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Transnational Innovations, LocalConditions, and Disruptive Teachersand Students in Interwar EducationKay Whitehead & Judith PeppardVersion of record first published: 30 Jun 2006.
To cite this article: Kay Whitehead & Judith Peppard (2006): Transnational Innovations, LocalConditions, and Disruptive Teachers and Students in Interwar Education, Paedagogica Historica:International Journal of the History of Education, 42:01-02, 177-189
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Paedagogica Historica,Vol. 42, Nos. 1&2, February 2006, pp. 177–189
ISSN 0030-9230 (print)/ISSN 1477-674X (online)/06/010177–13© 2006 Stichting Paedagogica HistoricaDOI: 10.1080/00309230600552112
Transnational Innovations, Local Conditions, and Disruptive Teachers and Students in Interwar EducationKay Whitehead and Judith PeppardTaylor and Francis LtdCPDH_A_155194.sgm10.1080/00309230600552112Paedagogica Historica0030-9230 (print)/1477-674X (online)Original Article2006Stichting Paedagogica Historica421&2000000February [email protected]
This paper examines the grammar of schooling and educational innovations that were being promulgatedtransnationally in the 1920s and 1930s. First, the paper explores how some elements of the grammar ofschooling such as age grading, year-long courses of study and annual employment contracts for teachers weremediated by local circumstances in Newfoundland. Then it identifies progressive ideas that were beingpromoted by the Department of Education and discusses ways in which they were negotiated at the local level.The main argument is that, local conditions notwithstanding, Newfoundland administrators portrayedtransient teachers and students as the chief impediments to the institutionalization of both the grammar ofschooling and progressivism in the interwar years.
Ramirez and Boli, among others, have argued that in Western countries the introduc-tion and expansion of mass state schooling proceeded along similar lines in thenineteenth century.1 Deploying the concept of transnationalism to denote a broaderfield of interactions than the formal political and organizational ties that characterizeinternationalism, historians and sociologists have identified many common featurespertaining to the construction of modern school systems. These include:
… ideological acceptance of particular goals for mass education, the adoption ofcompulsory school laws and constitutional provisions affirming a state interest in masseducation, and the formation of national educational ministries and bureaus.2
At the macro level mass schooling was integral to the development of a unifiednational polity and the shoring up of both capitalism and patriarchy, but transna-tional features also extended to the ‘regular structures and rules that organize the
1 Ramirez, F., and J. Boli. “The Political Construction of Mass Schooling: European Origins andWorldwide Institutionalization.” Sociology of Education 60 (1987): 2–17; Meyer, J., F. Ramirez, andY. Soysal. “World Expansion of Mass Education, 1870–1980.” Sociology of Education 65 (1992):128–49.
2 Ramirez and Boli, “The Political Construction of Mass Schooling”, 2.
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work of instruction’, the so-called ‘grammar of schooling’.3 Schools across Westerncountries resembled one another in their external appearance, classroom layout andeven desks and teaching apparatus. Common practices included the grouping ofpupils by age and proficiency, and it was assumed that children would attendschool regularly and progress at a similar pace. There was an expectation thatteachers would be trained appropriately for the occupation and committed to work-ing in the same school for the duration of the school year. They were required todeliver a sequential curriculum that was subdivided into year-long components,and use pedagogical techniques that focused on the transmission of subject matterto the whole class simultaneously.4 Inspectors were employed as agents of thecentral administration to ensure teachers’ and students’ accountability to educa-tional goals. Such was the institutionalization of the grammar of schooling that by1900:
Teaching typically proceeded on the view that the teacher’s principal task was to managea classroom efficiently, that in doing this, he should be able to instruct his pupils clearly,methodically and thoroughly in a group, that the pupils should be directed by the teacherin what they learnt and how they learnt it, that the principal sources of their informationshould be the teacher and the textbook selected by the teacher, and that they should acceptand reproduce the ideas and knowledge prescribed for them in a quiet and well-disciplinedmanner.5
These understandings were exchanged and elaborated through the press, by thepublication of books and reports, and via educationists who travelled extensively tostudy and to work in different countries.6 Notwithstanding these transnationalsimilarities in the purpose and nature of schooling, there were many local variants.The aforementioned changes occurred at different times and to varying degreesacross countries and were most evident in urban rather than rural areas. Variouscomponents of the grammar of schooling were also accommodated and resisted at themicro level by students’ families and teachers.
