
15
own, they were unable to change a provincial policy that had never
acknowledged, much less funded, educational alternatives to the public
system. In 1966 the associations representing the three groups, totalling 121
schools, came together to form a joint lobby, the Federation of Independent
School Associations. FISA, as it is usually known, was not an organization of
schools but rather of their separate associations, whose continued existence
showed the great extent to which the separate strands in private education
stood apart from each other. The word `ìndependent'' in the name of the
federation denoted these schools' conscious change in orientation from being `
`private,'' in the sense of private profitmaking, to independent, in the sense of
distinct from the public system.10
FISA's sole mandate was to secure provincial recognition and funding. Its
executive director, Gerry Ensing, came out of the very vigorous Dutch
Calvinist tradition and was determined that the provincial government must
acknowledge the private sector's contribution to education and accord it its
financial due. Ensing was extraordinarily capable and effective in promoting
grass-roots activism among private-school supporters. ``Think carefully! YOU
have supported your private school, financially, YOU have read and heard all
about this subject and presumably, agree. BUT, HAVE YOU WRITTEN
YOUR LETTER? Male or female, youth or adult—the testing time is NOW!
The wedge is inserted! DRIVE IT HOME, WITH A GENTLE BUT FIRM
BLOW WITH YOUR PEN!''11 Key provincial legislators of diverse political
orientations soon saw the practical advantages in supporting the cause. As
L.W. Downey has analyzed in detail, the passage of legislation in September
1977 underlined the extent to which a small but determined vested-interest
group could set public policy.12
LEGISLATION
The School Support (Independent) Act of 1977 provided for two levels of
per-pupil funding to schools in operation for at least five years. To qualify for
assistance at 10 percent of what it cost to educate the same child in a public
school in the same district, a school had only to satisfy a school inspector that
it did not promote racial or religious intolerance or social change through
violent means, and that it had adequate facilities. Funding at the higher rate of
30 percent of comparable costs required adherence to the same basic
educational program being offered in the public system, subsequent
employment of qualified teachers, participation in provincial student
assessment and examination programs, and operation as a non-profit enterprise. Most established schools requested funding at the higher level even
16
JEAN BARMAN
though the legislation did not, it must be stressed, compel schools to seek
recognition and funding. Only a small minority then or later sought assistance
at the lower level. Schools that for religious or other reasons rejected the
principle of government control over education remained free to operate
unhindered by any outside authority, be it the provincial government or FISA.
Official terminology thereafter tended to refer to schools receiving funds as
independent, those opting to go their own way as private.
The original Act was subsequently amended and rewritten in ways more
favourable to schools seeking funding. In 1982 the time a school had to
operate before applying for assistance was cut from five to three years, in
mid-1987 to just a single year, shifts that encouraged the foundation of new
schools. Also in 1987 the date when a school would actually receive the first
payment for a particular school year was advanced from November of the
subsequent year to February of the year in question, a considerable boon for
smaller schools operating on the economic margin.13 Maximum funding was at
the same time raised to 35 percent.
Responding to recommendations of the provincial Sullivan Royal Commission on Education, which reported in 1988, a new Independent School Act
was passed in mid-1989. The funding level was raised to 50 percent for
schools whose per-pupil operating expenses did not exceed those of public
institutions in the same school district and which, as summed up by the
Minister of Education during debate on the legislation, ``meet all the requirements or parallel requirements of the public school system in terms of
educational programs.'' For schools whose per-pupil costs were higher than in
public schools in the same district, the same regulations held but funding
remained at 35 percent. The lower rate continued at 10 percent. Although the
latter schools did not have to follow the provincial curriculum, they were now,
as the minister emphasized, ``required to provide an educational program, as
. . . in the public schools.''14 Schools' capital and other non- operating costs are
not provincially supported, although schools have been and continue to be
accorded a proportion of funds targeted from time to time for special purposes,
such as Pacific Rim initiatives, computer education, and programs for children
with learning disabilities.15
The 1989 Act also put private education as a whole under state control for
the first time in British Columbia. All schools enrolling ten or more children
and all home-schooling families, defined as school-aged groups of fewer than
ten, were required to register with provincial authorities.16 Upon registration, a
school was officially inspected. Home-schooling families were subject to
superintendents' inspection. As had been the case in funded schools, all
schools were now explicitly prohibited from offering programs that fostered
17
racial or ethnic superiority, religious intolerance, or social change through
violent means.
Very importantly, the Independent School Act of 1989 began with the same
preamble as did its companion School Act, for the first time committing all
schools across the province to a common purpose developed by the ministry
for the public system. ``The purpose of the British Columbia school system is
to enable learners to develop their individual potential and to acquire the
knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy society and a
prosperous and sustainable economy.''17 Although non-funded schools could
still make a profit and hire unqualified teachers, the requirement clearly and
unequivocally put the state's social and economic priorities up front. British
Columbia's remaining ``private'' schools were in effect legislated out of
existence.
GROWING NUMBERS
Since 1978 both the number of pupils in non-public schools and the number of
institutions have grown steadily, although, as Table 1 makes clear, two
important shifts sometimes attributed to the legislation were already underway.
Demographics were depressing public school enrolments even as those of
non-public schools were rising, partly in reaction to what some British
Columbians perceived to be public-school permissiveness.
18
JEAN BARMAN
TABLE 1
Comparison of British Columbia Public and Private School Enrolments,
1970/71–1990/91*
Public
school
enrolment
% change
over prev.
year
Private
school
enrolment
% change
over prev.
Total
year enrolment
Private
enrol.
as %
of total
1970/71
526,991
—
21,319
—
548,310
3.9
1971/72
524,305
-0.5
21,777
2.1
546,082
4.0
1972/73
537,067
2.4
22,061
1.3
559,128
4.0
1973/74
549,019
-2.2
21,421
-2.9
570,440
3.8
1974/75
541,575
-1.4
21,055
-1.7
562,630
3.7
1975/76
542,680
0.2
23,071
9.6
565,751
4.1
1976/77
536,237
-1.2
23,318
1.1
559,555
4.2
1977/78
527,769
-1.6
23,691
1.6
551,460
4.3
1978/79
517,786
-1.9
24,556
3.7
542,342
4.5
1979/80
511,671
-1.2
24,827
1.1
536,498
4.6
1980/81
509,805
-0.4
26,314
6.0
536,119
4.9
1981/82
503,371
-1.3
27,936
6.2
531,307
5.3
1982/83
500,336
-0.6
28,280
1.2
528,616
5.4
1983/84
497,312
-0.6
29,118
3.0
526,430
5.5
1984/85
491,264
-1.2
30,326
4.1
521,590
5.8
1985/86
486,777
-0.9
33,553
10.6
520,330
6.5
1986/87
486,299
-0.1
34,242
2.1
520,541
6.6
1987/88
491,309
1.0
36,724
7.3
528,033
7.0
1988/89
500,088
1.8
37,731
2.7
537,819
7.0
1989/90**
513,533
2.7
39,240
4.0
552,773
7.1
19
1990/91**
% change
over
20 years
% change
since
funding
527,900
2.8
0.2
nil
41,391
5.5
94.2
74.7
569,291
7.3
3.8
3.2
*Federal schools for native Indian children and schools for blind and deaf students are
excluded from the total.
**Figures shown are estimates.
Sources:Statistics Canada, Elementary-Secondary School Enrolment (81-210) and Advanced
Statistics of Education (81-220), and FISA calculations.
20
JEAN BARMAN
The number of children in the public system fell from a high of 549,00 in
1973/74 to under 530,000 by 1977/78, during which time enrolment in
non-public schools grew from just over 21,000 to almost 24,000.
Funding accelerated the trend in favour of non-public school enrolments.
Public school numbers troughed at 486,000 in 1986/87, moving slowly
upwards thereafter, whereas the number of non-public pupils surpassed 41,000
by 1990/91. Overall, the proportion of British Columbia children being
educated outside the public system rose by two thirds, from 4.3 percent in
1977/78 to 7.3 percent in 1990/91. The number of non-public institutions also
grew by two thirds, from approximately 167 in 1977/78 to 279 by 1989/90. In
addition, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 children, or just over 0.5 percent of their
cohort, were being home-schooled.
Overall figures are somewhat misleading, for growth in numbers and thereby
in families' choice of school for their children has not been evenly dispersed
between the principal groups of non-public schools. As Table 2 shows,
Catholic enrolments have increased least. Yet the influence of funding for this,
the largest group of schools, has probably been the most significant. The
province's Catholic schools had by their own admission fallen on hard times, a
situation worsened by a worldwide shortage of cheap, dedicated Catholic
labour. Many schools so optimistically established across hinterland British
Columbia during the postwar years were barely surviving. The church's
willingness to countenance, never mind to champion, a joint funding campaign
is perhaps the best evidence of the situation's gravity. Funding turned matters
around. By 1980 enrolments were slowly but steadily moving upward. Fees
could be kept down while individual schools were made more attractive
through the improvement of deteriorating facilities and employment of paid
teachers to replace aging nuns and lay brothers.
Of 67 Catholic schools in operation on the eve of funding, 1977/78, just four
subsequently closed, two at least for non-economic reasons. Overriding
strenuous parental objections, an elderly order of nuns from Montreal shut
down an exclusive Vancouver girls' school rather than see it fall into the hands
of lay teachers. A few years later a popular girls' high school in nearby
Burnaby was summarily closed by the local archdiocese rather than submit to
unionizing teachers' demands.18 Nine new Catholic schools were founded in
the early to mid-1980s, primarily in rapidly expanding surburban
communities.19 Their appearance partially accounts for the rise in enrolments
from just over 13,000 at the beginning of the decade to 17,000 by 1987. Totals
thereafter levelled out. This is in part because, rather than reducing fees and so
encouraging additional families to consider attendance, institutions used
provincial funds primarily to raise teachers' salaries toward provincial norms
21
in the public system, hoping to counter threats of unionization. State funding
has been critical to the renaissance of Catholic education in British
Columbia.20
TABLE 2
British Columbia Private School Enrolment, 1977/78–1990/91
Catholic
1977/78
13,264
1978/79
13,395
1979/80
% incr.
over
prev.
year
—
Elite
% incr.
over
prev.
year
Funded
Christian
% incr.
over
prev.
year
—
Other
funded
3,559
—
2,471
1,357
1.0
3,556
-0.1
2,702
9.8
1,411
13,226
-1.3
3,667
3.1
2,946
9.0
1980/81
13,712
3.7
3,661
-0.2
3,239
1981/82
14,077
2.7
3,839
4.9
1982/83
14,620
3.9
3,872
1983/84
15,516
6.1
1984/85
15,421
1985/86
1986/87
% incr.
over
prev.
year
—
Nonfunded*
% incr.
over
prev.
year
Total
3,040
—
23,691
4.0
3,492
14.9
24,556
1,273
-9.8
3,715
6.4
24,827
10.0
1,498
17.7
4,204
13.2
26,314
3,436
6.1
2,056
37.3
4,528
7.7
27,936
0.9
3,592
4.5
2,002
-2.6
4,194
-7.4
28,280
3,935
1.6
3,745
4.3
1,518
-24.2
4,404
5.0
29,118
-0.6
3,886
-1.3
3,969
6.0
1,756
15.7
5,294
20.2
30,326
16,592
7.6
4,331
11.5
4,149
4.5
2,047
16.6
6,434
21.5
33,553
16,934
2.1
4,484
3.5
4,639
11.8
2,563
25.2
5,622
-28.2
34,242
23
1977/78
13,264
1978/79
13,395
1979/80
3,559
—
2,471
3,040
—
23,691
1.0
3,556
-0.1
2,702
9.8
1,411
4.0
3,492
14.9
24,556
13,226
-1.3
3,667
3.1
2,946
9.0
1,273
-9.8
3,715
6.4
24,827
1980/81
13,712
3.7
3,661
-0.2
3,239
10.0
1,498
17.7
4,204
13.2
26,314
1981/82
14,077
2.7
3,839
4.9
3,436
6.1
2,056
37.3
4,528
7.7
27,936
1982/83
14,620
3.9
3,872
0.9
3,592
4.5
2,002
-2.6
4,194
-7.4
28,280
1983/84
15,516
6.1
3,935
1.6
3,745
4.3
1,518
-24.2
4,404
5.0
29,118
1984/85
15,421
-0.6
3,886
-1.3
3,969
6.0
1,756
15.7
5,294
20.2
30,326
1985/86
16,592
7.6
4,331
11.5
4,149
4.5
2,047
16.6
6,434
21.5
33,553
1987/88
17,029
0.6
4,697
4.8
5,133
10.0
3,396
32.5
6,469
15.1
36,724
1988/89
16,734
-1.7
4,814
2.5
5,509
7.3
3,755
10.6
6,919
6.9
37,731
1989/90
16,845
0.7
5,196
7.9
6,281
14.0
4,570
21.7
6,348
8.3
39,240
1990/91
17,354
3.0
5,158
-0.7
7,476
19.0
5,344
16.9
6,059
-4.5
41,391
% increase
since
funding
—
30.8
44.9
—
202.6
1,357
—
293.8
99.3
24
*Enrolments in non-funded schools are estimates only.
Source: Enrolment statistics compiled by the Federation of Independent School Associations on behalf of Statistics Canada.
JEAN BARMAN
In the case of the province's elite schools on the British model, their
relatively small growth in enrolments has been largely self-imposed. The ten
that survived into the late 1970s used funding primarily to retrieve lost
exclusivity. Rather than moderating fees, they chose to upgrade facilities or
even open new campuses in order to maximize appeal and thereby pupil
selectivity. Their success was most visible in the foundation in the heavily
populated Greater Vancouver area of several new schools quite contented to
accept the older schools' rejects.21 These institutions, old and new, have been
especially concerned to maintain their image as distinct from and superior to
the public system.22 In 1989 they opposed any further rise in provincial
funding beyond 35 percent and helped fashion the dual policy whereby only
schools whose per-pupil cost was below that in local public schools received
the higher rate of 50 percent.
Christian schools have expanded the most dramatically in numbers and
enrolment. The general appeal of conservative Christian values has been
evident in the parallel growth of funded Christian schools and of their
non-funded counterparts.23 Funded Christian schools have increased enrolments one and a half times over the past twelve years, while overall enrolments in non-funded private schools, the majority evangelical Christian in
outlook, have doubled.
In practice the two kinds of Christian schools intertwine.24 Those originating
in Dutch immigration have gradually become more welcoming of families
belonging to other Protestant churches.25 State funding has been vital in
legitimizing curricula and teachers and thereby achieving broadly based
acceptability within the larger Christian community. Some non-funded
Christian schools begun by particular evangelical or fundamentalist denominations have moved closer to their funded counterparts by joining the
association encompassing funded Christian schools and applying for provincial recognition and financial assistance. Thus, enrolment in non-funded
schools as a whole began to decline in the late 1980s even as, so Table 2
details, that in funded Christian schools continued to rise. Newer funded
schools were mostly located in geographical areas without Dutch settlement,
thereby increasing funded Christian schools' accessibility to families across the
province. By the end of the 1980s, twenty-five to thirty different denominations were represented among pupils attending funded Christian schools.
Christian schools choosing to remain non-funded have often had relatively
short life spans. Founded by an enterprising minister and operating in ad hoc
quarters, likely a church basement, they have relied on individualized curricula
such as Alpha-Omega or Accelerated Christian Education, the latter able to be
overseen by non-professionals, often the minister and his wife or other
26
volunteers from within the church. Thus, almost half the approximately 60
non-funded Christian schools in operation in the early 1980s had begun after
1977 but were closed by the end of the 1980s, by which time another 30 or so
new non-funded Christian schools were in operation across British
Columbia.26
Other non-public schools have fared variously. The stagnation of alternative
school enrolments, even where such schools received funding, was likely a
consequence of general conservatism in social values in the 1980s. Seventh
Day Adventists, who at first rejected government funding, have had little
success in opening new schools. Other religious schools, schools for very
young children, and schools for children with special needs have each tripled
in numbers, due largely to the increased ease of obtaining provincial funding.
Among groups newly establishing schools in the 1980s in British Columbia
were Mormons, Sikhs and Muslims.
INCREASED OVERSIGHT
The growth in numbers of pupils and schools has both encouraged and been
encouraged by increased official and unofficial oversight of non-public
education. The shift has gone beyond changes in legislation into attitudes.
Non-public schools have come to be perceived as an integral component of a
provincial system of education. Whereas once it was the Federation of
Independent School Associations alone that spoke out for private education,
three powerful groups now look out for their interests.
First, unlike some lobbies that fold their tent as soon as their goal is secured,
FISA strengthened its presence in British Columbia as the principal liaison
between, and advocate for, various groups or associations of schools that
otherwise continued to have relatively little in common.27 The federation
communicates schools' concerns to the proper authorities, monitors government actions, and administers some provincial programs encompassing
non-public schools, making FISA a direct agent of state control. FISA also
functions as the principal advocate of independent education, in the press and
elsewhere defending the principle of funding and making the case for family
choice and diversity in education.28 FISA's role should not be underestimated.
FISA has had internally to maintain a delicate balancing act between school
associations, some of which favour increased funding, even as high as 100
percent, whereas others oppose any change appearing to legitimize
government intervention in their operations. FISA has been remarkably
successful in quietly and effectively reconciling very different perspectives.
The provincial Ministry of Education officially oversees non-public
education, ensuring that individual schools adhere to designated standards for
curriculum and teachers' credentials. The presence of an Independent Schools
Division within a government ministry traditionally responsible only for
public education has played a major role in legitimizing private schools as
integral to the provincial system. Although some individuals within the
division, including Gerry Ensing, formerly of FISA, have been scrupulous in
their public neutrality, others have sometimes sounded ``more like an apologist
for the private schools than their inspector.''29
The third critical support group is the provincial government itself. The
centre-right Social Credit coalition that has been in power since 1977 has
actively encouraged non-public schooling as an option for British Columbian
families. Some MLAs have been attracted by the elitism, others have been
genuinely concerned to give parents the opportunity to opt for religiouslybased schooling for their offspring. Over the past dozen years evangelical
Christians have played a growing role in government as members of the
legislature and as ministers. Overall, the vision of society held by members of
the ruling political party has been more closely approximated by some
component of the non-public sector, or at the least by the freedom to choose,
than by public education.30
THE DIALECTIC
Growing oversight combined with the expansion in family choice has fundamentally altered the character of non-public education in British Columbia.
Provincial funding revitalized non-public schools, but at a price. Whereas a
dozen years ago these schools quietly went their own way, they are now
accountable not just to the government but in the court of public opinion.
Their every action is monitored by and discussed in the press, due in good part
to their appeal.
The dominant image of private education depicted in the press is of a
panacea inaccessible to ordinary British Columbians. An editorial in the
province's major newspaper unequivocally asserted in 1987 that all private
schools `àre elitist.''31 Such an assessment gains credibility from the frequent
advertisements in the daily and periodical press for the province's handful of
truly elite schools, containing details like ``fully 96% of last year's graduating
seniors gain[ed] admission to universities such as Harvard, Princeton and
MIT.''32 Newspaper headlines at first glance negative in tone—``Hefty private
school funding hike angers cash-strapped public schools''—leave much the
same message.33 FISA's very success in holding together an independent
school coalition has ironically heightened the perception of all non-public
28
schools as fashioned in the image of the select few.
The press's tendency to obscure schools' differing goals and clientele is due
in part to its distillation of expertise. Having polled British Columbians to
determine their level of support for private education, Donald Erickson
lumped his findings together as though they applied equally to all kinds of
non-public schools.34 The Ministry of Education has contributed to the same
perception through such actions as highlighting in its annual report a public
opinion survey indicating that, `ìf money was no object, more than half the
population would choose to send their children to an independent school.''35
One consequence is that families believe they will obtain for their child at an
economy-model Catholic or evangelical Christian school the attributes of
exclusivity promised by one elite school with its public assertions that ``the
world steps aside for any man who knows where he is going.''36 To the extent
that families do not experience anticipated satisfaction or cannot afford a
non-public school in the first place, antagonisms grow and non- public schools
become more accountable for their every action.
Non-public education's new visibility has meant that individual schools are
monitored as never before. Efforts to get rezoning or other concessions result
in extensive press coverage.37 The revelation in spring 1989 that two of
Vancouver's elite schools limited admissions of local students of Asian
background in the interests of maintaining an `àppropriate ethnic mix''
unleashed a public furor. Whereas half the children entering the public system
in Vancouver spoke English as a second language, half of these a Chinese
language, one of the two schools deliberately kept the proportions of Asians to
twenty percent and of other ethnic groups to between 2 and 3 percent, despite
half its applicants being of Asian descent.38 Another outcry erupted a year later
over the realization that some non-public schools issued tuition rebate slips for
income tax purposes on the ground that the school offered at least one
post-secondary course and therefore the fees of all students, whatever their
academic level, were deductible for tax purposes, a position apparently upheld
by Revenue Canada.39 Also in 1990 came news that one of the province's
best-known elite schools had decided to continue to restrict its enrolment to
males, which some in the public considered reason for withdrawing public
funds from the institution.40
Funded schools whose religious underpinnings have appeared to take
precedence over their educational function have also come under public
scrutiny.41 The most extreme case was a 1988 conflict between the Catholic
church and teachers at the province's only Catholic girls' high school. In the
end the church got its way by simply shutting down the school, but the cost
was much heavier than if the events had occurred a decade previous. The
conflict began when teachers sought to unionize in order to raise their salaries
and to secure better working conditions. The Catholic hierarchy was unwilling
to discuss such issues as teachers' personal behaviour outside school hours.
Many interpreted it as a warning to teachers in other Catholic schools
considering unionization that the church closed the school over the protests of
students, parents and teachers. Every scene and act in a lengthy drama of
conflicting views was monitored by the daily press, and the church lost
decisively in the court of public opinion.42 The Catholic church was made
accountable for its actions in so unfavourable a light as to make it highly
unlikely that any school or religious group would ever again act in similar
fashion. All non-public schools across British Columbia were put on guard
that even in terms of their philosophical and religious underpinnings, there
were public standards for acceptable behaviour. As for the Catholic church, it
not suprisingly used much of the 1989 funding increase to raise teachers'
salaries.
Neither are funded schools any longer independent in terms of daily
operations. Individual schools still embody very different philosophical,
religious and even class-based perspectives. Yet each must now serve the
same basic purposes as does the public system, summed up in the preamble to
the 1989 legislation. Educational programs build on a core curriculum
developed within the public system. Some long-standing teachers are qualified
through experience, but more and more receive their training in the same
post-secondary institutions serving the public system and are similarly
certified, meaning that they can readily move between public and non-public
schools.43 All students take the same provincial graduation examinations and
graduate equally qualified to enter institutions of higher learning. The
provincial inspector of independent schools has the authority to appraise all
school records as well as to `èxamine the achievement of students and
examine and assess teachers, programs, operations and administration.''44
Further, by accepting funding non-public schools have committed themselves in advance to whatever new regulations the Ministry of Education may
implement for the system as a whole. Through FISA, schools have some voice
in policy formation, but that voice is very small compared to that of the much
larger public system. When during the early 1980s the provincial government
repeatedly cut back public education in the name of economic restraint,
independent schools were also cut back. Far-reaching policy changes
consequent on the 1988 Sullivan Royal Commission look toward a
fundamental restructuring of the entire system by the year 2000. Kindergarten
through grade 3 is becoming ungraded, and grades 11 and 12 will be
reoriented. The traditional subject areas are to be replaced by four interwoven
30
strands: humanities, fine arts, sciences and practical arts.45 Although
independent schools have some flexibility, the widespread assumption that
their academic component equals or surpasses that in the public school creates
tremendous pressures to conform. As one independent school head put the
case, `ìt's our job to be up-to-date with what's happening educationally.''46 For
non-public schools in British Columbia, the future is no longer theirs alone to
determine.
The 1989 legislation paired the carrot of funding with the stick of mandatory
registration and what the minister termed ``stronger inspection.''47 The appeal
of financial assistance had already brought into the regulated category the
majority of schools, together enrolling about 85 percent of non-publicly
educated children. Although the new Act does not force the remaining schools
to accept provincial funding, it does stipulate that they as well as
home-schooling families must, for the first time, acknowledge themselves
before the state. When the legislation was passed, the provincial inspector of
private schools commented that some non-funded schools deeply opposed the
new Act. ``They don't want us to know about them because they're afraid of
government intervention.''48
The new Act effectively puts children's right to a basic education, whatever
school they attend, above their parents' and the school's philosophical or
religious predilections.49 As the Act's preamble affirms, children's rights take
priority: ``The purpose of the British Columbia school system is to enable
learners to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge,
skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy society and a prosperous
and sustainable economy.'' The Minister of Education explained the preamble's
purpose as ensuring that non-public schools ``meet more stringent
requirements relative to the public school act, so that if students had a choice,
they also had equal opportunity to get an education that would prepare them
for a healthy society.''50
It is too early to determine proportions of schools and home-schooling
families refusing to register or whether the provincial ministry will act against
the holdouts. As of early 1991, the section of the legislation making
non-registration an offence, Section 13, had not yet been proclaimed, the delay
intended to give schools time to comply voluntarily. The Act gives the
government the authority to order a school closed for failing to comply. Such a
school would remain closed during any appeal, likely dooming long-term
viability. Over the long run the Act likely will result in the closure of some
schools, mostly voluntarily, and cause decisions to open new schools to be
taken less lightly than during the 1980s.
Most supporters of non-public education, by distinguishing between schools'
didactic and moral functions, have had little difficulty accepting the state's
greater role. They applauded the 1989 legislation as putting `ìnto a legislative
code a commitment to pluralism in education'' with ``room for parental choice.'
'51 They hold that their ability to teach from their own philosophical or
religious perspective has been little, if at all, affected by the growth of state
oversight. A minority, including some members of the evangelical Christian
community, have expressed reservations based on their strong belief that the
state has no role in schooling. Others worry over the appropriate percentage of
financial support, with its implication of a comparable degree of state control.
The greater the reliance on government funding, the more difficult it becomes
to oppose government requests that might in the event of opposition become
demands. Thus, during internal debate preceding the 1989 legislation, some
voices within FISA argued that the proportion should not top the current 35
percent, others that it not exceed 49 percent, to ensure schools retain 51
percent control.
For the overwhelming majority, the security of financial support far
outweighs apprehensions that a provincial government of a different political
orientation might revise regulations. FISA's effective cooption of provincial
political parties and of most major interest groups through ongoing liaison has
ensured there will be no drastic reversal in policy.52 Funding itself is no longer
at issue. The principal opposition party, the New Democrats, has since the
early 1980s committed itself to maintaining financial support of non-public
schooling. In debating the 1989 legislation, the NDP critic for education, Anita
Hagen, emphasized that ``we agree with the government that choice and
alternatives should be the hallmark of an educational system,'' even though the
preference would be for ``that kind of choice and diversity to exist within the
public school system as broadly as possible.'' She continued, ``So I am
passionately committed to the public school system, but I recognize too—and
certainly we have recognized and acknowledged—that parents are seeking
choices related to the educational needs of their children and also to the values
that they feel are important.''53
On the other hand, if in power, the province's left-leaning opposition might
well effect changes toward greater accountability and accessibility and
emphasis on children's rights. Home schoolers and non-funded schools on the
margin would probably be pushed closer to the independent school
mainstream. During the 1989 legislative debate an opposition member
commended the new requirement that `èvery child to be registered somewhere
in a school.'' She urged that children be given ``some choice about whether
they will be schooled at home or in schools.'' Some opposition members would
curtail funding to ``schools that charge fees that make them available only to
32
parents who are wealthy.'' `Ènrolment procedures should be ones that do not
preclude the attendance of people who themselves choose such schools, rather
than having standards of enrolment that may preclude them from enrolment.''54
In the interests of expanding choice and greater equity between families,
differences between public and non-public schools would further diminish.
