(with George (Skip) Hills) Changing Visions of Excellence: The case of the Hall-Dennis Report (1968)...

335

CHANGING VISIONS OF EXCELLENCE IN ONTARIO SCHOOLPOLICY: THE CASES OF LIVING AND LEARNING AND

FOR THE LOVE OF LEARNING

Rosa Bruno-Jofre and George (Skip) Hills

Faculty of EducationQueen’s University

Abstract. In this essay, Rosa Bruno-Jofre and George Hills examine two major Ontario policy docu-ments: 1968’s Living and Learning and 1994’s For the Love of Learning. The purpose is, first, to gaininsight into the uses of the term ‘‘excellence’’ in the context of discourse about educational aims andevaluation, and, second, to explore how these uses may have changed over time. Bruno-Jofre and Hillsemploy the conceptual framework developed by Madhu Prakash and Leonard Waks to elucidate thevaried notions of excellence contained in the two reports. Bruno-Jofre and Hills argue that Living andLearning is an eclectic report that creates continuity by aligning itself with the pedagogically progres-sive tradition in Ontario; that propounds a holistic conception of excellence centered on the all-arounddevelopment of the self; and that seeks simultaneously to secure a sense of being Canadian whiledealing with rapidly emerging social fragmentation. For the Love of Learning, in contrast, attempts tocombine a technical view of excellence in education (stressing various literacies and skills as measurableindicators) with the principles of caring and the goals of social responsibility. Each report can be seen asan attempt to respond to the expectations of a population that had become increasingly diverse in theinterval between the two reports. What is cause for concern in terms of policymaking, Bruno-Jofre andHills conclude, is the turn away from broader, more comprehensive and coherent views of excellencein education toward narrower and more fragmented accounts that are preoccupied with various typesof literacy or loosely related vocational and other skills. The effect of this shift is to leave educationalpolicy and practice in the schools essentially rudderless.

Introduction

As an integral part of the educational and political landscape, the understand-ing of what is desirable and worthwhile in formal education has been constitutedand reconstituted in various ways at different points in history. In the past fiftyyears, excellence has played a central role in educational policymaking and reform,though excellence has often been separated from other educational aims. We arguethat the understanding of excellence has been framed by tensions between, on theone hand, the role of formal education in relation to socioeconomic needs and,on the other, the educational and political ideals of personal development and fullparticipatory democracy. We attempt to gain insight into the uses of excellenceby examining policy documents. These documents normally contain major guide-lines, expressions of intention, and patterns for action that are grounded in somesort of philosophical views or in ideologies.

As context for our analysis, it is important to understand that in Canada thelegislative and regulatory power of the system of school administration is concen-trated in a provincial bureaucracy, responsible to a minister of education workingin the premier’s cabinet and answerable through the provincial legislature to theelectorate.1 Thus as case studies, we draw upon Living and Learning: The Report

1. Jon Young and Benjamin Levin, Understanding Canadian Schools: An Introduction to EducationalAdministration (Toronto and Montreal: Harcourt Brace, 1998), 25.

EDUCATIONAL THEORY Volume 61 Number 3 2011© 2011 Board of Trustees University of Illinois

336 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y Volume 61 Number 3 2011

of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives in the Schools of Ontario(1968), known as the Hall-Dennis Report, and For the Love of Learning: Reportof the Royal Commission on Learning (1994), because these documents representthorough examinations of the Ontario school system and its policies in periods sep-arated by twenty-six years.2 Quite distinctive notions of excellence are embodiedin these proposals for reform. The progressive tradition of Living and Learning gaveway in For the Love of Learning to an unstable, eclectic configuration of ideas thatultimately tried to situate the global market as a mediating reference to construeexcellence. The framework of educational conceptions of excellence developed byMadhu Prakash and Leonard Waks, which allows for the articulation of distin-guishable views of excellence in education, provides us with a heuristic startingpoint for interrogating the two documents.3 The analysis of social theory and con-ceptions of modernity developed by Gerard Delanty helps us to further frame theargument. We explore the issues as historical displays of the tensions of modernitybetween autonomy and fragmentation, as identified by Delanty. In his words,

on the one side, modernity as a cultural project refers to the autonomy of the Subject, theself-assertion of the self, or individual, and the progressive expansion of the discourses ofcreativity, reflexivity and discursivity to all spheres of life. On the other side, modernityentails the experience of fragmentation, the sense that modernity as a social project destroysits own cultural foundations.4

As part of our exploration of assumptions and criteria associated with what isconsidered excellent, or educationally worthwhile, we pay particular attention tothe aims of education and the evaluation of students.

Conceptions of Excellence

The conventional understanding of ‘‘excellence’’ as a noun originated from theLatin verb excellere: ex (out, up) and celsus (lofty). Dictionaries at various timeshave given a meaning that is norm-referenced and comparative, defining excellence

2. Ontario Department of Education, Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committeeon the Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario (Toronto: Newton Publishing,1968); and Ontario Royal Commission on Learning, For the Love of Learning: Report of the RoyalCommission on Learning, 5 volumes (Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 1994). For agood discussion of these reports, see Robert D. Gidney, From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario’sSchools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).