The purpose of this paper is primarily to explore the extent to which the aforemen-tioned transnational understandings regarding the grammar of schooling wereinstitutionalized in the state school system in Newfoundland in the interwar years.The paper also identifies ideas concerning progressive education that were beingcanvassed by administrators and discusses ways in which these ideas were negotiatedat the local level in elementary schools. While nineteenth-century educators such asPestalozzi and Froebel had laid the foundations for progressivism it has been argued
3 Tyack, D., and W. Tobin. “The ‘Grammar’ of Schooling: Why Has it Been so Hard toChange?” American Educational Research Journal 31, no. 3 (1994): 454.
4 Ibid.; Kliebard, H. “Constructing the Concept of Curriculum on the Wisconsin Frontier: HowSchool Restructuring Sustained a Pedagogical Revolution.” History of Education 25, no. 2 (1996):125–26.
5 Connell, W. A History of Education in the Twentieth Century World. Canberra: Curriculum De-velopment Centre, 1988: 4.
6 See for example, Trethewey, L., and K. Whitehead. “Beyond Centre and Periphery: Transna-tionalism in Two Teacher/Suffragettes’ Work.” History of Education 32, no. 5 (2003): 547–59.
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Paedagogica Historica 179
that the interwar years were ‘the heyday of progressive experimentation and curricularinnovation’.7 However, the main argument of the paper is that the transience ofwomen teachers and students in state schools reputedly disrupted both the grammarof schooling and progressivism in the interwar years.
The Newfoundland Context
Newfoundland was granted responsible government by the British in the 1850s anda denominational system of schooling was established by law in 1874. Thereafter,three approximately equal church groups – Church of England, Roman Catholic andMethodist Churches – were funded by the state to conduct schools. However, therewas no centralized administration until the 1920 Education Act provided for theestablishment of the Department of Education to oversee the workings of all stateschools, advise on curriculum and deal with the training and certification of teachers.Although provisions were made for an inspectorial system no staff were employeduntil much later and schooling was neither free nor compulsory until 1942. This waspartly a matter of long-term inadequate funding but was made worse by theeconomic depression. In 1933 the national debt was so severe that responsiblegovernment was suspended and a Commission of Government was appointed by theBritish to run the country.8 Whatever the economic and political situation, theNewfoundland Department of Education struggled throughout the period to institu-tionalize the transnational understandings that underpinned the development ofmass state schooling.
During the interwar years the one-room school dominated the education landscapein Newfoundland. In 1920 there were 1053 state schools and their number increasedslightly in the following 20 years. In 1940 74% of schools were one-room schools andeven in the capital of St John’s there were no large state-funded schools. The teachingworkforce was predominantly female. In 1920 there were 302 men and 1121 womenteachers, only a few of whom were deemed to be fully qualified.9 The majority wereunqualified and third-grade teachers, mostly young women, who were employed inthe one-room schools. In 1923, for example, one quarter of the teachers in Church ofEngland schools were ‘ungraded’, that is unqualified and employed on short-termcontracts. They had to be at least 17 years old and of ‘good moral character’ butreceived no induction whatsoever prior to beginning teaching.10 No official recordswere kept for ungraded teachers as their ‘teaching service did not carry any credit for
7 Connell, A History of Education, 152.8 Rowe, F. The Development of Education in Newfoundland. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1964: 71,
126–9; id. Education and Culture in Newfoundland. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1976: 7–9, 18; McCann,P. “Class, Gender and Religion in Newfoundland Education, 1836–1901.” Historical Studies in Ed-ucation/ Revue d’histoire de l’education 1, no. 2 (1989): 179–200.
9 Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report of the Departmentof Education, Newfoundland, 1919/20: ix; Secretary for Education’s Report. Annual Report …, 1940:19.
10 Education Act 1927. St John’s, 1927: 24.
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certification or pension purposes’.11 Thus the regulations and practices that governedtheir employment assumed that such teachers would be transients in the profession.A further 40% of teachers held the minimum qualification, a third-grade certificatethat was awarded on the basis of their educational qualifications and six months’teaching experience. A similar profile of teachers existed in the other denominations’schools and the composition of the Newfoundland teaching profession had notchanged dramatically by the late 1930s.12 This paper will show that it was theungraded and third-grade teachers who reputedly disrupted the grammar ofschooling in the interwar years.