Thus, what began in 1977 as a single piece of legislation secured by a small
interest group has become an integral component of public policy. Growing
numbers of British Columbian families have come to consider non-public
alternatives for their children. At the same time, family choice has been
constrained, in part through non-public schools' very success. The didactic
function of most such schools now differs little from that of their public
counterparts. Even schools' philosophical and religious underpinnings,
supposedly the reason for their existence in the first place, have increasingly
come under public scrutiny. Individual schools may still run roughshod over
teachers and families, but only at considerable cost in terms of public censure.
Independent education's new visibility may not dictate but certainly tempers
schools' behaviour in philosophical and religious as well as in didactic realms.
From the perspective of children's rights, events in British Columbia have
further meaning. The distinctive philosophical and religious underpinnings of
independent schools have been moderated by the right of all children, to quote
once again from the preamable common to the School and Independent School
Acts, to `àcquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a
healthy society.'' Children are protected, at least in theory, against the actions
of willful schools even where those are selected by equally willful parents.
Education in British Columbia may not conform to the traditional image of the
local public school as the common meeting ground for the next generation, yet
the system has since 1977 moved markedly in that direction. Among questions
that remain to be answered is whether this shift results from factors unique to
British Columbia or is an inevitable concomitant of public funding for private
education.
NOTES
1
I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for
financial support of the Canadian Childhood History Project, under whose
auspices this assessment was developed. It draws not only on written sources
including the daily press but on conversations with numerous individuals more
expert than myself, including Gerry Ensing, Fred Herfst, Harro Van Brummelen, and private-school teachers and principals in Vanderhoof, Vernon and
Vancouver. William Bruneau, Gerry Ensing, Jud Purdy, Patricia Roy, Harro
Van Brummelen, and J. Donald Wilson usefully made critiques of earlier
versions of the assessment presented to the American Educational Research
Association in spring 1990 and to the Canadian History of Education Association in fall 1990. Comments received there were also very helpful.
2
Only Alberta is comparable, although Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec also
fund private schools. Provinces' policies are summarized in Romulo F. Magsino,
``Human Rights, Fair Treatment, and Funding of Private Schools in Canada,''
Canadian Journal of Education 11 (1986), pp. 245–63, and in J. Donald Wilson
and Marvin Lazerson, ``Historical and Constitutional Perspectives on Family
Choice in Schooling: the Canadian Case,'' in M.E. Manley- Casimir, ed., Family
Choice in Schooling: Issues and Dilemnas (Lexington: D.C. Heath, 1982), pp. 1
–19. Private education across Canada is discussed in an international context in
John J. Bergen, ``Canada: Private Schools,'' in Geoffrey Walford, ed., Private
Schools in Ten Countries: Policy and Practice (London: Routledge, 1989), pp.
85–104, and in Charles L. Glenn, Choice of Schools in Six Nations
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1989), pp. 145–85. The
issues raised in British Columbia have also received considerable attention in
Ontario, expressed most strongly in Bernard Shapiro, Commission on Private
Schools in Ontario, Report (Toronto: Ontario Department of Education, 1985),
which argued against public assistance.
3
The largest was the multi-year COFIS (`À Study of the Consequences of Funding
Independent Schools in British Columbia'') study undertaken by Donald
Erickson, whose published findings have been sparse. See Donald E. Erickson,
Lloyd MacDonald and Michael E. Manley-Casimir, Characteristics and
Relationships in Public and Independent Schools (San Francisco and
Vancouver: Centre for Research on Private Education and Educational Research
Institute of British Columbia, 1979); and Donald A. Erickson, ``Should All the
Nation's Schools Compete for Clients and Support?'' Phi Delta Kappan,
September 1979, pp. 14–17, 77. For unpublished reports by Erickson and
associates, see Frank J. Dragojevich, ``The Funding of Roman Catholic Schools
in British Columbia: Issues and Implications'' (M.Ed. major paper, Department
of Administrative, Adult, and Higher Education, University of British Columbia
[1988]), pp. B2-B3. On British Columbia, also see Daniel J. Brown, ``Financial
Effects of Aid to Nonpublic Schools: The British Columbia Experience,''
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 4 (1982), pp. 443–60.
4
Some of these issues are discussed in Donald Fisher, ``Family Choice and
Education: Privatizing a Public Good,'' in Manley-Casimir, ed., Family Choice,
pp. 199–206; Donald Fisher and Averlyn Gill, ``Diversity in Society and
Schools,'' Pacific Group for Policy Alternatives (paper no. P-85-03),
(Vancouver, 1985); and Donald Fisher and Betty Gilgoff, ``The Crisis in B.C.
34
Public Education: The State and the Public Interest,'' in Terry Wotherspoon, ed.,
A Sociology of Education: Readings in the Political Economy of Canadian
Schooling (Toronto: Methuen, 1986), pp. 68–93.
5
On the broader historical context, see Jean Barman, ``Transfer, Imposition or
Consensus? The Emergence of Educational Structures in Nineteenth-Century
British Columbia,'' in Nancy M. Sheehan, J. Donald Wilson and David C. Jones,
ed., Schools in the West: Essays in Canadian Educational History (Calgary:
Detselig, 1986), pp. 241–64; and Jean Barman, The West Beyond the West: A
History of British Columbia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991).
6
The official Catholic interpretation of events is summarized in ``History of B.C.'s
independent school struggle,'' B.C. Catholic, 18 September 1977, p. 3.
7
On these schools, see Jean Barman, Growing Up British in British Columbia:
Boys in Private School (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,
1984).
8
On Dutch immigration to British Columbia, see Edith M. Ginn, ``Rural Dutch
Immigrants in the Lower Fraser Valley'' (M.A. thesis, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1967).
9
See Harro W. Van Brummelen, Telling the Next Generation: Educational
Development in North American Calvinist Christian Schools (Lanham: University Press of America, 1986), pp. 250–65.
10
The term `ìndependent'' began to be used by the elite schools in British Columbia
after the Second World War, as it was in Britain, to set themselves apart as no
longer private-profit-making. The British Columbia press still uses the two
terms interchangeably.
11
Undated FISA bulletin from 1970. Capital letters in original.
12
L.W. Downey, ``The Aid-to-Independent Schools Movement in British Columbia,'' in Sheehan, Wilson and Jones, Schools in the West, pp. 305–23. More
revealing of events from the perspective of proponents within the private
schools are ``FISA: Working against all the odds,'' B.C. Catholic, 18 September
1977, p. 3, and the minutes of the Independent Schools Association of British
Columbia, available in the British Columbia Archives and Records Service.
13
FISA Memo, 4 September 1987; Sun, 25 June and 5 September 1987; and FISA,
``Commentary on the Independent School Act, 16 October 1989, p. 2. The 1989
legislation continued these provisions.
14
Anthony Brummet, 4 July 1989, in Legislative Assembly, Debates, v. 14, no. 23,
p. 8120.
15
For examples, see Ministry of Education, ``News Release,'' 22 June 1987, and
FISA, Monday Bulletin, 1 February and 13 June 1988.
16
More specifically, home-schooling families were required to register with a local
public or non-public school of their choice or with the Ministry of Education's
correspondence division. In exchange for providing access to evaluation and
assessment services and loan of educational materials, the school receives for
each home schooler registered one-quarter of its per-pupil provincial funding.
Bill 67, School Act, 1989, part two, sections 12–13; Bill 68, Independent School
Act, regulations, section 6; and Sun, 1 November 1989.
17
Ministry of Education, Annual Report, 1987/88, 3, amd School Act and
Independent School Act, 1989, preamble.
18
Respectively, the Convent of the Sacred Heart and Marian Regional High
School.
19
Data compiled from FISA's annual Independent Schools Directory.
20
The same point is made forcefully in Dragojevich, ``Funding,'' based primarily on
interviews with individuals knowledgable about the Catholic school system in
the Greater Vancouver area.
21
Notably North Vancouver's Collingwood and Maple Ridge's Meadowridge,
founded specifically to take rejects from Vancouver's St. George's School and
Crofton House as well as students who might prefer an elite private school
closer to home. Sun, 18 and 30 January, 9 June and 20 September 1984, 24 June
1985, and 9 June 1987, and North Shore News, 15 April 1984. Among the more
eclectic newcomers have been Woburn Ladies College, established as a girls'
finishing school, and Marlborough College, founded by a property developer `
`to create millionaires.'' Sun, 27 April and 3 and 14 September 1988.
22
This point underlies Elizabeth J. Thomas, ``The Importance of School Culture in
School Improvement: A Case Study'' (M.Ed. paper, Department of Administrative, Adult, and Higher Education, University of British Columbia, 1988), a
portrait of Crofton House from the perspective of a participant-observer.
23
For detail on these schools' operation, see Gordon C. Calvert, ``Growth of
Non-FISA Christian Schools in British Columbia: 1975–1985'' (M.A. thesis,
Department of Social and Educational Studies, University of British Columbia,
1987). For more general introductions with relevance to British Columbia, see
Alan Peshkin, God's Choice: The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian
School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), and Susan D. Rose,
Keeping Them Out of the Hands of Satan: Evangelical Schooling in America
(New York: Routledge, 1988).
24
This point is incisively elaborated in Harro Van Brummelen's comparative study
of three Christian schools in a single Fraser Valley community. Curriculum
Implementation in Three Christian Schools (Grand Rapids: Calvin College,
1989).
25
See Harro Van Brummelen, ``Leadership without coercion,'' Canadian School
Executive, January 1984, pp. 14–15, and his Telling the Next Generation, esp.
pp. 1, 253–54 and 265. Church membership is often a qualification for
admission.
26
FISA, Independent Schools Directory, 1978/78, 1983/84, and 1990/91.
36
27
Visiting the different non-public schools in two small interior communities in the
mid-1980s, the author was repeatedly queried by school heads about the
operation of other schools in the same community. It was clear they knew
almost nothing about each other, their horizons extending no further than
maintaining day-to-day operations and satisfying parental expectations within
the philosophical framework mandating their existence.
28
FISA's role is well summed up in its annual brochure.
29
Sun, editorial of 6 October 1982, referring to E. Lester Bullen, who became
provincial inspector of independent schools in 1980. Bullen's views are clear in
his ``Freedom of Choice in Education,'' Education Canada, Fall 1978, pp. 24–
30.
30
See Harold S. Drysdale, ``The B.C. Independent School Debate: Cultural
Diversity, Family Choice, and Privatization,'' Policy Explorations 2, 5 (n.d.), pp.
1–4.
31
Sun, 29 June 1987. Several days later (9 July) came the rebuttal from FISA's
executive director. Similarly, an editorial by Walter Block in the weekly
newsmagazine British Columbia Report in early 1991 characterized the
province's private schools as ``vastly superior'' (25 February 1991, p. 4).
32
Advertisement for St. George's School, Vancouver, appearing in a wide variety
of provincial daily and weekly newspapers and magazines, as well as in
Toronto's Globe and Mail in January 1991.
33
Sun, 25 March 1988. Due to continued enrolment growth, the budget of the
province's 206 funded private schools had risen over the past year from $40.7 to
$48 million, or by 18 percent, at the same time as total public school funding
only increased from $1.73 to $1.85 billion, or by 7.4 percent.
34
Donald Erickson quoted in Toronto Star, 6 July 1982, as well as the other
findings from the COFIS study. The tendency by scholars to generalize across
non-public education is not limited to British Columbia, as evidenced by the
aggregate approach of James Coleman and others in analyzing non-public
education in the United States. James Coleman, Thomas Hoffer and Sally
Kilgore, Public and Private Schools (Washington, DC: National Center for
Education Statistics, 1981); James Coleman and Thomas Hoffer, Public and
Private High Schools: the Impact of Communities (New York: Basic Books,
1987); Daniel C. Levy, Private Education: Studies in Choice and Public Policy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); and Neil E. Devins, ed., Public
Values, Private Schools (London: Falmer, 1989), among other studies.
35
Ministry of Education, Annual Report, 1987–88, p. 49.
36
Sun, 5 February 1988, ad for St. George's School, Vancouver.
37
Exemplary was Collingwood's rezoning application, detailed in the Sun through
May and June 1988. The press can also compliment schools, as in its
recognition of the efforts by Vancouver's Sikh school to rectify health and other
problems. Sun, 19 February 1990.
Sun, 25 April and 2 and 12 May 1989.
39
Sun, 28 April and 1 May 1990. Other tax benefits include property tax relief for
schools, and deductions allowable to individuals for charitable donations made
to school building programs and to the religious group operating a school.
40
Sun, 27 April and 16 May 1990, and Western News, 26 April and 24 May 1990.
41
See, for instance, the charges made in the press in September 1990 against a
funded Mormon school that it favoured the children of prominent sect members,
used excessive discipline, and had included in a grade 11 biology examination
questions on the sect's polygamous marriage practices. Sun, 15 September 1990.
42
Sun, 13 and 25 August 1987 and 24–27 May, 1–3, 6–7, 9–11, 15–16, 21–25 and
29 June, 6 July and 10 August 1988.
43
With the 1989 legislation, teachers are encouraged to be certified by the
province's College of Teachers. This point is underlined in FISA, ``Commentary
on the Independent School Act,'' issued 16 October 1989, p. 2.
44
Bill 68, Independent School Act, 1989, section 2.
45
See Royal Commission on Education, A Legacy for Learners, 1988, and
Commissioned Papers, v. 1–7, 1988. The base for change is the new 1989
School Act and Independent School Act, and the ministry documents, Policy
Directions: Year 2000: A Curriculum and Assessment Framework for the
Future, and Year 2000: A Framework for Learning. The implementation
process is made public in periodic working plans: Working Plan #3 was issued
in November 1990. For a short overview of intended shifts, see Globe and Mail,
7 October 1989.
46
John Parry, headmaster of St. George's School, Vancouver, quoted in the Sun, 25
September 1989. For evidence of some growing frustration over restructuring,
see British Columbia Report, 25 February 1991, p. 32.
47
Brummet, 4 July 1989, in Legislative Assembly, Debates, v. 14, no. 23, p. 8119.
48
Glenn Wall, in Globe and Mail, 8 July 1989.
49
On this issue, see Eamonn Callan, ``Justice and Denominational Schooling,''
Canadian Journal of Education 13 (1988), 367–83.
50
Brummet, 4 July 1989, in Legislative Assembly, Debates, v. 14, no. 23, p. 8119.
51
Leo Hollaar, educational coordinator for the Society of Christian Schools
(funded Christian schools) in British Columbia, quoted in Globe and Mail, 8
July 1989.
52
For example, FISA, Monday Bulletin, 7 November 1988, p. 2, and 5 December
1988, p. 2.
53
Anita Hagen, 4 July 1989, in Legislative Assembly, Debates, v. 14, no. 23, p.
8121.
54
Anita Hagen, 28 June and 4 July 1989, in Legislative Assembly, Debates, v. 14,
no. 21, p. 8008, and no. 23, p. 8022, and Anita Hagen and Barry Jones, 4 July
38
38
1989, no. 23, pp. 8120–25.
Jean Barman is in the Department of Social and Educational Studies, University of
British Columbia, 2125 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z5.
Problems in the Reform of
Educational Finance: A Case Study*
Tim Sale
t. sale and associates
Benjamin Levin
university of manitoba
Educational finance reform proposals emphasize too heavily features of desirable
financing systems, and underplay the significant constraints facing any reform
proposal. Persons interested in finance reform should pay more attention to factors
affecting both adoption and implementation, including limits on decision makers'
time, attention, and understanding; the difficulty of integrating all relevant
considerations; political limitations; and problems of implementation. We illustrate
these constraints and their implications for finance reform through a case study of
a Canadian province.
Les projets de réforme des finances en matière d'éducation insistent trop sur les
caractéristiques des systèmes de financement souhaités et minimisent les contraintes importantes auxquelles est soumis tout projet de réforme. Les personnes
qui s'intéressent à cette question devraient davantage prendre en compte les
facteurs ayant une incidence sur l'adoption et l'implantation d'une réforme, y
compris les contraintes de temps et les connaissances limitées des décideurs, la
difficulté d'intégrer toutes les considérations pertinentes, les contraintes politiques
et les problèmes liés à la mise en oeuvre d'une réforme. Nous illustrons ces
contraintes et leurs répercussions sur les réformes des finances à l'aide d'une étude
de cas tirée d'une province canadienne.
The case we wish to make is a simple one. We contend that discussion of
educational finance reform has emphasized too much the elements of a
desirable financing system, and not enough the significant constraints facing
any reform proposal. We contend that finance reform can only be understood,
*
The authors acknowledge the helpful comments of J.A. Riffel, Peter Coleman,
Kent McGuire and Elchanan Cohen on earlier versions of this paper.
32
33
REFORM OF EDUCATIONAL FINANCE
and indeed should only be undertaken, with greater attention to factors
affecting both adoption and implementation. We set out, using a particular
case in which both authors were participants, to illustrate some of the
limitations on the reform of educational finance, and conclude with
suggestions for educational finance reformers.
INTRODUCTION
The reform of educational finance is never-ending. Jurisdictions frequently
change their approach to educational finance in order to maximize such goals
as equity, excellence, efficiency, local control, or accountability. Finance
reform is also motivated, of course, by such considerations as tight budgets,
legal issues, and new programs.
The finance literature is extensive and wide-ranging. We believe, however,
that it has underutilized relevant research on policy adoption and
implementation, even though many have recognized the importance of these
elements (Garms, 1986). For example, texts on educational finance often give
much more attention to various finance formula approaches than to the politics
of finance (Burrupp, 1977; Guthrie, Garms & Pierce, 1988; Johns, Morphet &
Alexander, 1983). Reviews of finance literature (for example, Guthrie, 1988)
also give insufficient play to political considerations. Finance policy is
regarded primarily as a matter of working out formulas (Barro, 1989); the key
role of political and organizational considerations in policy making is
understated.
CONSTRAINTS ON THE ADOPTION OF REFORM
The decision to adopt a new mode of financing education is essentially
political, even when the impetus is judicial (Colvin, 1989; Ward, 1988). A
political body will decide what reforms, if any, to make. That being said, many
discussions of reform do not take into account the limitations politics
necessarily impose.
Our approach borrows heavily from Dror (1986), whose analysis of
problems of policy making is, in our view, unsurpassed. We identify four main
limitations on policy making, recognizing that they are separable only
intellectually, and that other formulations could well be developed.
1.The limits of decision makers' time, attention, and understanding.
2. The difficulty in integrating all relevant aspects of reform.
3. The limits imposed by political elements on the scope of any reform.
33
34
TIM SALE & BENJAMIN LEVIN
4. The difficulty of dealing with issues of implementation.
Time, Attention, and Understanding
Educational finance is complex and even the simplest finance formula or
system (and most are far from simple) has multiple components. On the
revenue side, there are questions of the balance among revenue elements, at
both the district and provincial levels. These require consideration of property
values, property assessment policies, other tax sources, and so on. On the
expenditure side, the various competing goals of a finance system must be
kept in mind. So must the mix of elements (categorical, block, equalization,
and other grants), as well as the specific policies to be adopted for each of
these elements.
All of this is complex enough to fill a long textbook. It is also relatively
unfamiliar territory to many elected officials asked to determine, or at least to
approve, changes to current practice. Educational finance reform therefore
impels decision makers to acquire a very considerable amount of knowledge in
a complex, technical, and sometimes arcane field.
The decision maker at the provincial level must also consider the political
dimension of proposed reforms. How will any particular proposal affect
various political constituencies? Whose districts will benefit, and whose will
lose? How will interest groups react to the various provisions? Although there
are agreements on some technical aspects of educational finance, the weighing
of political considerations will necessarily be subjective (Lawton, 1979).
Then there is the matter of the place of educational finance reform on a
government's overall agenda. Complex and important as it is, finance reform
competes with many other issues facing any administration, many equally
complex and many ranking higher on the political agenda. Thus, the time a
provincial Cabinet may devote to understanding finance reform is likely to be
limited. This is not a hopeful conclusion, given earlier comments on the
complexity of finance as a subject, and most decision makers' relative
unfamiliarity with it.
Integration of Relevant Aspects
Educational finance is itself complex, but also linked to other, equally
complex matters that would, in the best of possible worlds, receive simultaneous consideration. Educational finance should be considered in the general
context of municipal taxation systems, property assessment systems, and
taxation levels. Important constitutional or legal provisions may affect finance
35
decisions. Other levels of government are involved, and their views and
situations must be taken into account. Equally, decisions about educational
finance must attend to likely spending consequences, and thus to the place and
priority of education as compared with other areas of expenditure. In Canada,
for example, health care is consistently the public's number-one spending
priority (Morrow, 1985), although there is evidence that education is moving
up the public agenda (Livingstone & Hart, 1987). Since health care costs
continue to rise more rapidly than inflation, relative priorities determine how
much money may be available for educational finance regardless of the merits
of any particular financing scheme. Indeed, lack of money has itself been a
powerful motive for changes in financing systems in Canadian provinces
(Fleming & Anderson, 1984).
A second set of conditions that should be, but frequently are not integrated
into policy calculations are those to do with possible impacts and outcomes.
Although it is reasonable to ask what impact any educational finance plan
might have on the actual provision of schooling, or to ask what unanticipated
outcomes might result, such questions are not often posed in the
policy-making process. Thus, until recently, justifications of educational
finance proposals rarely mentioned their impact at the school or classroom
level, or even the programmatic effects at the district level.
This is so despite the fact that no policy will produce all the desired effects
and will produce unanticipated, although not always negative, results (Jordan
& McKeown, 1988). Levin (1988) has pointed out the unused potential of
cost-effectiveness in deciding educational policy, noting the system's
incapacity to take into account this fact. Coleman and LaRocque (1990),
Hanushek (1986; 1989), and Walberg (1984), among others, have argued that
current financing practices are unlikely to have the desired effect on school
outcomes. One possibility is that in making decisions we lack the will or the
skills to think through questions of impact. Alternatively, there may be
compelling reasons to discount such questions when decisions are being made.
In fact, both are likely. Dror (1986) notes a number of ``policymaking
incapacities'' (p. 131) involving features of organizations and features of
human thinking. He claims that
Currently known core policymaking institutions, including structures and processes and their interactions, have limited maximum performance capacities, error
propensities, and resulting incapacities. These result partly from inbuilt characteristics of the process-system and of the materials out of which it is made. (p. 133)
Dror concludes, to simplify an eloquent and detailed argument, that although
36
policy-making incapacities can be reduced, there are important reasons for
believing they cannot be eliminated or even made negligible; ``Many
incapacities are shared by all central minds of governments, being in the main
common to all contemporary forms of governments'' (p. 216).
Political Constraints
Political calculations will inevitably—and properly—play on government
decision making about educational finance. Beyond the requirement politically
to calculate, however, politics impose absolute restraints on reform. For
example, a system in which the majority of members of a legislature represent
rural districts militates against reforms that would increase the rural tax
burden.
Some contend that these political elements interfere with rational decision
making. In our opinion, that view misconstrues democracy, where we trust
these political elements to yield a better decision than would any competing
method. We do not pretend for a moment that political processes always result
in good decisions.
Implementation
There is now a very considerable body of literature on policy implementation,
both in education (McLaughlin, 1987) and more generally in public policy and
administrative studies (Linder & Peters, 1987; Wildavsky, 1979). If one were
to find a lesson in this work, it would surely be that implementation cannot be
taken for granted; what is intended and what results are often different.
Several implementation issues require especially careful attention in
considering educational finance change: the capacity of the system (including
the people in it) to understand and to absorb the change, the willingness of the
system to do so, and the various unanticipated but nonetheless serious effects
of any change. Majone (1975) has argued that policy making should discard
optimal solutions in favour of a stringent focus on feasible choices, thus
requiring careful attention to implementation: ``When all . . . constraints are
taken into consideration, the range of feasible choices turns out to be much
more restricted than is usually assumed'' (p. 50). Of course, some would
suggest that consideration of feasibility, however flawed, is precisely what
political processes accomplish.
Finally, we should note Dror's concept of ``high probability of low
probability events.'' In other words, we can predict that in the course of policy
making and execution some very significant surprises will occur, with major
37
resulting disruption. We cannot—and this is true by definition— predict which
particular surprises these will be.
Given all of this, it is not surprising that educational finance changes are
rarely well thought out, have multiple and possibly contradictory goals, or are
undertaken without adequate attention to practical results. Our perspective
suggests no alternative.
In the remainder of this article, we illustrate these considerations through
description of a case study of educational finance change in Manitoba.
THE CASE
The Setting
The Province of Manitoba has some sixty school divisions and districts. There
are a total of about 200,000 students in 700 schools, about 250 of which enrol
fewer than 200 students. School districts were consolidated more than twenty
years ago, resulting in large rural districts. However, declining population and
demographic changes have meant that even geographically large districts may
have very small and dispersed student populations. This makes pupil
transportation a major concern. More than half of all divisions/districts had
fewer than 1500 students in 1989.
Additionally, school districts vary greatly in size, the smallest having under
1,000 students, the largest more than 30,000. There are great geographic,
demographic, economic, tax base, and other disparities among districts. About
80% of the funding of public schools in Manitoba is supplied by the provincial
government through convoluted arrangements. This is exclusive of a large
program of property tax credits normally not seen as education funding even
though they reduce school tax.
The Authors' Perspective
The case is built from the authors' personal experience. Both of us were on the
staff of the Manitoba Department of Education during many of the events we
describe, one as Assistant Deputy Minister for educational finance, the other in
senior staff positions not directly involved in reforms. Both of us left the
Department—one in 1988 and the other in 1989. The case description derives
from documentary sources and from our experiences and recollections. We
sought and received critical review by others directly involved in these events.
Background to Change
38
Manitoba implemented its program of school finance in 1984, after extensive
public review of an earlier system implemented only in 1980. To understand
why there were three major shifts in less than a decade, the reader should
know that Manitoba changed its governing party in 1977, 1981, and again in
1988; each new government brought forward new programs of educational
finance.
The review discussed in this article sprang from two major sources, reform
of the province's property assessment system, and the recommendation in the
1984 reform that, after three years' operation, the Government Support to
Education Program (GSEP) be reviewed. In addition to these formal causes,
there had been widespread dissatisfaction with major features of the GSEP,
particularly the role of equalization payments and the degree to which the
GSEP was based upon the previous year's expenditures of each school
division.
The review began internally in March 1986, and initially was coordinated
with assessment reform through a staff committee representing five provincial
departments and the central government's policy arm. Public review
commenced in the fall of 1986 with a series of regional meetings with
members of the Manitoba Association of School Trustees (MAST), the
Manitoba Teachers' Society (MTS), and the Manitoba Association of School
Business Officials (MASBO). These meetings were designed to sensitize
audiences to major policy issues in Manitoba's educational finance. Various
groups submitted briefs. The Department discussed ``work in progress'' with
the groups, with the support of the Minister and Deputy Minister. The 1989
spring Throne Speech indicated that the government would issue a ``consultation paper'' on this subject during the 1989 session of the legislative
assembly. Despite later announcements that release was imminent, as of this
writing (January 1991) the consultation paper has not appeared. The three
organizations know that the consultation paper has been in draft for a year, and
have indicated to the Minister their hope it will be circulated for their
comment and reaction prior to formal release. The Minister has indicated his
wish for further seminars, but has not yet directed that these take place.
Major Stakeholders in the Review
There are four major stakeholders:
Central government: Anxious to control expenditure growth and to reduce
unpredictability of fiscal demands. Prefers a structural rather than an ad hoc
39
approach.
Department of Education: Interested in a wide range of program issues
including transportation, special needs, giftedness, libraries, and guidance.
Recognizes limitations on funding but sees uneven program delivery across
the province.
Providers: Teachers, Trustees, Superintendents, and other administrators,
all of whom emphasize program availability and cost control, yet value local
autonomy. This group has the greatest variety of agendas.
Recipients: Children and parents, whose lobby groups want specific
solutions to local issues. For example, parents want more program variety.
Lobby groups want ``more'' of whatever they exist to lobby for. This is the
least articulate and most diffuse group.
The last stakeholder group—recipients—has not been formally included in
the review, with the exception of such specific lobby groups as a library
committee of parents in one school and advocacy groups presenting briefs.
