Phillip McCann
Memorial University of Newfoundland

Royal Commissions are popularly supposed to be a device of government for delaying or avoiding crucial decisions of policy. Even if there is some truth in this, their importance should not be minimised. Whether or not Commissions inspire action, they provide a valuable repository of facts on particular issues and a revealing guide to the ideological currents of the time.

Our Children Our Future, chaired by Dr. Leonard Williams and published in March 1992, is the second Royal Commission on Education in Newfoundland. The first, chaired by Dr. Philip Warren, reported in 1967-68, some twenty years after Newfoundland voted to enter Confederation and exchange the relative poverty of a centuries-old fishing community for the greater prosperity and security of the Canadian consumer and welfare society. Inspired by dissatisfaction with anomalies and deficiencies within the denominational education system (Anglican, Roman Catholic, United Church and Salvation Army) inherited from pre-Confederation days, the Report centred on the enrichment of education and the streamlining and rationalisation of the structure. ⁽¹⁾ The Commission was followed by the amalgamation of the Protestant churches into a single educational denomination, the secularisation of the Department of Education, and the recognition as a denomination of the Pentecostal Assemblies. ⁽²⁾

Twenty-five years have elapsed since the Warren Report was published; this is probably the minimum time in which economic, social and cultural changes in a community manifest themselves sufficiently clearly for at least some tentative observations to be made about society. Among the most important changes in Newfoundland have been the decline of the birthrate and the increase in urbanisation. The former slowed down after the post-war and post-Confederation baby boom -- from the 2% of 1960-61 to the virtually zero increase of the late 1980s ⁽³⁾ -- and the total fertility rate dropped from 4.6 in 1966 to 1.5 in 1988, one of the lowest in the world; this was largely due to the doubling of female participation in the labour force, progressive industrialisation and increasing urbanisation. ⁽⁴⁾

Since Confederation a significant fraction of the population has, in fact, moved into the larger towns and cities. Between 1951 and 1976, the proportion of the population living in urban communities increased from 26.9% to 39.9%. ⁽⁵⁾ In the last decade the urban population increased by 4.5% and today 51.5% of the population lives in urban areas. St. John's, the capital, increased in size by 11% between 1981 and 1991, and four other large centres by 5%-20%. Conversely, 13 communities with 2,000 or fewer inhabitants declined in population between 1981 and 1986. ⁽⁶⁾

Urban expansion fed the growth of suburbs. In two of the larger suburban areas of St. John's -- the Goulds and Mount Pearl -- the population increase has been 14.7% (between 1981 and 1986) and 435% (between 1966 and 1991) respectively. ⁽⁷⁾ These and other suburbs are largely occupied by white-collar workers of various kinds. The number of clerical, sales and service workers in Newfoundland increased by 100% between 1971 and 1989, ⁽⁸⁾ and they now form 69% of the employed labour force. ⁽⁹⁾ Social indicators suggest the adoption of middle-class life-styles geared to a consumer society by this relatively affluent and educated sector of the population. Between 1966 and 1989, retail sales of luxury or semi-luxury items - furniture, appliances and hardware, jewellery, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics rose by 900%-2,000%, far ahead of the sales of necessities. ⁽¹⁰⁾ Sale of imported wines escalated by over 1,000% between 1972 and 1992. ⁽¹¹⁾ The number of motor vehicles sold in 1989 was more than twice that of 1965. ⁽¹²⁾

It is no exaggeration to say that the outlook and way of life of the pre-Confederation era - localised, frugal, god-fearing, socially conservative - has all but disappeared in the urban centres, and has also undergone some changes in the rural outports. ⁽¹³⁾ Further indicators of the advance of modernity are the number of divorces: 6,195 in 1986, compared with a mere 47 in 1945, and the growth of single-parent families to nearly 16,000, 11% of all families. ⁽¹⁴⁾ The burgeoning of activity in art, music, literature and drama in the last two decades, and the formation of social action groups - the women's movement, organisations for peace and social justice, the environmental movement, white-collar unionism, and ad hoc protest factions of various kinds, most virtually unknown before the '70s, is testimony to the transformation of Newfoundland society.

