Abstract
Using education as a lens, and Ontario, Canada, and Victoria, Australia, as case studies, this chapter lays out the central arguments, scope, and methodology for the project. The central argument is that Britishness continued to be a useful lynchpin for the national identity of both countries through the 1950s, but that by the 1960s, large-scale non-Anglo and non-Protestant immigration, combined with a backlash against racialized thinking, made a defense of Britishness increasingly difficult to sustain for educators in schools across both Ontario and Victoria. Historiographically, this project builds on several areas of scholarship, including histories of education in Canada and Australia, the British World, nationalism, and decolonization. This book is the first full-length comparative study of education's significance to the British World, demonstrating how the concept of Britishness within the settlement colonies rapidly waned in the era of decolonization.
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Notes
- 1.
Dorothy McGuire , “The Crown of Education,” Brief A-64 to the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives in Ontario: The Christian Women’s Council on Education of Metropolitan Toronto , 1966, Archives of Ontario RG2–168, Container 3, 6.
- 2.
Ibid., 8.
- 3.
Ibid., 8.
- 4.
Ibid., 9.
- 5.
E.M. Hall and L.A. Dennis, Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives in the Schools of Ontario (Toronto : Newton Publishing Company, 1968), 93.
- 6.
A.G. Hopkins, “Rethinking Decolonization,” Past & Present, Vol. 200, Issue 1, Aug. 2008, 210–247.
- 7.
Justice John Hope, Report of the Royal Commission on Education in Ontario (Toronto : Government Printer, 1950), 31.
- 8.
Although he wrote about education in England, Stephen Heathorn’s argument that “[h]istory instruction was thus specifically invested with the role of training the patriotic and loyal citizen” was just as applicable in Ontario and Victoria. Stephen Heathorn, For Home, Country, and Race: Constructing Gender, Class, and Englishness in the Elementary Schools, 1880–1914 (Toronto : The University of Toronto Press, 2000). For an introduction to histories of education in Canada, see Alf Chaiton and Neil McDonald, Canadian Schools and Canadian Identity (Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing Limited, 1977); R.D. Gidney, From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario’s Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); George S. Tomkins, A Common Countenance: Stability and Change in the Canadian Curriculum (Ontario: Prentice-Hall of Canada, 1986); J. Donald Wilson, Robert M. Stamp, Louis-Phillippe Audet, Canadian Education: A History (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice-Hall of Canada Ltd., 1970). For more information on Australian education, see Bob Bessant, Making Policy for Schools: The Education Policy Process in Victoria (Parkville, Victoria: Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne , 1980); L.J. Blake, ed., Vision and Realisation: A Centenary History of State Education in Victoria, Volumes I–III (Melbourne: Education Department of Victoria, 1973); G.S. Browne, Education in Australia: A Comparative Study of the Educational Systems of the Six Australian States (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1927); R.T. Fitzgerald, Through a Rear Vision Mirror: Change and Education, a Perspective on the Seventies from the Forties (Hawthorn, Vic.: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1975).
- 9.
Stuart J. Foster and Keith A Crawford, “The Critical Importance of History Textbook Research,” in Stuart J. Foster and Keith A. Crawford, What Shall We Tell the Children?: International Perspectives on School History Textbooks (Greenwich, Connecticut: Information Age Publishing, Inc., 2006), 1. See also many of the works of Michael Apple including Teachers and Texts: A Political Economy of Class and Gender Relations in Education (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).
- 10.
Jatinder Mann , The Search for a New National Identity: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1890s–1970s (New York: Peter Lang, 2016).
- 11.
José Igartua , The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945–71 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006).
- 12.
The first Trudeau government announced the Canadian policy of “multiculturalism within a bicultural framework” in 1971, and Australia followed suit in 1972. For a helpful overview of literature on Canadian multiculturalism, see Miriam Verena Richter, Multiculturalism in Canadian Children’s Literature from 1950 to 1994 (New York: Rodolpi, 2011), especially Chapter 2. For a good overview of multiculturalism in Australia, see Mark Lopez, The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics, 1945–1975 (Melbourne : Melbourne University Press, 2000).