The review was set up to provide significant political opportunity to educational interest groups regarded as having the most political influence. One
outcome was a bias towards the status quo, since changes unacceptable to any
group were likely to be rejected before any formal report. The Manitoba
Teachers' Society has well-developed policies on educational finance the
review must consider if the Society is to be satisfied with proposed change.
Extensive consultation thus narrows the range of possible policy choices. It
also shifts governments' attention towards the political agendas of the
participants, perhaps at the cost of more consideration of educationally sound
alternatives. Consultation also emphasized the formula more than its
implementation and follow-up, which organizations see as their prerogatives.
Major Issues in the Review
To the government, the major policy issues have to do with the desirability
and feasibility of change from fiscal, administrative, and political perspectives.
These issues might be explored under the following headings:
How imperative is the overall need for change? (central government,
school boards, taxpayers)
How imperative is the need for change from a program perspective?
(department and field)
How feasible is any change that would take into account the fiscal realities
of central government?
40
How feasible is any program change of interest to the department and its
clients?
No single proposal could satisfy all these divergent agendas. Thus reform must
take into account, as it proceeds, both the substantive desires of the
participants, and their relative political clout. Careful management is required.
The Imperative of Change
Manitoba's overall fiscal situation is that of a ``poor'' province. This status is
not likely to change in the foreseeable future. Wage pressures in the education
sector are nonetheless increasing as teachers come off a two-year agreement
that did not provide increases to meet rises in the cost-of-living. Pressures will
be greater because of teacher shortages in Ontario and British Columbia.
In terms of program expenditures, and because of Manitoba's rapidly aging
population, the greatest fiscal pressure facing the Province arises particularly
but not exclusively from the health care sector. Debt service costs will also
continue to require a significantly larger proportion of current income than
was the case a decade ago.
Despite the major structural fiscal isses noted above, the present funding of
Manitoba's public education system does not reflect the province's underlying
financial situation. Manitoba's pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) of 14.9:1 is the lowest
in Canada. The average of all provincial PTRs in Canada today is 16.7:1
(Council of Ministers of Education of Canada, 1988). The difference between
Manitoba's and the average Canadian PTR represents over $60 million
annually in salary costs. Manitoba also spends more than the Canadian
average per pupil, and devotes a higher percentage of gross provincial product
(GPP) to education than do other, wealthier, provinces. The student population
is stable, with no projected significant increase.
Educational finance research shows that much variation in per-pupil
expenditures can be explained by pupil-teacher ratios. The PTR is thus both a
major structural issue and a major policy lever in control of education costs. It
is unclear whether smaller PTRs increase pupil performance. Some researchers
contend that lowering of PTR is a poor use of educational resources (for a
recent treatment of this issue, see Tomlinson, 1989).
As many jurisdictions do, Manitoba faces economic pressure to restrain
expenditure growth in the education sector so funds can be allocated to higher
demand areas. To accomplish this politically difficult task, allocation
mechanisms must be, and be seen to be fair and balanced. Moreover, any
changes must be realizable in practice. School divisions and teachers will
41
accept only with difficulty any proposal that would effectively raise pupilteacher ratios. Just as importantly, if schools and school divisions do not wish
to, or do not see how to provide education with a somewhat higher PTR, then
a proposal to increase PTR is likely to be unworkable, or to create more
negative consequences than it otherwise might.
School Board Perspective
Although school divisions, like other publicly funded bodies, will always wish
for more funding than is available, divisions face serious problems as a result
of GSEP structures.
The GSEP requires divisions to provide the first-year costs of any new
program, with the GSEP providing support from the second year. This means
divisions able to raise local support can attract provincial support after one
year, whereas those with less local fiscal capacity are less able to do so.
Divisions with low assessment bases may face extreme local tax pressures
when raising very small sums of money. This is especially problematic given
the substantial differences in local tax bases among Manitoba school divisions.
As well, the GSEP makes no allowance for the extreme range in Manitoba
in costs of transportation, special needs services, or other unevenly distributed
costs of education. Coleman (1987) has suggested that uncontrollable costs are
due largely to geographic factors, and account for a high proportion of cost
variation among school districts.
Equalization grants are tied to balanced per-pupil assessment. Although
this is a logical measure of a division's ability to raise funds on its local tax
base, it works against those divisions with declining enrolment. As enrolment
drops, their balanced assessment per-pupil rises, making them appear
wealthier and less in need of equalization. In fact, their costs do not decline in
step with enrolment, and their per-pupil costs often increase.
Finally, the GSEP contains no provision for such services as libraries and
guidance teachers, considered necessary in a modern education system.
Although support for these services could be introduced through categorical
grants, this would add excessively to the costs of the system, since many
wealthier divisions are now providing these services through their local levy.
Others, with weak levy bases, cannot afford to do so.
The above analysis illustrates how imperative is educational finance reform
from the board perspective. Reforms, however, will likely be acceptable only
insofar as they add funds for ``needful'' programs without reducing funding in
others. If some boards are penalized and others gain, the political costs of
reform will rise steeply. Boards will see any proposed reform from their own,
42
rather narrow point of view rather than the broader provincial perspective.
And all boards have an interest in increasing the total amount of provincial
funding rather than in redistributing existing funding.
Taxpayers' Perspective
Ultimately, all of the costs of education come from taxpayers. In Manitoba the
property tax provides about 44% of the costs of public education. This tax is
offset by a complex set of tax credits delivered through the income tax and
property tax system to various target groups. About 50% of the tax credits are
neither income dependent nor linked to the level of the property taxes in
question. Over the years, tax incidence levels have shifted so that particular
groups, such as residents of rural towns and villages, pay almost no property
taxes for education, and others, such as land-intensive farmers, pay very high
education taxes. Taxpayers in adjoining school divisions may pay radically
different rates yet enjoy roughly the same educational services.
Departmental Perspective
The Department of Education and Training must disburse funding for public
education in a manner that is fair and that assists divisions to provide programs
consistently across the Province. It is doubtful that the GSEP adequately
responds to demands.
Field Perspective
Staff members who deliver education services to Manitoba's children generally
agree there are significant disparities in education programs and opportunities
across the province. Through local and provincial organizations, they have
made repeated calls for funding to reduce these disparities.
The Feasibility of Change
Central Government Perspective
Manitoba's central government agencies have called on line departments to
become increasingly accountable for achieving specific program goals with
assigned funding. At present, there are no clear program goals in the Department of Education against which assigned funding levels can be tested. Few
elements link system goals with funding, program levels, and outcomes at any
43
level of the system.
This is not a recent problem, but rather stems from what might be termed `
`benign neglect'' dating from the re-organization of school division boundaries
in the mid-1960s. No government since that time has seen public education as
a major priority in policy. Although funding has been generous, it has been
mechanistically distributed, and thus the direction of current programs is
divorced from funding.
The GSEP is fiscally driven, with few program- or service-level goals
informing funding. It is thus incapable of serving as a funding mechanism in a
system that seeks to develop program accountability. In other words, it cannot
serve the central government's current goal of accountability.
Departmental and Field Perspective
Department and field perspectives on this issue are similar to that of the central
government. Over the past few years, most divisions have developed increased
financial management capacity, and accept the provincial financial reporting
system (FRAME). Although divisions sometimes allocate expenditures to
inappropriate FRAME categories, this may well result from there being no
incentives to increase accuracy since FRAME data are not central in
determining funding levels in the GSEP.
In sum, structural reform of Manitoba's educational finance system is
warranted according to field, departmental and central government perspectives. Reform is feasible; the development in 1988 of a fully functional model
of an altered funding system proved this. There is significant support from the
three major educational organizations for a new funding system. The elements
of a significant reform are in place. Yet, as of the end of 1990, no new
educational finance package has been announced. Why has reform not
proceeded?
Political Realities and Incapacities
At this point we return to the initial section of our article, and indicate how the
constraints and incapacities earlier described have worked in this particular
case. Each of the limitations has had an important effect on finance reform.
Educational finance reform in Manitoba has suffered because such reform
is complex, difficult to grasp. With the advent of a new government in 1988,
Cabinet ministers needed time to acquire at least a rudimentary understanding
of the finance system and possible alternatives. In Manitoba, educational
44
finance reform was not a significant part of any party's commitment during the
1990 election, nor has it been high on the Conservative government's political
agenda, with the exception of tax relief for farmers, partly implemented
already.
The problem was exacerbated by the limited ability of both the Department
of Education and the Department of Finance to project the financial
implications of various changes over the medium-to-long term. Bureaucratic
units have assumed continuance of similar policies, and have difficulty
answering questions about what might happen under quite different rules and
conditions. The capacity to provide sound advice is therefore limited. When
the Education finance unit developed a reasoned approach to long-term
forecasting, it found that interest in such projections among politicians and
political staff was not very high, especially from 1988 to 1990, while the
government was in minority.
A central problem of the reform is, in fact, an effect of the 1988 change in
government. The finance reform was conceived and initiated under the
previous government. The substantive content of the proposed change, its
discussion, and its implementation occurred under particular political
conditions, and envisaged a particular group of policy mkers. The review was
well advanced when the 1988 election and change of government came. Many
of the fundamental parameters then shifted, but strategy did not officially
change—no doubt partly because the new Minister did not at first see clearly
the various implications of the review and therefore could not give directions
about change. The tremendous pressure from so many sides and on so many
issues that immediately hits a new minister, and then continues unrelentingly,
also makes it difficult to devote sustained attention to any particular issue,
even one as important as educational finance.
The new government has also sought to manage other complex issues that
have national implications, such as Meech Lake, where Manitoba turned out to
have a very important role. The political agenda has been extremely crowded
and the stakes on national issues very high. Cabinet has been unable to devote
the time required for full understanding and discussion of the implications of
educational finance reform.
Further, the government was until recently in minority and still has only a
bare majority. Until the last election the government's primary consideration
was survival and obtaining a majority. Each policy action was evaluated under
that constraint. Thorough-going educational finance reform, especially when
linked to impending property assessment reform, is likely to be controversial
and hard to sell to the public, and hence is to be avoided in minority
government. It is too soon to know whether the slim majority the
45
Conservatives obtained in the fall of 1990 will change the government's
approach to educational finance reform.
The Conservative government has also been most anxious about the
provincial budget deficit, and therefore reluctant to consider alternatives
requiring injections of new money into the education system. Without new
money, government has difficulty creating support for policy change.
The Conservative government is composed largely of members from rural
constituencies. This means great weight will be given in decision making to
the interests of rural school divisions, and to such issues such as pupil
transportation. Many of the preoccupations of the former government, such as
the needs of the inner city, are now much less salient.
A further barrier to change came with another of Dror's low-probability
events. Through an unusual set of circumstances, three senior members of one
particular school division were catapulted into senior governmental advisory
or staff positions. The Deputy Minister of Education, a senior advisor to the
Premier (since elected an MLA), and the Chair of the Minister's Advisory
Committee on Education Finance—all from the same school division—have
considerable influence on government policy. Since the school division in
question has strong and not necessarily typical views on major issues, reform
has been significantly affected.
Finally, senior staff persons who conducted the finance review were
appointed by the previous government, and were viewed with considerable
suspicion by the new government. Manitoba has a politicized (by Canadian
standards) senior administration; those who survive from one administration to
the next may still be removed in due course. This happened to the Assistant
Deputy Minister of Education, who had been responsible for the finance
reform effort. However, because there were no other senior staff with a
background that would enable them to take over reform, reform was largely
halted for some months so the bureaucracy could develop new expertise to
compensate for his removal.
Thus, despite the feasibility of and imperative for change, educational
finance reform did not proceed. All of the difficulties outlined at the beginning
of this article played a part in these events. Limits of time, attention, and
understanding both slowed the reform effort and reduced its priority in
government. Political pressure from various interest groups, particularly from
those with close links to the new government, raised questions about the
credibility of work done in 1987 and early 1988. Reluctance to provide
additional funds narrowed the reform options available. The needs of a
minority government brought issues other than educational finance to the fore.
In all of this, issues of implementation have received particularly short
46
shrift. The 1987–1988 review assumed that implementation could be fostered
through participation in policy making. However, well over a year has now
passed since the end of the formal discussions on finance reform. Changing
circumstances and budget pressures may well undermine a fragile consensus.
Thus, even were changes to be announced soon, there might be more
opposition to them, both in principle and in their implementation, than would
have been the case with an earlier announcement.
IMPLICATIONS
We do not think the particular circumstances described here unusual. Indeed,
we would suggest that, although the specifics may vary, any complex policy
reform will have to contend with the kinds of events, both anticipated and not,
that occurred in Manitoba. Change in any policy arena takes place on ground
that is itself changing. We are drawn to the analogy of so-called chaotic
systems such as weather, in which small perturbations in any system may have
dramatic long-term effects.
Persons interested in reform, then, must be prepared to work in a disruptive
and disrupted world. It is not reasonable to expect a major policy reform to be
developed, approved, and implemented in a smooth and linear way. It might
be better, perhaps, to think of the reform process as analogous to whitewater
rafting on an unfamiliar river. There will be periods of intense and even frantic
activity, as well as periods where activity stalls. Reform is not smooth and
continuous.
Under these conditions, promoters of reform must be prepared to be
persistent, patient, and adaptable. Persistence is required to keep the objective
in mind and to follow through on reform despite major unforeseen obstacles
and substantial delays; to continue to look for opportunities to move forward
whenever these occur; and to work towards effective implementation of policy
changes. Patience is required in inauspicious times, or when other agendas
come to the fore and a reform agenda has to be delayed or temporarily put
aside. It is important not to be discouraged too easily at such times. And
adaptability is required to make changes in any reform proposal, changes
which without destroying the reform's integrity may yet secure a crucial vote
or opinion, or overcome a particularly difficult obstacle.
The obstacles cited at the beginning of the article are, as our case study
illustrates, substantial, and they have important implications. The pursuit of
reform may seem so difficult as to be overwhelming. Yet change takes place.
We argue for recognizing the difficulties without abandoning the enterprise,
for a point of view that does not underestimate the task but equally does not
47
shirk from it. We can be assured at the outset only that the journey will be
important, interesting, and full of surprises.
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round of research. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 11, 17–30.
Burrupp, P. (1977). Financing education in a climate of change. Boston: Allyn
and Bacon.
Coleman, P. (1987). Equal or equitable? Fiscal equity and the problem of student
dispersion. Journal of Educational Finance, 13, 71–96.
Coleman, P., & LaRocque, L. (1990). Struggling to be good enough: Administrative practices and school district ethos. London: Falmer.
Colvin, R. (1989). School finance: Equity concerns in an age of reforms. Educational Researcher, 18 (1), 11–15.
Council of Ministers of Education of Canada. (1988). The financing of elementary
and secondary education in Canada. Toronto: CMEC.
Dror, Y. (1986). Policy-making under adversity. New York: Transaction Press.
Fleming, J., & Anderson, B. (1894). Financial management of education in British
Columbia. Victoria, BC: Ministry of Education.
Garms, W. (1986). The determinants of public revenues for higher and lower
education: A thirty-year perspective. Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis, 8, 277–293.
Guthrie, J., Garms, W., & Pierce, L. (1988). School finance: The economics and
politics of public education (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Guthrie, J. (1988). Educational finance: The lower schools. In N. Boyan (Ed.),
Handbook of research in educational administration (pp. 373–389). New
York: Longman.
Hanushek, E. (1986). The economics of schooling: Production and efficiency in
public schools. Journal of Economic Literature, 24, 1141–1177.
Hanushek, E. (1989). The impact of differential expenditures on school performance. Educational Researcher, 18 (4), 45–51.
House, P. (1982). The art of public policy analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Johns, R., Morphet, E., & Alexander, K. (1983). The economics and financing of
Education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Jordan, K., & McKeown, M. (1988). State funding for education reform: False
hopes and unfulfilled expectations. Journal of Educational Finance, 14, 18–29.
Lawton, S. (1979). Political values in educational finance in Canada and the
United States. Journal of Education Finance, 5, 1–18.
Levin, H. (1988). Cost effectiveness and educational policy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 10, 51–69.
48
Linder, S., & Peters, G. (1987). A design perspective on policy implementation.
Policy Studies Review, 6, 459–475.
Livingstone, D., & Hart, D. (1987). The people speak: Public attitudes toward
schooling in Canada. In R. Ghosh & D. Ray, (Eds.) Social change and
education in Canada (pp. 3–27). Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Majone, G. (1975). The feasibility of social policies. Policy Sciences, 6, 49–69.
McLaughlin, M. (1987). Learning from experience: Lessons from policy implementation. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 9, 171–178.
Morrow, D. (1985). Public attitudes to education: A review of opinion polls
(Report 85-01). Winnipeg: Manitoba Department of Education Planning and
Research Branch.
Tomlinson, T. (1989). Class size and public policy: Politics and panaceas.
Educational Policy, 3, 261–274.
Walberg, H. (1984). Improving the productivity of America's schools. Educational
Leadership, 41 (8), 19–27.
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Tim Sale is with T. Sale and Associates, 941 North Drive, Winnipeg, Manitoba,
R3T 0A9, and Benjamin Levin is in the Department of Educational Administration
and Foundations, Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg,
Manitoba, R3T 2N2.
A Cross-Canada Study
of High School Art Teachers*
James U. Gray
Ronald N. MacGregor
university of british columbia
In A Place Called School (1984) Goodlad suggested that art teaching in American
schools was characterized by make-work projects, lack of concern for
individuality, and general fuzziness of goals. To determine whether the same could
be said of art teaching in Canada, we studied 59 high schools across the country.
We conclude that Canadian art teachers enjoy considerable autonomy in what they
teach and how they teach it. Teachers' goals for the students, while often
developed from personal experience rather than from identifiable prescriptive
sources, nevertheless have sufficient commonality that their subject can be
characterized as `àrt.'' Our study's profile of the Canadian high school art teacher is
more complex than that in Goodlad's American research.
Dans A Place Called School (1984), Goodlad avance que les cours d'arts
plastiques dans les écoles américaines sont au fond des cours de remplissage dont
les objectifs sont en général assez flous. Pour déterminer s'il en est de même au
Canada, nous avons étudié 59 écoles secondaires d'un océan à l'autre. Nous
sommes maintenant en mesure de conclure que les enseignants en arts plastiques
jouissent d'une très grande autonomie quant à la matière enseignée et aux
méthodes pédagogiques. Si les buts que fixent les enseignants à leurs élèves sont
souvent dérivés de l'expérience personnelle plutôt que de sources normatives
identifiables, ils sont suffisamment semblables pour que la matière à laquelle ils se
rattachent soit identifiée sous la dénomination `àrts plastiques.'' Le profil que trace
notre étude de l'enseignant en arts plastiques au secondaire est plus complexe que
celui qui ressort de la recherche menée par Goodlad aux États-Unis.
*
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council's grant in support of this study.
47
48
JAMES U. GRAY & RONALD N. MACGREGOR
This study is at once commonplace and unique. It is commonplace in that it
records what it is to be a high school teacher of art in Canada, what sorts of
programs a number of these persons teach, and what kinds of products result.
It is unique in that it has never been done before.
On the face of it, this last statement is difficult to believe. The literature of
art education, in Canada and the United States, is filled with claims that,
readers must assume, are predicated on empirically derived observation. To
some extent, that is correct: writers in the field often have themselves taught
art, and their professional lives may bring them into continual contact with
teachers, administrators, and even students. But invariably their analyses—
and their generalizations—are based on local knowledge, or on fragmentary
evidence obtained from colleagues and from the literature to which they
contribute.
Between 1985 and 1988, we visited 59 high schools across Canada. From
our field notes and data we describe circumstances in which art is taught and
learned, individuals who have a hand in its administration, and products that
result.1 Our study is not evaluative, either in the sense of judging the perceived
success of a program, or in determining which of teachers' characteristics
elicited favourable or unfavourable responses from the students. Instead our
study deals with particulars, the dynamic here-and-now of teaching art in
Canadian schools.
FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY
Every piece of writing owes its existence to one or several progenitors that
provide legitimacy and inspiration. We acknowledge that tradition of
classroom case studies established by Phillip Jackson (1968) and supported by
a generation of classroom ethnographers. Donald Schon's Reflective
Practitioner (1983) offered a model for professional dialogue, along with
evidence that being a professional required much more than fulfilling a job
description.
The kinds of knowledge the professional teacher possesses have been
explored by Connelly and Clandinin (1985), Clandinin (1986), and Elbaz
(1981). Goodlad's A Place Called School (1984) spurred us to carry out our
national study. These and similar sources kindled our interest in observing art
teachers as they worked, and in questioning them about their practices.
Goodlad (1984) had noted that American programs tended towards
make-work projects, individuality was not encouraged in class, and the goals
48
HIGH SCHOOL ART TEACHERS
49
and objectives of art education were generally fuzzy. Was this as true of
Canada as he alleged of the United States? We knew that, compared with other
subjects, art in Canadian schools was taught with few prescriptive constraints.
Although most provinces had curriculum guides, from years of conversations
with teachers in various places we suspected that these documents did not
furnish the goals around which teachers built their lessons. Indeed, we
surmised that teachers were primarily idiosyncratic in their construction of
programs, with their individual temperaments as influential as any body of
theory or prescription.
The matter of teaching autonomy led to other, disarmingly simple questions. What goes on in classrooms? How does the community, in this case of
art teacher and students, conduct its business? We designed research questions
that would help to answer these more general questions and provide some
initial structure for data collection. We began with a survey of literature on art
teacher education, and found it dealt largely with three themes. One was
teachers' aims and priorities, derived from training and experience, for the
content of an art program. A second described classroom interactions, and the
third concerned settings, equipment, and products.
These persistent themes led to our research questions:
1. What factors in art teachers' personal experience and interests affect the
organization and conduct of their classes?
2. What kinds of classroom interactions characterize the conduct of art
programs?
3. How are art teacher priorities and attitudes embodied in classroom
environments and art products?
Selection of Participants and Conduct of the Study
Conventional methods of sample selection were not practical for this study:
two researchers compiling data across ten provinces over periods that seldom
exceeded two weeks at a time could not accommodate those geographic,
economic, and demographic differences that might have yielded a stratified
random sample of respondents. Instead, we undertook a series of observational
case studies, with numbers of subjects varying from province to province.
There being no lists of respondents who might satisfy various criteria for
representing the art teaching body, in each province we contacted an art
50
educator with extensive experience and asked her/him to name teachers we
might visit in the time available.
These adaptive steps produced a decidedly irregular patchwork, yet overall,
we collected quite a range of histories and situations. Situations visited ranged
from 18 in our home province, British Columbia, to two in each of New
Brunswick, Newfoundland/Labrador, and Prince Edward Island. In British
Columbia we studied both urban and rural situations; in Quebec, only urban
schools. Teachers' professional preparation included several permutations of
art school, university and teacher college; their teaching experience ranged
from two years to almost thirty-five; they taught schools enrolling from 200 to
over 2,000 students.
Each teacher we visited received a letter outlining the study's purposes, and
was asked to obtain permission to participate from the school principal or
district superintendent. We also enclosed information about the study to assist
the principal or superintendent in making a decision on participation.
The teachers themselves provided information on their background and
perceived professional role. Each teacher was then interviewed by the
researcher responsible for that particular geographical area. Formal and
informal interviews took place over two to three days, during and after school.
The conduct of classroom activity was recorded by the researcher, who
accompanied the teacher to class, and recorded events as they happened. The
teacher later verified the accuracy of the researcher's notes and elaborated
upon them in discussion with the researcher. Space and equipment were
described by the researcher, while information on products came from a
combination of researcher observation and anecdotal material supplied by the
teacher.
PRESENTATION OF THE DATA
Material gathered from interviews with 59 high school art teachers across
Canada was analyzed for content by each of the two researchers. This
information was grouped under each of the three general headings from which
the research questions were derived, and these groupings were then discussed
and modified until we had an agreed-upon set of subheadings. The heading
teacher background and perceived professional role yielded ten subheadings:
experience, influences, professional commitments, attitudes to teaching and
students, relations with other staff, ongoing studio activity, role of curriculum
guides, special character of the school, role of art history, and role of art
criticism. The second heading, conduct of classroom activities, had five
51
subheadings: lesson content, interaction, technical expertise, evaluation, and
administrative duties. The third heading, space, equipment, and products,
included physical plant, tools, equipment and material resources, and class or
student products.
Rather than present numerical data as tables, general descriptors are used,
sometimes along with numbers. Thus, nearly all means 90% or more of
teachers interviewed; many means 70%–89%; half means 50%; some means
20%–49%; and a few means fewer than 20%.
Teacher Background and Perceived Professional Role
Art teacher preparation practices differed in each province. In British
Columbia, half the informants had completed a five-year Education degree
with an art major, while in the eastern provinces (Manitoba to Newfoundland)
10 of 27 informants possessed a BFA and teacher certification. Differences
between the teachers' undergraduate programs had little effect upon their
common sense of being centrally concerned with art as a body of knowledge.
How they translated that knowledge into classroom practice was a
consequence of personal preference, rather than of undergraduate training.
Citing major influences during professional preparation, most teachers
named three or four persons, distinguished by their dedication and accomplishments. One teacher cited an entire class of fellow students. In a few cases,
participants said classroom teachers who supervised their practica were
negative influences. Said one, `Ì determined that whatever I did, I would
never teach like that.'' Informants valued the practicum, experiences of art
content, skill mastery, and classroom management techniques.
Continuing personal involvement in art production was an art teacher's
individual choice; we found no differences from one province to the next.
What sets arts teachers apart from other teachers is the expectation of the
public, students, and teachers themselves that they ought to be active
practitioners. The majority of teachers we surveyed were involved in their own
work moderately, slightly, or not at all, and were frequently apologetic about
this. Only one or two respondents said they derived sufficient creative reward
from their students' work, and did not need to pursue their own studies.
The minority of participants who were heavily involved in their own work
claimed it was vital to their well being. They worked individually, or with
fellow art teachers, in which case they usually referred to the benefits of
having a critical yet friendly audience for their ideas. Some exhibited
professionally, while others used their time to explore new media, like
computer graphics or video.
52
Although professional involvement as an art teacher occurred largely at a
local level, several teachers (particularly in Ontario) mentioned that they
taught courses for the Ministry of Education. Other teachers worked for
provincial curriculum development committees, operated as faculty associates
for universities, and served on professional executive bodies. Several had
helped to plan and run the annual assembly of the Canadian Society of
Education through Art, a national professional body that meets in a different
province each year. Most said that lack of funding and travel time prevented
them from participating in events outside their own province. Although most
indicated willingness to participate in local inservice, they were not willing to
give time to provincial inservice initiatives unless benefits to their own
districts were clearly evident.
The role of the art teacher was generally defined as providing students with
opportunities to realize their own goals, whether these were a career in art or
taking an art class for enjoyment. Participants took pleasure in working
constructively with students, and responded to students' exuberance and
vitality. They frequently referred to their personal rapport with individuals and
classes, a rapport confirmed on several occasions during our visits by the
appearance of former students who dropped in to see the art teacher.
Positive remarks on the teacher's role far outweighed negative; these latter
usually arose from perceptions of insufficient support by parents or
administrators. Relationships between the art teacher and school administrators occasioned similar remarks in every province. Most teachers saw good
in-school relations as means to maintain art's funding parity with other subject
areas, and to ensure the program's visibility. In one Quebec school, where
French and English programs coexisted, the failure of the English art teacher's
attempts to convince the administration to equate the two art budgets was a
matter of concern, even resentment.
The school community, rather than the community at large, influenced and
shaped the art teachers' aims. Although one or two interviewees mentioned
schools being rewarded for their community efforts by being given new
equipment or an improved facility, and though art teachers frequently referred
to the presence of community values in the attitudes of their students, the
microcosm of the school, and the mutual obligations on which that community
is formed, captured most of the teachers' attention. The schools we visited
were a cross-section of economic and cultural differences; the ultimate
multicultural challenge was offered by a Quebec school where students
represented 51 nationalities, 41 languages, and 18 religious groups. Yet for
most of our participants, a student's identity was conferred by belonging to a
particular school rather than an ethnic or social group. References to ``my
53
students'' mean more than a recognition that certain students attend art class,
and several observed events testified to the teacher's personal interest in
students' general welfare.
