Social Reform In Rural Canada

The quest for social reform in rural Canada during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reveals a deep connection between educational movements and reform. Many studies and primary sources allow us to explore the history of our nation and ways in which key actors used education to encourage reform in rural Canada. In doing so, many of these key thinkers hoped to use education as a solution, or as an alternative, to a variety of problems in the rural world. Therefore, some educational reforms resulted in the creation of special rural institutions as a way of providing educational for the “masses,” and encouraging an equality of education. Other educational reform movements resulted in providing rural adult education in order to create a better
I will use primary and secondary sources in order to explore various educational reform movements, and the ways in which key actors sought to bring learning opportunities to the rural society. My rationale will be to further investigate efforts made by actors in Canadian history to provide “education for all,” and whether these efforts were warranted for the betterment of society. Ultimately, I hope to answer the question on whether education for social reform provided liberation from oppression within the rural society of Canada, or whether it led to greater oppression.

By the late ninetieth century, urban populations were starting to transform Canada into an economically ‘modern’ nation, and the developments of ‘modern systems of education’ were an important part of this project. Thus, various actors played an important role in ushering change within the rural society using education. My paper will explore the motives and efforts made by these key players in order to investigate the results of educational
I will use the article written by Santo Dodaro and Leonard Pluta on their findings of “bigger picture” of the Antigonish Movement by charting the institutional history of Extension from its founding in 1928, to its ultimate demise in the late 1990s. Using this source, I will examine how the institution fell apart due to a lack of a clear sense of direction. Additionally, I will review the piece written by Pierre Walter in which he discusses the ways that the nature of the literacy programs of the Frontier College constructed an “imagined community” with particular conceptions of race, class, and gender. Finally, I also review Terry Wilde’s article on how literacy education among the Frontier was a matter of life and death for many of the camp men. Each of these resources reveals how many factors causes challenges to adult education in the rural society leading to an unsuccessful attempt at providing education for all. Ultimately, with the exploration of these various resources, my final research paper will demonstrate the strong relationship between education and social reform in rural Canada. Through my findings, I will aim to validate whether educational reform was more strongly associated with oppression or liberation from