3. Madhu Suri Prakash and Leonard J. Waks, ‘‘Four Conceptions of Excellence,’’ Teachers College Record87, no. 1 (1985).

4. Gerard Delanty, Social Theory in a Changing World: Conceptions of Modernity (Cambridge: PolityPress, 1999), 2.

ROSA BRUNO-JOFRE is Professor on the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University, 511 Union St.,Duncan McArthur Hall, Kingston, Ontario, CA K7L 3N6; e-mail <[email protected]>. Her primaryareas of scholarship are history of education and educational theory.

GEORGE (SKIP) HILLS is Associate Professor on the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University, 511Union St., Duncan McArthur Hall, Kingston, Ontario, CA K7L 3N6; e-mail <[email protected]>.His primary areas of scholarship are philosophy of education, history and philosophy of science, andscience education.

Bruno-Jofre and Hills Changing Visions of Excellence in Ontario School Policy 337

as surpassing others. They also include as a noun the notion of excellence asreferring to a valuable characteristic quality or trait. In characterizing the useof excellence in public discourse, John Gardner observes that ‘‘‘excellence’ is acuriously powerful word . . . about which people feel strongly,’’ and he refers toexcellence as a word ‘‘into which we read our own aspirations, our own conceptionof high standards, our hopes for a better world.’’5 Robert Solomon, commenting onthe growing popularity of the term in public discourse — in particular, in businessor marketing — points out that

Excellence has become something of a buzzword in business, a marketing term rather than adefinition of purpose. Like quality (its close kin), it implies good value without any particularsubstance or commitment. But, both practically and philosophically, it is a word of greatsignificance and indicates a sense of mission, a commitment beyond profit potential and thebottom line. It is a word that suggests ‘‘doing well’’ but also ‘‘doing good.’’ It is a word thereforethat synthesizes the demands of the marketplace with the demands of ethics.6

In its uses as a buzzword or slogan, ‘‘excellence’’ — like ‘‘democracy’’ or‘‘freedom’’ — becomes a sort of rallying cry the point of which is less to conveyinformation than to promote the taking up of a cause. Accordingly, it is notsurprising that we encounter multiple and conflicting views of excellence ineducation that are very much akin to what we find in contemporary talksurrounding the notions of literacy, quality, or success. Prakash and Waks describethe situation in this way: ‘‘excellence is a concept whose meaning and range ofapplication is contested’’ (FCE, 80). What lends particular significance to this stateof affairs is the fact that each of these notions is intimately related to our viewsconcerning the nature and purposes of education. At various times in the recentpast, both ‘‘excellence’’ and ‘‘quality’’ have served as surrogates for talk of the aims,or purposes, of education. In our experience, it seems to be widely assumed thattalk of aims or goals in education is either controversial or unproductive or both;at the same time, many appear to take for granted that terms such as ‘‘excellence,’’‘‘literacy,’’ ‘‘quality,’’ or ‘‘success,’’ to mention some of the more prominent ones,are far more likely to promote consensus. Who after all would want to deny that‘‘excellence’’ and the others are the sorts of things we ought to be striving for ineducation? Yet a careful examination of much of this talk reveals that it rarelyreaches beyond the level of superficial slogans that mask profound differences inoutlook. So the problem is due in no small part to the lack of sustained attentionto the aims (or concept) of education. This neglect is problematic simply because,as Nel Noddings points out, ‘‘we need to talk about aims because aims providecriteria by which we judge our choices of goals, objectives, and subject content.Aims talk can also be directed at the larger society and its policies. Both functionsare important.’’7

5. John W. Gardner, Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (New York: W.W. Norton,1961), xiii.

6. Robert C. Solomon, Ethics and Excellence: Cooperation and Integrity in Business (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1992), 153.

7. Nel Noddings, Happiness and Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 89.


The four conceptions of excellence developed by Prakash and Waks — thetechnical, the personal, the social, and the rational — resonate with the viewsexpressed in the reports that we analyze here. They provide an interpretive lensfor articulating, clarifying, and distinguishing different conceptions of excellence(FCE, 79). The conceptions are grounded on epistemological and psychologicalviews, as well as on existential conceptions of human beings. Prakash and Waksunderscore the importance of context in understanding talk about excellence whenthey write that

Each conception has a history; it has been shaped to meet needs and interests in concretecircumstances, and has given rise to its own traditions. Each conception has had tocome to terms with the most fundamental issues of education, such as the meaning andpurpose of education, desirable forms of knowledge and understanding, theories of mind andlearning, appropriate curricula, effective forms of student-teacher interactions, individualdevelopment, intelligence, giftedness and creativity, evaluation of student performance,educational leadership, educational research, teacher training and assessment, and desirableeducational reforms, among others. (FCE, 80)

Briefly then, from the technical view, excellence in education is conceivedof as ‘‘rational production, as efficient adjustment of productive means todeterminate, measurable ends’’ (FCE, 81). Education, thus understood, isinterpreted as the acquisition of a collection of discrete skills, competencies,or techniques that can be measured by standardized tests. Excellence in thisview is achieved through exemplary test scores. The overall approach tends torestrict teachers’ autonomy since the curriculum becomes more prescriptive (FCE,81–82).

