ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways that one of Ontario’s leading progressive educationists, Duncan McArthur, wove meaning and consistency out of the various progressivist interests and initiatives. McArthur had a seminal role in Ontario’s Department of Education between 1934 and 1942 McArthur was a driving force behind the province’s modern, progressivist curriculum reforms serving first as Deputy Minister of Education, then Minister of Education in the province. The former head of the History Department at Queen’s University worked in the national archives and served as a school board trustee in Kingston, Ontario, before being recruited into provincial politics as a noted, and respected, educationist. While his training was in history and the humanities, he challenged classicists and humanists, two of the last bastions of the traditional curriculum and teaching methods, to confront the themes and interests of progressivist educational thought.