- 13.
The purpose of this study is to examine a shared culture based on a sense of British culture that gradually fell apart in the wake of decolonization. Therefore, my focus is on a primarily English-speaking province of Canada, and not on the French-speaking province of Quebec, which generally refused to embrace Britishness. Schools in both Ontario and Victoria had to find ways to accommodate, assimilate, and eventually celebrate minority groups including immigrants and Franco-Ontarians, so those groups do figure prominently in this analysis.
- 14.
For an overview of education in Ontario, see Gidney, From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario’s Schools.
- 15.
Craig Munro, and Robyn Sheahan-Bright, eds., Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia 1946–2005 (Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2006). For an insightful analysis of education in Victoria, see Blake, Vision and Realisation.
- 16.
For more detailed information on government expenditure on education, see Chap. 2.
- 17.
For some of the most influential work on the British World , see Philip Buckner, “Presidential Address: Whatever Happened to the British Empire?” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 4, 1993, 3–32; Philip Buckner, ed., Canada and the End of Empire (UBC Press: Vancouver, 2005); Philip Buckner and Douglas Francis, eds., Canada and the British World: Culture, Migration, and Identity (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006); Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, eds., The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity (London: Frank Cass, 2003); Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); James Curran and Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation: Australia after Empire (Melbourne : Melbourne University Press, 2010); Kate Darian-Smith, Patricia Grimshaw and Stuart Macintyre, Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007); Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine, Frank Trentmann, eds., Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c. 880–1950 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Stuart Ward, ed., British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).
- 18.
‘British Dominion’ denotes a colony composed mostly of emigrants from the British Isles that was given the right to autonomous government in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. They include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (following the Anglo–South African War). Ireland was also granted Dominion status after the signing of the Anglo–Irish Treaty in 1921. The term broadened in meaning and legal status following the Second World War.
- 19.
Literature on Canadian and Australian nationalism has often focused on the implications of developing an autonomous national identity. This is sometimes referred to as the “colony-to-nation” theory in Canada, and the “thwarted nationalism ” thesis in Australia. For examples of literature on Canadian nationalism , see Chaiton and McDonald, Canadian Schools and Canadian Identity; Ryan Edwardson, Canadian Content: Culture and the Quest for Nationhood (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Arthur Lower, Canadians in the Making: A Social History of Canada (Toronto: Longmans, 1958) and Colony to Nation: A History of Canada (Don Mills, Ontario: Longmans Canada, 1964); Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (London: Routledge, 1999); Eli Mandel and David Taras, eds., A Passion for Identity: Introduction to Canadian Studies (Scarborough, Ont.: Nelson Canada, 1988);Vincent Massey, On Being Canadian (Toronto: J.M. Dent, 1948); W.L. Morton, The Canadian Identity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961); Philip Resnick, The Land of Cain: Class and Nationalism in English Canada, 1945–1975 (Vancouver: New Star, 1977), and The European Roots of Canadian Identity (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2005). For examples of literature on Australian nationalism , see John Carroll, ed., Intruders in the Bush: The Australian Quest for Identity (Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1982); Catriona Elder, Being Australian: Narratives of National Identity (Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2007); Geoffrey Stokes, ed., The Politics of Identity in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Kosmas Tsokhas, Making a Nation State: Cultural Identity, Economic Nationalism and Sexuality in Australian History (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2001); Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1978); Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity, 1688–1980 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1981). For more on the “colony-to-nation” theory, see A.R.M. Lower, Colony to Nation: A History of Canada (Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1946). For some examples of the ‘thwarted nationalism ’ school, see Stephen Alomes, A Nation at Last?: The Changing Character of Australian Nationalism, 1880–1988 (North Ryde, NSW, Australia: Angus & Robertson, 1988); W.F. Mandle, Going It Alone: Australia’s National Identity in the Twentieth Century (Ringwood, Australia: A. Lane, 1978).
- 20.