It is always difficult to connect changes in social structure with the movement of popular opinion or to determine the part that the social consciousness of participants plays in determining the actual course of events. There is certainly a process of interaction, and despite possible countervailing pressures of an individualist orientation - the media, political propaganda, religious beliefs, etc., the structural component generally has the greater weight in influencing the opinions and consciousness of groups and classes. ⁽¹⁵⁾

This has been recognised in the correlation between life in a city and the decline in religious belief. ⁽¹⁶⁾  In Newfoundland this has largely taken the form of a more critical attitude to the denominational educational system, influenced to some extent by recent disclosures of child abuse by some of the Catholic clergy. ⁽¹⁷⁾ In 1976, 50% of respondents in a public opinion poll were in favour of a single public educational system. Similar surveys in 1979 and 1986 recorded 56% in favour of a non-denominational system of public education; five years later a poll in February 1991 found this figure had increased to 67%. ⁽¹⁸⁾

The writing was obviously on the wall before the Royal Commission's own survey, carried out in September 1991, revealed that 79% of the populace was in favour of a single school system for all children. ⁽¹⁹⁾ The Commission's survey showed that large majorities - from 74% to 87% were in favour of dismantling many aspects of the system, from denominational busing to discrimination against teachers, from supporting the election of school boards to the teaching of all religions in schools. An analysis of the answers given by supporters of the system led the Commission to conclude that for many the attachment was "in name only." ⁽²⁰⁾

The various surveys also demonstrated that support for the educational status quo was strongest among older people in rural areas, and that those most critical were younger people with post-secondary education in and around the capital, St. John's ⁽²¹⁾ -- in other words the suburbanites previously analysed. Many of them are graduates of Memorial University -- which granted over 38,000 degrees between 1950 and 1988 ⁽²²⁾ -- and have taken the opportunity to widen their outlook by travel. The number of passports issued to Newfoundlanders increased from 2,049 in 1968 to 9,897 in 1990. ⁽²³⁾

To the increasingly sceptical attitudes towards the denominational system was added, from the mid-1980s onwards, a volume of criticism of other aspects of education. ⁽²⁴⁾ Despite the post-Confederation transformation of the system - from one consisting largely of one-room schools staffed by under-qualified teachers to the present-day North American style system which, as we have seen, has helped to bring about substantial social improvements - the quality of schooling in Newfoundland still falls below the Canadian level in several areas. The province has the lowest median years of schooling and highest level of illiteracy; post-secondary enrolment, as a percentage of the 18-24 age-group, is far below the Canadian average, as is the percentage of the population with a university degree, and Newfoundland fares badly in the Canadian Test of Basic Skills. ⁽²⁵⁾

There is thus much scope for legitimate criticism of the province's educational performance, and by and large the "service class" of the newly-educated generation has provided a fertile soil for the growth of attitudes conducive to the production of a searching series of studies in the six or seven years preceding the Royal Commission on Education.

The first and perhaps the most influential of these critiques was Education for Self-Reliance, a supplementary volume to Building On Our Strengths, a Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment which reported in 1986, Education for Self-Reliance posited "a growing mismatch between the kind of secondary and post-secondary education system that has evolved and the kind of society Newfoundland is becoming." ⁽²⁶⁾ Post-Confederation schooling, the Report continued, was modelled on the North American system and geared to the growth of an urban-industrial society, with a largely academic secondary system leading to Memorial University and membership of a new middle-class of professionals, politicians and public servants, with the College of Trades and Technology and district vocational schools catering for manual workers. ⁽²⁷⁾

The system, the Report argued, in short, was geared neither to the needs and lifestyles of the people of the outports, nor to the demands of the "post-industrial society" allegedly now in being. The whole Report, in fact, was suffused with the concept of education as an economic investment, derived from the human capital theory originating in the early 1980s in the USA. The theory rests on the supposition that the higher the level of a country's education, the greater the degree of economic growth. ⁽²⁸⁾

Two government-mandated documents followed Education for Self-Reliance. The first, Focussing Our Future, was concerned with the Faculty of Education at Memorial. Responding to the alleged concern of "various groups" that the education program at the university no longer met the "needs of the province," the Report asserted that the administrative structure of the Faculty prevented it from functioning with the necessary efficiency to respond to changing social conditions. ⁽²⁹⁾ The second, Towards an Achieving Society, a task force on Mathematics and Science Education, suggested remedies for the poor performance of Memorial students in Mathematics and the low participation rates in science programs, and argued that "a high level of competence in science and technology is a key element in economic growth, and crucial to the ability of the province, and indeed the nation, to compete economically". ⁽³⁰⁾ Finally, a report issued by the Economic Council of Newfoundland and Labrador in March 1990, entitled Education and Labour Market Training, stressed the contribution of education to economic development and deplored the general and persistently low level of Newfoundland education compared with that of Canada. ⁽³¹⁾ All these documents emphasised the connection of education with economic growth, Focusing Our Future obliquely, ⁽³²⁾ the others directly. ⁽³³⁾ Both Conservative and Liberal governments of Newfoundland, influenced by publications of national business-academic organisations on the need for hi-tech education as the saviour of the economy, ⁽³⁴⁾ were thus supporting an ideology that was to influence the work of the Royal Commission on Education.