‘That was a little embarrassing, especially as you got a bit older’
Although schooling was neither free nor compulsory, most Newfoundlanders weremaking use of the state school system in the 1920s and 1930s. Parents demanded thattheir children learn to read and write but school attendance was fitted around thedictates of the family economy. Some children accompanied their parents toLabrador when the fishing season began and families that survived on both fishingand farming required their children at home until after the potatoes were dug, forexample, and during blackberry picking.13 Melvin Grandy, a student in the 1930s,recalled how he combined school and work:
… my father worked on the high road. Of course he wanted us to work with him so mosttimes we came out of school on the first of May … that work wouldn’t finish until the endof October. So most times we didn’t start school again until the end of October.14
However, Melvin’s irregular attendance interfered with a key element of the grammarof schooling, namely the grouping of pupils by age and proficiency:
When we entered school … you were probably a month, or sometimes a month and a halfbehind the others and you know, you wasn’t up to date and of course that was a littleembarrassing, especially as you got a bit older, when they were ahead of you.15
11 Letter from M. Burke to W. Brown, 11 June 1979, inserted in Anglican Transfers Service/Pay-roll Records Book One A–K, 1907–48, PRC #21, Box #5, file AE3, Provincial Archives ofNewfoundland (hereafter PANL).
12 Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report …, 1922/23: 3;Annual Report …, 1938: 3.
13 Andrews, R. “A Brief Survey of the School System in Newfoundland Together with Some Sug-gestions for its Improvement”, 5. In Andrews, R. Personal Files 1920s–1970s, MG 895, Box 6,PANL; Corbett, M. “A Protracted Struggle: Rural Resistance and Normalization in CanadianEducational History.” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’education 13, no. 1 (2001):19–48.
14 Grandy, M., Transcript of an Interview with Judith Peppard, June 2003; a series of interviewswas conducted in June 2003 by Judith Peppard as part of a Flinders University Small Grant, entitled“Transients in the Teaching Profession in the Interwar Years.”
15 Ibid.
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Like the majority of students in Newfoundland, Melvin’s school attendancespanned five or six years of his childhood, was subject to seasonal work patterns andcompleted ‘part ways through Year 7, so we were just starting fractions then Ithink’.16
In tiny outport communities the grammar of schooling was not only interrupted byirregular attendance, it was also the case that many schools remained closed for partof the year. In 1919, for example, only about 60% of Church of England schoolsoperated for the entire school year.17 Mabel Skinner, who attended the Church ofEngland school in Piccaire in the 1930s, stated ‘we didn’t get a teacher for a full year.We would only get five months out of a year. Then she had to go somewhere … sothat’s how we got our learning.’18
The proliferation of these part-time schools impacted on curriculum and pedagogyin significant ways. Mass schooling was underpinned by the idea that knowledgecould be compartmentalized into year-long programmes of study and that studentswould progress through the designated topics at a similar pace. Whole-class ratherthan individualized instruction was promoted as the most efficient pedagogy to effectsuch progress.19 However, when schools such as Mabel Skinner’s operated for part ofthe year there was very little continuity and coherence in terms of what the childrenlearnt, and as she said, ‘the bit, you know, what we did learn, it was very hard’ andshe ‘only got grade six, as far as grade six’.20
In the absence of a standardized and sequential curriculum in Newfoundlandand no matching textbooks until 1936, children’s early learning experiences in theone-room school were individualized and defined by the Royal Crown Readers.Jessie Kittelson recalled that in her school ‘we went by books. We didn’t go bygrades.’21 George Piccott’s experiences were probably typical of the era: ‘Piccairewas a very small village and as I said it probably had about twelve or thirteen chil-dren from Primer to maybe grade six.’ He continued, ‘of course that’s where yougot your education was mostly from the Royal Crown Reader’.22 Likewise MelvinGrandy began with the ‘Primer. Tom’s dog was in the Primer … and then youwent on to the next one, Jerry and Jane.’23 The common practice was for theteacher to set assignments from the books at hand for each student and then listento individuals recite the work as time permitted.24 Given this pedagogy and theirregular attendance, students mostly proceeded at their own pace through the vari-ous readers until they had completed the fifth book. Thereafter, they were deemed
16 Ibid.17 Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report …, 1919/20: xiv.18 Skinner, M. Transcript of an Interview with Judith Peppard, June 2003.19 Kliebard, “Constructing the Concept of Curriculum”, 125–26.20 Skinner, M. Transcript of an Interview with Judith Peppard, June 2003.21 Kittelson, J. Transcript of an Interview with Judith Peppard, June 2003.22 Piccott, G. Transcript of an Interview with Judith Peppard, June 2003.23 Grandy, M. Transcript of an Interview with Judith Peppard, June 2003.24 Kliebard, “Constructing the Concept of Curriculum”: 125–31; Tizzard, A. On Sloping Ground.