In contrast, on the personal view of excellence, Prakash and Waks suggest thathuman potential, self-actualization, and the search for authenticity are the orga-nizing principles and standards of excellence. While the technical view embracesan atomistic account of the self, the personal view subscribes to a holistic one thatentails an autonomous process of development (FCE, 85).

On the view of excellence understood as rational inquiry, or as disciplinaryinitiation, education is construed as a matter of socializing students into forms oflanguage and thought in relation to practices and standards constitutive of one ormore of the intellectual, or scholarly, disciplines. In this case, human excellenceis construed as an adventure of the mind.

Finally, on the social view of excellence, Prakash and Waks link excellence ineducation to social responsibility and place emphasis on ‘‘what it is good for usto do’’ (FCE, 89). The good of the individual is considered as inseparable from thegood of the community.

Prakash and Waks indicate that ‘‘each conception aims to generate a coherentset of propositions on these topics and standards of value for assessing andprescribing educational practices and products. It is by reference to such standardsof value that questions of excellence are decided’’ (FCE, 80).

While Prakash and Waks go on in their analysis to examine other facetsof the educational enterprise, such as teaching and learning, in this essay weconfine our attention to excellence with respect to its role in talk of educational


aims and evaluation. In our examination of educational aims or purposes, wehave adopted William Frankena’s use of the term ‘‘excellence’’ as referring tostudents’ acquisition of desirable dispositions (that is, excellences) developed as aresult of their engagement in educational activities.8 The notion of disposition,rooted in Aristotle’s concept of virtue (arete), includes abilities, habits, skills,and traits of character or personality, but also states of mind such as beliefs,knowledge, understanding, and values. Only those qualities of character or mindthat enable persons to engage in worthwhile activities, activities that underpinthe good life, may be regarded as educational excellences in this view. In thiscontext, a disposition is understood to be a tendency to act in certain waysunder particular circumstances. Frankena’s approach helps make the connectionbetween excellence and educational aims explicit.

In addition, in our analysis we concentrate on the way in which the stu-dents’ accomplishments are evaluated because in evaluation we set out to deter-mine whether and to what extent our aims or purposes are realized, whetherthese are the long-term and more comprehensive aims of education or the short-term and more focused goals or objectives of a particular lesson or unit. Inshort, the approach to evaluation associated with a particular conception ofexcellence can help us gain insight into how seriously the aims or goals aretaken.

Case Studies: Excellence and Proposals for School Reform in Ontario

LIVING AND LEARNING

The 1968 policy document Living and Learning: The Report of the ProvincialCommittee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario hassince come to be known as the Hall-Dennis report. This report was the productof the bureaucracy of the Conservative minister of education of Ontario, and laterpremier of the province, William Davis. In June 1965, Davis appointed a provincialcommittee ‘‘to inquire into and report upon the means whereby modern educationcan meet the present and future needs of children and society.’’9 In other words,education was seen as instrumental in dealing with the profound changes, andthe resulting needs, brought about by modern society. The committee was led byEmmett Hall, justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Lloyd Dennis, a formerschool principal from Toronto who was committed to progressive education, andits members came from various parts of the province and represented a numberof different occupations and a wide range of interests. The committee confrontedthe challenge set by left-wing critics of the school system and by the so-callededucational Right, which often articulated an eclectic antimodernist concern thatwas linked to issues of Canadian identity, by preparing a report that combines

8. William K. Frankena, Three Historical Philosophies of Education (Chicago: Scott Foresman, 1965);and William K. Frankena, ‘‘Education,’’ in Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected PivotalIdeas, vol. 2, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973).

9. Ontario Department of Education, Living and Learning, 9. This work will be cited in the text as LLfor all subsequent references.


pedagogically progressive views on education with an explicit preoccupation withCanadian identity.10

Talk of excellence appears at various places throughout the document in con-nection with education (LL, 19), cultural achievements and public standards (LL,39), the quality of schools (LL, 46), and the qualities of teachers (LL, 154 and 156).In reference to the last of these, the document asserts that ‘‘excellent teachersare needed because excellence in education depends chiefly upon them’’ (LL, 159).How, then, does the report conceive of excellence in education, paying particu-lar attention first to the achievements, aims, or excellences that it recommendspublic education ought to promote? The underlying aim of education in Livingand Learning is the unending search for truth, a transformative emancipatory toolthat is linked to the sense of autonomy of the child. It is not surprising, then,that one of the early subtitles in the report reads ‘‘The truth shall make you free’’(LL, 9). Truth and autonomy remained vivid contesting themes of modernity ina late incarnation. The child, the report specifies, ‘‘should not be treated as anisolated entity, but educated for life in a society which respects individuality’’ (LL,60). Thus where conflict arises the committee tended to side with the individualwhile pressing for individuals to accept their social responsibility that is rightand essential to the common good (LL, 67). An important aim of the school isto enable young people to investigate freely, discuss, evaluate, think, and decide(LL, 70). Dewey is cited to validate the argument that aims are related to growthand development and that ‘‘one aim should be to avoid finality in education andensure a continuing will to learn’’ (LL, 72).