One area where responses varied widely from province to province was in
teachers' perceptions of the role of curriculum guides. Both the history of art
curriculum development in the province, and the extent of the informant's
participation in curriculum development, affected these perceptions. Further
research might examine in depth the relationship between teacher perceptions
of how curriculum is developed, and the official record of events that result in
publication of a curriculum guide, since teachers were often unclear as to how
the document originated, or why it took the form it did.
In Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, informants rated the provincial art guide
all but invisible. Teachers there developed their own programs to suit local
situations or to reflect their personal priorities. In British Columbia and
Alberta, where curriculum guides had recently been updated, teachers—
especially younger, less experienced teachers—expressed considerable
support for them. Ontario teachers were most committed to the aims of their
curriculum guide. Almost all of the eight Ontario informants indicated
commitment to making it work, and voiced support for its comprehensiveness
and effective translation of theory into practice.
Since art history and criticism have in the past decade claimed an increasingly important share of art programs devised for North American schools,2
informants were asked how they felt about teaching these subjects. A few had
reservations about teaching art history, alleging student resistance.
Nevertheless, at least half offered it, chronologically or thematically, as part of
their program. One Alberta respondent spoke for teachers in several other
provinces in dismissing as unproductive so-called `ènrichment'' art history,
wherein history is tacked on to whatever studio area is currently being
undertaken, on the grounds that what students are doing is part of a worldwide, ongoing tradition of making art, and the role of art history is to
illuminate that tradition. This informant, and others of similar persuasion,
created opportunities for students to focus on art history as a subject in its own
right. These students made oral presentations, developed booklets and papers,
and worked individually and in groups. One enthusiastic student presenter had
driven 50 miles to make (and to pay for) colour xerographs for her classmates.
``They wouldn't have got the real impact from black and white copies,'' she
said.
The Ontario Academic Credit (OAC) program provided the clearest
articulation of an art history course of study. One Ontario respondent pointed
out, however, that it had nothing on minorities, nothing on women, and almost
54
nothing on Canadian art. Quebec programs alone allotted part of the art history
syllabus to the art and architecture of the home province.
Across Canada, criticism occupied a more shadowy, less defined place in
the curriculum than did art history. Its content varied according to whether the
teacher defined it as self-reflection, or as the formal study of aesthetics. Some
teachers encouraged students to visit galleries, to give reports on established
artists, and to apply similar methods to their own work. Several times we
encountered contextual analysis, questions related to why works have
meaning, and why one interpretation may have greater validity than another.
Feldman's (1969) categories of description, analysis, interpretation, and
judgment were used most often for formal analysis.
Of the few observed instances where critical discussion of work was the
sole focus, one involved series of photographs taken by students according to
a theme each had developed. The teacher used this opportunity to point out
that art works may have public meaning, accessible to most of an audience, or
may be so personal that only the artist can know the meaning.
CONDUCT OF CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
Classroom interactions vary with type of activity: working on a task,
reviewing or organizing material, casual conversation between peers and
between teacher and students. Sometimes the teacher, like a good squash
player, controlled the ``court'' and kept the ``play'' moving. In other situations,
information was dispensed casually, sometimes while the teacher worked on
something else, and students were expected to listen peripherally while they
themselves worked.
Technical advice formed a significant part of in-class dialogue, and usually
took one of two forms. Process assistance described a sequence: mix this to get
that. Rules assistance dealt with applied knowledge: invoking the rule that eye
scanning begins near the centre of an object and travels to the edge helps to
establish a centre of interest for a work in progress.
In every classroom we visited, much conversation between teacher and
students was one-to-one. Frequently, the teacher moved all over the room
during a single period, fielding students' questions and dealing with individual
difficulties as these arose.
In classrooms where the teacher had a desk, it was almost invariably
neglected, and often buried in bric-a-brac—evidence of the pervasiveness of
practices that focused on the students' workspace. The desk of one teacher
who taught art and social studies was systematically cleaned up for the social
studies lesson, and the area around it became the locus of control and class
55
activity. When the next art class began, the desk reverted to being just another
storage surface.
Interaction between teacher and students varied according to the stage of
project completion: relatively formal while information was first handed out,
and increasingly personalized as individuals sought advice or discussed what
they had accomplished. Students criticized each other's work, shared technical
advice, and offered opinions about the chances of bringing the project to a
successful conclusion. Teachers mediated disputes, encouraged students (not
always successfully) to push their ideas past the conventional, and sometimes
worked directly on students' work when words failed.
Interaction carried over into evaluation of student work and even the
assignment of grades. Evaluative comments might be facilitative (``Let's look
at X's work to see how this was done''), or reinforcing (``This looks promising'
'), or extending (``You could carry this further by . . .''). In one classroom where
work was being graded, the teacher said `Ì think a C+ for this.'' ``No, more,''
responded the student. ``You convince me, then,'' demanded the teacher, and
the student, grinning, gave in, `Àll right, then, C+.''
Patterns of interaction varied as seasonal activities intervened: work on the
school yearbook, exhibition of work in the nearby shopping mall, involvement
in art competitions, visits to and from feeder schools. Teachers accepted most
tasks willingly in the interests of better dialogue with members of the
profession and the public, though the limits of hospitality were usually reached
with requests for throwaway posters for bake sales and car washes.
SPACE, EQUIPMENT, AND PRODUCTS
Of the art facilities we studied, most varied not so much by province as by the
economic circumstances prevailing when the school was built. They ranged
from basic block to well-equipped suite. Most facilities had a separate area for
storage of supplies, and in almost half, teachers had an office separate from
their classrooms, where they could keep their own books and teaching
resources. Art rooms across the country fell into three groups: (1) a cube
containing a sink, cupboards, and shelves; (2) a single area divided into bays
where specialized activities like ceramics and printmaking were carried out;
and (3) a number of specialized rooms, including one for showing slides or
films.
Some teachers said the kind of facility available to them constrained their
programs. In a few cases, toxic activities were carried out in relatively
unventilated conditions, but it was more common for teachers to exclude
potentially harmful activities from their program. Other cited reasons for
56
restricted offerings included lack of student interest, lack of materials, change
in the nature of the curriculum, and lack of commitment to the principle of
offering a variety of options or experiences.
Very few teachers volunteered information on why their art rooms looked
the way they did, yet the effects of external events were sometimes clearly
visible. In one situation, the art program was in temporary decline; a handful
of students occupied an echoing suite of rooms. At the other end of the scale,
expansion of working areas, or construction of an art gallery space in the
school, indicated a program's health. In one instance, a work study program
enabled the art teacher to claim that the art program's working environment
extended beyond the school's walls into the larger community.
Art rooms often bear signs of having gradually assumed a character over
the years, particularly where the teacher has a fondness for acquisition and a
reluctance to throw anything away, reasoning that any object might provide a
stimulus or serve as a resource. The shelves of one such area contained bottles,
a 50-year-old typewriter, a merry-go-round horse, skulls of many animals, a
B-flat baritone horn, hubcaps, a Canadian flag, an Oriental screen, peacock
feathers, a toaster, model boats, radio innards, a sewing machine, fungi, plants,
washing machine parts, signs, a bird cage, lamps, a hornet's nest, saddles,
chains, calculator parts, and a gas pump dial.
Students in all situations we visited used a variety of materials, mostly in
response to specific assignments the teacher set. Alhough the content was
often derived from the popular culture of television, rock videos, and
commercial advertisements, it was seldom reinterpreted in film, video, or
computer-generated images. Instead, students used traditional art materials
(paint, clay, cardboard) and supplemented their work with ideas from
sketchbooks or workbooks completed outside school hours.
The tools and equipment used for these projects usually required a modest
outlay of money. Whenever facilities for film or photography were being
developed or expanded, expenditures rose sharply. Audio-visual equipment
either belonged to the art area, or was readily available from the school's AV
pool. Computers were relatively uncommon, though one or two art teachers
had arranged to share computer time with another subject area.
The products of art programs showed relatively few regional differences.
Instead, the most evident difference was between teachers who favoured
subjects derived from students' first-hand experiences and teachers who
permitted subject matter derived from the mass media. Although classes might
produce a variety of work, it often was sufficiently influenced by a teacher's
preferences to be readily identifiable as the work of a particular school.
Two-dimensional work was much more common than three- dimensional.
57
Large-scale sculptures were rare.
CONCLUSIONS
Several of the questions that prompted our study can now be answered. Were
Goodlad's American findings about make-work projects, lack of individuality,
and fuzziness about objectives replicated in Canadian high schools? No.
Although many of the activities in art classrooms were not arranged
sequentially, every teacher had a plan for what she/he intended to cover in a
semester or year. The encouragement of individuality, far from being
neglected, was a central tenet of every teacher's credo, and a recurring feature
of everyday interaction with the students in the classroom. That the products
of these art rooms were seldom ``radical'' probably says much about students'
own definitions of `àrt'' and ``not art.'' Teachers, for their part, had few doubts
about their objectives, though it must be said that in many cases these were not
formally articulated, and often only slightly resembled those in the provincial
curriculum guide.
That art teaching in Canada is an idiosyncratic activity was confirmed. Two
teachers at opposite ends of the country might find that their programs and
attitudes coincided, while two in the same city might have created quite
different situations and conduct strikingly dissimilar programs. Why does the
assumption of unity persist, in phrases such as ``the art teacher'' and ``the art
curriculum,'' when the reality is so diversified? There is perhaps a level at
which business has to be seen to happen, and another at which business
actually occurs. Since the latter provides, as we have shown, anything but a
uniform profile, it is tidier and more expeditious for writers to reconstruct
reality in a more regular image. A curriculum planner who mistakes literary
economy for the true state of affairs is doomed to disappointment.
Yet, idiosyncrasy is not synonymous with whimsy. Individual temperament
affected the selection of experiences that the teacher considered to be in the
students' best interests, and determined whether the space in which art
education was conducted was treated as a workshop or a shrine. Each teacher
surveyed would, however, have admitted that the other informants were
teaching a form of art. Although they enjoy an autonomy partly attributable to
art's non-examination status in provincial systems, and partly to the Western
tradition of individualism that surrounds the arts, teachers have evidently
fashioned their programs from a common body of material. We saw no
programs so bizarre as to force us to reconceptualize our notions of the forms
taken by art in school.
We have tried to convey the situational realities of art teachers across
58
Canada. Further research might now consider how materials developed for
teachers might more closely accommodate those realities, doing justice to the
complex theory/practice relationships our study described and implied.
NOTES
1
The study was conducted under the acronym PROACTA: personally relevant
observations about art concepts and teaching activities.
2
The most potent example of a current program that emphasizes art history and
criticism is Discipline Based Art Education. It is being implemented in various
parts of the United States, under the aegis of the Getty Center for Education in
the Arts.
59
REFERENCES
Clandinin, D.J. (1986). Classroom practice: Teacher images in action. London:
Falmer Press.
Connelly, F.M., & Clandinin, D.J. (1985). Personal practical knowledge and the
modes of knowing: Relevance for teaching and learning. In E.W. Eisner (Ed.),
Learning and teaching: Ways of knowing (pp. 174–198). Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Elbaz, F. (1981). The teacher's ``practical knowledge'': Report of a case study.
Curriculum Inquiry, 11, 43–71.
Feldman, E.B. (1969). Becoming human through art. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Fullan, M. (1982). The meaning of educational change. Toronto: OISE Press.
Goodlad, J.I. (1984). A place called school. NY: McGraw Hill.
Jackson, P.W. (1968). Life in classrooms. Chicago: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Schon, D.A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action.
New York: Basic Books.
James U. Gray and Ronald N. MacGregor are professors in the Department of
Visual and Performing Arts in Education, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z5.
Relevance and the Romantic Imagination
Kieran Egan
simon fraser university
It is a widespread belief that students will more readily learn and understand
material if it is made relevant to their everyday experience. This truism is commonly interpreted to exclude students' imaginative life as an element of everyday
experience. This article explores students' imaginative lives and considers implications for attempts to make material ``relevant.'' It further explores implications
for the planning of teaching to engage students' imaginations.
On entend souvent dire que la matière est plus facile à apprendre et à comprendre
si elle a un lien avec la vie quotidienne des élèves, mais quand on énonce cette
évidence, on exclut souvent l'imaginaire du vécu des élèves. Cet article explore
certaines des caractéristiques de l'imaginaire des élèves et tire des conclusions,
d'une part, sur les efforts qui sont faits en vue de rendre la matière ``pertinente'' et,
d'autre part, sur la planification d'un enseignement visant à faire travailler
l'imagination des élèves.
INTRODUCTION
It is a truism, if rather a stale one, that students will learn more effectively if
what is taught is made relevant to their experience. I fear that ``relevance,'' like
the word ``culture,'' impels people to reach for their guns. The over-use of the
term in the sixties has made people somewhat wary of using it these days.
Nonetheless, the notion that successful teaching comes about by making what
is to be learned relevant to students' experience now has the status of a truism.
This truism is, however, less problematic than is its most common
interpretation. It is interpreted as meaning that new knowledge or experience
will be more effectively learned if it is made relevant to the student's everyday
experience. In this paper I argue that we can also interpret ``relevance'' in terms
of the experience of students' imaginative lives. Such an interpretation could
have a liberating effect both for teaching and for the curriculum.
Why have we come to accept that children require connections with what
Dewey (1916) called the ``material of ordinary acquaintance'' (p. 258), when
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THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION
59
we routinely observe them generating or eagerly accepting a menagery of
creatures that do not and cannot exist, engaging in amazing adventures in
never-never worlds? The most evident feature of the fantasy games invented
by my children and their friends just outside my study window is a wild
imaginativeness, as they transform the garden, its playhouse, compost heap,
shed, and fruit trees into a strange kingdom full of monsters, castles, dungeons
and dragons, and wizards. They imbue what to my dull eyes is a place for
leisure into an enchanted place whose pragmatic reality is of only the slightest
concern.
Partly because of John Dewey's enormous influence and the influence of
widely agreed interpretations of his work, educational practitioners generally
accept that children are concrete thinkers whose intellectual activity is tied to
here-and-now everyday experience. There is, of course, endless dispute about
Dewey's work and the ways it has been interpreted or misinterpreted and the
degrees to which it has been implemented or perverted (see, for example,
Cuban, 1984; Kliebard, 1986). It is perhaps easier to measure influence on
curriculum documents than on teaching practices and teachers' beliefs, but it
does seem fair to conclude, as Cremin (1961, 1976) has argued in some detail,
``that by the 1950s the more fundamental tenets of the progressives had
become the conventional wisdom of American education'' (1976, p. 19). It
seems true also that ``whether or not we like Dewey and the progressives, we
are heirs to their formulations, and the irony is that an age that has all but
forgotten Dewey is still governed by his analytical categories'' (1976, p. 8).
Among the most pervasive themes of Dewey's writing is insistence on the
child's meaningful everyday experience as the paradigm of appropriate
learning. `Ànything which can be called a study, whether arithmetic, history,
geography, or one of the natural sciences, must be derived from materials
which at the outset fall within the scope of ordinary life-experience'' (Dewey,
1938, p. 86). To avoid the class divisions he so hated and to bring about the
kind of democracy he saw as liberating to the human spirit, Dewey wanted to
ensure that all learning for all children was tied to democratic social
experience. His social commitments and his related ideas about how scientific
knowledge was generated and established led to a strong insistence on
particular procedures in teaching and the curriculum. Dewey (1916) insists
upon ``the necessity of an actual empirical situation as the initiating phase of
thought'' (p. 153) and argues, `Èven for older students, the social sciences
would be less abstract and formal, if they were dealt with less as sciences . . .
and more in their direct subject-matter as that is found in the daily life of the
social groups in which the student shares'' (p. 201). In general, he argues that `
59
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KIERAN EGAN
`The subject matter of education consists primarily of the meanings which
supply content to existing social life'' (p. 192), and that ``Before teaching can
safely enter upon conveying facts and ideas through the media of signs,
schooling must provide genuine situations in which personal participation
brings home the import of the material and the problems which it conveys'' (p.
233). In his pamphlet, ``My Pedagogic Creed,'' he emphasizes that ``The school
life should grow gradually out of the home life; . . . it should take up and
continue the activities with which the child is already familiar in the home''
(Dewey, in Archambault, 1964, p. 431).
Even its strongest proponents find problematic the idea that teaching in any
area will be more effective if it connects with students' everyday experience.
Dewey also wanted widespread understanding of disciplinary knowledge,
some of which seems not easily accessible without significant breaks from the
underlying assumptions given by everyday experience—a point argued
strongly by Floden, Buchmann and Schwille (1987). The starting point in
education for Dewey, however, remains the child's daily social experience, and
he notes that ``The child lives in a somewhat narrow world of personal
contacts'' (1902, p. 5). This is generally true as long as we do not interpret it
exclusively: exclusively, that is, of the fact that the child also lives in a vivid
and expansive world of imaginative activity.
Dewey's concern with a kind of education appropriate to a developing
industrial democratic society led him to try to undercut those features of
schooling that seemed most responsible for dividing people from one another.
He was especially concerned to discredit what he saw as the artificial, `
òrnamental,'' effete ``culture'' of European upper-middle classes. He was
moved towards intemperate language whenever he discussed the kind of `
ìnner'' cultural life whose development someone like, say, Matthew Arnold,
saw as the point of education:
And the idea of perfecting an `ìnner'' personality is a sure sign of social divisions.
What is called inner is simply that which does not connect with others—which is
not capable of free and full communication. What is termed spiritual culture has
usually been futile, with something rotten about it, just because it has been
conceived as a thing which a man might have internally— and therefore
exclusively. What one is as a person is what one is as associated with others.
(Dewey, 1916, p. 122)
Our imaginative lives are indeed not capable of ``free and full communication,''
and are indeed something `ìnner.'' They can include futile, mind- wandering
fantasizing, but also important constructive activity. The kind of statements
61
quoted above have led European educationalists in particular to see a
significant totalitarian element in Dewey's theories (see, for instance, Bantock,
1984, pp. 315–322).
It would be absurd to suggest that the author of Art as Experience was
conducting a campaign against the use of imagination. But Dewey's insistence
on the pragmatic, on the child's everyday social experience, has generated sets
of pedagogical principles which have in turn stressed concrete activity to the
neglect of imaginative activity. (I have elsewhere discussed the way in which
interpretations of Piaget's work in education have reinforced this tendency
[Egan, 1983].) We are, as Cremin notes, the heirs to Dewey's and his various
progressivist interpreters' formulations, whether we like it or not. The
inheritance in theory can be endlessly disputed, but in practice it is constantly
evident. Just a couple of weeks ago, for example, I was talking with a recently
graduated, bright, and conscientious teacher in the interior of British
Columbia. The curriculum required that she teach her grade 8 class about the
Middle Ages. With increasing desperation she had sought for weeks ``relevant''
material, and had only come up with the fact that this was the period during
which women's high-heel shoes were invented. She had been taught, and
accepted as reasonable, that to make something new meaningful and engaging
to students she had to find in it elements relevant to students' everyday
experience.
Imagination in education is perhaps like the weather: everyone talks about
it but nobody does anything. Beyond encouragement, the professional
educationalist's job should be to offer some clarification about what imagination is and perhaps more usefully to offer some technical help to enable
teachers to plan in such a way as to more routinely evoke imaginative activity
in their students. I mean to consider briefly some incidents in the history of the
imagination, then turn to common characteristics of adolescents' imaginative
lives, and finally derive from these a technique for planning teaching.
TWO INCIDENTS IN THE HISTORY OF IMAGINATION
The human mind is complicated. We don't know what a natural mind might be
like; we know minds only within particular cultures that evoke, stimulate, and
develop particular potentials. One potential evoked, stimulated, and developed
long ago, and very early in each of our lives, is what we rather vaguely call the
imagination. The first historical incident I would like to touch on concerns its
role in the survival of oral cultures. In oral cultures, people know only what
they can remember. Without writing, what is forgotten is lost forever: a very
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KIERAN EGAN
high social value is thus placed on techniques that aid memorization. It was
very early discovered that rhyme, rhythm, and meter made oral messages more
reliably memorable. But perhaps the greatest social invention was the story.
People discovered that the lore that determined social structures and
relationships, technical skills, economic activities, and so on, could be made
more memorable by encoding it into stories. All known oral cultures
throughout the world use stories for this purpose. These stories, usually called
myths, provided an important cohesion and relative stability to oral cultures. It
was discovered also that the messages to be encoded in myths were more
memorable if they were put in the form of vivid and dramatic events involving
very strange creatures in weird circumstances. To be most memorable the
events had to engage and to shape the emotions of their audience (Goody,
1977; Havelock, 1963, 1986; Lévi-Strauss, 1966; Ong, 1982). These
techniques have been found throughout history to be reliable aids to memory,
in literate but book-poor cultures as well as in oral cultures (Spence, 1984;
Yates, 1966). What is crucial is evoking in the listener's mind vivid and
strange images.
In rituals, particularly initiation ceremonies, and more casually as parts of
social life, myths in oral cultures evoked, stimulated, and developed the mind's
potential for imaginative activity. We tend, ironically, to think of
memorization and imagination as somewhat antithetical in early schooling.
We might transcend this rather simplistic binary opposition by bearing in mind
that the birth of the imagination and its early stimulation are a product of the
need to remember. To most members of oral cultures the natural world is not
made up of objective phenomena, but is rather imbued with vivid dramas in
which gods and spirits of various kinds are ever-active, and the individual's
behaviour must be coordinated with those great dramas. Classification
schemes of natural phenomena are also tied to them (Lévi- Bruhl, 1910/1985).
The second incident I would like briefly to touch on is the conflict in
European culture about the role of the imagination once writing became
commonplace. This conflict, like so many others, was set rolling by Plato's
characteristically vigorous and intricately argued solution. Like everyone who,
on his mother's knees, fought beside Achilles on the windy plains of Troy or
sailed with Odysseus across the wine-dark sea, Plato had some difficulty
reaching the conclusion to which his new conception of how to think and how
to educate people to become rational drove him: ``he struggled within himself
and proclaimed one part of himself the enemy of the other. He knew his inner
war had to end with the victory of reason and the grudging surrender of
passion, the victory of philosophy over poetry'' (Simon, 1978, p. 157). His
solution was to ban poets from his ideal Republic, because poets seduced the
63
emotions and created in the soul falsehoods and illusions about reality.
Some time after Plato's influential contribution this conflict reached another
kind of resolution, perhaps best expressed in the work of one of the most
underrated contributors to educational thought, William Wordsworth. His
major insight is summed up in the observation that ``The child is father of the
Man,'' and is elaborated on in many of his poetical works. He saw and
expressed with greater clarity than anyone before him that the young child's
perception of the world is not adequately described, as Plato described it,
primarily in terms of confusion and illusion, as irrational or a-rational. This
Platonic view led to a sense that education was the process of gradually
leading the child from its initial confusion about reality to adult, mature
rationality: from Plato's stage of eikasia or doxa to noiesis or episteme. This
view is still prominent among traditionalist educational theorists. Oakeshott
(1971), for example, characterizes young children as ``postulants to the human
condition'' who require initiation into the inheritance of human understandings
to become human beings with minds. Before this deliberate initiation, `ìn the
morning twilight of childhood, where there is nothing that, at a given moment,
a clever child may be said exactly to know or not to know'' there is only `
ìnclination . . . casual encounters provoked by the contingencies of moods . . .
fleeting wants and sudden enthusiasms tied to circumstances . . . current wants
and ìnterests''' (pp. 47, 48). Even Peters (1964), seeking an almost poetic
summary of his image of education, says: `Ìt is education that provides that
touch of eternity under the aspect of which endurance can pass into dignified,
wry acceptance, and animal enjoyment into a quality of living'' (p. 48).
Education turns the animal enjoyment, presumably what is available to the
uneducated child, gradually into a ``quality of living.''
In Wordsworth's view, childhood perception is quite the opposite of
Oakeshott's ``morning twilight.'' Rather, the world of early childhood appears `
Àpparelled in celestial light,'' with the glory and freshness that at length as we
mature dies away and fades `ìnto the light of common day.'' This sense of
childhood perception being bright and vivid, and childhood intellectual life
being equivalently vivid and dramatic, is now a commonplace recognition in
autobiographers of childhood (Coe, 1984). The educational problem for
Wordsworth is to ensure that in the initiation of the child into the inheritance
of human understandings, the imaginative freshness and vividness of
childhood is not lost. If it is, if that is the price of admission to our
accumulated knowledge, then that initiation carries with it ``Shades of the
prison-house.'' Wordsworth's optimistic conclusion is that while we must
indeed lose that vivid immediacy of childhood perception, ``the radiance
which was once so bright,'' we can nevertheless carry it forward in our
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KIERAN EGAN
memories into ``the years that bring the philosophic mind.'' (All quotations
from `Ìntimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.'')
Wordsworth ``kept till the end of his life a sense that the ordinary can be
transformed by the imagination and that the poet's task is to show this''
(Sturrock, 1988, p. 62).
One may describe Wordsworth's achievement as recognizing a way in
which the great intellectual achievements of oral cultures, and in particular
their stimulation of the imagination and fluency with metaphor—used to
encode social information into vivid stories—are not antithetical to the
achievement of rationality—as Plato represented them. One can preserve the
great intellectual achievements from the oral culture of childhood into the high
literacy of modern educated adulthood. This insight of Wordsworth's is the
key that can enable educational theory and practice to transcend the disabling
conflict between progressivism and traditionalism, which continues today in a
variety of forms.
Wordsworth was not alone, of course, in radical reconception of the
imagination's role in education. The Romantic movement was in part a
reaction against what the Romantics considered an excessive dessicating
rationality in eighteenth-century neo-classicism. Coleridge refers disparagingly to those ``who have been rationally educated, as it is styled. They were
marked by a microscopic acuteness, but when they looked at great things, all
became a blank and they saw nothing, and denied (very illogically) that
anything could be seen. . . .'' Rather he advocates the importance of imaginative stories for the young: ``For from my early reading of fairy tales and genii,
etc. etc. my mind had been habituated to the vast, and I never regarded my
senses in any way as the criteria of my belief. I regulated all my creeds by my
conceptions, not by my sight, even at that age'' (Coleridge, in Potter, 1933, p.
355). It is clear how far Coleridge's views are from today's commonly asserted
principles about children's ability to learn.
For the particular purposes of this paper, let me highlight very briefly just
three characteristic features of distinctive imaginative activity in the Romantic
movement. First is the new focus on reality. The excitement of Romanticism
was not simply a sense of imagination being freed, but of its freedom to
explore afresh the reality of human experience and of the world, uncluttered
by artificial conventions imposed during eighteenth-century neo-classicism.
Blake expressed it in terms of the need to cleanse the gates of perception;
Shelley saw the poet's proper task as lifting the veil from the hidden beauty of
the world and showing the familiar in all its strange wonder. It is the everyday
detail of the world, often at a purely descriptive level, that fills much of the
most distinctively Romanticist art and literature: ``Romantic art . . . is not
65
`romantic' in the vulgar sense, but `realistic' in the sense of concrete, full of
particulars'' (Barzun, 1961, p. 26).
A second characteristic of Romanticism is the ambivalence caught in the
figure of the hero. ``The writers who achieved the greatest popular success in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were those who created
simpler, more colourful imaginative worlds, dominated by heroes of superhuman effectiveness'' (Butler, 1981, p. 2). The ambivalence stems from
recognition of the constraints of reality along with desire to transcend them.
The hero is constrained by reality like the rest of us, but manages somehow to
overcome the constraints. The career of Napoleon fascinated most Romantics
because his force of will transcended what seemed politically and militarily
possible. The Byronic hero is another example of the cult of heroism that grew
up during the period.