St John’s: Breakwater Books, 1984: 60–65.
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to be in the higher classes and potentially subject to the annual Council of HigherEducation (CHE) examinations, which had been inaugurated in Newfoundland inthe late nineteenth century. Few students completed the higher grades where thecurriculum comprised the subjects required to pass these exams. Lydia Hiscock,whose schooling did extend to grade ten, recalled that ‘in the higher grades Mr.Richards used to give you History notes and you memorized them and it’d bepretty near the questions you’d get in the CHE’.25 Jessie Kittleson explained thatthe fees for these exams were paid at Christmas and students took the exams inspring.26 Given the impoverished circumstances of many families, few could affordthe fees and of those who sat the exams only about half passed.27 In essence, thecurriculum experienced by Newfoundland pupils was dictated by their Readers,their instruction was individualized and their progression through the gradesdisorderly in the interwar years.
The fact that most Newfoundland children attended school irregularly and did notprogress according to the reputed standards of other countries was of profoundembarrassment not only to the aforesaid students but also to the fledglingDepartment of Education. In 1920 the Deputy Minister of Education lamented:
In relation to school attendance and grading of pupils … we are forcibly struck with twooutstanding facts: (1) viz. That in our schools there is far too much retardation and (2)that the number of pupils in Standard VI and over … is alarmingly small.28
In annual reports statistics were produced to show that the average daily attendancehovered around 64% and at least 20% of pupils in each of the grades were repeating,that is they were ‘retarded’ or ‘over-aged’ for their grade. It was also common practiceto retain students in the lower grades until they were deemed capable of passing thefirst CHE exam. In 1920, for example, 42% of students also left school in the fifthgrade, that is at about the age of 12 and before they reached the higher grades.29
Newfoundland administrators promoted compulsory attendance laws as a solution tostudents’ irregular attendance, disorderly progress and early school-leaving, but theywere well aware of children’s economic value to their families and also doubtedwhether there was sufficient infrastructure to enforce such legislation. With the latterin mind, the Deputy Minister reflected that ‘it would not be good training incitizenship for a child to learn by experience during its school years that he [sic] could,without risk, break the laws of his country’.30 Nevertheless, as Tyack comments, ‘inan age that worshipped efficiency, over-aged students and school leavers were signs
25 Hiscock, L. Transcript of an Interview with Judith Peppard, June 2003.26 Kittelson, J. Transcript of an Interview with Judith Peppard, June 2003.27 Andrews, R. Integration and Other Developments in Newfoundland Education, 1915–1949. St
John’s: Harry Cuff Publications, 1985: 92, 98.28 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1919/20: vi.29 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1919/20: vii; Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual
Report …, 1921/22: x.30 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1922/23: vii.
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of malfunction that required analysis and correction’.31 The following section willshow that in Newfoundland such analysis attributed these inefficiencies to thepresence of transient women teachers who, like their students, popped helter-skelterin and out of schools.
‘The insufficiency of the low-grade teacher’
In 1923, the Deputy Minister of Education argued that there were three ‘essentialsfor efficient education’, the first two being ‘uniform administration’ and ‘propersupervision’.32 At this time the administration and supervision of the Department ofEducation was in the hands of just six men.33 While ‘a good system of records andreports’ was seen to be ‘vital to the success of modern school organization’, theDepartment lacked the infrastructure to put these procedures in place.34 In 1930 theSecretary of Education explained the difficulties of processing the annual returnsunder 80 headings and argued for the employment of an expert in statistics.35 Statis-tical rather than anecdotal records were seen to be more persuasive evidence of theefficiency of mass state schooling and in 1920 the Deputy Minister of Education hadpublished statistics from Michigan to support his case for the appointment of quali-fied supervisors.36 Nevertheless, none was appointed until 1936 and administratorsrepeatedly argued for the structures and processes deemed to be essential for efficientstate schooling.