The authors of Living and Learning relied on the pedagogical progressivetradition, latent in the province of Ontario, in defining educational aims andthe notion of excellence.11 Pragmatism — understood as a school of thought, inkeeping with Dewey’s views — provides the conceptual means to deal with theneeds, rights, and desires of young people, major themes of the time. The report’stitle is indicative of the overall direction. The following paragraph is illustrative:

[Existentialists] believe that the individual must face the anguish of making his own decisionsand taking responsibility for himself apparently alone and without hope. The existentialistsare credited with having done a service to education by pointing out our subjection of theindividual. But it is surely more fitting for parents and teachers to be cheerful, as the youngare if given a chance, even cheerful about living in a somewhat demanding society. From aNorth American activist pragmatic point of view, the way to get some control of affairs and

10. We take this notion of pedagogically progressive education from David Labaree. Following DavidTyack, he differentiates between pedagogical and administrative progressives in education. See DavidF. Labaree, ‘‘Progressivism, Schools, and Schools of Education: An American Romance,’’ PaedagogicaHistorica 41, no. 1 and 2 (2005): 280.

11. As previously noted, Labaree distinguishes between pedagogical and administrative progressivism.He identifies two important components of pedagogical progressivism: developmentalism and holisticlearning inherent in the naturalism of progressive pedagogy. Pedagogical progressives (John Dewey,William Kilpatrick, and George Counts, among others) all had a romantic vision. Conversely,administrative progressives (such as Edward Thorndike, Charles Ellwood, and Edward Ross) heldutilitarian views.


some recognition and satisfaction as an individual is to do things partly for enjoyment, butpartly to earn privileges or rights by work or service to others. (LL, 68)

By referring to the 1937 Programme of Studies, a set of curricular reformsrepresentative both of the pedagogical progressive tradition in Ontario and ofDewey’s thinking, the authors of Living and Learning also drew attention to theimportance of such qualities as self-realization, security, decision making, socialresponsibility, public service, adaptability to change, and the ability to work andget along with others (LL, 66).12 Living and Learning rearticulates the notion ofexcellence rooted in human potential and plasticity, and in a Deweyan notion ofthe relation between the democratic ideal and education. The report’s authors didnot address the criticisms of progressive education itself, nor did they contendwith the antimodernist and anti-U.S. overtones of these criticisms, overtones thathad a strong presence in the 1950s and early 1960s.13 Instead, the report deals withcriticism of life in schools and fully incorporates a concern with national identityand the role of Canada.14 As noted previously, it captures the critiques comingfrom both the right and the left.

Living and Learning also contains a reference to the Report of the RoyalCommission on Education in Ontario (otherwise known as the Hope report),published in 1950, in particular to its understanding of the aims of education,including a capacity to apprehend and practice basic virtues (or, in ourterminology, to display excellences); the power to think clearly, independently, andcourageously; the talent to understand the views of others and to express one’s ownviews effectively; the competence necessary for a suitable occupation; good health;aptitude for recreation; the characteristics for happy family relations; and goodcitizenship.15 The more contemporary British Plowden Report on Children andTheir Primary Schools, published in 1967, serves as a referent for a child-centerededucation in which flexibility becomes the measure of excellence in schools.16

In addition, the report’s points of emphasis and recommendations demonstratean explicit continuity with the progressive tradition in education, in particular

12. Patrice Milewski, following Michel Foucault’s notion of rupture, interpreted the 1937 Programmeof Studies as a rupture or mutation in pedagogical discourse. Milewski writes that the document thatreplaced the Programme in 1968 — the Interim Revision Introduction and Guide — explicitly statesthat the new curriculum represented a ‘‘re-statement of the approach’’ enunciated in 1937. See PatriceMilewski, ‘‘‘The Little Gray Book’: Pedagogy, Discourse and Rupture in 1937,’’ History of Education 37,no. 1 (2008): 91–112.

13. Hilda Neatby’s book So Little for the Mind (Toronto: Clarke Irwin, 1953) became emblematic of thecritique of progressive education. For an excellent analysis of the 1950s, see Kenneth C. Dewar, ‘‘HildaNeatby’s 1950s and My 1950s,’’ Journal of Canadian Studies 40, no. 1 (2006): 210–231.

14. Obviously, the report does not embrace the sort of elitist notion of nationhood and leadership thatHilda Neatby and others from her generation did. See Dewar, ‘‘Hilda Neatby’s 1950s and My 1950s.’’

15. John A. Hope, Report of the Royal Commission on Education in Ontario (Toronto: King’s Printer,1950), 65.

16. Bridget Plowden, chair, Children and Their Primary Schools: A Report of the Central AdvisoryCouncil for Education (London: HMSO, 1967).


