ABSTRACT
This chapter focusses on one episode of curriculum change, in a Canadian school in the early twentieth century. The episode is part of a much broader matrix of social structure and change. Likewise, this chapter is part of a much broader study of schooling within the context of vocationalism and of early twentieth century Canadian society. In Through the Schoolhouse Door (Goodson and Anstead, 1993), we seek to provide a commentary on these wider contexts but here our focus is both time and context specific. The dangers in representing such a specific episode are clear: it may read like the story of one ‘great man’ (a dying genre) or of bounded internal curriculum change in one school. Nothing could be further from the truth: this is a story of agency and structure. This story then is part of our wider story and part of the wider social landscape and must be read against the background of this wider commentary and viewpoint.