The occasion of the Commission was the election of the Liberal government in 1989. Aware of the depression of the economy - a virtually extinct fishery, declining transfer payments from Ottawa, earned income only 60% of the Canadian level and Gross Domestic Product 63% that of Canada ⁽³⁵⁾ - and of a critical public and institutional opinion which demanded change and improvement in both the economy and the educational system, the government felt the need for planning documents which would chart the path for the last decade of the century. The Education Commission was the first, mandated in August 1990 and reporting in March 1992, with the ostensible purpose of seeking ways of making better use of resources in a period of "fiscal restraint" and declining school enrolment, ⁽³⁶⁾ which, consequent on the declining birthrate, had fallen from a high of 163,000 in 1971-72 to 125,000 in 1991-92. ⁽³⁷⁾ The second document was Change and Challenge, a "strategic economic plan" of the Provincial government, which envisaged future prosperity in the creation of a skilled, innovative and adaptive workforce educated in scientific, mathematical, electronic and computer skills.

The concentration of attention on this type of curriculum, and on the fostering of competitive "enterprise" attitudes, to the neglect of the humanist-academic side, may have been influenced by the rapid growth of the electronic, telecommunication, information and business-service sector of the economy - by the beginning of the '90s consisting of over 400 companies employing some 20% of the service labour force. ⁽³⁸⁾ The government was also undoubtedly influenced by the most powerful of the many lobby groups - the business community, spearheaded by the St. John's Board of Trade, entirely in favour of "entrepreneurial" type of education set out in Change and Challenge, and desirous of radically changing the way education is delivered by the denominational system. ⁽³⁹⁾

There are, however, other strands of opinion on the present status and future direction of education in the province. The Newfoundland Teachers' Association, in a document entitled Exploring New Pathways, issued in 1986, urged the Faculty of Education to provide a sufficient number and range of specialised teachers in music, the languages, the arts, and computer technology. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ In a submission to the Royal Commission, the NTA argued that an acceptable educational system should provide literacy and numeracy skills, opportunities for creative thinking and problem solving and the enhancement of communication and life-enhancement skills -- in short, a world-class program with local relevance, but a wide perspective, particularly in the fields of the arts, music and sport. ⁽⁴¹⁾

The Newfoundland and Labrador Home and School Federation, which by and large speaks for parents, also has a position on education which is fundamentally different from that of the supporters of hi-tech, "enterprise" education. The Federation advocates improved teacher education, especially in specialist areas; core courses in English, mathematics, the sciences, history and social studies; improved library and other resources; an extended school year and measures to improve student interest and class attendance; the community use of schools, and the rationalisation and adaptation of the denominational system. Above all, the Federation would like to see the role of parents within the system -- at present minimal -- greatly expanded. Parents should elect school boards, have a voice in decision-making, audit school performance and evaluate curricula, and have a voice in rewarding improved performance by schools and teachers by the use of discretionary funds. ⁽⁴²⁾

With regard to public opinion in general, a task force on educational finance, which reported in 1989, carried out a public opinion survey on the function of the school. Between 87% and 95% of respondents felt that teaching mathematics and reading was the most important function of schools; that schools should teach attitudes of cooperation, tolerance and good citizenship while preparing pupils for university; colleges and the labour market, and for life in a technological world. Only 58% considered that the school should teach basic moral and religious principles. ⁽⁴³⁾

There thus existed two bodies of opinion: on the one hand the business community, government and a sector of the academic world -- who wished to forge an education system based on the new technologies of electronics, telecommunications, information services and computers, with an emphasis on a mathematical-scientific curriculum and the inculcation of competitive, entrepreneurial attitudes. On the other hand teachers, parents and the public at large saw the function of schools as the providers of a broadened and improved academic-humanist curriculum with emphasis on cooperation, citizenship and multicultural values, with increased parental participation in the educational process.

Both groupings are critical in various ways and to a varying extent of the denominational system. The business community see it as an irrelevant barrier to hi-tech education and greater productivity; the teachers' want a unified system with the churches confined to education in religion and morality; the great majority of the public take a similar view.

Both these ideological positions find expression in the Report of the Royal Commission, which stresses both the need for skills for young people in order to function in the global market place, and also recognises the need of a broader vision of a rich and varied curriculum, and increased parental involvement in the process of schooling. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ The weight which it gives to each has been shown; the wisdom of its choice is a matter of debate.

1. Report of the Royal Commission on Education and Youth (Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1967 and 1968).

2. R.L. Andrews, Post-Confederation Developments in Newfoundland Education (St. John's 1985), pp. 254-319.

3. Historical Statistics of Newfoundland and Labrador (hereafter HSNL), Vol. II (vi), 1990, Table A-1, p. 5.

4. Department of Education, Newfoundland and Labrador, Toward 2000. Trends Report 2: Elementary-Secondary Projections (St. John's 1990), pp. 8-12. The fertility rate is the average number of children born per woman.

5. Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment Education Report: Education for Self-Reliance (St. John's 1986), p. 4. Urban is defined as communities greater than 5,000 people.