in the approach to the meliorist relation between schools and society, the cen-trality of self-development, and the individuality of the child. In this specificcontext educational reform was expected to deal with the persistent dissonancesbetween the ideal of self-realization and the acknowledgment of diversity (interms of emerging ideas of multiculturalism, human rights, Aboriginal issues, andwomen’s rights and experiences). It was also expected to introduce social justiceand a concern with the unity of the country (social cohesion).17 In Living andLearning the notion of excellence is not tied to economic competitiveness. Still,the overall conception of educational aims and of excellence is tainted by concernsover a perceived fragmentation of society in light of an emerging culture of rightsand difference (a feature of late modernity) and over national identity in relationto the United States. In line with the progressive tradition, the report emphasizescoordination and cooperation, and is explicitly preoccupied with the intersubjec-tive character of communication and with social justice. Living and Learning doesnot, however, develop a transformational understanding of diversity beyond thesocial and political discourse of a somewhat tired progressivism with eclectic fea-tures. A case in point is the treatment of the education of the ‘‘Indian’’ people, whoare not considered in the context of their unique experience in Canada and theirplace in its history. The concept of nationhood based on the notion of two foundingnations (English and French), on the other hand, is explicit.18 Overall, Living andLearning is not based on an elitist understanding of the public and its mediatingrole in educational affairs. Nevertheless, it fails to recognize the distinctiveness ofthe needs of different groups in society, for example, women of color, aboriginalpeoples, and so on. The notion of excellence that permeates the report seems toembody elements both of what Prakash and Waks describe as the personal viewof excellence based on self-actualization as well as of the social view. There is astrong inclination toward the cultivation of dispositions in Frankena’s sense.

Living and Learning recommends replacing the so-called ‘‘traditional’’ formof evaluation — comparative and competitive, carried out for the purpose ofsorting — with a kind of evaluation whose purpose is ‘‘to determine theeffectiveness of the program in the pupil’s development’’ (LL, 142). To this end,the report proposes abolishing class standing, percentage marks, letter grades, andformal examinations ‘‘except where the experience would be of value to attenduniversities where formal examinations may be still in use’’ (LL, 218). Educationalexcellence retains a personal and existential connotation in this document. Itis conceived as criterion-referenced (to use Kenneth Strike’s characterization),19

achievable by anyone, and students were not in competition for it. Excellence, onthis understanding, has to do with a level of proficiency and with a commitment to

17. Ibid., 11.

18. The Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (Ottawa: The Queen’sPrinter) was published in 1967.

19. Kenneth A. Strike, ‘‘Is There a Conflict between Equity and Excellence?’’ Educational Evaluationand Policy Analysis 7, no. 4 (1985): 409–416.


equality of educational opportunities. The notion of accountability receives littleattention in Living and Learning, while the moral responsibility of teachers andthe professionalism of teaching are linked to achieving excellence. Thus, when itcomes to evaluation, the report eschews objectivity in favor of what it refers to as‘‘subjectivity,’’ by which it appears to mean the professional judgment of teachers.The following comment seems to put this notion in context:

The aims of education are determined philosophically, . . . striving for uniformity throughstandardized tests, external examinations, and other devices and controls has little to do withthe attainment of objectives in education. Subjectivity is [the] accepted mode for educationalendeavor; objectivity is desirable only in specific instances, subordinate to the major purposesof education. (LL, 170)

Living and Learning’s authors construed objectivity as intimately related to whatis sometimes labeled ‘‘formal assessment’’ or ‘‘evaluation,’’ which is to say thatit involves formalized procedures such as those associated with standardizedtests or external examinations. Subjectivity, by contrast, can be seen as anindispensible feature of ‘‘informal evaluation,’’ such as that involved in a teacher’screating qualitative descriptions of his or her students’ accomplishments based onobservations.

Although a number of other reports on the school system were prepared in theintervening years, the next comparable examination of the schools in the provincesand recommendations for wide-scale reforms was not undertaken until 1994. Inthat year the Ontario Royal Commission on Learning produced a five-volumedocument entitled For the Love of Learning.

FOR THE LOVE OF LEARNING

The 1994 report For the Love of Learning and its pursuit of excellence wereframed by a historical juncture that witnessed the intersection of the end ofso-called communism in 1989, a revival of faith in the free market, the emergentpresence of a human rights culture, a broad-based acknowledgment of diversitydespite tendencies to institutional forms of homogenization, an accentuation ofsocial fragmentation in the midst of the crisis of modernity, and new discursivespaces generated by the rapid expansion of information technologies.20

Premier Bob Rae of Ontario announced in 1993 the appointment of an OntarioRoyal Commission on Learning charged with examining the purpose and directionof the school system in Ontario.21 The task of the commission was framed

20. Ontario Royal Commission on Learning, For the Love of Learning. This work is composed of5 volumes, with the first titled ‘‘Short Version’’ (SV) and the remaining volumes numbered 1–4.Individual volumes will be cited in the text as FL SV, FL 1, FL 2, FL 3, and FL 4, respectively. Forinstance, the citation (FL 1, 57) refers to For the Love of Learning, volume 1, page 57.