As in the earlier outburst of romantic energy during the Renaissance, which
included revolt against the ossified scholasticism of the late Middle Ages, so
the movers of Romanticism looked back to the earlier liberation of spirit they
saw in, or projected into, myth and popular fantasy. Resistance to ``classical''
reason led many to a fascination with the exotic and mysterious, to fantasy and
the `ìrrational'' myths of the ancient world and contemporary ``savages.'' This
attraction to extremes of experience and reality, then, is a third commonly
observed feature of Romanticism on which I will draw. Clearly, the
characteristics I have chosen are related, indeed they overlap considerably. My
purpose is to consider some implications for education today of such
observations about the imagination.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF STUDENTS' IMAGINATIVE LIVES
If one considers the kinds of films or reading material most engaging to early
adolescents, there is evident a significant difference from the fantasy or
fairy-tales that commonly engage younger children. Crucial is the concern
with reality. Even the wilder super-heroes, like the Hulk or Spiderman, or even
Superman, require an aetiology that links them with some possible, however
implausible, reality. Superman is not accepted, as is Cinderella's
fairy-godmother, without our knowing about his birth on the dying planet
Krypton and his being launched into space by his father, Marlon Brando, and
about his arrival in Kansas where he was cared for by Mr. and Mrs. Kent, and
so on.
Students in early adolescence seem most readily engaged by equivalents of
People magazine, often having to do with pop-stars or sports-heroes, or by
material such as that compiled in the Guinness Book of Records. That is, they
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KIERAN EGAN
are attracted not to reality in its everyday aspects, but rather to its extremes, to
exotica and the bizarre. The student's imaginative grappling with reality
emphasizes who or what is the biggest, the smallest, the fastest, the slowest,
the fattest, the thinnest, the hairiest, etc. It is the mysterious, the strange, the
weird, the wonderful, and emphatically not the everyday that engages the
student's imagination.
Another common feature of students' imaginative engagements during this
time of life is their development of obsessive interests in something in
particular, or in a hobby. Typically students are drawn to collect exhaustively
or to master something in detail, or to find out everything about something. It
may be a pop-music group, cathedrals, castles, a football team, the kings and
queens of England, costume through the ages, steam trains, shells, spiders, or
anything whatever. With the discovery of an autonomous real world comes the
need to explore its extent and scale. Studying something exhaustively gives
one some security and also some sense of the scale of things in general.
Simply as a strategy for exploration, these are perfectly sensible procedures.
They also partake of prominent features of imaginative exploration in
Romanticism: intense interest in details of the world and in exotic and extreme
features of the world and of experience.
The third characteristic also echoes a common aspect of the Romantic
imagination: what I shall call the association with transcendent human
qualities. The everyday autonomous world is somewhat threatening to the
immature ego; students are very much immersed in their everyday world but
are relatively powerless to affect it, being subject to routines and activities
decided on by others—parents, teachers, and so on. Students commonly
respond by identifying with those human qualities best able to transcend the
threats of the everyday world, qualities frequently embodied by a hero or
heroine. As in Romanticism, the association with an heroic figure—whether
Superman, pop-stars, sports heroes or teams, Rambo, Crocodile Dundee, Mad
Max, Harriet the Spy, Alfred E. Neuman, or Alfred Einstein—allows the
imagination both to acknowledge constraints of the real world and to associate
with some means of transcending those constraints. Whether the association is
merely passive, or whether the student tries more actively to follow the
transcendent path laid out by the heroic figure by adopting, or trying on, a role,
the result is some taste of power or control or security or confidence—if things
go well. (This point begins to overlap with Erikson's [1963] developmental
task of integrating ego identity.) Another internalizing of the heroic figure
commonly finds expression in diary-keeping. The secret diary, with elaborate
locks, enables one to gain some power over the everyday world. The diary is
often associated with spying—the possession of secret knowledge. This can be
67
culled—parents often discover to their dismay—from overheard family
conversations, telephone calls, chats with neighbours, captured and
transformed into scarlet dramas in the pages of (most commonly daughters')
diaries. It is not, I think, coincidental that the Romantic period saw the virtual
birth and very rapid proliferation of the autobiography (S. Egan, 1984).
RELEVANCE TO THE IMAGINATIVE LIFE: A PLANNING FRAMEWORK
If we consider just these few characteristics of typical early adolescents'
imaginative lives, how can we devise a technique for planning teaching that
draws on them? At present we are in the odd position of having a restricted
repertoire of planning devices for teaching. Virtually all available techniques
are derived from Tyler's (1949) model, in which one must first establish
objectives then determine content, select appropriate methods, and evaluate
the product. This model, and its derivatives—which tend to vary little from
their source—have been important technical aids to planning. What is odd is
the virtual absence of alternative models from conceptions of teaching and
education other than the rather mechanistic, assembly-line derivatives
(Callaghan, 1962) currently dominant. (I have tried elsewhere to construct an
alternative based on characteristics of primary school children's imaginative
lives [Egan, 1986].)
Here I construct another planning framework derived from the above
observations, then show how it might be used.
The Romantic Planning Framework
1. Taking a Romantic Perspective
1.1Identify Romantic qualities—What characteristics are brought to mind
by looking at a particular topic in a Romantic way? What
transcendent human qualities are most prominently embodied in the
topic?
1.2Identifying Romantic associations—What aspects of the topic can most
engagingly attract students' Romantic associations? What
transcendent human qualities are most accessible?
2. Organizing the Content into a Story Form
2.1Providing access—What content, distant from students everyday
experience, most vividly exemplifies the romantic qualities of the
topic with which the students can associate?
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KIERAN EGAN
2.2Organizing the unit/lesson—What content best articulates the topic into
a developing story-form, drawing on the principles of Romance?
2.3Pursuing details—What content can best allow students to pursue some
aspect of the topic in exhaustive detail?
3. Conclusion
What is the best way of resolving the dramatic conflict on which the
unit/lesson is articulated? How does one tie together a satisfactory ending
to the Romantically important features of the topic?
4. Evaluation
How can one know whether the topic has been understood and the appropriate
Romantic capacities have been stimulated and developed?
Earlier I implied a criticism of starting a unit on the Middle Ages that tried
to begin with whatever could be found that seemed relevant to students'
present-day experience. I should show how my model might make the Middle
Ages accessible through something other than high heels. How can we use this
model to make the Middle Ages engaging to students using the characteristics
of their imaginative lives touched on above? Let us follow the Romantic
model step by step and see how it might shape our unit. I will not work out
such a unit in detail; my intention is to show, however schematically, that the
model can be used in planning teaching.
First, we are to take a Romantic perspective. This invites us to consider the
Middle Ages romantically—not in the vulgar sense, but in the sense of
highlighting the characteristics sketched earlier. The first step is to focus on
whatever transcendent human qualities are most prominent in the topic. What,
in Romantic human terms, were the Middle Ages all about? We might
sensibly emphasize the Renaissance of the twelfth century and its aftermath—
the High Middle Ages. This period succeeded centuries of political chaos,
social disruption, and large-scale migrations of people, relieved briefly by
Pepin's and Charlemagne's empire, which fell apart after Charlemagne's death.
The main, although unstable, order came from the varied forms of the
elaborate protection racket vaguely referred to as Feudalism. Gradually from
this varied system there came a remarkable civilizing force that created and
held together civilized life in Europe for more than a century. During this
period, feudal protection rackets gave way to written-law-regulated political
units, and over them developed one of the strangest organizations Europe has
ever seen. The engines of this civilization were monasteries, the leading power
69
was the papacy, and among the most influential characters who caught the
popular imagination was Francis of Assissi. The transcendent human quality
we can identify as central to the Middle Ages is the ideal of a spiritual life,
whose appeal is more powerful and important than the secular powers that
have control over our bodies. The papacy's authority was based on its claim to
represent this spiritual power, and on its near monopoly on literacy and the
powers of organization it allowed. The Middle Ages, then, can be seen for our
unit in terms of the rise and dominance of this spiritual power and its conflicts
with the physical, worldly power of kings, princes, and emperors. It was a
curious period of history when the powers of church and of states were very
distinct, in a way not known before or since in Europe. We might emphasize
the transcendent vision and courage of popes like Gregory VII and Innocent
III and their attempts to keep alive the spiritual ideal and its authority in the
face of the warring secular powers, and their resultant civilizing of those
secular powers.
The model directs us to organize the topic's content by selecting content
distant from students' everyday experience which will nevertheless be
accessible because it allows students to associate with the transcendent
qualities central to our theme. We might begin with three vivid stories: first,
emperor Henry IV's refusal to acknowledge Gregory VII as pope and Henry's
being eventually forced to cross the Alps and stand waiting in the snow until
Gregory pardoned him and lifted his excommunication; second, Henry II at
the tomb of Thomas à Becket doing penance for his part in Thomas's death,
while being whipped by monks (no doubt fairly gently); and third, how the
tough and wily emperor Barbarossa was brought to heel by the pope—almost
literally—being forced to kiss the pope's feet in repentance for encroaching on
the church's property and prorogatives. These stories can be told, shown, or
enacted in whatever way seems best to individual teachers. They are vivid and
powerful when fleshed out in their dramatic detail, and they make clear to
students how a spiritual organization with, at that time, virtually no armed
resources could exert its power across Europe against the mightiest of kings
and emperors.
In organizing the unit, we are directed to select the content brought to the
fore by our Romantic theme. The High Middle Ages are about, for example,
the energy and sweetness of St. Francis of Assissi, who within a few short
years immensely influenced Europe by renouncing all wealth and material
goods and trying instead to help those in greatest need. Every time you see a
crib at Christmas, you see something invented by St. Francis. He was helped
by Innocent III to found an order of priests and brothers who were to put into
practice his vision of how best to live. A century later papal authorities would
70
KIERAN EGAN
likely have burned St. Francis at the stake as a heretic, as they did his `
`spiritual'' followers, but during the expansive years of the High Middle Ages
the Franciscan spirit was part of the great Renaissance of civilized life. It also
added new flavor to civilization, helping even to civilize barbarian knights
with ideals of chivalry. By examining the careers of individuals like Peter
Abelard, we can see old dogma attacked (and the schools of Paris emptying as
the students followed the expelled Peter across France), and clerical skills in
literacy helping to bring law and order to the kingdoms of Europe. We would
also fill out such a unit, perhaps with a two-minute session at the beginning or
end of each lesson, with a kind of Guinness Book of Records of the most
strange, exotic, and wonderful events, characters, and inventions of the period.
The options for pursuing some element of the Middle Ages in exhaustive
detail seem endless: castles or cathedrals (perhaps beginning with David
Macauley's superb books [1973, 1977])—and here we could indeed bring in
high heels and costume in general, the simple rule St. Francis wrote for his
followers, eating utensils and typical foods eaten by lords or peasants during a
typical day, and so on.
The conclusion might bring together all the elements of the unit to show
how people could think of themselves first and foremost as members of
Christendom and less significantly as members of a particular state. Our
conclusion might also focus on the waning of this spiritual ideal and the
narrowing vision, on the corruption of the papacy as the power-hungry
struggled for it or to control it, the schisms, the effects of the Plague, the
Inquisition, and the fading of an institution and set of bright ideas that for a
while seemed to work and that had a remarkable civilizing effect on Europe.
Our conclusion might stress that for a while something strange and wonderful
happened in Europe, that brought art, literature, and architecture to new levels
of achievement and made the likes of Francis of Assissi the pop-heroes of the
age.
Now clearly this is not the whole truth; it is a simplification. But it is not
false: it catches something important and true about the Middle Ages, and it
organizes it in a Romantic way that can catch the imagination of the typical
early adolescent.
Evaluation of such a unit might use informal observation and traditional
kinds of assessment techniques, but something additional is clearly required to
ensure that the students' Romantic capacities have been stimulated and
developed. One might test this with assignments that elicit from the students
evidence of enthusiastic engagement and a sense of wonder. Such assignments
might include a project on some aspect of the Middle Ages that stim- ulates
students' interest, or some model construction of a castle or cathedral, or
71
recreation of the dress or games available at the time, or the reenactment of
some crucial event, or whatever. The important point is to provide for some
kind of activity that allows the students' Romantic engagement to be exhibited,
to find an outlet, and to be further developed at the same time.
CONCLUSION
These days many students, even those successful in the school's terms, leave
school feeling cheated. So many assignments, so many tests, and somehow the
richness of the world and experience beyond their everyday experience, which
they sense is there, has eluded them. The sheer knowledge of the dimensions
of the world, the range of human experience, are not a part of what they
understand. What I am arguing for here as at least a partial solution to this
problem is a sense of romance. Its agent is the imagination. In this I am
echoing Whitehead (1929): ``Romantic emotion is essentially the excitement
consequent on the transition from the bare facts to the first realizations of the
import of their unexplored relationships'' (p. 18). It is the imagination that can
carry us beyond bare facts and can hint at the wonder of their unexplored
relationships.
One shouldn't, of course, make too sharp a distinction between everyday
experience and imaginative life, as each must continually feed the other. But
we can forget that `èxperience isn't necessarily a window on to meaning''
(Wills, 1988, p. 254), or as T.S. Eliot put it compactly in the Four Quartets, `
`We had the experience/But missed the meaning.'' The current half-hearted
sense in which so many teachers feel they cannot bring much of the students'
cultural heritage to vivid life but rather are responsible only to `èxpose'' them
to it, perhaps provides the experience, but, without imaginatively engaging
students, misses the meaning. I fear that one of our main concerns with
schooling at present ought to be that despite the heroic efforts of so many
teachers, there is so little for the imagination.
REFERENCES
Archambault, R.D. (Ed.) (1964). John Dewey on education: Selected writings.
New York: Modern Library.
Barzun, J. (1961). Classic, romantic and modern. Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown.
Butler, M. (1981). Romantics, rebels, and reactionaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Callaghan, R.E. (1962). Education and the cult of efficiency. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
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KIERAN EGAN
Coe, R. (1984). When the grass was taller. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cremin, L.A. (1961). The transformation of the school: Progressivism in American education, 1876–1957. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Cremin, L.A. (1976). Public education. New York: Basic Books.
Cuban, L. (1984). How teachers taught: Constancy and change in American
classrooms, 1890–1980. New York: Academic Press.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan.
Egan, K. (1983). Education and psychology: Plato, Piaget, and scientific psychology. New York: Teachers College Press/London: Methuen.
Egan, K. (1986). Teaching as story telling. London, ON: Althouse Press/London:
Methuen, 1988/Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Egan, K. (1988). Primary understanding: Education in early childhood. New
York: Routledge.
Egan, K. (1990). Romantic understanding: The developmentof rationality and
imagination, ages 8–15. New York: Routledge.
Egan, S. (1984). Patterns of experience in autobiography. Chapel Hill: North
Carolina University Press.
Erikson, E.H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.) New York: Norton.
Floden, R.E., Buchmann, M., & Schwille, J.R. (1987). Breaking with everyday
experience. Teachers College Record, 88, 485–506.
Goody, J. (1977). The domestication of the savage mind. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Havelock, E.A. (1983). Preface to Plato. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Havelock, E.A. (1986). The muse learns to write. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Kliebard, H.M. (1986). The struggle for the American curriculum, 1893–1958.
Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Lévi-Brühl, L. (1910/1985). How natives think. (L.A. Clare, Trans.; C.S. Wittleton, Intro.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966). The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Macauley, David. (1973). Cathedral. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Macauley, David. (1977). Castle. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Oakeshott, M. (1971). Education: The engagement and its frustration. Proceedings
of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, 5 (1), 43–76.
Ong, W.J. (1982). Orality and literacy. New York: Methuen.
Peters, R.S. (1964). Education as initiation. London: University of London
Institute of Education.
Potter, S. (Ed.). (1933). Selected poetry and prose of S.T. Coleridge. London:
Nonsuch.
Simon, B. (1978). Mind and madness in ancient Greece. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
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University Press.
Spence, J.E. (1984). The memory palace of Matteo Ricci. New York: Viking
Penguin.
Sturrock, J. (1988). How the graminivorous ruminating quadruped jumped over
the moon: A romantic approach. In K. Egan & D. Nadaner (Eds.), Imagination
and education (pp. 57–75). New York: Teachers College Press.
Tyler, R. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological
processes. (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.).
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wertsch, J.V. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Whitehead, A.N. (1929). The aims of education. London: Macmillan.
Wills, C. (1988, March). Times Literary Supplement, 4–10.
Yates, F.A. (1966). The art of memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kieran Egan is in the Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby,
British Columbia, V5A 1S6.
College Choice:
A Survey of English-Speaking
High School Students in Quebec*
Geoffrey B. Isherwood
mcgill university
Anglophone Quebec students may in their last year of high school choose a
college to attend. Chapman's model of choice, which incorporates both student
characteristics and external influences—significant others, college characteristics,
and college efforts to communicate with students—offers a conceptual framework
for detecting patterns in their choices. A sample survey of 422 students found that
college reputation and location coupled with student academic average and attitude
to high school determined choice. Colleges were caught in the dilemma of trying
to achieve the goal of excellence while at the same time maintaining an open
admission policy. A network of colleges with different corporate missions would,
to some extent, alleviate the dilemma.
La recherche présentée dans cet article visait à préciser comment les élèves
anglophones du Québec dans leur dernière année de secondaire choisissent le
collège qu'ils veulent fréquenter. Le modèle de choix de Chapman, qui intègre à la
fois les caractéristiques des élèves et les influences extérieures—personnes prisées
par les élèves, caractéristiques des collèges et efforts des collèges pour
communiquer avec les élèves—a servi de cadre conceptuel. Un sondage mené
auprès de 422 élèves a révélé que le choix de l'établissement était déterminé par la
réputation et l'emplacement du collège ainsi que par la moyenne scolaire de l'élève
et son attitude vis-à-vis de l'école secondaire. Les collèges sont aux prises avec un
dilemme: essayer d'atteindre leur objectif d'excellence tout en maintenant une
politique ouverte d'admission. Un réseau de collèges avec des missions différentes
pourrait, dans une certaine mesure, régler ce dilemme.
It is a 20th-century truism in North America that everyone needs a college
*
This article was originally submitted for publication in August 1988.
72
COLLEGE CHOICE
73
education. Education is a ticket to work, a step on the path to graduate study, a
means to athletic prowess, an alternative to a tight labour market, an
opportunity for self-development, and a means to a second career. In Quebec,
Canada, a Province with historic roots in France and England and in their
systems of education, a college education has additional meanings.
In the early 1970s, Quebec had a population of about six million people.
Roughly 80% were of French origin while the remainder had an English or `
òther'' heritage. In the 1980s, a low birth rate among the French, English
out-migration to other parts of Canada and steady immigration from around
the world has produced a demographic transition. The 1986 census revealed
the population of greater Montreal, the hub of Quebec, was 67% French, 15%
English and 18% `òther''—a diverse mix of nationalities (Bourbeau, 1986).
The Montreal Catholic School Commission, the recipient of most immigrants
to Montreal had, in 1981, 89% of its students with French as their mother
tongue. By 1986 the number had diminished to 69%, and the projection for the
year 2000 was well below 50% (Montreal Catholic School Commission,
1988). By the 21st century, the French flavour of Quebec would be replaced
by a much more multiethnic one.
Until the 1960s, there were two main educational systems in the province.
The French system was composed of elementary and secondary schools along
with private classical colleges, trade and technical schools, nursing schools,
and family institutes. Few students graduated from secondary schools; fewer
went on to the classical colleges; very few entered university (which required
fifteen years of study prior to university entry). The smaller English school
system provided an elementary and secondary education of only eleven years
prior to university entry. There were no colleges for English students
(Magnuson, 1980).
Those in political power in the 1960s, seeking to bring French Quebec into
the mainstream of English-speaking North America—while preserving their
French heritage—legislated massive changes in the education system. At the
post-secondary level, a new college institution was formed in 1967, the
collèges d'enseignement général et professionnel (CEGEP), to `èncourage
secondary school graduates to continue their schooling and [to] . . . eliminate
the disparate paths to higher education of French and English students''
(Magnuson, 1980, p. 111). French-language CEGEPs were established from
former classical colleges and other schools, while English- language CEGEPs
had to be created from scratch.
The CEGEPs provided two-year compulsory pre-university programs as
well as three-year technical studies leading to employment. Enrolments grew
73
74
GEOFFREY B. ISHERWOOD
rapidly, particularly in the university preparatory programs. Between 1962–
1963 and 1970–1971 full-time university enrolments, fed by the newly formed
CEGEPs' graduates, tripled on the French side and doubled on the English side
(Magnuson, 1980, p. 117). Administrators and professors molded their new
organizations into vital institutions; colleges developed missions for
themselves.
As well, nationalism was on the rise in Quebec. In the mid-1970s, the
separatist party came to power and passed language legislation to protect and
to preserve French Quebec. Quebeckers whose mother tongue was French as
well as non-Canadian immigrants to the Province had to send their children to
1
the French school system (K–11). Until then, most immigrants had entered
English-speaking schools. As in former years, parents whose mother tongue
was English, and who had an elementary education in English in Canada could
send their children to the English school system (the Canada clause). This
legislation, the reduced French birth rate, and the influx of migrants made the
French school system both smaller and more multi-ethnic, and the English
school system simply smaller. Some immigrants had difficulty studying in
French, despite introduction of ``welcoming classes.'' By the mid-1980s, there
were charges that French teachers diluted their courses so immigrants could
keep up and that French students in the same classrooms suffered.
However, entrance to CEGEPs was not decided by mother tongue. Students
could elect to attend any CEGEP in the province, provided they met entrance
requirements for their chosen program (and that the CEGEP had sufficient
space in the program). In fact, some CEGEPs declared as part of their
corporate mission that they were `òpen'' institutions; they would admit any
student to any program—all the student had to do was succeed, once enrolled.
There are no studies of ``college choice'' among senior high school students
in Quebec. Given the province's unique educational development, the fact a
college education is mandatory prior to university study, and the competition
among colleges for a declining pool of students, a study of Quebec students'
college choice is worthwhile. I wish, therefore, to determine the basis of
college choice for students in their last year of high school in the English
school system.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Chapman (1981), in the United States, developed from the literature and his
own research a model that postulated salient factors influencing a student's
college choice. He found that choice was influenced by:
—Student characteristics: parental background; socioeconomic status;
COLLEGE CHOICE
75
aspiration (both level and type); high school performance;
—External influences: significant persons (parents, siblings, friends, high
school staff, others); fixed college characteristics (cost/aid, location, program
availability, reputation); college effort to communicate with students (written
information, campus visit, admissions, recruiting).
Chapman speculated that interaction between a student's personal characteristics and external influences would lead the student to a set of expectations
about college life in a particular institution. A student considering a group of
institutions would likely develop a preference for one college over others; the
student could then make a first choice, a second choice, and so forth.
Chapman's model led to the development of the following research
questions to guide the investigation:
RQ1: What are the factors that influence college choice for students? Are the
factors the same for different colleges?
RQ2: Do personal characteristics of the student influence college choice?
METHODOLOGY
Design
A sample survey produced data for analysis of the research questions. The
population included secondary school students (grade 11) graduating from
English-language high schools in the greater Montreal area (where the vast
majority of English-speaking Quebeckers lived) in 1987 June. Of the
approximately 8000 students, about 75% or 6000 would enter college. Of the
6000, some were interested in programs available at only one college; these
students were excluded from the sample because ``college choice'' was not
possible for them. The study emphasized public as opposed to private colleges.
The vast majority of English college students in Quebec attend four public
colleges (referred to as A, B, C and D). The study was funded by one college,
and that college was primarily interested in students who might attend their
school. This led to a random selection of students from 22 high schools in
greater Montreal. English high schools elsewhere in the province were not
included in the sample.
A sample of about 400 of the 8000 graduating students would provide data
with less than 5% error 95% of the time (Walonick, 1985). The final sample
included 422 students.
Interviews to collect all data were conducted in 1987 January. The inter-
76
viewer would visit a school, meet randomly selected students during the
students' free periods, interview them in a quiet setting for about 20 to 25
minutes, and record responses to questions. Respondents were guaranteed
anonymity, as was their school. The interviewers were all female and
university students.
Instrumentation
An interview guide was developed to tap each aspect of Chapman's model. `
`Significant others'' in college choice were assessed on a variant of a measure
developed by Riley (1967). Students were asked to mark, on a 5-point scale,
the level of influence each potential significant other had upon them.
The four colleges' reputations were assessed in two ways. First, each college
was placed on a 9-point scale ranging from low to high reputation. Second, the
respondent's image of each college was established using a projective
technique: respondents were asked the first word that came to mind after each
college was named (each was named up to four times). Content analysis of
responses yielded most frequently stated descriptors of each school.
The ``Quality of School Life (Revised)'' measure—an 18-item measure that
indicates attitude toward school, school work, and teachers (Isherwood &
Hammah, 1981)—was used to assess students' attitude to high school.
Data Analysis
The individual interviews were coded, then entered into a data file verified to
have less than .01% error. Data was analyzed using the STATPAK program of
Walonick Associates (1985).
FINDINGS
The study's findings were organized around the research questions.
RQ1: What are the factors that influence college choice for students?
Are the factors the same for different colleges?
Content analysis of student responses to the question, ``What are the key
factors in making `X' your first choice of college?'' (repeated for the second
choice) yielded 14 responses. See Table 1 for the leading responses by college.
Program availability was mentioned in each case, college location or
COLLEGE CHOICE
77
proximity in seven cases, and college reputation in six cases. Because the `
`program'' was available in each college, ``program'' had little to do with `
`choice.'' Location and reputation were the two salient factors in college
choice.
Most students (n=211) chose college D, because of its reputation. Many
(n=151) said colleges A and B were first choice because of ``location'' coupled
with ``reputation.'' College C was first choice for the fewest students (n=60).
Their choice was based on ``location'' and ``suits me''—a euphemism used by
students whose academic average in secondary school was weak.
The factors influencing choice were the same for different colleges in
Quebec.
The saliency of ``reputation'' in college choice led me further to explore
RQ1. Students rated each college's reputation on a 9-point scale (9 high, 1
low). College D had the highest reputation (mean of 7.1) and was the first
choice of most students. College C had the lowest reputation (5.0) and was the
first choice of the fewest students. College A (6.3) and College B (5.7) held
intermediary reputational ratings. Analysis of variance was used to see if
differences in reputation scores were significant.
78
TABLE 1
The Three Leading Factors in College Choice by College of First Choice
A
College of First Choice (N=422)
%
C
%
%
B
Location
41
Location
29
Program
Program
24
Reputation
19
Reputation
13
Program
15
n=71
A
D
%
45
Reputation
40
Location
18
Program
20
Suits me
10
Location
17
n=80
n=60
College of second choice (N=354)
%
C
%
%
B
Program
21
Reputation
26
2nd choice
Location
15
Program
17
Reputation
15
`Òther''
11
2nd choice
11
n=34
n=53
n=211
D
%
28
Location
29
Program
19
Reputation
21
Location
15
Program
17
n=162
n=105
College D had a significantly higher reputation than College A, College A was
significantly higher than College B, and College B was significantly higher
than College C (F=86.78, p<.01). Students' responses to the projective
measure (for instance, ``Tell me the first word you think of when I mention
college A'') helped further to explain the meaning of each college's reputation.
Each college evoked different images. The following descriptions, developed
from students' responses, reveal each college's image.
Many students thought college A was far away (it was about 35 km from the
centre of the location of sample schools), so remote that they had no image of
it. Students who knew about college A saw it as a large school with an
attractive campus and a good academic reputation—it drew smart students. A
few respondents saw college A as ``stuffy and snobby.''
Most students saw college B as having a good—but average—academic
reputation, good programs of study, good atmosphere, and many good
COLLEGE CHOICE
79
teachers. It appeared a clean and friendly place. Some saw it as a small school,
while others viewed it as large. A few students thought it was far away (it was
on the periphery of the sampling area, about 7 km from the centre).
Everyone knew about college C: a school attended by low achievers, a
school easy to get into. It was a big school with several campuses. Many saw it
as a place where neither teachers nor students were serious, and where the
climate was bad. For these students, college C was ``second choice,'' a ``last
resort.'' By contrast, other students thought it a friendly school with some very
good programs and good campuses. Students were divided on the image of
college C.