Bridge and Fedorowich, “Mapping the British World ,” in The British World, 11.
- 21.
Canadian and Australian immigration will be discussed more fully in Chapter 2. For reference on Canadian immigration , see Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540–2006 (Toronto : Dundurn Press, 2007). For information on Australian immigration , see James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- 22.
For more on decolonization within the British Empire, see Jordanna Bailkin , The Afterlife of Empire (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2012); John Darwin, The End of the British Empire: The Historical Debate (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (London: Basingstoke, 1988), The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World -System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Roy Douglas, Liquidation of Empire: The Decline of the British Empire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Frank Heinlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation 1945–1963 (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2002); Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); W.M. Roger Louis, Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez, and Decolonization (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006); Martin Lynn, The British Empire in the 1950s: Retreat or Revival? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Andrew Stewart, Empire Lost: Britain, the Dominions and the Second World War (London: Continuum, 2008); Nicholas White, Decolonisation: The British Experience Since 1945 (London: Longman, 1999).
- 23.
J.L. Granatstein, How Britain’s Weakness Forced Canada into the Arms of the United States (Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1989); Stuart Ward, Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal (Melbourne : Melbourne University Press, 2001).
- 24.
Jordanna Bailkin , The Afterlife of Empire.
- 25.
For more info see the multivolume work by R.T. Dixon and N.L. Bethune, A Documentary History of Separate Schools in Ontario, Parts One–Three (Toronto : Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, 1971); also, Peter McLaren, Schooling as a Ritual Performance: Towards a Political Economy of Educational Symbols and Gestures (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).
- 26.
For more detailed information on Catholic Education in Australia, see Lawrence Angus, Continuity and Change in Catholic Schooling: An Ethnography of a Christian Brothers College in Australian Society (London: Falmer Press, 1988); Ronald Fogarty, Catholic Education in Australia, 1806–1950 (Melbourne : Melbourne University Press, 1959); Thomas O’Donaghue, Upholding the Faith: The Process of Education in Catholic Schools in Australia, 1922–1965 (New York: Peter Lang, 2001); P.D. Tannock, ed., The Organization and Administration of Catholic Education in Australia (St. Lucia, Queensland: University Press, 1975).
- 27.
The terminology is somewhat confusing in the case of Ontario. Though both systems were ‘public’ in the sense that they received state funding, the non-Catholic system was typically referred to as the “public school system.” The Catholic schools were generally referred to as the “Roman Catholic Separate Schools,” “R.C.S.S.,” or simply “Separate Schools” for short, thus perpetuating a sense of difference through the name.
- 28.
The terms of the BNA Act stipulated that the system in place at the time of Confederation be maintained afterwards. Whether this was a ‘final settlement’ on Catholic education was an extremely controversial issue, particularly for Separate School supporters who wanted increased funding for the Catholic school system. For more on this, see Chapter 2.
- 29.
In Ontario, sources came from two primary locations. The first was the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, especially their Ontario Historic Textbook Collection, which contains a comprehensive collection of authorized textbook used in the province. This study also relied heavily on the Archives of Ontario for critical resources, especially for official documentation from the Ministry of Education. Australian sources contained information from the State Library of Victoria, the Public Records of Victoria, and, importantly, the Alfred Deakin Prime Ministerial Library’s Historic Textbooks Collection. Other archives accessed for the study included the General Synod Archives of the Anglican Church of Canada, the University of Toronto Archives, the Robarts Library, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, and the Victoria University E.J. Pratt Library, the La Trobe University Library, and the University of Melbourne Library.
- 30.
Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Ontario Inter-Church Committee on Religious Education in the Schools, 1962, General Synod Archives: Anglican Church of Canada, 3.
- 31.
René Lévesque and Alf Chaiton, “Education in a Changing Society: A View from Quebec,” in Chaiton and McDonald, Canadian Schools and Canadian Identity (Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing, 1977), 177.
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Jackson, S. (2018). Introduction. In: Constructing National Identity in Canadian and Australian Classrooms. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89402-7_1
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