21. The Commission on Learning was chaired by Gerald Caplan and Monique Begin. It should be notedthat as the commission embarked on its task, the government approved a number of versions of theCommon Curriculum, an integrated curriculum that was outcome-based with an emphasis on equityand social goals (see Gidney, From Hope to Harris). The Common Curriculum generated negativereactions due to its eclectic attempt to reconcile an instrumental and competitive view with a viewbased on global interdependency.


by two contrasting views of education and the global economy: one based onthe interdependency paradigm, and the other on the global competitivenessparadigm.22 The first of these views focused on fostering global understandingand a recognition of needs, rather than strictly addressing instrumental purposes;by contrast, the second view, which was more utilitarian in outlook, situatededucation in relation to the world economy and identified job preparation as apriority.23 But by the late 1980s, there was a push to enact a conception of educationthat would define excellence in the context of human capital theory within a viewof education that stressed global competitiveness. The discussion of these issuesin the United States and numerous reports, including 1983’s A Nation at Risk, hadan impact on the Canadian debate and on the public consciousness.24 In Ontario,a well-known report by George Radwanski, The Ontario Study of the Relevanceof Education and the Issue of Dropouts (published in 1987), encapsulated theutilitarian approach.25 Not surprisingly, the Economic Council of Canada, theBusiness Council on National Issues, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, andthe Conference Board of Canada, among others, strongly supported this view.26

Education came to been seen as an exportable product in the global marketplace. In1993, Canada’s Council of Ministers of Education issued the Victoria Declarationand thus made dealing with education and economic globalization part of thenational agenda. The declaration puts emphasis on standardization and testing.There were, however, important groups and organizations — among them theOntario Teachers’ Federation, the Canadian International Development Agency,and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy — thatadvocated for an approach stressing global interdependence.27 Reforming educationin Canada, hitherto a provincial prerogative, had become part of a national debate.There was a shift from understanding schooling and education as a ‘‘technologicalmedium’’28 designed to lead toward unity and social justice, to seeing schoolingand education as an engine of the Canadian economy.

The immediate context in which For the Love of Learning was written,therefore, included a crisis of policy (the contradictory directions just described),

22. Brian O’Sullivan, ‘‘Global Change and Educational Reform in Ontario and Canada,’’ CanadianJournal of Education 24, no. 3 (1999): 311–325.

23. An example of the latter is the report Towards the Year 2000, produced by the Ontario Ministry ofEducation in 1984.

24. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative forEducational Reform (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html.

25. George Radwanski, Ontario Study of the Relevance of Education and the Issue of Dropouts (Toronto:Ontario Ministry of Education, 1987).

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. We use the term ‘‘technological medium’’ in the sense used by Daniel Trohler in ‘‘Stability or Stag-nation, or Why the School Is Not the Way Reformers Would Like,’’ Encounters/Encuentros/Rencontreson Education 9 (2008): 3–15.


a Ministry of Education in conflict with teachers,29 and a general public thathad assumed as conventional wisdom dominant notions of education groundedin global competitiveness. For the Love of Learning was motivated primarily bya concern with excellence and by a desire to be responsive to the public and toparents in particular. But this was complicated by the fact that the public had frag-mented interests and a new public with specific equity agendas emerged during thepresentations and gathering of input that preceded the writing of this report. Con-sequently, the notion of excellence in For the Love of Learning is a hybrid constructthat links a particular conception of accountability with the idea of an equitableand socially responsible citizenry (FL 1, 57). Aboriginal self-government of edu-cation, inequity based on gender, and inequities affecting children of immigrants,black children, and special needs children were some of the issues the commissiontried to address while navigating the tensions between self-realization and fragmen-tation. Accountability in its technical conception and partnership among stake-holders were conceived as the means to bridge these tensions. However, the role ofthe public, specifically its potential to serve as a stabilizing influence in the devel-opment of a political mediation, was trumped by the regulatory power of testingresults.30 In practice, the report set the basis for the invisible power of competition.

One pivotal recommendation in relation to the construct of excellence, equity,and accountability is the creation of a new body: an Office of Learning Assess-ment and Accountability, consisting of a small number of experts in educationand assessment and reporting directly to the legislature (FL 4, 140). The reportspecifies that ‘‘one of the chief responsibilities [of this entity] would be to evaluateand report on the success of Ontario’s education policy primarily through the twouniversal literacy tests in Grades 3 and 11, as well as the Grade 3 numeracy test’’(FL SV, 53–54). For the Love of Learning embodies a technical understanding ofexcellence in education (using the categories of Prakash and Waks) and is pairedwith a recommendation to develop a school-community alliance that would serveas the first engine driving the reform. This form of accountability and the involve-ment of the public in relation to excellence found justification in internationaltest results that suggested that elementary students in Ontario were doing as wellas most, but not better (FL 2, 37). The low proportion of science and engineeringdegrees being granted was seen by many, the report notes, as an economic liability,hence the emphasis on scientific literacy.

29. The conflict with teachers was mainly due to Premier Rae’s ‘‘Social Contract,’’ which affected theirsalaries, and to hastily made and contradictory changes in policy, some of which were construed bythe unions as a threat to employment. As Monique Begin observes, from the teachers’ perspective thisreform meant reducing the number of school boards by half and adopting accountability as the keyconcept. See Monique Begin, ‘‘Conflicting Approaches to Educational Reform: The Royal Commissionof Learning Revisited’’ (the Jackson Lecture, delivered at OISE, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario,on May 13, 1999).

30. Delanty argues that ‘‘the mediation of culture and agency must be conceived of as being articulatedthrough cultural models. In this context, the question of social knowledge as reflexively and discursivelyconstructed takes on new significance . . . since what now becomes of central importance is the role ofthe public in the construction of cultural models’’ (Delanty, Social Theory in a Changing World, 15–16).


