Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

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The Voyageur cracy has been more or less achieved but we are far from achieving an economic democracy. Post-War government must eliminate economic chaos and misery. There was an old doctrine,-that government is best which governs least. It is surely evident that, in our modern, complex, highly interdependent world, such a doctrine is no longer valid. ln varying ways, Nazism, Fascism, Com- munism, the 6'New Dealw, the Marsh Report and the Beveridge Report are all manifestations of the fact that in a modern community the welfare of each is the responsibility of all. We cannot tolerate any recurrence of de- pression conditions when 400,000 young Canadians went begging for work and when one-third of the population of the United States was living below a minimum subsistence level. Furthermore, organization to eliminate economic chaos must be more than national in its scope. It has become fashionable in some quarters to be cynical about the League of Nations, but it was not an idle dream, it was an expression of man's deep yearning for a better world. Surely we have learned that no nation can any longer consider itself isolated, independent, self-sufficient, sovereign and responsible only to itself. Surely we know now that no nation or race can be considered inferior because of the colour of its people or the stage of its cultural development. The only possibility of human progress depends on a universal recognition of the fact that men everywhere must co-operate or die. ln our Western democracies we had developed a ugimmei' theory of democracy with all the emphasis on rights and privileges and few on duties and responsibilities. There must be a recognition by all men of their com- mon obligation to each other and, therefore, to the community. This truth was long ago expressed by a great teacher,-aHe that would save his life shall lose itg he that will lose his life, the same shall find it.', Or as H. C. Wells has said, 4'There is no peace-no security--no righteous leadership or kingship unless men lose themselves in something greater than themselvesf' Our leaders say that changes of this nature mean a revolution in our way of life, it is only if our anew order , when it is formed, is based upon such principles of Christian democracy that the present struggle can be justified. Implications for Education Changes of such a nature must affect our attitude to education. Our schools have two main tasks. The first is to transmit to each successive new generation the acquired cultural heritage of the race or of the com- munity in which the individual lives. The second is to enable the individual, not merely to adjust to his society, but to analyze, to crticize and to improve it-to help direct the course of its changing development. Any educational process that thinks only in terms of the past-its glories and its traditions- is, at any time, inadequate, but never more so than at the present time. An educational programme fo-r to-day and to-morrow must be bold, visionary and courageous. The post-war period must see a great new forward step in the onward march of man, otherwise it will be 1919-39 all over again, 15

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The Voyageur Education, the War and After An address delivered by Joseph McCulley, MA., Headmaster, Pickering College, Newmarket, Ontario, To the Rotary Clubs of Toronto and Montreal. HE PROCESS of constant change which is the most characteristic feature of all life has been tremendously accelerated by the fact of two wars in one generation. It can be assumed that the post-war world will be different than the one we have known. Before discussing the place of edu- cation in the post-War period it is important to understand something of the changes we may expect. No man is wise enough to forecast the exact nature of those changes. No one is intelligent enough to provide the blue-prints of 'fthe new order . But in the recorded words of leaders of the United Nations,-President Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Sumner Welles, Wendell Wilkie, in the United States, Churchill and the Archbishop of Canterbury, in England-we can see some indication of the general nature of those changes. These leaders are looking ahead fearlessly to the future, we, too, can take some thought to-day for our post-war problems--no apology is necessary. Clearly to see our aims is not a diversion, but a source of strength, the better we all see what we are fighting for, the better we shall fight. A World of Change Change is uncomfortable. There is a rooted aversion in most of us to any alteration in our accustomed ways of life. We must, however, recognize that we are living in one of the great periods in human history, when change, which is the normal expression of life, becomes more rapid-when all our umoresw, customs and conventions become subject to profound modifi- cation. We must rid ourselves of any notion that we can put the clock back. When the bugles blew in August, 1914, they marked the end of: our old world of easy optimism, our old world of privilege for some and mass misery for others, our old world of expanding frontiers, our old world of imperialist and nationalist rivalries. We were not conscious of it at the time, but two wars and the long armistice have made the fact increasingly evident. Uur War A irns If any of us were asked what we are fighting for, we might answer in one word, MDemocracy7'. 1 am afraid, however, that we really mean our own old way of life, which we-the more or less privileged of our society- have found comfortable and pleasant, in other words, Lathe status quow. This is not good enough. A new democracy must come to birth out of the fires of the present struggle. There must be a re-interpretation of the doctrine of liberty,-not only in political, but also in economic terms. In our countries, political demo- 14

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The Voyageur ending in a new orgy of carnage and destruction. What are some of the practical steps necessary for the improvement of Canadian education? W Canadian Unity and Education Perhaps our greatest weakness in this country is our lack of any sense of national unity. Thinking Canadians are appalled by our unhappy di- visions, our provincialisms and our sectionalisms. To overcome these divisions and prejudices we must plan an all-Canadian educational structure. As a first step, I recommend a Federal bureau or oflice of education, not to destroy or eliminate provincial administration, but to act as a clearing-house for educational ideas, to set minimum standards of curricula, to co-ordinate the certification and exchange of teachers from province to province and to equalize educational opportunity. This last matter is a vital one. Equalizing Opportunity No child should be denied his rightful educational opportunity because he happens to be born in the country rather than in the city or in one province rather than another. The principle of federal grants-in-aid for education has already been established, viz.:-for technical and vocational education and for soldiers' civil re-establishment. An extension of this principle would do much to equalize opportunity across the country. The Larger Administratirve Unit In our day the one-room rural school is as outmoded as a buggy whip on a trans-Canada plane. One of the next important steps in Canadian education is the establishment of a larger administrative unit-at least, town- ship administration. Larger units should combine not only rural schools but the schools in urban communities with those in contiguous rural areas, helping a little to overcome the traditional antagonism between town and country. The development of the consolidated school would follow as a logical next step, in the meantime this Hrst step would materially improve the status of the teachers and the quality of instruction. T Educational Guidance There must be compulsory education for all Canadian children. fThe present move in Quebec is long overduell. And education must be suited to the capacities of the child. This means a tremendous extension of uguid- ance in the schools and the utilization of the results of modern educational research. The armed services have discovered the value of a personnel at On the day this address was delivered in Montreal, the Canada-Newfoundland Education Association published its recommendations to the James Committee. This document charts a course for Canadian education for many years and is worthy of serious study by all Canadians. +A beginning has already been made in the Province of Ontario. Of 6,300 school sections, 863 have been wiped out and replaced by township boards. 16