The third essential for efficient education was ‘trained teachers’, and thus theaforementioned number of ungraded and third-grade teachers was an ongoing issue.Indeed, ‘the insufficiency of the low grade teacher’ dominated annual reports in the1920s and 1930s.37 These teachers, almost all of whom taught in one-room schools,were most often represented by administrators as ‘young and inexperienced’ girls wholacked the ambition (rather than the economic resources) to undertake the expensivetraining on offer at the Normal School in St John’s.38 However, administrators’ anxi-eties regarding girl teachers encompassed much more than their lack of training. Thefollowing discussion highlights several ways in which girl teachers reputedly thwartedthe institutionalization of the grammar of schooling.
31 Tyack, D. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1974: 199.
32 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1922/23: xii.33 Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report …, 1921/22: xi.34 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1919/20: xiii.35 Secretary for Education’s Report. Annual Report …, 1929/30: xii.36 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1919/20: viii–ix.37 Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report …, 1922/23: 14.38 Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report of the Bureau of Ed-
ucation, 1929/30: 5; See also Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. AnnualReport …, 1919/20: vii; Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report…, 1922/23: 3; Secretary for Education’s Report. Annual Report …, 1941: 19.
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First, girl teachers were said to lack ‘knowledge of the main objectives of educa-tion’.39 Although they were constructed as ‘good meaning and zealous young girls’who ‘do their best’ their own education was portrayed as an insufficient intellectualbasis for the teaching occupation.40 Many had only passed the first CHE exam beforebeing employed as ungraded teachers. According to the Superintendent of Church ofEngland schools, these girls:
… have the proper disposition; the heart and will are right; there is in them the making ofgood teachers, but unfortunately they have not the knowledge or educational equipmentthat is necessary to enable them to satisfy the rapacious and curious mind of youth.41
Second, girl teachers were said to be unable to organize their schools efficiently andintroduce the ‘right methods’.42 In their schools ‘the present system of grading seemsto be based on guesswork’ and too many students were retarded, that is, kept in thelower grades instead of being promoted according to their age.43 As far as methodswere concerned, girl teachers relied heavily on the Readers from which they setlessons, rather than actively engaging the students with whole-class instruction.According to the Superintendent of Church of England schools, ‘there is not enoughof “doing” in the programme; it is largely sitting idle or memorizing or copying’.44
Lacking pedagogical knowledge, untrained teachers:
… were hindering rather than helping, and injuring and crippling mentally for life brightboys and girls who, with proper teaching would become most capable men and women, acredit to themselves, a source of pride to their parents and most valuable citizens of theircountry.45
Indeed, their teaching was seen to be undermining the very purposes of mass stateschooling. Their inefficient organization and monotonous pedagogy were also said tocontribute significantly to students’ irregular attendance and early school leaving.46
Last but not least, girl teachers’ transience was deemed to be a major hindrance notonly to students’ learning but also to the administration of an efficient state schoolsystem. They did not keep their school records ‘with that accuracy and precision neces-sary in this twentieth century’.47 In addition, some failed to submit their annual returnson time and others ‘mostly ungraded teachers, failed to send them at all’.48 Worse still,between 20% and 30% of teachers changed school every year, some times even during
39 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1921/22: x.40 Ibid.; see also Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1919/20: vii.41 Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report …, 1924/25: 37.42 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1921/22: x.43 “Inspectorial Report and Statistical Summary, 1936.” In Andrews, R., Personal Files 1920s–
1970s, MG 895, Box 6, PANL; Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1921/22: xiii; DeputyMinister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1920/21: vi.
44 Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report …, 1921/22: 24.45 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1921/22: x.46 Andrews, “A Brief Survey of the School System”, 5.47 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1919/20: xiii.48 Secretary for Education’s Report. Annual Report …, 1929/30: xii.