Most students knew about college D: a good school academically, people
friendly despite overcrowding. College D was big and convenient to get to
(public transportation was available). It had a fine reputation, good teachers
and ``hard'' academic standards.
Student rankings of the colleges clearly were based on each institution's
envisioned academic reputation or lack thereof.
The question arose of how students learned about each college and their
associated reputations. Each student was asked how they learned about the
colleges. They were asked to list up to four sources of information and to rate
the usefulness of each source. Data was summed by source and degree of
usefulness. The prime source of very useful or useful information was
pamphlets (74% of 422 students mentioned pamphlets). School counsellors
were good sources of information (52%); another source was college
representatives (38%) and friends (35%). Teachers (1%), parents and siblings
(17%), and relatives (6%) played minor roles in providing information about
colleges.
Students were asked the level of influence people had on their choice of
college (Table 2). Analysis of variance was used to compare the relative
influence of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, teachers and counsellors. The most influential people were friends (mean 3.27); they were
significantly more influential than mothers (3.03), fathers (2.86), and counsellors (2.83), who, in turn, were significantly more influential than teachers
(2.41), sisters (1.65), and brothers (1.41) (F=8.73, p<.01).
The pattern of influence for males was the same as that for the entire
sample. However, the pattern altered slightly for female students. For them,
friends (3.24) and mothers (3.15) were the most influential, while counsellors
(2.92) and fathers (2.89) had less influence.
80
TABLE 2
People Who Influence College Choice
Level of
Influence
Moth
5 Key person
Number of mentions (N=422)
Fath
Brot
Sist
Frnd
Tchr
Coun
67
64
28
41
57
23
57
4 A lot
105
91
31
43
138
71
95
3 Some
98
99
36
40
127
108
104
2 A little
79
71
34
29
61
75
57
1 No influence
71
85
153
139
39
144
104
0 No response
2
12
140
130
0
1
5
3.03
2.86
1.41
1.65
3.27
2.41
2.83
Mean
Although older siblings were not perceived as influencing the college of first
choice, a pattern emerged within families. If an older sibling attended a
particular college, then their younger sibling was also likely to attend it: for
college A, 77% of the time; college B, 56% of the time; college D, 68% of the
time; college C, only 20% of the time.
RQ2: Do personal characteristics of the student influence college choice?
There was no indication the ethnic origin of students' parents was related to
college choice. Only 32% of students' fathers and 33% of their mothers were
born in Canada. Parents came from Italy (fathers 23%, mothers 21%), Greece
(fathers 14%, mothers 14%), other European countries (fathers 10%, mothers
12%), Asia (fathers 7%, mothers 7%), the West Indies (fathers 4%, mothers
4%), and a scattering of other countries. Students in the anglophone school
system formed a multi-ethnic community, and it was likely that many of their
parents knew little about Quebec CEGEPs.
There was no indication that either the socioeconomic status of parents or
aspirations of students influenced college choice. In general, students' parents
had modest means. Yet students had nearly significantly higher job aspirations
than the current occupations of their fathers (Chi-square=71.4, p=.07).
COLLEGE CHOICE
81
By contrast, high school performance as indicated by students' academic
average and attitude to high school was related to college of first choice.
Students who applied to colleges A, B, and D as first choice had a significantly higher high school academic average than students who applied to
College C (AOV, F=4.41, p<.05). The same pattern was found for students'
attitude to high school (AOV, F=3.91, p<.05).
DISCUSSION
College choice of students in the Quebec English-speaking school system can
be understood in terms of the following model, reduced from Chapman's, and
assuming that the program a student wants is available. College choice is
determined by:
—Student characteristics: academic average, attitude to school;
—External influences:
Primary Secondary
Significant people
A. Male students friends
parents
counsellors
B. Female students
friends
counsellors
mother
father
College characteristics (reputation, location)
College efforts to communicate (pamphlets, recruiting visits to high schools by
college representatives).
College choice was influenced by student academic average in high school
and by student attitude to high school. Better academic students, and those
with more positive attitudes to high school sought colleges with higher
academic reputations; they selected other colleges as ``second choice'' to
ensure they would be accepted by at least one college. Students with weaker
academic credentials sought entry to colleges `òpen'' to them.
Male high school graduates were primarily influenced in their choice by
their friends in high school and their friends already at college; parents and
school counsellors had less influence. Female high school students were
primarily influenced by their friends and their mother. Fathers and counsellors
had less influence on their choice of college.
College characteristics that influenced choice were reputation and location
(given program availability). As well, individual colleges influenced student
choice through their pamphlets and visits to high schools by college representatives—visits by college staff members and visits by recent graduates of
82
high schools.
Not influencing choice in Quebec colleges, yet a part of Chapman's model,
were parental background, family socioeconomic status, student job aspirations, teachers, siblings, college campus visits, or the cost of college. The cost
factor might best be explained by noting that Quebec supports tuition through
general taxation—there are few college costs for students. Of course, entering
college meant a student would not likely enter the work force full-time.
Attending college meant little or no earned income to the student or the
student's family. We cannot tell how many students did not attend college,
despite low costs, simply because their earned income was needed at home.
The Chapman model remains useful in exploring issues related to college
choice.
Students in Quebec English-speaking high schools have roots around the
world. As is often the case for recent immigrants to a country, adults have
access only to occupations at the lower end of pay and status scales. These
immigrants view the education system as a vehicle by which their children
may gain a better place in life. Students who do well in Quebec high schools
have high job aspirations—far higher that the positions held by their parents.
The English-speaking college system in Quebec seems committed to
supporting both parental hopes and student aspirations. Some colleges define
their ``corporate mission'' as one of high standards and top-quality programs.
Other colleges' stated mission is to be `òpen''; that is, open to any student to
come and try a program—and to succeed or not. Open- admission colleges
have difficulty attracting high-calibre students because their reputation is poor.
In an emerging multi-ethnic community, a community that relies on
immigration to increase its human resources, colleges must be prepared to
serve students linguistically limited, academically weak, or economically
disadvantaged, as well as to serve the academically talented. Although not by
design, Quebec English CEGEPs, seem to be meeting this challenge.
NOTE
1
See Quebec's Bill 101 for a detailed statement of the language law in Quebec.
Specific requirements for entry to French (Catholic) and English (Protestant)
schools are detailed.
REFERENCES
Bourbeau, R. (1986). Canada: A linguistic profile. Ottawa: Minister of Supply and
Services, 22–24.
COLLEGE CHOICE
83
Chapman, David W. (1979). Improving information for student choice: The
national effort. National ACAC Journal, 23 (1), 25–26.
Chapman, David W. (1981). A model of college choice. Journal of Higher
Education, 52 (5), 490–505.
Edwards, Flora M. (1985). Can community colleges offer opportunity and
excellence? Community, Technical and Junior College Journal, 56 (2), 41–42.
El-Khawas, E. (1977). Better information for student choice: Report of the
national task force. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher
Learning.
Isherwood, G.B., & Hammah, C.K. (1981). Home and school factors and the
quality of school life in Canadian high schools. In Joyce L. Epstein (Ed.), The
quality of school life (pp. 137–151). Toronto: D.C. Heath.
Magnuson, Roger (1980). A brief history of Quebec education. Montreal: Harvest
House.
Montreal Catholic School Commission, Secteur Français (1988). Gain du français
parlé sur le français maternel. Montreal: Montreal Catholic School
Commission.
Pascarella, E.T., Terenzini, P.T., & Wolfe, L.M. (1986). Orientation to college and
freshman year persistence/withdrawal decisions. Journal of Higher Education,
57 (2), 155–175.
Riley, Mathilda W. (1963). Sociological research (Volume 2). New York: Harper,
Brace and Company.
Walonic Associates (1987). StatPac. Minneapolis, MN: Walonic Associates.
Geoffrey Isherwood is in Administration and Policy Studies in Education, McGill
University, 3724 McTavish Street, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1Y2.
Limitations of Quantitative Methods for
Research on Values in Sexuality Education
Ronald W. Morris
mcgill university
Quantitative methods are rarely appropriate for research on values in sexuality
education. Survey research cannot capture the richness, complexity, and depth of
value questions. It pays no attention to levels of meaning, nuances in language, or
lived values. Experimental research abstracts values, valuing, and sexuality
education from their social, institutional, and relational contexts. Experimental
designs are also undergirded by epistemological assumptions that are difficult to
reconcile with research on values.
Les méthodes quantitatives sont rarement utiles pour mener à bien des recherches
sur les valeurs dans le domaine de l'éducation sexuelle. Les sondages ne peuvent
capter la richesse, la complexité et la profondeur des questions ayant trait aux
valeurs. Ils ne tiennent pas compte des niveaux de signification, des nuances de
langage ou des valeurs vécues. La recherche expérimentale extrait les valeurs, les
jugements de valeur et l'éducation sexuelle de leurs contextes sociaux, institutionnels ou relationnels. Elle repose en outre sur des hypothèses épistémologiques
qu'il est difficile de concilier avec une recherche axée sur des valeurs.
In the sixties and seventies sexuality education was inspired by a positivistic
paradigm. Teachers, it was argued, should avoid values and teach only those `
`sexual facts which have been established as valid in the scientific community''
(Karmel, 1970, p. 95).
In the eighties, enthusiasm for this approach began to subside. In Quebec,
for example, the Ministry of Education's (1985) sexuality education program
states that: ``because it is linked with the person and with human behaviour,
because it is the subject of a moral position in every society, because it holds
the attention of all religions, sex education may not be given without reference
to values'' (p. 103). Recognizing that sexuality is more than a biological
phenomenon, and that education is more than just information, sexuality
82
LIMITATIONS OF QUANTITATIVE METHODS
83
educators throughout North America are now pointing to the importance of
values (Darling & Mabe, 1989; Desaulniers, 1982; Durand, 1985; Gilgun &
Gordon, 1983; Gordon, 1981; Kenney & Orr, 1984; Lawlor, Morris, McKay,
Purcell, & Comeau, 1990; Pegis, Gentles, & de Veber, 1986; Samson, 1979,
1981; Varcoe, 1988).
As a result of this emphasis on values, sexuality education research has
begun to emphasize value-related areas. Survey research has thrown new light
on views and perceptions of value issues. Experimental studies have measured
the impact of sexuality education programs on knowledge, behaviour and
values.
This paper raises issues about the appropriateness and adequacy of surveys
and experimental studies for research on values in sexuality education. My
first objective is to highlight the limitations of quantitative methods for
research on values. Can a quantitative framework provide an adequate picture
of values? Are its goals and procedures appropriate for research in this area?
My second objective is to draw attention to methodological issues that have
yet to be considered in sexuality education. Research in this area is almost
exclusively quantitative. My third objective is to provide a context for further
reflection and discussion about the relationship between quantitative and
qualitative methods in educational research (for example, see Howe, 1988;
Smith & Heshusius, 1986).
But first it is important to clarify how I use the term ``values.'' ``Values” will
refer to moral values. The term ``moral,'' as Daniel Maguire (1978) argues, `
`means human in the ought or normative sense'' (p. 114). When we say that
rape is immoral, for example, ``we are saying that it is an inhuman activity;
that it is not what humans ought to do in expressing their sexuality'' (p. 115).
Sexual-moral values name what is most human about sexuality (Guindon,
1989). They are ideals or ``standards of goodness or rightness'' that serve as
points of reference in evaluation, decision-making or action (Guindon, 1977,
p. 22).
Moral values also represent one's most fundamental convictions. They
define ``what one will be, instead of merely what one will have'' (Maguire,
1978, p. 94). As affective appreciations of the good, moral values run deeper
than attitudes (Samson, 1987). In addition to serving as points of reference,
they also orient or give meaning to our evaluations, decisions and actions. As
Maurice Friedman (1984) writes, real living values are ``touchstones of reality''
that we carry forward as ``life stances'' (p. 63).
SURVEY RESEARCH AND QUESTIONNAIRES
83
84
RONALD W. MORRIS
Although sexuality educators increasingly agree on the importance of values,
some value-related issues remain highly controversial and complex. What
specific values should underlie or inform a program in sexuality education?
How should values and value-related areas be discussed in the classroom?
Should a set of values be presented to students? If so, should these values be
presented as guidelines or as absolutes that apply to all situations and issues?
What should be the source of these values? Should sexuality education attempt
solely to clarify personal values? Should teachers openly indicate to students
their value preferences?
My colleagues and I have designed survey research to study the views and
perceptions of teachers, parents, and students in the Montreal area on these
questions (Lawlor et al., 1990; Lawlor & Purcell, 1989a, 1989c; Morris, 1986;
Purcell, Lawlor, & Morris, 1991). Other researchers have surveyed the views
and attitudes of Ontario parents (Marsman & Herold, 1986). We have found
that survey research can make important contributions to value-laden
classroom practice. Although such research does not settle the issues outlined
above, it serves as a context for further reflection and discussion. Knowing
how different groups view and perceive these issues may also help reduce
tensions, fears, and misunderstandings, legion in sexuality education.
Our research to date, however, also indicates that surveys cannot penetrate
values and value-related issues in all their richness and complexity. In the first
phase of the research, we distributed a questionnaire to high school teachers of
sexuality education (Morris, 1986). Some multiple-choice questions dealt with
general issues in sexuality education, while others dealt specifically with
values.
The teachers in the study responded to the general questions on sexuality
education without difficulty. They simply checked the appropriate answer. On
questions dealing with values, however, most teachers specified on the
questionnaire that they thought it necessary to qualify or to develop further
their answers. The teachers emphasized that their responses would depend on
the particular circumstances of the issue or question, and worried that
statistical data would not catch the nuances and subtleties of their responses.
These teachers were saying, in other words, that statistical analysis of
value-rich data may easily become reductionistic.
Questionnaires also provide researchers with little information about how
respondents interpreted the questions. In the second phase of our research, we
developed a questionnaire for parents (Lawlor & Purcell, 1989b; Purcell,
Lawlor, & Morris, 1991). One question asked parents what source of values a
sexuality education program should be based on. A typology developed for the
85
study described: (1) a traditional Judeo-Christian approach based on a literal
interpretation of the Bible; (2) a modern theological approach that sees
sexuality as inherently good when expressed in a context of love and
commitment; (3) practical guidelines drawn from medicine and psychology for
good mental health, physical well-being and satisfactory interpersonal
relationships; (4) principles of civil rights (such as a charter of human rights);
(5) a humanistic philosophy (not based on religion) that emphasizes personal
growth and relationships.
From this question we learned that parents surveyed favoured (in decreasing order) practical guidelines drawn from medicine and psychology, principles of civil rights, a humanistic philosophy, and a modern theological
approach. The traditional religious perspective was the least favoured source
of values.
The responses do not show what meaning parents gave to the question's
language. This limitation is important in that values are deeply embedded in
language. For example, how were the words ``traditional'' and ``modern''
understood? Some people will see the word ``traditional'' in the first type as
pejorative, especially since it is followed by a value framework that is said to
be ``modern.'' Modern, in our culture, usually implies ``more advanced'' or `
`better.'' For some people the word ``humanistic'' carries negative connotations.
A questionnaire alone cannot probe these different layers of meaning.
SURVEYS AND VALUE RANKING
We identified the value priorities of high school students through value
ranking (Lawlor & Purcell, 1989a, 1989c), a procedure also used in a
Canada-wide study of adolescents (Bibby & Posterski, 1985) and in a study of
the sexual values of Montreal adults (Samson, 1987).
Studies using value ranking provide useful information. They may serve,
for example, as a starting point for the development of a program that takes
into account the value priorities of teachers, students, and parents. As Samson
(1987) indicates, this instrument could, in larger comparative studies, identify
values shared by different communities, cultures, or even countries.
The problem with value ranking is that we do not know if the ranking
shows what respondents value or what they believe should be valued. We do
not know whether value priorities embody theoretical choices or whether they
are lived values.
Samson (1987) counters these possible criticisms by suggesting that
ranking forces respondents to differentiate values that might lazily be
86
RONALD W. MORRIS
perceived as identical, and that it best reveals the hierarchical structure of
value thinking. Forcing the respondents clearly to differentiate and separate
values, however, may easily become artificial and reductionistic. As Robb
(1985) indicates, it assumes ``that values must be chosen at the expense of
others'' (p. 215). Values like ``generosity,'' ``mutuality,'' and ``tenderness'' have
many interrelated qualities. Forced ranking leaves little room for more
nuanced or integrative/holistic thinking.
Furthermore, consensus in ranking may be misleading. It is not unusual for
individuals to give different meanings to the same value. Take a value like `
`mutuality,'' for example. One individual might understand mutuality as a form
of intimacy that comes through fusion. For another, mutuality might mean `
`you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.'' A third respondent might see
mutuality as a form of interindependence, that is, a form of intimacy or sharing
where one's autonomy and uniqueness is both valued and celebrated (Kegan,
1982).
Discerning differences and similarities in meaning-making is all the more
critical in a pluralistic society where specific values are likely to have diverse
meanings. It is also important when one is dealing with different age groups.
According to psychologist Robert Kegan (1982), there is a developmental
structure to the meaning people give to their values. Without more explicit
emphasis on meanings underlying value choices, we have no sense of the
degree of importance of values chosen, reasons why these values had priority,
level or depth of valuing, or the extent to which rankings embody a value
consensus.
EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES AND ATTITUDINAL SCALES
ON CLARITY OF VALUES
Experimental studies have been designed to measure sexuality education
programs' impact on knowledge, behaviour, and values. They have found that
though school-based programs may successfully increase knowledge, they
have no ``measurable impact'' on behaviour, and only a ``small impact” on
values (Kirby, 1980, 1985; Pegis, Gentles, & de Veber, 1986).
These findings provide useful information. First, they challenge the view
that school-based programs lead to an increase in sexual activity (Richert,
1983; Schlafly, 1983). Second, by placing sexuality education in perspective,
they may help alleviate the burden teachers are expected to carry, such as
reducing the rates of teenage pregnancy and incidence of sexually transmitted
diseases.
The problem with experimental research is that it obscures the hidden
87
curriculum, that is, the ways that sexual values are tacitly transmitted and
learned through language, sex role expectations, the rules and regulations of a
school, and the various social relationships of that school. Sexual values are
shaped not only by formal classes on sexuality, but also by ``the interests and
requirements of social institutions'' (Nelson, 1988, p. 26). Experimental
research does not uncover the qualities of a value-rich sexuality education.
What are the attitudes, experiences, processes, and relations that enhance
sexual-moral valuing? What are the requirements of a meaningful and
responsible education in human sexuality? These questions are not likely to
show up in a framework that reduces sexuality education to an object in the
school curriculum (Moran, 1983, 1987).
The measure of values and valuing used in experimental studies is also
problematic. To determine whether a sexuality education program affected
students' values, students were given a pretest and posttest questionnaire
(Kirby 1985; Parcel, Luttman, & Flaherty-Zonis, 1985). This questionnaire,
consisting of attitudinal scales, asks students to indicate whether their sexual
values are clear to them, whether it would be easy for them to describe their
values to someone, and whether they get confused about their values in
discussions about sexuality.
Findings that suggest that a particular program did or did not affect
perceptions of value clarity do not necessarily indicate that the program did or
did not affect values. There is more to values and valuing than value clarity,
especially when the instrument abstracts value clarification from its relational
context. Are the respondents, for example, able to describe their values in `
`real-life'' discussions, particularly when partners in the discussion hold
radically different values? If respondents are confused about their values, what
might be the confusion's source? Does the confusion depend on which
value-related question is being discussed? Does confusion arise more with
certain conversational partners than with others (e.g., with parents versus
peers)? What these instruments measure, in other words, are hypothetical
perceptions of value clarity. They say very little about valuing itself.
PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFICULTIES AND PRESUPPOSITIONS
OF EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH
My criticism of experimental research will be controversial. The present
research trend in sexuality education is toward more experimental studies
(George & Behrendt, 1985). Only rigorously controlled experimental studies,
it is argued, will produce ``hard data,'' ensure objectivity and neutrality, allow
valid predictions, and establish causality (Jayne, 1986; Kelly, 1985, 1988;
88
RONALD W. MORRIS
Kirby, 1985).
I would respond that researchers in sexuality education have too readily and
uncritically accepted the positivistic assumption that the methods and goals of
the natural sciences can be applied to the human and social sciences. Notions
like causality and prediction presuppose that there is such a thing as an
objective human nature and society that follows formal laws akin to the laws
of physical or material nature (Bernstein, 1985, pp. 8–20; Jagger, 1983, pp.
353–389).
Epistemologically, this view rests on a correspondence theory of truth,
which suggests that reality or truth is known `òut there'' and `ìn itself,''
independent of the subject. What is real or true, according to this view, is
known in the same way a mirror reflects objects (Rorty, 1979).
Human beings, unlike physical or material phenomena, mediate their
experience and understanding with meaning. Humans define themselves and
interpret their experience through dialogue, symbols, rituals, and storytelling.
A research method that strips sexuality, education and valuing of the ways in
which persons construct meaning will have little to say about the ``specifically
human aspects of sexual experience'' (Guindon, 1989, p. 8). Such a method
perverts sexual language (Guindon, 1977; Lafortune, 1989), and will produce
results `ìnapplicable to real-life issues'' (Guindon, 1989, p. 9).
From an ontological perspective, the view that experimental procedures
will immunize the researcher against bias, ideology, and value judgments
assumes that researchers can deliberately abstract themselves from their own
history and meaning-making, and that there exists an `àrchimedian point''
outside of history where one can be free of subjectivity, bias, and prejudice
(Bernstein, 1985). It fails to recognize that data in the human and social
sciences are mediated by the subjectivity, historical context, and language of
both the researcher and the research subject. As Gadamer (1975) argues, ``the
standpoint that is beyond any standpoint, a standpoint from which we could
conceive its true identity, is a pure illusion'' (p. 339). We enter a world that is
already pre-interpreted in language. Language mediates our values, and the
place outside of language does not exist (Gadamer, 1976).
From an ethical perspective, the commitment to value-neutrality in
unacceptable because it leaves potentially insidious values unexamined. In
Reflections on Gender and Science (1985), Keller argues that references to
objective data as ``brute'' or ``hard'' (as opposed to ``soft'') reveal a masculinist
bias. When we dub objective science as ``hard'' as opposed to the softer (that is,
more subjective) branches of knowledge, we implicitly invoke a sexual
metaphor, in which ``hard'' is of course masculine and ``soft'' feminine. A
woman who thinks ``scientifically or objectively is thinking `like a man';
89
conversely, a man pursuing a nonrational argument is arguing `like a woman'''
(p. 77).
Ethicist James Nelson (1988) believes the prizing of hard over soft shows a
``phallic interpretation of reality'' (p. 90). Such an interpretation projects upon
the world values about size, hardness, up-ness, linearity, and externality. These
take precedence over values relating to the internal, ``the cyclical, the
horizontal, and the soft'' (p. 90).
The doctrine of value-freedom and neutrality played an important role in
the history of the social sciences. Originally it liberated and emancipated
(Gouldner, 1962). It `èstablished a breathing space'' and encouraged `à
temporary suspension of the moralizing reflexes built into the sociologist by
his own society'' (p. 204). It does not follow however, that social sciences
should abstain from all value-judgments, a position Barry (1979) calls `à
declaration of non-responsibility'' (p. 264). As Gouldner notes, the commitment to value-freedom and neutrality ``had a paradoxical potentiality: it might
enable [persons] to make better value judgments rather than none'' (pp. 203–
204).
It is ironic that sexuality education research favours a methodology whose
language may perpetuate insidious sexual values. It is even more ironic that
this methodology is modelled after an understanding of the natural sciences
that is being rejected by researchers in the natural sciences.
Recent developments in philosophy of science have shown how the issues
discussed above also apply to the natural sciences. This work was spearheaded
by Thomas Kuhn (1970), who outlined how scientific theories are based on
traditions of research that condition the selection of research topics and
interpretation of data. More recently, Mary Hesse (1980) has argued that data
in both natural and social sciences are ``not detachable from theory, for what
count as data are determined in light of some theoretical interpretation, and the
facts themselves have to be reconstructed in light of interpretation'' (p. 171).
According to Hesse, all science—whether natural or social—`ìs irreducibly
metaphorical and inexact . . .'' (p. 172).
In modern physics conviction is growing that the physicist not only
observes the properties of atomic phenomena but participates in their creation.
Rejecting the ``sharp Cartesian division between mind and matter, between the
observer and the observed,'' physicists are asserting that ``we can never speak
about nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves. . . . The
patterns scientists observe in nature are intimately connected with the patterns
of their mind; with their concepts, thoughts, and values'' (Capra, 1983, pp. 86–
87).
From this perspective, the epistemological challenge of all research, and
90
RONALD W. MORRIS
particularly of research on a value-rich area, is not a denial of subjectivity or `
`cool objectivity, but a clarity and honesty about where we begin'' (Zullo &
Whitehead, 1983, p. 20). As sociologist Karl Manheim has said:
A clear and explicit avowal of the implicit metaphysical presuppositions that
underlie and make possible empirical knowledge will do more for the clarification
and advancement of research than a verbal denial of the existence of these
presuppositions accompanied by their surreptitious admission through the back
door. (cited in Lyon, 1983, p. 181)
Implicit value commitments are inaccessible to criticism and thereby
subject to ideology. The quest for scientific objectivity, ``belies its own aims,
subverting both the meaning and potential of objective inquiry'' (Keller, 1985,
p. 12; see also Maguire, 1978, p. 180). Researchers must admit, clarify and
criticize their own fundamental value presuppositions if their findings and
conclusions are to become more objective. In other words, authentic
subjectivity is genuine objectivity (Conn, 1981; Peshkin, 1988).
CONCLUSION
The current emphasis on values in sexuality education increases the need for
research in this area. Researchers, however, must begin to consider possibilities other than surveys and experimental designs. Surveys' quantitative
instruments can show only the external face of values, not the richness, depth
and complexity of real living values.
Experimental research reduces sexuality education to an object in the
school curriculum, and reduces valuing to hypothetical perceptions of value
clarity. Having adopted the goals and procedures of a science that deals with
non-human objects and material phenomena, experimental research obscures
the ways in which persons imbue their sexuality and valuing with meaning.
Both surveys and experimental designs demean and decontextualize an area of
human experience organically linked to meaning-making and irreducibly
context dependent. As Mishler (1979) writes:
Science is neither a cure nor a palliative for alienation. Nonetheless, it need not
add to other alienating forces in the society. A better fit between our research
methods and our phenomena of interest, the context dependence of human
meaning and action, might be one step toward a nonalienating science. (p. 18)
91
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Profiles of the Abilities
of Preschool Aged Children
in an Isolated Northern Community*
Patricia M. Canning
mount saint vincent university
This preliminary investigation into cognitive abilities, social competence, and
home environments of preschool children living in a northern Labrador community was a first step in the development of an appropriate preschool program. The
preschool was intended to help alleviate a pattern of school failure in the
community. Eighteen children ranging in age from 34 to 46 months performed on
standardized tests of language and cognitive ability at levels suggesting they were
at risk of school failure. Even within this sample there is a subgroup who are at
even greater risk and who are not receiving any early intervention. On a test of
social competence both groups scored above the normative mean. These findings
have implications for preschool intervention and for early schooling.
Cette recherche préliminaire axée sur les aptitudes intellectuelles, les aptitudes
sociales et les milieux familiaux des enfants d'âge préscolaire d'une communauté
du nord du Labrador a constitué la première étape de l'élaboration d'un programme
préscolaire visant à contribuer à la diminution des échecs scolaires au sein de cette
communauté. Les résultats des tests mesurant le langage et les aptitudes
intellectuelles de 18 enfants âgés de 34 à 46 mois ont donné à penser que ces
derniers risquaient d'échouer à l'école. Un sous-groupe encore plus susceptible
d'échouer ne fait l'objet d'aucune intervention précoce. Dans un test portant sur les
aptitudes sociales, les deux groupes ont obtenu des résultats supérieurs à la
moyenne. Ces observations peuvent servir en matière d'intervention et d'éducation
préscolaires.