Running through the narrative developed in For the Love of Learning is a his-torical overlapping of various strands of progressivism, including elements of whatLabaree called ‘‘pedagogical progressivism,’’ some of the language of critical ped-agogy, and various elements from progressive scholarship of the time. The reportalso builds continuity with the evidence-based practices and the social-efficiencyethos of early twentieth-century administrative progressives, whose ideas thisdocument develops further in order to address the context of a global competitiveapproach. In addition, For the Love of Learning relies on the notion of buildingcompetencies and skills in a way that is reminiscent of the widespread discussionof ‘‘competency-based education’’ or ‘‘performance-based education’’ of the early1970s. Both were intimately connected with a behaviorist conception of learningby way of setting behavioral objectives and employing these for purposes of evalua-tion. There is something odd in the pursuit of excellence grounded on aims such asintellectual nurturing and critical and creative thinking if these are to be developedas skills and competencies. The same may be said of citizenship and values. It maybe that such qualities are associated with skills (likely more than one), but it cannotbe suggested that this is all they amount to without falling into a form of reduc-tionism usually associated with behaviorism or some other simple-minded form ofempiricism. As a result, it appears that the authors of For the Love of Learning gen-erated a conflicting and unstable cultural synthetic framework that undermines theintellectual aims stated in the report. This is due to their commitment to a techni-cal view of accountability based on test scores, since the accountability mechanismshould flow from the aims and purposes of schooling. Ultimately, it seems thatFor the Love of Learning served to create an accountability- or evaluation-drivenview of education, which in practice, if not in theory, could promote a view ofeducation merely as changing or shaping behavior. In our view, this report in all itseclecticism represents a transition toward a strong market-oriented approach thatwas subsequently actualized by the Conservative government of Mike Harris. Har-ris, touting his party’s ‘‘Common Sense Revolution’’ platform, swept into office inJune 1995, six months after publication of the report. While the new governmentreversed the equity policies of the previous government, it carried out the report’srecommendation to establish an Education Quality and Accountability Office.31

The critical narrative component of For the Love of Learning, often groundedin a conception of excellence that Prakash and Waks would see as rooted inexistentialism and human potential as well as in social responsibility (including adetermination to combat violence, racism, gender inequality, and environmentaldegradation, and to foster a sense of civility, social justice, and cooperation), seemsdissonant with the (positivistic) notion of excellence that is based on a technicalunderstanding of education results. The latter is related to what Gert Biesta callsthe dangerous assumption that education is a sort of causal practice that linksresearch and evidence to teaching and learning, thus producing a truth that canbe translated into rules for action to be followed by practitioners — that is, that

31. See Stephen E. Anderson and Sonia Ben Jaafar, Policy Trends in Ontario Education: 1990–2006(Toronto: OISE, University of Toronto, 2003).


education is an evidence-based practice.32 The problem with such an approach isthat, in practice, it diminishes the ethical dimension of education while it offersno articulated grounding for conceptions of a good life, a good person, and a justsociety. In other words, the educational aims become lost.

Conclusion

Living and Learning advances a holistic conception of excellence centering onthe all-around development of the self, that is, the intellectual, moral, and socialaspects of the person. It conceives of education as fostering personal development,self-actualization, and social responsibility, and views the aims of education asinvolving the cultivation of certain dispositions in sense described by Frankena.The report pairs this notion of education with a distrust of norm-referencedevaluation and specifies that activities are to be valued according to standardssteeped in a qualitative, descriptive, noncomparative assessment. The aims ofeducation that are specified appear to be clearly articulated with the notion ofevaluation. The late 1960s provided an idealistic framework for the developmentof this report, without the urgencies for global competitiveness of the 1990s, andthus its authors were able to address the concerns of the critics of education whilesimultaneously asserting a progressive agenda.

Living and Learning, a product of the Department of Education itself,built continuity with the pedagogical progressive reconstructionist tradition inorder to secure a sense of being Canadian and to deal with emerging socialfragmentation. The means proved to be inadequate in light of the search forthe legitimation of unheard voices, experiences, and identities.33 Meanwhile, theeconomic imperative progressively gained ground with the public and tainted thedebate on ‘‘competency-based education’’ in the 1970s that would take new formin the 1980s.

For the Love of Learning, in contrast, captures the internal tensions andcontradictions that characterized the 1990s, including those emerging from multi-cultural educational policies and difference and international pressures associatedwith globalization. The report’s authors sought to combine a technical viewof education — with emphasis on literacy and numeracy skills, as well as onscience and technology — with caring and compassion as overarching principles;

32. Gert Biesta, ‘‘Why ‘What Works’ Won’t Work: Evidence-Based Practice and the Democratic Deficitin Educational Research,’’ Educational Theory 57, no. 1 (2007): 1–22.