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the school year, and most did not remain long in the occupation.49 Thus administra-tors had difficulty obtaining the annual returns from teachers who had left the schoolor, indeed, resigned from teaching altogether. Many schools were not assigned ateacher for the full year as Mabel Skinner’s recollections attest, and this meant thatthe curriculum was interrupted and students’ progress through the grades wasimpeded. In essence, Newfoundland’s girl teachers shouldered much of the blame forstudents’ irregular attendance and retardation, the Department’s inefficient adminis-tration and the low status of the teaching profession, their mobility undermining thegrammar of schooling in multiple ways in the interwar years.
‘Teachers are beginning to realize that children are more important than books’
Notwithstanding Newfoundland administrators’ preoccupations with transientstudents and teachers, they were anxious to position the Department as being ‘abreastof the times’ in annual reports.50 To this end readers were informed of progressiveideas that were circulating among educators in other countries. In the interwar yearsthese transnational understandings included the need to tailor curriculum andinstruction to children’s interests, to foster more freedom and creativity thancurrently existed in schools, and to connect school experiences to other aspects ofchildren’s lives.51 With these kinds of ideas in mind there was a call to ‘create aNewfoundland atmosphere in our curriculum, school readers and textbooks’ in 1923,for example, and discussion about the introduction of Junior High Schools to caterfor the newly identified needs of ‘adolescents’ and keep them in school longer.52
Advocacy for progressive ideas was not confined to annual reports but some ofNewfoundland’s teachers were funded by the Carnegie Corporation to study inAmerica in order to ‘get in touch with some of the best ideas and practices nowcurrent in the educational world’.53 In 1922 the Deputy Minister of Educationclaimed that:
… a new spirit is beginning to find its way about the land, teachers are beginning to realizethat children are more important than books, [and] that right methods go hand in handwith good subject matter.54
However, the following discussion will show that the conditions of teachers’ workmilitated against progressive ideas becoming mainstream practice in the interwaryears.
49 Andrews, “A Brief Survey of the School System”, 5.50 Superintendent of Church of England Board Schools Report. Annual Report …, 1926/27: 19.51 Cuban, L. How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1990.
New York: Teachers College Press, 1993: 50.52 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1922/23: xi; Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual
Report …, 1928/29: xiii.53 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1921/22: xi.54 Ibid., x.
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On 10 September 1920 Miss Reeves, the trained teacher in charge of the lowerclasses at St Mary’s Church of England school in St John’s, reflected on her 48students and the school’s amenities.
The children are all small and for such little tots the conduct on the whole is very goodexcept for incessant talking. The lessons are fair for such youthful classes. The room israther bare looking. No facility of any kind here. I only have a piece of blackboard on achair as yet.55
The new blackboard arrived one week later, but by the end of September anotherproblem had emerged:
If the fifty [students] registered attended at one time I do not know how they could beseated. There is not enough room for good satisfaction. Very little standing room. Theteachers’ desk is on a level with the children. This is miserable.56
The problem of overcrowding, however, only occurred at certain times of the year forthese students were typically transient. In December 1920 Miss Reeves commentedon the poor attendance: ‘Some are away because “they are wanted on messages.”Others have left for the winter.’ By 1925 Miss Reeves was in charge of the upperclasses and Miss Gruchy whose ‘first experience of teaching’ commenced in themiddle of the 1925–1926 school year had taken her place. In April 1926 Miss Gruchywrote ‘the school is not very up-to-date in some ways but today all faults can be over-looked. The sun is pouring in and the birds are chirping at the back of the school.’57
The students also poured in, but only when it suited them and their families. On 17May Miss Gruchy recorded ‘I admitted three new pupils … all in “Primer” class. Twostragglers … returned this morning after an extended vacation.’ And so it was thatthroughout the 1920s Miss Gruchy and Miss Reeves’s entries in the logbooks focusedon students’ attendance, school amenities and the vagaries of Newfoundlandweather. Whatever their perspectives on progressivism, neither teacher discussed herclassroom practice. However, visitors to the school recorded that positive relation-ships existed between the teachers and their students. In 1925 the Assistant Priest ofSt Mary’s church wrote that ‘Miss Reeves was loved by her scholars and did veryfaithful work’, while a visiting teacher praised Miss Gruchy’s classroom practice:
It is surprising to watch [the ‘little ones’] doing their work for they take such interest intheir teacher and jump at her biding. They are very smart and look happy which gave methe idea of the delight they find in trying to please their teacher. Miss Gruchy is to beheartily congratulated on the discipline and conduct of her pupils.58
Although Miss Reeves and Miss Gruchy worked under very trying conditions theyalso reflected positively on their relationships with students, if not their pedagogy andtheir understandings of progressivism in the interwar years.