6. Calculated from data supplied by Statistics Canada and the Newfoundland Statistics Agency.

7. Calculated from data supplied by Statistics Canada and Mount Pearl City Council.

8. HSNL, Vol. II(vi), Table C-4, p. 41.

9. Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Change and Challenge: A Strategic Economic Plan for Newfoundland and Labrador (St. John's 1992), Chart 5, p. 42.

10. HSNL, Vol. II(vi), Table E-4, p. 66.

11. Calculated from data supplied by Newfoundland Liquor Corporation.

12. HSNL, Vol. II(vi), Table T-2, p. 215.

13. Marilyn Porter, "A Tangly Bunch: The Political Culture of Outport Women in Newfoundland", unpublished typescript, Memorial University, 1982.

14. HSNL, Vol. II(vi), Table A-4, p. 8; Table A-10, p. 18.

15. Cf. Margaret A. Coulson and D.S. Riddell, Approaching Sociology: A Critical Introduction (London 1970), esp. Ch. 5.

16. Cf. H. Cox, The Secular City (New York 1966).

17. M. Harris, Unholy Orders: Tragedy at Mount Cashel (New York 1990).

18. M. Graesser, "Public Opinion on Denominational Education: Does the Majority Rule?" in W. McKim (Ed.), The Vexed Question: Denominational Education in a Secular Age (St. John's 1988), pp. 195-220.

19. Our Children Our Future. Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Delivery of Programs and Services in Primary, Elementary, Secondary Education (St. John's 1992), Table 5.8, p. 90.

20. Ibid., p. 93; p. 95.

21. Graesser, "Public Opinion and Denominational Education," loc. cit., pp. 202-204.

22. HSNL, Vol. II(vi), Table E-4, p. 66.

23. Information from Passport Office, Ottawa.

24. Cf. eg. Evening Telegram, 19 November 1987, reporting a public meeting on education.

25. Statistics Canada. Education in Canada: A Statistical Review for 1990-91 (Ottawa 1992), Chart 28, p. 243; Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Education, Profile '91: Educational Performance Indicators (St. John's 1992), Tables 3.1.1 - 3.1.4, pp. 32-33; Statistics Canada. Adult Literacy in Canada: Results of a National Study (Ottawa 1991), pp. 13-14; pp. 19-20; Economic Council of Newfoundland and Labrador, Education and Labour Market Training, St. John's 1990, x.

26. Education for Self-Reliance, 2.

27. Ibid., pp. 3-4.

28. Cf. D.W. Hornbeck and L.M. Salamon, Human Capital and America's Future (Baltimore 1991).

29. Focussing Our Future. The Report of the Presidential Committee to Review Teacher Education. (Memorial University of Newfoundland 1988), p. 2.

30. Towards an Achieving Society. Task Force on Mathematics and Science Education (St. John's 1989), passim; p. 5.

31. Education and Labour Market Training, x-xi.

32. In urging the Faculty of Education to examine its role in the work of the Ocean Studies Task Force, and to consider "what implications follow for teachers and schools in a province whose economic and cultural destiny is inescapably bound up with ocean resources" (p. 97).

33. Education for Self-Reliance, p. 11ff; Towards an Achieving Society, p. 5; Education and Labour Market Training, x.

34. E.g. Steering Group on Prosperity, Inventing Our Future: An Action Plan for Canada's Prosperity (1992); Information Technology Association of Canada, A Knowledge-Based Canada; the New National Dream (1993).

35. Newfoundland and Labrador Budget 1992, Figure 4, p. 7; Change and Challenge, Chart 2, p. 6.

36. Information from Dr. Philip Warren, Minister of Education 1989-93.

37. Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Education, Educational Statistics Elementary Secondary 1991-92, Table 8, p. 17.

38. Change and Challenge, pp. 43-4.

39. Evening Telegram, 21 October 1987, reporting a speech by John O'Dea, President of the St. John's Board of Trade; St. John's Board of Trade: Brief to Premier and His Cabinet on a Number of Current Economic Issues (St. John's 1989), pp. 1-5.

40. Newfoundland Teachers' Association, Exploring New Pathways: A Brief Presented the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador (St. John's, 1986).

41. Newfoundland Teachers' Association, Building a Vision for the Future: A Summary of the Submission to the Royal Commission on Education (St. John's 1991).

42. St. John's Area Council, Newfoundland and Labrador Home and School Federation, Brief to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Delivery of Programs and Services in Primary, Elementary and Secondary Education (1991).

43. Financing Greater Equality and Excellence in the Newfoundland School System, Report of the Task Force on Educational Finance (St. John's 1989).

44. Our Children Our Future, p. 27; p. 216; p. 231ff.

Dr. Phillip McCann is Professor Emeritus at Memorial University