Chapter 13: Curricular Reforms and Progressive Rhetoric: Examining the Programme of Study in interwar Ontario, Canada

This chapter considers the progressive qualities of Ontario’s school curriculum reforms issued in 1938 and 1941. Ontario’s two popular educational journals, The School and The Canadian School Journal, rallied behind the cause of a democratic education for a progressive world. The curriculum reforms weaved consistency and order to the various depictions of progressive schooling. Progressivist rhetoric concerned three areas: active learning, concern for the individual learner, and relating schools to social reality. This rhetoric wove together the themes developmental psychology, social efficiency, and social meliorism.