55 Stoker, Richard, St Mary’s School, St John’s, Logbooks, 1916–1954, MG 365, PANL, Book2, 10 September 1920 (no page numbers).
56 Ibid., 27 September 1920.57 Ibid., 19 December 1920, 7 January 1925, 23 April 1926, 17 May 1926.58 Ibid., 26 September 1925.
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There is no evidence that the ideas circulated by administrators in the annualreports regarding the creation of a Newfoundland atmosphere in the curriculum andtextbooks, for example, materialized in the classrooms of St Mary’s or elsewhere inthe 1920s. Despite comments that the Readers were out of date and other textbooksinsufficient, there was little change in the curriculum until the early 1930s.59 In 1933a Commission of Enquiry was appointed ‘to consider the present curriculum of thePublic Schools in Newfoundland’ and Inspector Richardson from the London Boardof Education was recruited to provide a report on the system.60 He invoked progres-sive ideas and was especially critical of the emphasis on the CHE exams inNewfoundland, arguing that it led to an ‘undue development of and concentrationupon the more formal aspects of education’. Furthermore, he stated that little or noopportunity was being ‘afforded to the child of developing his [sic] own qualities andinterests and of gaining some culture by the study and appreciation of the elementsof Literature, Music and Art’.61 As a result of the Commission’s recommendations,a new and broader curriculum was distributed to Newfoundland schools at the begin-ning of the 1936–1937 school year. Textbooks for Grades I to VIII were produced foreach of the subjects – English, Arithmetic, Social Studies, Nature Study, Science andHealth, Art, Handwork and Music – and 10 supervisors were also appointed toinspect schools and ensure teachers’ accountability.62
‘If she moves to another school with its new group of children … there is bound to be a loss of efficiency’
‘New Curriculum’ notwithstanding, the teaching and learning conditions continuedto stymie the institutionalization of progressive ideas in Newfoundland schools. TheSalmon Cove Church of England school began the new school year on 8 September1936 with an enrolment of four in the upper classes and 12 in the lower section. MrHiscock, who was in charge of the upper classes, wrote in the logbook: ‘we are obligedto introduce the new curriculum in vi, vii and viii but we shall not be able to makemuch progress with so low an attendance’.63 Enrolments gradually increased to 28 inthe upper classes and 69 in the lower classes but the teachers ‘were not provided withthe Teachers’ Manual and other materials which were obviously essential to theimplementation of the new curriculum’.64 A survey of school amenities the previousyear had revealed that a mere 30% of Newfoundland’s schools had satisfactory black-boards, 40% of classrooms had adequate desks, and 85% of schools ‘had not a single
59 Deputy Minister’s Report. Annual Report …, 1924/25: xiii.60 Quoted in Andrews, Integration, 162.61 Ibid., 165.62 Statistical Report of the Bureau of Education for the Fiscal Years Ended June 30, 1934, 1935, 1936,
1937: 7–9.63 Salmon Cove, Conception Bay, School Logbooks, MG 810, PANL, Book 1, 8 September
1936 (no page numbers).64 Andrews, Integration, 237.
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188 K. Whitehead and J. Peppard
book of any kind for reference or general reading’.65 Whatever Mr Hiscock’s perspec-tive on the new curriculum, there was little infrastructure to support its implementa-tion, and the students came and went according to the dictates of their families’economies. On the last day of the school year Mr Hiscock reflected:
Only half of the pupils attend regularly. Unless compulsory attendance is enforced theseconditions will not likely be much better due to the fact that pupils stay away until lateAutumn for berry picking and farming, and leave early in the spring.66
Although Mr Hiscock pointed to disruptive students as preventing the implementa-tion of a progressive curriculum, the final section of this paper will show thatadministrators were more likely to focus on teachers as the source of the problem. Notsurprisingly, the untrained girl teacher continued to be an object of their attention.