33. Multiculturalism as an official policy in Canada (beginning in 1971) provided a means to articulatea new conception of the polity at a point when the idea of citizenship glossing over differences hadbecome socially and politically unacceptable. The limits of multiculturalism — conceived as a practicalprinciple offering an avenue to deal with issues of identity, allegiances, and the place of Canada in theworld — quickly became apparent. It could not address either Quebec’s aspirations or the First Nationsand the Aboriginal peoples’ claims for their own status. Furthermore, the demands set by the women’sand human rights movements expanded the ranks of those dissatisfied with multiculturalism. Still,multiculturalism would become the core of the new educational discourse translated into policies bythe provinces. See Rosa Bruno-Jofre, ‘‘Manitoba Schooling in the Canadian Context and the Building ofa Polity: 1919–1971,’’ Canadian and International Education 28, no. 2 (1999): 99–123.


in addition, they attempted to embrace goals of social responsibility and intel-lectual nurturing. It seems evident, however, that in the context of this reportexcellence is understood as grounded on the student’s intellectual development,interpreted as a competence, skill, or complex of competences or skills. This viewis in keeping with the conception of accountability the report adopts, one that isfocused on clear and measurable indicators expressed as learning outcomes andassessed by means of standardized tests. Indeed, this approach is in tune with theparadigm of global competitiveness and the concern with standards and rigorousevaluation of teaching and learning deriving from that paradigm. Yet the precedinginterpretation appears to conflict with the document’s stated commitment to‘‘the production of creative young people with critical thinking skills,’’ and itsassertion that ‘‘we want schools to develop students — all students — who arefeisty, questioning, creative, imaginative, autonomous, and independent’’ (FL 1,59). Excellences of this sort are not particularly amenable to exacting specifica-tion, standardization, and rigorous measurement. Indeed, in this respect it seemsas if, when For the Love of Learning is considered as a whole, the assessment orevaluation tail is wagging the educational excellence dog.

By examining the role of excellence in these two major reports aimed atreforming the system of Ontario schools, we have gained insight into the ways inwhich the use of the term ‘‘excellence’’ has changed in provincial policymakingcircles during the period between 1969 and 1994. Moreover, we have learnedabout the factors that may have precipitated these changes. Broadly speaking,the two documents represent what happens in complex democracies whenpolicymakers seek to respond to the varied and sometimes conflicting demands oftheir constituencies while simultaneously dealing with external pressures. Livingand Learning provides an eclectic, yet more or less coherent report and set ofrecommendations in the context of a polity that is considerably less diverse, both interms of its cultural make up and its expectations of schools, than that confrontingthe authors of For the Love of Learning in 1994. Furthermore, it was written duringa time when widespread questioning of authoritarian values and pedagogies wascommon. For the Love of Learning, on the other hand, was obliged to come to termswith a much broader range of expectations, owing to increasing cultural diversityand especially the growing influence of the global market economy. The upshotis that this report provides a much more fragmented vision of education and itsaims, and, as a consequence, a much less coherent set of policy recommendations.

According to Nicholas Burbules and Carlos Torres, educational policy isconstrained by the need to balance four types of influences: ‘‘(1) responses totransnational capital; (2) responses to global political structures (for example,the United Nations) and other nongovernmental organizations; (3) responses todomestic pressures and demands, in order to maintain its own political legitimacy;and (4) responses to its own internal needs and self-interests.’’34 They contend that

34. Nicholas C. Burbules and Carlos Alberto Torres, ‘‘Globalization and Education: An Introduction,’’ inGlobalization and Education: Critical Perspectives, ed. Nicholas C. Burbules and Carlos Alberto Torres(New York: Routledge, 2000), 1–27.


policy initiatives, including educational policies, are framed and shaped by thesefour pressures. Our examination of Ontario policy documents provides a goodillustration of certain of these pressures and how they are integrated into policyrecommendations. Thus, For the Love of Learning retains elements of a criticalview of traditional pedagogical projects and even contains emancipatory language,but these are transformed and diluted within a neoliberal framework and lead toan eclectic set of recommendations.35

As we look to the future, the task of the policymaker, whom we can expect toencounter even greater diversity in the polity, will become an even less enviableone. Unfortunately, under these circumstances, those in policymaking roles maysuccumb to the temptation to pursue courses of action such as those we havewitnessed in Ontario during the 1990s — courses that involve either setting one’ssights on intermediate rather than long-term ends, or conflating ends and means.The interest in creating a broader, more comprehensive view of excellence ineducation, as seen in Living and Learning and For the Love of Learning, has oftentended to give way to a narrower focus on various types of literacy, numeracy, anassortment of loosely connected skills, and vocational preparation. If policymakerssacrifice the broad and more comprehensive views of education, they may wellend up creating a situation in which those responsible for implementing suchpolicies are expected to make midcourse corrections aboard a ship headed in nodefinite direction.

35. Tom De Coster, Frank Simon, and Marc Depaepe, ‘‘‘Alternative’ Education in Flanders, 1960–2000:Transformation of Knowledge in a Neo-liberal Context,’’ Paedagogica Historica 45, no. 4–5 (2009):645–671. The authors of this study analyze the hybrid character of knowledge emerging from theinsertion of emancipatory education into a neoliberal logic.

(with George (Skip) Hills) Changing Visions of Excellence: The case of the Hall-Dennis Report (1968)...

Documents

Transcript of (with George (Skip) Hills) Changing Visions of Excellence: The case of the Hall-Dennis Report (1968)...