This study grew out of a project to establish a preschool program in a northern
*
Preparation of this article was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The author thanks the women and
children who participated in this study, and R.R. Orr and M.E. Lyon for their
comments and suggestions.
93
94
PATRICIA M. CANNING
Labrador community. I hoped through studies of cognitive abilities, social
competence, and home environments to explain why the community's
preschool-aged children typically go on to fail in elementary school and how
that pattern of failure might be broken.
Research over the past 25 years indicates that preschool programs designed
to improve intellectual and language development can help children from poor
and disadvantaged environments to function in and benefit from public
education (Bryant & Ramey, 1987; Lazar, Darlington, Murray, Royce &
Snipper, 1982; Ramey & Campbell, 1984; Wright, 1983). This evidence
comes predominantly from inner-city areas in the United States. Although
social and educational problems in northern communities are well documented, there have been few interventions with, and little research on young
children in such communities.
Taylor and Skanes' (1975, 1976, 1977) studies of the cognitive and linguistic
characteristics of elementary school-aged children in Labrador communities
found that these children perform below the norm on standardized tests of
intelligence and language. The effects of low socioeconomic status on
children's performance is similar in northern, isolated communities and in
southern, poor, inner-city areas in the United States and Canada. There are no
similar published studies of preschool-aged children from isolated northern
Canadian communities.
The objective of this preliminary investigation was to gather information on
the abilities of preschool aged children in this community. This information is
essential if appropriate measures are to be taken to help prevent educational
failure.
METHOD
Subjects
This study's sample consisted of 18 preschool-aged children comprising
approximately 90 percent of all children aged between 2 and 4 living in the
community. The children ranged in age from 34 months to 46 months, with a
mean age of 39.22 months. There were 8 males and 10 females.
Of 18 children, 10 subsequently enrolled in the preschool program and 8 did
not. There was no significant difference between the ages of those who
enrolled in the preschool and those who did not. Preschool programs are
voluntary, and controlling or matching the two groups was thus impossible.
However, the results display interesting post-hoc differences.
94
PROFILES OF ABILITIES
95
The investigator and a community worker visited all families in the
community with preschool-aged children to inform them of the preschool
program and to request their assistance with preliminary data gathering. All
parents reported prior knowledge of the preschool program. All parents whose
children participated in the study spoke English. Only one preschool child, a
male, was not of Inuit and/or Settler (that is, descendants of people of
European origin who have lived in Labrador for approximately a century)
origin. All children spoke English in the home and heard older persons speak
Innukituk.
Community
The preschool centre was in a relatively large coastal community in Labrador,
accessible by boat and plane during summer, and otherwise by plane.
Television arrived in the late 1970s. The population includes Inuit, Settlers and
outside transient workers (for example, teachers, police, hospital and
government employees). It has tripled since the resettlement programs of the
1950s and the closure in the 1960s of small settlements mainly to the north.
The transition from small group to large community living has been difficult.
The community now has high rates of unemployment, alcoholism, family
violence, teenage suicides, and low rates of school completion.
Measures
The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (McCarthy, 1972) provide a
differentiated profile of children's abilities and indicate a general level of
intellectual functioning. Its relatively recent standardization included children
from different races and different socioeconomic strata.
The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Revised (Dunn & Dunn, 1981) is
widely used in intervention research. It primarily measures receptive vocabulary ability.
The Vineland Social Maturity Scale (Doll, 1965) is a standardized developmental schedule that measures level of social competence. During early
childhood the scale indicates self-help skills. The most recent edition was not
available at the time of the initial testing.
The High Scope Home Environment Scale (High Scope Educational
Research Foundation, 1974) asks parents about the home setting and parentchild interactions. It assesses a number of areas, including mother's involvement, mother's teaching, child's participation in household tasks, playthings
available, and books in the home.
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PATRICIA M. CANNING
Procedure
The children were tested before the beginning of the preschool year. All
children took the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Revised (PPVT–R) and
the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA). The mothers completed
the Vineland Social Maturity Scale (VSMS) and the High Scope Home
Environment Scale (HES).
Two experienced psychometrists tested all children in a quiet area of the
preschool centre. Both psychometrists were female and assessed an equal
number of males and females.
RESULTS
Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations on the McCarthy Scales of
Children's Abilities, the PPVT–R, and the VSMS.
TABLE 1
Means and Standard Deviations for the MSCA (General
Cognitive Index), PPVT–R, and VSMS and the MSCA Subscales
X
S.D.
MSCA
64.44
13.81
PPVT–R
74.22
16.05
118.11
21.13
Verbal
40.17
7.45
Perceptual-Performance
45.44
8.80
Quantitative
38.39
6.28
Memory
42.17
7.70
Motor
50.83
7.63
VSMS
MSCA Subscales
97
Scores on both the MSCA and the PPVT–R were significantly below the
normative mean (that is, 100). The mean score on the VSMS, however, was
above the mean for the normative sample. Scores on the MSCA General
Cognitive Index (GCI) were higher than those on the PPVT–R.
Table 1 displays the means and standard deviations for the subscales of the
MSCA.
The Verbal Scale and other scale performances did not differ significantly.
Initial variability of data distinguished children who, subsequent to testing,
enrolled in preschool (group P) and those who did not (group NP).
Table 2 shows the means and standard deviations for the two groups on the
MSCA, PPVT–R, and VSMS.
TABLE 2
Means, Standard Deviations and t Values
for the MSCA, PPVT–R and VSMS
Group P
Group NP
X
S.D.
MSCA
91.30
8.36
PPVT–R
81.00
124.00
VSMS
X
S.D.
t
75.88
14.47
2.66*
13.78
67.50
14.70
2.29*
18.88
111.00
21.40
1.29
*p<.05
T-tests indicated that group P had higher mean scores on the PPVT–R and
the MSCA than group NP. Although children registered for preschool scored
significantly higher on the PPVT–R than those not enrolled, the former were
still below average compared to the normative sample.
Both groups' performance on the MSCA was closer to the normative mean
than was their performance on the PPVT–R. Group P's MSCA mean score was
within the average range, although their performance on the PPVT–R was
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PATRICIA M. CANNING
more than 1 S.D. below the normative mean. Group NP's performance on the
MSCA was within 1 S.D. of the normative mean, but their performance on the
PPVT–R was more than 2 S.D.s below the normative mean. Both groups'
performance on the VSMS was above the normative mean, with group P's
performance more than 1 S.D. above.
Table 3 presents the means, standard deviations and t values for the five
subscales of the MSCA.
Of the three subscales included in the General Cognitive Index—Verbal,
Perceptual-Performance, and Quantitative—group P's scores on the Verbal
and Quantitative scales were significantly higher than those of group NP. Of
the supplementary scales—Memory and Motor—group P's performance on
the Memory scale was significantly higher than group NP's.
Group NP's mean discrepancy in level of performance on the Verbal and
Perceptual-Performance subscales was significantly greater than that of group
P. This indicates relatively lower verbal skills rather than more- developed
perceptual abilities in the NP Group.
The Home Environment Scale provided some very preliminary information
about these children's home environments. Both groups of mothers responded
similarly to items about objects available in the home, household tasks that the
child helps mother with, and hours of television watched. The few differences
that did emerge (on items such as child is read to almost every day, mother and
child talk about feelings) may indicate that parents of group P children interact
more verbally with their children and this may account for higher verbal
scores.
TABLE 3
Means, Standard Deviations and t Values for MSCA Subscales
Group P
X
Verbal
Group NP
S.D.
X
S.D.
t
44.80
4.00
34.37
6.67
3.88**
Performance
47.50
7.47
42.87
9.61
1.08
Quantitative
43.10
5.82
32.50
12.97
2.18*
Perceptual-
99
Memory
46.10
5.05
37.25
7.61
2.78*
Motor
53.60
5.59
47.38
8.40
1.26
*p<.05
**p<.01
TABLE 4
Description of Sample
X
S.D.
Father's occupation
Clerk
2
Fisherman/fish plant worker
1
3
Labourer
1
On government assistance
1
Technician
2
Government service
2
Self-employed
1
Mother's occupation
Clerk
2
Fisherwoman/fish plant worker
1
On government assistance
2
Homemaker
Technician
Nurse's aide
2
2
1
Secretary
Teacher's aide
3
2
2
1
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PATRICIA M. CANNING
Additional information about the families of these children was obtained by
examining parents' occupations (see Table 4). Of the five fathers of group NP,
three were fishermen or fish plant workers, one was a labourer, and one was
unemployed. No father of a child enrolled in preschool was unemployed and
seven of the ten fathers have blue- or white-collar jobs. There was no
substantial difference between the two groups in the numbers of mothers
working outside the home, nor did the mothers' occupations differ between
groups.
DISCUSSION
Initial testing showed that these children's performance on both the MSCA and
the PPVT–R is significantly below the norm for those tests. These data show
that these children will be at a cognitive disadvantage when they begin school.
Performance on the measure of social competence, however, indicated that
these children have well-developed social skills.
Results on cognitive and language measures are similar to those reported for
older children living in that area (Taylor & Skanes, 1975). However, these
children's performance on the receptive vocabulary measure (X_=74) is
somewhat higher than that Taylor and Skanes (1976) reported for school- aged
children in northern communities (X_between 58 and 61). These differences
may be accounted for by the use of the revised PPVT or by the approximately
10-year gap between these studies, during which time there have been changes
(for instance, the introduction of television in the late 1970s) that may
facilitate vocabulary development. The inferior performance of the older
school-aged children in the Taylor and Skanes study suggests that those who
begin school at a disadvantage become more disadvantaged with age—a
finding that would underscore the importance of early intervention.
The relationship between this receptive language measure and a more
comprehensive measure of intellectual functioning is similar for the preschool
children in this study and for older children studied by Taylor and Skanes.
That is, both groups of children scored lower on the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test than on the measure of general cognitive functioning. Lower
PPVT than Stanford-Binet scores have been reported by Zigler, Abelson and
Seitz (1973) in ``disadvantaged'' ethnic minority children in the United States.
While the lower PPVT–R scores obtained may therefore indicate that some
items are inappropriate for children living in isolated communities, generally
the PPVT–R does correlate with school achievement (Sattler, 1988).
101
Educational materials used in northern schools are developed for Southern
children; consequently, depressed scores on this measure of language skill
may point to the need for educational materials better suited to such
communities.
Performance on the Verbal Scale of the MSCA did not differ significantly
from performance on the other subscales. This result contrasts with data
reported for older children in similar communities. Taylor and Skanes (1975)
reported significantly higher scores on performance than on verbal scales on
the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (Wechsler, 1967)
for school-aged children. The present findings may be a result of these
children being at an age when there is less differentiation between separate
abilities.
Although all children require early intervention services, these data point to
a sub-group at even greater risk of future school difficulties. On measures of
both general cognitive functioning and receptive language, the children who
did not subsequently enroll in preschool (group NP) performed significantly
more poorly than those who enrolled in preschool (group P). That is, all
children in the study are below average on the receptive language measure and
on the comprehensive measure of general cognitive functioning, but the
children who have greatest need for preschool experience are not receiving it.
The two groups' performance on the VSMS did not differ significantly; the
mean scores were above average for both groups. Preschool children's mothers
have previously been found to report higher levels of competence than the
children's teachers (Kaplan & Alatishe, 1976), which may be a factor in these
results. Perhaps in isolated, northern communities a more traditional
involvement of children in daily living is encouraged; as well, the size and
nature of the community (no strangers, no cars) might allow more rapid
development of social skills than would a more modern community (Skolnick,
1976). These results are also consistent with the independence and autonomy
Native parents encourage in young children (Guemple, 1979; McKenzie &
Hudson, 1985). Preschool and school programs should take into account the
well-developed social competence of these children.
As indicated earlier, there were no obvious demographic differences
between the two groups. Information from the Home Environment Scale
indicated that the homes of group NP children contain the same number of
toys and other playthings as did the homes of the preschool group. However,
the two groups' home backgrounds differ on several individual measures,
including language experience. The higher verbal scores of the preschool
group may be attributable to greater mother-child verbal interaction as
reported by the mothers. Perhaps these parents are more likely to value such
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PATRICIA M. CANNING
interactions and recognize that advantages might stem from experiences
during the early years. The fathers of children in group P work in skilled trades
or white-collar jobs. Although wages of group P families may be higher than
those of group NP families, attendance at preschool is thought not to be solely
determined by financial considerations. Some of the families in the preschool
group were receiving subsidies, and at the time of this study, additional
subsidies were available.
There was no evidence that mothers who did not enroll their children in
preschool were less interested in their children than those who did, and both
groups' mothers were equally willing to participate in this study.
Recommendations
Bryant and Ramey (1987) found that without some sort of systematic
intervention during the preschool years, a significant proportion of children
considered to be environmentally at risk are not likely to develop their full
intellectual potential. These data indicate that children in isolated northern
communities are at risk of later school failure and might benefit from early
intervention. A variety of early intervention models can potentially influence
development. This being so, preventive intervention for children at risk of
educational failure should be tailored to the lifestyles and experiences of both
the children and their families (Slaughter, 1983). Bronfenbrenner (1977)
argues that an ecological approach generally is, and ought to be, more
effective than intervention aimed at the child alone. Children's intellectual
development improves most when children attend day care and families
receive parent training or other services, regardless of variations in
well-developed educational methods and practices (Bryant & Ramey, 1987).
Services additional to the preschool program might be extended to all families
through information services, parent get-togethers, book and toy lending
libraries, mother-child groups, and drop in centres. Parents might be more
willing or able to meet their children's needs if the program also meets their
needs as adults and as parents.
The community I studied has included an extra year of schooling between
kindergarten and grade 1. However, simply staying in school longer will not
help these children. Rather, the first school year could be modelled after
preschool instead of a typical kindergarten class. These children would benefit
from a variety of experiences and the language stimulation that is more easily
encouraged in a preschool-like environment which emphasizes
experimentation, exploration, and social interaction.
103
CONCLUSIONS
The children in this community are at risk of school failure. There is a
sub-group—those who do not attend preschool—who are at even greater risk
than the group as a whole and who do not receive any early intervention. I
hope my data will help educators reexamine and revise educational practices
to help these children and to build on their competences rather than on their
weaknesses. Since research supports the value of preschool for children from
lower socioeconomic families (Bryant & Ramey, 1987; Wright, 1985) it is
important to identify factors that determine whether a parent enrolls a child.
There have been many studies of disadvantaged preschool children who
receive early intervention. Such studies often do not include information on
children's levels of functioning when they start the program, or comparisons
with those who do not attend (Department of Health and Human Services,
1985). Yet, the level of a child's functioning at the start of any intervention
may affect whether she/he benefits from such a program and may be an
important consideration for designing effective intervention. This study
highlights the need for further research in this area.
REFERENCES
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecology of human development. American Psychologist, 32, 513–531.
Bryant, D.M., & Ramey, C.T. (1987). An analysis of the effectiveness of early
intervention programs for environmentally at-risk children. In M. Guralnick &
F. Bennett (Eds.), The effectiveness of early intervention for at-risk and
handicapped children (pp. 33–78). New York: Academic Press.
Department of Health and Human Services (1985). The impact of head start on
children, families and communities (Publication number OHDS 85-31193).
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Doll, L.A. (1965). Vineland Social Maturity Scale. Circle Pines, MN: American
Guidance Service.
Dunn, L.M., & Dunn, L.M. (1981). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Revised.
Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.
Guemple, L. (1979). Inuit socialization: A study of children as social actors in an
Eskimo community. In K. Ishwaran (Ed.), Childhood and adolescence in
Canada (pp. 39–53). Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
High Scope Educational Research Foundation (1974). High Scope Home Environment Scale. Ypsilanti, MI: High Scope Press.
Kaplan, H.E., & Alatishe, M. (1976). Comparison of ratings by mothers and
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teachers on preschool children using the Vineland Social Maturity Scale.
Psychology in the Schools, 13, 27–28.
Lazar, I., Darlington, R., Murray, H., Royce, J., & Snipper, A. (1982). Lasting
effects of early education: A report from the Consortium for Longitudinal
Studies (Monograph 47). PLACE: Society for Research in Child Development.
McCarthy, D.A. (1972). Manual for the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities.
New York: Psychological Corporation.
/McKenzie, B., & Hudson, P. (1985). Native children, child welfare, and the
colonization of native people. In K.L. Levitt & B. Wharf (Eds.), The challenge
of child welfare (pp. 125–141). Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.
Ramey, C.T., & Campbell, F.A. (1984). Preventive education for high-risk
children: Cognitive consequences of the Carolina Abecedarian Project. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 88, 515–523.
Sattler, J. M. (1988). Assessment of children (3rd ed.). San Diego, CA: Author.
Skolnick, A. (Ed.). (1976). Rethinking childhood: Perspectives on development
and society. Toronto: Little, Brown.
Slaughter, D.T. (1983). Early intervention and its effects on maternal and child
development (Monograph 48). PLACE: Society for Research in Child Development.
Taylor, L.J., & Skanes, G.R. (1975). Psycholinguistic abilities of children in
isolated communities in Labrador. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 7
(1), 30–39.
Taylor, L.J., & Skanes, G.R. (1976). Cognitive abilities of Inuit and white children
from similar environments. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 8 (1), 1–8.
Taylor, L.J., & Skanes, G.R. (1977). A cross-cultural examination of some of
Jensen's hypotheses. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 9 (4), 315–322.
Wechsler, D. (1967). Manual for the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of
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Wright, M.J. (1983). Compensatory education in the preschool. Ypsilanti, MI:
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Patricia M. Canning is in the Department of Child Study, Mount Saint Vincent
University, 166 Bedford Highway, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3M 2J6.
Differences in the Given Names
of Good and Poor Readers
Jo-Ann L. Stewart
Sidney J. Segalowitz
brock university
Of the many researchers who have investigated the psychological importance
of names (Dion, 1985; Garwood, 1976; Hargreaves, Coleman, & Sluckin,
1983; McDavid & Harari, 1966), we are especially interested in those working
on the relationship between student names and the school performance of
those students. Busse and Seraydarian (1978), for example, found significant
correlations between students' first name desirability, as rated by peers, and
their school readiness, IQ, and school achievement. Harari and McDavid
(1973) required teachers to evaluate fifth-grade essays previously rated by
researchers as of equal quality. Writers were identified only by first name. The
essays of authors whose names were associated with positive stereotypes were
evaluated as being of a higher quality. One interpretation of these findings is
that teachers' stereotypic attitudes influence the performance of the children
under their care (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). However, the question remains
where these stereotypes come from and whether names are partly responsible
for these differences. Possible factors differentiating the names include
likability (Hargreaves, Colman, & Sluckin, 1983), commonality (Dion, 1985),
traditionality (Dion, 1983b), and socio-economic status (Zweigenhaft, 1977).
The present study derives from another investigation (Segalowitz &
Wagner, 1989) on reading skills in grade 9 students, where we noticed
anecdotally that individuals unfamiliar with the subjects or their names could
nonetheless consistently differentiate the list of given names of the remedial
group from that of the controls. One could not predict the group membership
of a single name with accuracy, but each list as a block could be accurately
assigned.
METHOD
Fifty-three teachers from six elementary schools rated their attitudes toward
names on four different dimensions. Seven-point ratings were obtained for the
103
104
RESEARCH NOTE / NOTE DE RECHERCHE
commonality of each name (1=very common name, 7=very uncommon name),
the traditionality (1=very traditional name, 7=very untraditional name) of each
name and how well teachers liked the names (1=dislike the name strongly,
7=like the name strongly). We used a three-point scale to decide at which
socio-economic level teachers thought the names were most common
(1=lower level, 3=upper level). Names on the questionnaire were
counter-balanced on gender and on reading ability group as determined in the
other study.
The names came from a list of 15-year-old secondary students from another
school board in Southern Ontario, including persons referred for remedial
reading classes and a control group many of whom were in an enrichment
program. There were 40 names in the original lists of good and poor readers,
with 20 appearing in both. After dropping names that occurred in both lists, we
had 18 names in the good reading group and 14 names in the poor reading
group.
Names in the good reading list were Aaron, Cheryl, Kristie, Andrew,
Rachel, Ryan, Stephanie, Shannon, Tanya, Kevin, Jennifer, Christopher,
Jessica, Elisa, Sarah, Scott, Todd, and Suzanne. Names in the poor reading list
were James, Kyle, Kathleen, Christine, George, Craig, Melanie, Wendy,
Angie, William, Bill, Lana, Steven, and Jenn.
Procedure
Teachers were told that if they chose to complete the questionnaire, they were
to rate the scales according to the names only. They were directed to try not to
think of people or students they knew who shared the same names as those
disclosed in the questionnaire.
RESULTS
Each subject's ratings were arranged to produce one rating on each scale for
each of the two name groups. A paired samples t-test was then performed on
each of the four scales. The groups did not differ on commonality or likability
(t(41)=1.35 and t(41)=1.28, respectively). However, the names of the good
readers were rated as significantly less traditional (M=3.688) than those of the
poor readers (M=3.0786), t(41)=6.33, p<.0001 and higher in socio-economic
level (M=2.1247) than the poor readers (M=2.0471), t(39)=2.37, p<.025. Two
subjects had not completed the SES scale.
The above analysis treats the group of names as a fixed effect, conforming
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105
to informal observations described in our introduction. We could, however,
view the names as subjects, that is, see whether the average rating per name
would differentiate the reading levels, treating names as a random variable
(Hays, 1988). Analyzed this way, the two groups were not different on any of
the four scales (t=.84, 1.27, .42, and 1.11 for the likability, traditionality,
commonality, and SES scales respectively, df=30). This conforms with our
intuition that individual names were too variable to permit consistent
individual allocation.
DISCUSSION
This study has confirmed earlier research into the relationship between
teachers' attitudes toward student names and the students' school performance
(Harari and McDavid, 1973). In our sample, groups with names rated by
elementary school teachers as less traditional (for example, Elisa, Aaron) also
performed well in academic subjects. Similarly, the group referred for
remedial reading had traditional names (for example, William, Kathleen). The
groups were similarly differentiated on perceived SES level. We emphasize
the distinction of academic achievement because groups did not differ on
non-verbal IQ as measured by the IPAT (t(27)=1.92, p<.05, IPAT
quotient=104 and 96 for good and poor readers, respectively) nor the Digit
Span (t(29)=1.06).
As Harari and McDavid (1973) suggest, teachers may stereotype first names
of students and have higher expectations for those students with names
associated with positive stereotypes. For this group in our study whose parents
belong more or less to the so-called baby-boom generation, upwardly mobile
parents may have chosen less traditional names for their children in the
mid-1970s. The traditional association between SES and reading skills may
have mediated the effects. The critical link tying this effect to the reading skill
of our secondary students—that non-traditional names were more popular in
upper SES groups in the 1970s—may not hold any more, as parental naming
patterns may have changed, but it may take some time before this change
affects teachers' attitudes.
REFERENCES
Busse, T.V., & Seraydarian, L. (1978). The relationships between first name
desirability and school readiness, IQ, and school achievement. Psychology in
the Schools, 15, 297–302.
Dion, K.L. (1985). Sex differences in desirability of first names: Another non-
106
conscious sexist bias? Academic Psychology Bulletin, 7, 287–298.
Garwood, S.G. (1976). First-name stereotypes as a factor in self-concept and
school achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 68, 482–487.
Harari, H., & McDavid, J.W. (1973). Name stereotypes and teachers' expectations.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 65, 222–225.
Hargreaves, D.J., Colman, A.M., & Sluckin, W. (1983). The attractiveness of
names. Human Relations, 36, 393–402.
Hays, W.L. (1988). Statistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
McDavid, J.W., & Harari, H. (1966). Stereotyping of names and popularity in
grade-school children. Child Development, 37, 453–459.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher
expectation and pupils' intellectual development. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Segalowitz, S.J., & Wagner, W.J. (1989). Frontal lobe EEG correlates of memory
and thinking in adolescence. Canadian Psychology, 30, 498.
Zweigenhaft, R.L. (1977). The other side of unusual first names. Journal of Social
Psychology, 103, 291–302.
Book Reviews / Recensions
L'enseignement secondaire public des frères éducateurs (1920–1970): utopie
et modernité
par Paul-André Turcotte
Montréal: les Éditions Bellarmin, 1988. 220 pages.
RECENSION PAR BERNARD LEFEBVRE, UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL
Dans cet ouvrage, qui se situe à la confluence de la sociologie et de l'histoire,
l'auteur démontre que le projet d'éducation secondaire prôné par les religieux
au cours d'une période de cinquante ans, soit de 1920 à 1970, a revêtu un
caractère utopique vu l'opposition des autorités réglementaires, soit le Comité
catholique du Conseil de l'Instruction publique.
Comme fils de l'Église, les frères se soumettaient à la hiérarchie catholique
mais se démarquaient et parfois même s'opposaient aux décisions prises par
elle en éducation. Cette protestation ne prenait pas les voies de la révolte mais
plutôt celles de discours proposant de façon répétitive des orientations
pratiques à l'égard de l'enseignement secondaire public où ils s'étaient
immiscés en prolongement de leur mission première. Les communautés
enseignantes nourrissaient un idéal de vie ascétique et de services à rendre à la
société en guise de témoignages chrétiens. Possédant leur originalité propre et
leur structure distincte, elles tenaient à se distinguer des clercs. Ceux-ci,
héritiers des Jésuites, se réservaient la part noble de l'enseignement secondaire
classique; ceux-là se voyaient confiner à l'héritage lasallien, les petites écoles
pour les enfants du peuple.
Personne ne refusait aux frères éducateurs le droit d'occuper le champ de
l'enseignement secondaire. Il fallait que cette activité soit alors seulement une
extension du primaire qui pouvait ne prendre que le nom de supérieur. On
évitait, de cette façon, toute compétition avec les collèges classiques et on
maintenait une distance respectable entre l'éducation populaire sans espoir
d'accéder aux études supérieures et celle de la bourgeoisie destinée à préparer
les futurs chefs de file et à renouveler les cadres du clergé.
Les frères préconisaient donc un cours post-primaire de quatre et même de
cinq ans tourné vers le modèle nord-américain des high schools, tandis que le
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BOOK REVIEWS / RECENSIONS
107
département de l'Instruction publique, établissant un cours de trois ans,
s'inspirait davantage de la France et de la Suisse. La peur de calquer les
États-Unis créait un niveau d'études voué à l'impasse, vu la quasi-impossibilité
de poursuivre ensuite des études universitaires. Pourtant, à la même époque,
les autorités québécoises de l'éducation autorisaient les anglo-catholiques et les
anglo-protestants à organiser un cours secondaire public et gratuit donnant
accès à l'université.
En 1929, malgré que l'expérience durait depuis huit ans dans plusieurs de
leurs institutions, les congrégations masculines durent renoncer à un enseignement secondaire long et gratuit. Ils ne se dévouèrent pas moins à implanter
un cours primaire supérieur tronqué de ce qui aurait assuré le relèvement de la
classe laborieuse, évitant ainsi toute concurrence avec les humanités classiques
et ne menaçant pas le prestige social de la bourgeoisie.
En 1939–1940, il est intéressant de constater la constance dans le discours
des frères enseignants, si l'on se réfère au mémoire présenté au cardinal
Rodrigue Villeneuve. Il y était proposé un enseignement pré-universitaire de
treize années: six ans de primaire, quatre ans de cours moyen et trois ou quatre
ans de cours secondaire; il n'était plus question d'un cours supérieur. Ce long
document demeura lettre morte.
Cependant, obéissant au besoin des jeunes, les frères enseignants mirent sur
pied des classes de 12e année spéciale ou de 13e année, qui étaient en sujet,
des classes de sciences et de génie. Voilà comment ces éducateurs ont pu
permettre à des fils du petit peuple de franchir les marches de l'université. En
1960, ces classes spéciales comptaient 4 000 inscriptions.
