1st Edition
Progressive Rhetoric and Curriculum Contested Visions of Public Education in Interwar Ontario
Progressive Rhetoric: Contested Visions of Public Education in Interwar Ontario considers the ways that progressivist ideas and rhetoric shaped early curriculum and structural changes to Ontario’s public schools. Through a series of case studies, conceptual analyses, and personal reflections from the field, this volume shows how post-WWI era debates around progressive education were firmly situated within political, economic, social and intellectual evolutions in the province and beyond. By framing contemporary educational rhetoric in light of historical concepts and arguments, Progressive Rhetoric adds to the ongoing historical examination of the meaning of progressive education in the modern age.
Preface: Who is Not a Progressive Reformer, Anyway?
Chapter 1: Ontario in the Interwar Period: Progressive Education for a Progressive Age
Chapter 2: Child Study as an Aspect of Progressive Education: Concentrating on the Individual Student
Chapter 3: Social Efficiency and Social Change: Schools, Workplaces, and Alignment with the World to Come
Chapter 4: Social Meliorism and Educational Progress: Making the World a Better Place through Schooling
Chapter 5: A Case Study in Educational Reform: Duncan McArthur, Progressivist
Chapter 6: Ontario in the 21st Century: Progressive Educational Rhetoric, Redux
Afterword: A Path Revisited, and Historical Research in Education Reviewed
Biography
Theodore Michael Christou is an Associate Professor of Social Studies and History Education in the Faculty of Education at Queens University, Ontario with a cross-appointment to the Department of History.
"Christou sets out to test Kliebard’s model in the Ontario context, devoting a chapter to each theme which he scrutinizes with Dewey’s three domains. In so doing, Christou shows the many and surprising variations of Progressivism (frequently at odds with one other), both in Ontario and in the movement itself."
-Kurt Clausen, Nipissing University, Historical Studies in Education/ Revue d'histoire de l'éducation
