ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |21 pages

Introduction

Who Is Not a Progressive Reformer, Anyway?

chapter 1|8 pages

Ontario in the Interwar Period

Progressive Education for a Progressive Age

chapter 2|25 pages

Child Study as an Aspect of Progressive Education

Concentrating on the Individual Student

chapter 3|34 pages

Social Efficiency and Social Change

Schools, Workplaces, and the Alignment With the World to Come

chapter 4|22 pages

Social Meliorism and Educational Progress

Making the World a Better Place Through Schooling

chapter 5|33 pages

A Case Study in Educational Reform

Duncan McArthur, Progressivist

chapter 6|12 pages

Ontario in the Twenty-first Century

Progressive Educational Rhetoric, Redux

chapter |4 pages

Conclusion

A Path Revisited: Historical Research in Education Reviewed