En plus de leur demander beaucoup sur le plan de l'enseignement, les
paroisses exigeaient des congrégations disponibilité et dévouement. L'action
catholique, les enfants de choeur et les associations pieuses requéraient les
services de ces enseignants-éducateurs. Les loisirs, la culture et l'action
économique les interpelaient de toutes parts. Exploités par tous et brimés dans
leur sphère particulière d'action, il n'est pas surprenant que les défections se
multiplièrent dans les communautés de frères enseignants.
Au moment de la réforme scolaire, qui se déroula de 1960 à 1970, la classe
ascendante des fonctionnaires gouvernementaux et, principalement, celle du
ministère de l'Éducation nouvellement créé, éliminait la présence
institutionnelle des congrégations tout en retenant, dans une large mesure, leur
proposition d'enseignement secondaire.
La réforme scolaire emprunta à l'utopie de la formation scientifique prônée
par les frères, mais ne retint pas l'ensemble de leur projet. L'intégration des
religieux à l'intérieur de la Centrale des enseignants du Québec eut finalement
107
108
pour effet de neutraliser leur spécificité particulière d'intervention.
Où réussir à sauvegarder leur action religieuse et éducative sinon dans des
pays lointains comme le Burundi? Certains religieux quittèrent alors les écoles
pour se livrer à la pastorale, ici où à l'étranger, se mettant ainsi clairement sous
les ordres du clergé qu'ils avaient toujours fidèlement assisté dans le service
des autels.
Le dossier du rôle joué par les frères éducateurs du Québec prend donc, en
quelque sorte, l'allure d'un rendez-vous manqué. Considérées comme mineures
dans la hiérarchie ecclésiale, les congrégations d'hommes avaient accepté la
mission de prodiguer cette oeuvre de charité spirituelle qui consistait en
l'éducation chrétienne dans les écoles primaires. Les besoins de la jeunesse en
milieu urbain et industriel de même qu'un certain nationalisme pragmatique
ont incité ces enseignants à développer un cours secondaire s'inspirant du
modèle américain et conduisant à l'université. Cette formation scientifique
frappait de plein fouet l'idéologie nationaliste et culturelle des clercs qui
avaient le monopole de l'enseignement secondaire long dispensé dans les
collèges classiques sous leur contrôle exclusif. Comme les frères s'installaient
dans un territoire déjà occupé, l'Église accepta de partager ce domaine sans se
départir des avantages qui y étaient déjà rattachés. Les congréganistes durent
par conséquent se contenter de dispenser un cours prolongeant le primaire. Ce
fut alors l'impasse puisque leur cours secondaire ne conduisait pas à l'entrée
dans les facultés universitaires.
Défiant le système scolaire officiel et bravant presque le haut clergé, les
frères ont toutefois maintenu une année préparatoire au génie et au commerce
avec le support de la population. N'ayant été que tolérées et manquant d'assises
juridiques, leurs institutions, même dans le secteur des commissions scolaires,
furent finalement emportées par le raz de marée de la réforme scolaire.
Jouissant de peu de prestige, l'État, qui devenait maître d'oeuvre en créant le
ministère de l'Éducation, ne tenait d'ailleurs pas à prolonger l'existence
d'institutions qu'il considérait comme passéistes.
L'éclatement des effectifs scolaires et la diminution en nombre des
enseignants religieux ont, à toutes fins pratiques, rendu illusoire le développement d'écoles secondaires sous la direction de ces-derniers. Cependant, en
dépit des embûches rencontrées, les frères éducateurs ont oeuvré à l'égalité des
chances en éducation et ont apporté une réponse au souci d'offrir des études
aussi prolongées que possible. La démocratisation scolaire réalisée par les
frères éducateurs a, pour ainsi dire, précédé les discours sur ce sujet.
109
Learning Works: Searching for Organizational Futures:
A Tribute to Eric Trist
Edited by Susan Wright & David Morley
Toronto: The ABL Group, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University,
1989. 286 pages.
REVIEWED BY THERESA RICHARDSON, UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA
This collection of fifteen essays by the ABL (Adapted By Learning) group at
York University is held together by the ideas and life work of Eric Trist, to
whom the book is dedicated. Trist is more than an intellectual mentor: the
volume is pervaded by Trist's charismatic leadership and his utopian legacy.
British born and Cambridge educated, Trist is a major figure in twentiethcentury behavioral scientists' rationalization of organizational management.
Trist's studies in the 1940s and 1950s pioneered `àction research'' and `
`field-based studies.'' It is a cornerstone of Trist's ``radical humanism'' to
improve the ``quality of working life'' (QWL). Trist brought QWL to the
United States and Canada in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1977 Trist was
appointed to York University, where he did `òrganizational ecology'' and `
`community-based'' Canadian research. He retired in 1985.
Trist's paradigm along with his specialized jargon has filtered into research
agendas in a variety of fields including education. Many of Trist's themes are
now popular in educational circles. An underlying premise of these essays is
that unprecedented change has overwhelmed society. Similar assumptions
contributed to the pressure to reform educational institutions in the 1980s.
Trist's thesis is also grounded in an individualistic ``learner- centred'' ideology
stressing `èfficiency.''
Trist helped to create the image of dramatic, disruptive, and global change,
and individual-oriented solutions. The first five essays describe a ``vortex'' of `
`radical,'' ``systematic,'' ``socio-technical'' transformation that has overtaken `àll
of humanity.'' This aspect of Trist's paradigm parallels Alvin Toffler's vision of
the cataclysmic transformation in Future Shock and The Third Wave, Ivan
Illich's attack on the inadequacy of education in Deschooling Society, and T.
Peters and R. Waterman's In Search of Excellence as an adaptation of business
strategies to solve social problems. Trist also incorporates elements of
nostalgia and sentimentalism reminiscent of E.F. Schumacher's Small is
Beautiful.
110
Trist argues that ``turbulent'' life conditions necessitate a humanitarian
revolution that becomes a form of ``field psychiatry'' (p. 169). Traditional `
`humanitarian'' concerns about social justice and human dignity are to be
redressed by reducing psychological stress. Discrepancies in the distribution of
wealth and power in society are not necessarily problematic. Social progress is
linked to cybernetic or ecological variables where ``field'' or ``community''
problems are caused by pervasive non-human forces. Trist's
group-therapy-like solutions depersonalize control at both the corporate and
governmental levels.
Since the primary cause of global disorder, the ``vortex,'' is separate from
any social power base and beyond human intervention, individual security is
reestablished on an interactional and affective level stressing freedom and
choice, with projects that incorporate the language of ``collaboration,'' `
`negotiated order,'' ``democratization,'' ``participation,'' `èmpowerment,'' and `
`power sharing.'' This translates into ``self-design,'' ``self-regulation,'' `
`self-respect,'' and ``self-esteem'' (see Clarkson, pp. 18–20). Building positive
self-concepts takes precedence over equitable distribution of political power,
decision-making authority, or control over primary resources or services. This
form of ``radicalism'' potentially comes full circle toward a staunch, if masked,
conservatism.
Although at least one essay (by Cunningham and White) in this collection
directly considers implementation problems past and future (p. 21), none of
the essays' authors questions or deviates from Trist's ideological premises,
even if the results are sometimes contradictory. One author reconciles the
dilemma inherent in advocating democratic participation, designing change `
`with'' people versus the inherent authoritarian nature of designing change ``for'
' people, by stating that: ```For' people and `with' people are not necessarily
opposites; they may more properly be considered complementary'' (p. 42). By
contrast to the traditional twentieth-century scientific management thesis of
Frederick Taylor (1911), who incorporated a ``machine'' metaphor into
organization theory, the authors in this collection use a ``holographic''
metaphor for the new paradigm where ``people complement machines''
(Morgan, p. 58; Craig, p. 69). Holography is, of course, the three-dimensional
photography of light, form without substance.
The most stimulating and least ideological essays are those in the midsection of the collection, which descriptively report research on `òrganizational ecologies'' or ``meta-problems.'' Examples include studies on ``community-based'' change in Nova Scotia; learning from Native peoples; the
separation of work and family life; international development; and provincial
health care in Ontario. The final section returns to the problem of justifying
111
and coordinating Trist's paradigm with a focus on `àction learning.''
Trist's legacy may deny democratic voice even as it paradoxically claims to
enhance such voice. It allows for the consolidation of power and status by
minimizing the viability of politically volatile interests. The cybernetic model
of change, which is incorporated into Trist's paradigm, redefines social
contexts in ways that make the issues appear either benign or beyond control.
Social control is incorporated into the design, where the process of change
eliminates the need for external sanctions or policing. Such closed systems are
concerned `às much with the recipe's potential for self-development as . . .
with the recipe itself'' (Ramirez, pp. 250–252).
Trist's legacy is partly the transformation of the post-industrial rationale for
distribution of resources in highly developed capitalistic societies. Resources
are distributed among labour and management in order to control the means of
production and to decide who will ultimately benefit most by the advance of
capital. But they are also distributed so as to control the distribution of public
power and knowledge in the allocation of life chances. This is an arena in
which education is particularly vulnerable. Educators would do well to read
this book carefully and above all critically. Personally, I cannot help but think
that there is a difference between doing something ``for'' someone, and doing it
``with'' them.
Choice of Schools in Six Nations
by Charles L. Glenn
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989. 238 pages.
REVIEWED BY JOHN J. BERGEN, UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
Since 1971 Glenn has directed equity and urban education programs in the
Massachusetts Department of Education. His office has promoted assignment
of students to schools so as to respect parents' choices as far as possible, yet
prevent racial and social segregation of children and creation of elite schools.
The object was to allow public schools to become better. Parents' and teachers'
satisfaction increased as they worked together to define the mission of their
chosen school.
Glenn investigated parental choice in schools in twenty-five countries; he
reports here on choices in France, Holland, Belgium, Britain, Canada, and
112
West Germany. Glenn reviews the historical development of each country's
educational system in political and social contexts.
In France, for example, a continual controversy centred on whether or not
the child belonged to the State, particularly in educational matters. When in
1984 the National Assembly was about to cut subsidies to private schools,
more than a million supporters of Catholic, Jewish and nonconfessional
private schools protested. The contesting of the state school's universalism
partly explains most parents' insistence on their right to choose schools for
reasons other than religious.
Parental choice is most prevalent in Holland, where after a 70-year
struggle, the freedom to choose was constitutionalized in 1917. About 70
percent of all children attend private schools. Though most schools are secular,
the majority of parents insist on freedom of choice.
In Belgium the amended Constitution of 1970 guarantees ``the rights and
freedoms of ideological and philosophical minorities'' (p. 81) to operate private
schools subsidized by the national government. Upon demand, ``neutral'' or
government schools are required also to provide Catholic, Protestant, Islamic,
or Jewish religious instruction.
The 1988 Education Act of Britain's Thatcher Government gave parents
additional power and allowed schools greater autonomy. In Britain, education
choice on religious grounds has long been traditional. As in Holland and
Belgium, more recent immigrants, such as Sikhs and Moslems, for whom
religious identity is of great importance, have also been granted publicly
funded schools.
The 1949 national constitution of West Germany gave parents the right to
choose private schools generously subsidized by each of its states (Länder).
Nevertheless, only about 5 percent of students are enrolled in private schools.
However, parental choice is limited in another sense, since children's
admission to one of the three levels of secondary education is decided by
primary schools' assessments of children's early achievements.
Choices in Canada vary much more than in the other five nations. As in
West Germany, in Canada the organization and control of schools is under
provincial jurisdiction. Unlike that of West Germany, Canada's constitution
does not consider the issue of equity or the right of parents to choose private
schools for their children. In contrast to the other five nations, public support
for private schools is subject to individual provincial policies. Private schools
in Canada as in Holland are under the supervision of education ministries; but
unlike in Holland, in the five Canadian provinces providing financial subsidy,
no private schools receive public funding equal to that of public schools. In
provinces where religious content had been a feature of school programs
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before 1867, the Constitution accommodated it in separate school systems for
Catholic and Protestant minority groups. Religious schooling took place in
private schools in the other provinces. When public schools were deemed
Protestant, many Jewish parents chose private schools for their children; when
the secular character of public schools increased, some non-Catholic parents
chose private schools for religious reasons, while other parents chose them for
pedagogical reasons, and a few chose elite private schools to provide their
children with enhanced educational and social advantages. More recently,
some school boards have provided for bilingual schools to serve the needs of
new immigrant families in particular.
An uncomplicated and simple educational setting would have one public
school system with one language for instruction, only one religious persuasion
(or only one secular perspective), one pedagogy, one set of political and social
values, one culture, and one system of financing—in fact, a state monopoly on
education. In a totalitarian state such a monopoly may be imposed. In a
democratic nation, political parties, ideological groups and professional
educators may seek to impose their views but can succeed only to the extent
that such views are acceptable to the majority of electors. Glenn quotes Mark
Holmes' observation that ``those who believe in the state's right to impose an
education on every child are not normally willing to embrace any education
that any state may actually choose to promulgate” (p. 182).
In a totalitarian state, favourable choices become available to parents in the
political elite, and in a democratic state, to parents with sufficient wealth to
choose private schools, or desirable public schools by residing in select
neighbourhoods. Glenn concludes that none of the national systems he has
examined has ``sought to put parent choice to work in the interest of more
rather than less equity and integration'' (p. 211). Glenn's concern is not directed
to choice between public and private schools, but rather, within reasonable
limitations, to providing all parents a choice among public schools.
Glenn believes `èducational policy must find ways to respect and
accommodate the desire of parents for schooling that reflects their own
convictions . . . without segregation and without abandoning our common
goals as a society . . .'' (p. 216). He believes educational effectiveness can be
increased by permitting individual schools to become clearer about their
mission, by reducing the level of conflict and increasing societal support by
providing parents with a choice, and by stimulating diversity and thus
permitting `à better match of the individual child with an appropriate
educational setting.'' He also suggests the quality of schools might be improved
if they had to compete for students, competition that could force closure of
ineffective schools (p. 218).
114
The benefit of examining other school systems may be less in finding
models for one's own use, but rather, by comparison and contrast, in obtaining
a new perspective on one's own initiatives, and consequently in arriving at
creative ways to improve a system that has evolved in a particular setting. For
this very reason, Canadian educators and administrators of school systems
might profit by reading Glenn's book, a valuable and insightful contribution to
the educational literature.
Philosophical Issues in Education: An Introduction
By Cornell Hamm
New York: Falmer Press, 1989. 184 pages.
REVIEWED BY ROMULO MAGSINO, UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA
Single-author full-length books on philosophy of education as a discipline by
Canada-based scholars are rare. Only Robin Barrow's, Clive Beck's, and
Michael J.B. Jackson's volumes come to mind. Hamm's Philosophical Issues
in Education is thus something of an event for philosophers of education in
this country.
Judicious coverage of the main topics in the discipline is the strongest
feature of Philosophical Issues. Ten chapters discuss the nature of philosophy
of education, the use of metaphors in education, the concept of education
itself, and the nature of knowledge and its place in the curriculum. They deal
also with learning, indoctrination, discipline, punishment, freedom, authority,
and student-teacher relationships, and with the justification of education.
The book also exemplifies good conceptual analysis, reasoning, and
argumentation. It is an exercise in philosophizing about education and should
prove valuable for philosophy of education professors. However, the
arguments are not as current as they might be. Apart from the chapter on moral
education, most chapters refer to works published largely before 1975. It
would have been interesting, for example, to see Hamm's response to Elmer
Thiessen's views on indoctrination, or his reaction to R.S. Peters' change of
mind about the concept of education.
Peters maintained that knowledge and understanding of various kinds
distinguish an educated person. However, by 1980 he had acknowledged this
narrow conception to be contestable. He now admits education may equally be
115
bound up with aesthetic and religious awareness (not forms of knowledge),
with moral attitudes, actions, and habits, and with emotional predispositions.
To equate education with the development of knowledge is to impose an
unwarrantable restriction on it.
Hamm's discussion of intellectualism and moral education anticipates the
problems Peters now thinks fatal. Although Peters now says he earlier
overestimated the contribution of the cognitive to emotional and moral life,
Hamm remains convinced of that contribution. He claims that to have
understood a poem is at the same time to have been able to respond to it
emotionally. Yet, if he uses understood cognitively rather than attitudinally,
his claim is disputable.
Hamm should consider Peters' recent view that the development of reason
is an aim of education rather than part of the concept itself, and that conceptual
analysis has been too self-contained an exercise. As Peters sees it, conceptual
criteria are established from a term's usage without much attention to its
socio-historical background and to its presuppositions about human nature.
His suggestion that philosophers pursue the concept and justification of
education by stressing social values and human nature may prove troublesome
for Hamm, given his intellectualism and discounting of human nature.
Hamm is largely successful in his simplification of the ``London Line'' on
education. Outstanding as Peters' Ethics and Education and Paul Hirst's
Knowledge and the Curriculum may be, they are beyond the grasp of most
education students. Hamm's volume is more than welcome as a sustained but
intelligible elaboration and examination of an important perspective in the
philosophy of education. The elaboration is aided by sound organization and
sequencing of topics. A number of chapters, particularly chapter 8 (on
interpersonal and social issues) and chapter 9 (on moral education) are well
done.
Nonetheless Hamm makes contentious points. (i) His use of Dewey to
exemplify educational metaphors is surprising since the latter did not compare
education with growth. Rather, Dewey declared education to be growth and
outlined its appropriate features. The Deweyan idea of growth should be
evaluated not as a metaphor but as a definition or conception. (ii) Hamm's
claim that aim always refers to something instrumental is belied by such a
common statement as ``My aim in life is happiness.'' (iii) His view that mastery
is a criterion of learning is questionable; people validly make observations
about someone's learning badly, inadequately, or haphazardly and about one's
learning being spotty, shallow, or defective. (iv) Hamm's view that the concept
of teaching in its task sense includes the learner's readiness goes against
common usage. Thousands of teachers in many schools are said to teach
116
students unprepared to learn the content taught to them. Are these teachers not
really teaching? Isn't readiness more a feature of intelligent teaching rather
than just teaching? (v) Hamm's distinction between developing into and
becoming a person may be defensible. However, his equating the former with
education is disputable. Given that he requires both breadth and depth of
learning, it sounds like few, if any, ever really develop as persons even in
advanced western societies. Many people falling short of Hamm's stipulation
but regarding themselves as full persons may take issue with him.
Hamm's volume offers stimulus for thought and reflection. A reviewer
could only wish the volume longer, so the author could mount fuller discussion of contentious issues settled rather quickly in the present text.
Achieving Extraordinary Ends: An Essay on Creativity
By Sharon Bailin
Dordrecht/Lancaster/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988. x+141
pages.
REVIEWED BY LEROI B. DANIELS, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
This is a fine book. It offers a systematic, exhaustive, and devastating critique
of the view of creativity most popular in education today. This received view
can be summarized as follows: (1) creative works display radical discontinuity
with previous products; (2) there can be no objective criteria within existing
disciplines for the evaluation of creative works; (3) creative efforts are
identified with a single creative ``process,'' common to all instances of
creativity, and hence found only in people with special creative abilities which
enable this process to occur—and not in creative products themselves; (4)
creative acts are rule-breaking acts and education in disciplines is therefore
likely to constrain creativity; (5) the imaginative leaps necessary for creativity
are logically different from acts involving normal mental ``skills.''
As I see it, and as Bailin shows, two interconnected notions are central to
this received view: that the presence of a ``single unique skill or process”
defines creativity; concomitantly, that to say that someone is creative is not to
comment on the nature of any product of that person.
According to this view, being creative necessarily involves deployment of
a specific skill, or, in even worse jargon, a single ``process.'' This ability-
117
cum-happening is supposedly the same no matter in which field it is deployed.
This view implies that one needn't know anything to be creative; indeed,
knowing a lot about a field is likely to get in the way of being creative. The
view is aptly satirized in one of my favourite cartoons, in which A is talking to
B about C and comments, ``C is very creative; she just doesn't know anything.''
This conception of creativity stems largely from certain conceptual
confusions among numbers of psychologists, artists, scientists and, alas,
educators. Bailin shows (where ``shows'' means she gets it right) that this view
is profoundly and, for educators, dangerously mistaken, and she offers an
alternative conception—one far more fruitful both theoretically and for
practising educators. Bailin's conception denies all five assumptions listed
above.
Her account is based on two central insights, one derived from the way
many verbs operate, the other from her astute understanding of what disciplines are, whether scientific or aesthetic, As she puts it, even in their ordinary
operation, disciplines are ``not static, fixed bodies of information and
procedures. Rather, they are traditions of knowledge and inquiry which are
open-ended and dynamic. . . . There are open questions, ongoing debates, and
areas of controversy within every discipline, and these furnish the arena for
evolution and change'' (p. 125). What, in brief, the latter implies is that
education in established forms of knowledge is the way to creativity—indeed,
the only way. With a wealth of examples from the arts and the sciences, Bailin
demonstrates what makes the cartoon funny. Contrary to the popular view,
creativity concerns not one or more so-called ``processes''; rather it is about
products that are or help us achieve extraordinary ends.
We are taught in grammar classes that verbs are `àction'' words. Well,
some are, but many are not. This can be seen by contrasting ``racing'' with
either ``winning'' or ``losing.'' Racing is an activity in which we can take part;
and a race endures through time. Winning and losing, however, occur at a
point in time; they are not activities, but outcomes or upshots of activities.
Being creative is like winning; indeed, it is winning where losing is the most
likely outcome. That's why being creative is so highly prized.
This is not a long book (133 pages plus a good index); it is exceptionally
clearly written. I mention these because although it is of great utility to any
scholar concerned with creativity, Achieving Extraordinary Ends is also very
appropriate as a text for university students.
Finally, the book not only offers a powerful argument for a conception of
creativity but is itself an exemplar of what Bailin deals with. It is a creative use
of philosophy to clarify an important concept.
118
Who's Afraid of Liberal Education?/Qui a peur de l'éducation générale?
Edited by Caroline Andrew and Steen B. Esbensen.
University of Ottawa Press, 1989. 128 pages.
REVIEWED BY ALEXANDER D. GREGOR
Who's Afraid of Liberal Education? is subtitled ``Proceedings of the National
Conference organized by the Social Science Federation of Canada and held in
Ottawa, Ontario, September 30th–October 1st, 1988,'' and has the strengths
and weaknesses characteristic of the ``proceedings'' genre. Because editors of
proceedings are hostage to what authors have earlier chosen to say at a
conference, individual papers will necessarily vary in quality and focus, and
will not always prove amenable to union in a seamless web. One can but hope
that such a collection has sufficient individual pieces that merit reading in their
own right. By this criterion the book under review does provide a useful
addition to the literature.
The editors' hope for the conference, that it would point to solutions, is not
obviously realized. The papers represent an interesting but not comprehensively representative sample of perspectives, from ``practitioners''—
individuals who have mounted liberal arts initiatives in their institutions—to
critics and ``consumers'' within and without the academy. The ``without'' are
limited to a single lonely businessman, Jon K. Grant, President and CEO of the
Quaker Oats Company of Canada, and Lise Bissonette, a remarkably
influential commentator on Canadian higher education. The practitioners
include Adrian Marriage, Chair of the Arts I program at the University of
British Columbia, and Peter Morgan, who at the time of the conference was
involved in a similar venture at the University of Toronto. The `ìnside critics''
include Claude Hamal, President of the Université du Québec, Howard C.
Clark, President of Dalhousie University, and Charles Karelis, formerly
Special Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Education and Director of the Fund
for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, of that Department.
The editors had hoped for a ``pragmatic'' book—one that could point the
way to workable programs—and although the practitioners' experiments are
interesting enough, they are overshadowed by the critics' pessimism. Ironically, the goals of the book founder on the very high quality of the contri-
119
butors; as a collection of papers, the contents are rather overwhelmed by their `
`bookends''—a powerful introduction and conclusion provided by Gilles
Paquet and Michael Skolnik, respectively. In their very different ways, these
two contributors provide cohesive, lucid, and conceptually sophisticated
overviews of the issues and problems of liberal education—but not extensive
grounds for optimism that much can be done in substantive remedy within the
contemporary university. (And the discussion is essentially limited to that
institution.)
At one level, a sufficient exercise of will might overcome the problems
identified: lack of institutional leadership in fostering and articulating a sense
of purpose and direction (Clark); a lack of clarity in what is actually meant by
liberal education (Paquet); a whimsical nostalgia for an education that never
existed. (Bissonette, in a characteristically incisive chapter, laments her fate in
becoming standard bearer for the ``new classicism,'' something she had
intended as a critical device, not a solution.)
At a second level of difficulty are problems endemic to the university as
institution: what Paquet would classify as ``wicked problems.'' These problems
rest on the entrenched self-interest of the professoriate, and on the fact that
genuine change would be inconvenient and discomfiting. Karelis is able to
show from the American experience universities' ability to accommodate the
types of change being discussed, but still to let business go on as usual. The
Canadian situation, it is noted, is further complicated by the absence of liberal
arts colleges whose very raison d'être is the undergraduate curriculum. In
consequence, we are faced, as Marriage points out, with the fact that `Ìf the
thing is to be done at all it will have to be done in a place where they don't
especially want it to be done.''
At the third and most perplexing level of difficulty, we encounter the
proposal, carefully crafted by both Paquet and Skolnik, that the university by
its very nature may be incompatible with the goals of liberal education. The
nature of the contemporary university, and the paradigm of knowledge and
scholarship on which it is based, may well be antithetical to the integrative
purposes of liberal education. (And, it is further argued, the efforts to find a
form of liberal education that ``fits'' the character of university scholarship—as,
for example, the experiments with fostering ``content-neutral skills''—are
really in the end liberal education in rubric only.) The concluding chapter
leaves us, then, with the disturbing question of whether the loss of liberal
education is the price we have to pay for the model of institution we have
chosen (and perhaps need).
But another conclusion remains as well, and may be the source of some
continuing optimism. Almost all the writers agree that we just do not yet know
120
enough about what is being done and what can be done. As Paquet most aptly
notes, this issue cannot be resolved a priori. Who's Afraid of Liberal
Education? leaves us with an excellent agenda for the long overdue task of
approaching the question a posteriori. We gain from this book a good sense of
the theoretical framework in which the issues must be posed, and the specific
information that must be sought. If liberal education has the importance the
associated rhetoric suggests, that research agenda could not be more timely.
Publications reçues
Angers, P. et Bouchard, C. (1990). L'activité éducative: le jugement, les
valeurs et l'action. Saint-Laurent, Québec: Les Éditions Bellarmin. 236
pages.
Berthelot, J. (1990). Apprendre à vivre ensemble: immigration, société et
éducation. Québec: Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec. 185 pages.
Cloutier, R. et Renaud, A. (1990). Psychologie de l'enfant. Boucherville,
Québec: Gaëtan Morin éditeur. 773 pages.
Contandriopaulos, A.P., Champagne, F., Potvin, L., Denis, J.L. et Boyle, P.
(1990). Savoir préparer une recherche: la définir, la structurer, la
financer. Montréal: Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal. 197 pages.
De Grandmont, N. (1989). Pédagogie du jeu: jouer pour apprendre. Montréal:
Les Éditions Logiques. 213 pages.
Dumont, F. et Martin, Y. (dir.). (1990). L'éducation: 25 ans plus tard! et
après? Québec: Institut québecois de recherche sur la culture. 432 pages.
Giasson, J. (1990). La compréhension en lecture. Boucherville, Québec:
Gaëtan Morin éditeur. 255 pages.
Leduc, A. (1990). La direction des mémoires et des thèses. Brossard, Québec:
Éditions Behaviora. 95 pages.
Morissette, D. et Gingras, M. (1990). Enseigner des attitudes: planifier,
intervenir et évaluer. Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval. 193 pages.
Ouellet, A. (1990). Guide du chercheur: quelques éléments du zen dans
l'approche holistique. Boucherville, Québec: Gaëtan Morin Éditeur. 190
pages.
Poisson, Y. (1990). La recherche qualitative en éducation. Sillery, Québec:
Presses de l'Université du Québec. 174 pages.

CJE Vol. 16, No. 1

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