The Department of Education introduced Summer Schools to inform teachersabout progressivism and the new curriculum, and in 1937, for example, 350 teacherswere selected to attend the six-week programme of activities. They were required tocomplete a compulsory topic, ‘Psychology and Principles of Learning and Teaching’,three methodology topics and one recreational activity. Participants chose fromPrimary Methods, English, Arithmetic and Mathematics, Health and PhysicalEducation, Social Studies, Nature Study and Household Arts, along with the recre-ational courses of Art, Singing, Scouting or Guiding and Games.67 Summer Schoolstaff included a Superintendent of Schools from Montreal, the professorial staff atMemorial University College, four district superintendents and city teachers who hadpreviously been sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation to study progressivism inAmerica.68
While a successful Summer School experience enabled third-grade teachers toachieve a second-grade qualification, many ungraded girl teachers were not able toattend. They had to rely on the Teachers’ Manual, and supplementary flyers andinfrequent visits from their district supervisors. The flyers, for example, urgedteachers to provide extra reading material for their students, correlate Art with othersubjects, and introduce project work and portfolios thereby enabling groups ofstudents to study topics of personal and local interest.69 The annual reports did notfocus on the lack of infrastructure to support these suggestions but continued toblame girl teachers for their insufficient knowledge, organization, administration andpedagogy. By 1940 these issues in combination with their transience were seen to beimpacting on a basic tenet of progressivism, that is, teachers’ understandings ofchildren as individuals and their communities. The Secretary for Education wrote,
65 Ibid.66 Salmon Cove, Conception Bay, School Logbooks, MG 810, PANL, Book 1, 18 June 1937.67 Advertisement for Department of Education Summer School 1937. In Andrews, R., Personal
Files 1920s–1970s, MG 895, Box 6, PANL.68 Department of Education. “Report of the Summer School of 1937”: 2. In Andrews, R., Per-
sonal Files 1920s–1970s, MG 895, Box 6, PANL.69 See the following flyers: 22nd November 1938, 20th January 1939, 25th April 1939. In Andrews,
R., Personal Files 1920s–1970s, MG 895, Box 6, PANL.
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‘two causes of weakness in the teaching service are worthy of special attention’. Firstthere were the large numbers of resignations from the service each year, and second:
It is the very pronounced tendency among teachers to move from school to school, some-times even during the school year. Of course this tendency is the result of a natural desireon the part of teachers to better their conditions. On the other hand it is a well-recognizedfact that it takes the teacher some time to become acquainted with conditions in a newcommunity and the children whom she is to teach. If, just when she has acquired this verynecessary knowledge, she moves to another school with its new group of children and newconditions, there is bound to be a loss of efficiency. When there is excessive amount ofmoving from school to school each year this loss of efficiency is very great indeed.70
His next report elaborated the second problem:
If teachers were merely dispensers of subject matter the loss in efficient service would notbe so great. Such is not the case, however. The children and the community conditionsgenerally must be known and understood by the teacher if real teaching and learning withall that these imply are to be realized.71
It seems that by 1940 progressivism had become part of the mainstream talk ofadministrators to the extent that they could portray the girl teacher as an even greaterobstacle to mass state schooling than had previously been the case.72
Conclusion
This paper has identified a number of transnational understandings regarding massstate schooling and focused on the extent to which they were normalized inNewfoundland’s state school system in the interwar years. While many of these ideashad become customary practice in Western countries where compulsory schoolingwas enacted in the nineteenth century, such was not the case in Newfoundland. Thelocal exigencies of the family economy, lack of infrastructure and the conditionsunder which teachers were employed mediated the institutionalization of elements ofthe grammar of schooling. However, Newfoundland’s administrators chose to down-play these issues and to conceptualize transient women teachers and students as themain obstacles to the construction of an efficient state school system. Likewise, it wasteachers and students who were seen to disrupt progressivism, rather than the localconditions under which both lived and worked. While the interwar years might havebeen the heyday of progressivism in some Western countries, Newfoundlanders werestill to come to terms during this era with the introduction of a key component of massstate education, namely legislation for compulsory schooling, let alone progressiveideas.
70 Annual Report …, 1940: 19.71 Annual Report …, 1941: 20.72 Cuban, How Teachers Taught, 45.
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