Home Social Landscape Featured Articles An Education for "Character" in Alberta Schools, 1905-45

An Education for "Character" in Alberta Schools, 1905-45

 by Amy von Heyking

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From the first introduction of social studies in Alberta schools, teachers had difficulty translating the demands of the new program of studies into classroom activities. A.T.A. Magazine included projects that teachers could assign their students, including group activities and scrapbooks. Teachers were specifically reminded to show eager male students the proper technique for gluing materials in scrapbooks without gluing themselves. Most of the activities demonstrate the extent to which teachers tended to fill time with activities of little educational value. Classroom discipline was also a concern for many teachers. They were reminded to keep their rooms organized and orderly: "If a student walks into such a room as that — where everything is kept in order; where the boards are clean at the start of the day, and where Social Studies is looking at him from every corner of the room, he just says to himself, 'This place looks like business; I don't think there will be any fooling around in here'. You may depend on it."⁸

The most serious concern, however, was that teachers had no idea how to evaluate their students' understanding of the new definition of good citizenship. How could teachers ensure that their students were committed to solving social problems? Stanley Clarke, a teacher in Two Hills, designed a test intended to evaluate his students' citizenship skills. The test (reprinted in A.T.A. Magazine in September 1939) demonstrated the difficulty teachers faced in implementing the new understanding of citizenship. Each question presented students with a separate problem in which a dilemma was described and three solutions were offered. Students ranked the solutions in order of preference, though they were not asked to defend or explain their ranking. Some questions seemed to test the teacher's commitment to progressive education rather than the students' skills of responsible citizenship:

One of the boys in the Sociology class is a Red — a definite Communist. Many students are not yet well informed and are easily influenced.

(a) The teacher should cut him short every time he
      starts to say anything in discussions.

(b) The teacher should argue with him and show him
      where he is wrong.

(c) The teacher should keep in the background as far
      as possible and let him and the other members of
      the class discuss all matters freely.⁹

Other questions failed to ask anything at all:

There is an election for officers of the Students' Union at your school. One student says he isn't going to vote. Another says he ought to. Consider these reasons which were given for not voting.

(a) It doesn't make any difference which side gets in.

(b) I don't know any of the candidates or what they stand for.

(c) We ought to have a director of each activity (say, a teacher) 
      instead of the Students' Union sponsoring and controlling it.

Not surprisingly, the author of the exam asked for the help of A.T.A. Magazine readers to create a correct-answer key for his examination.

The central feature of this new approach to citizenship education was that it didn't seek an explanation for the past, it sought emancipation from it. The earliest attempts to teach citizenship assumed that there was a connection between good citizenship and good conduct, that the good citizen was, in essence, a good person. After WWI, the connection between good citizenship and a Christian understanding of virtue was forgotten. In the 1920s, schools tried to create good citizens by showing students how to fit in, but while explicit references to traditional virtues ended, the assumption continued that society could function effectively and parliamentary democracy worked if everyone understood their role. Progressive education and the adoption of social studies meant that this confidence in existing economic and political institutions was abandoned. Under the new curriculum, schools were supposed to prepare students, not for participation in the current system, but for participation and active citizenship in a better world in the future. The irony was, of course, that this task depended even more heavily on personal virtue. Only good people could provide vision and leadership for this mission, and only citizens who believed in a better world could play an active role in the new society. Yet adoption of social studies also signalled the end of formal character education.

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From: Aspenland 1998 — Local Knowledge and Sense of Place
Edited by: David J. Goa and David Ridley
Published by: The Central Alberta Regional Museums Network (CARMN) with the assistance of the Provincial Museum of Alberta and the Red Deer and District Museum.