Rural Schools Across Canada

Mariah Bouchard
Thompson Rivers University
Tracy Penny Light
History 3510
December 8^th 2017

Canada is a diverse country and has always seemed to be this way. Something that makes Canada unique and the wonderful country it is, is the land that makes up Canada. Known for its beauty in nature and natural resources this makes the country the way it is. This country has been divided by two types of communities, rural verses urban locations. Both types of communities play significant roles in the development of Canada and the production we see throughout the country. However, there are pros and cons to each type of location. Looking specifically at rural communities which must fit certain criteria to be considered rural; these communities are most commonly made up of approximately 1000 people in and around the area depending on the distance. These communities will have a life style that is often from living off the land, and jobs in the area are usually the towns main source of income for most families, and the main export for the community.[1] Looking further into rural communities across Canada from 1930-1960 we can see the impact the education system had on the children in small towns, and how it impacted their experience with education. Children’s educational experience in these communities were impacted by the community itself, the teachers, as well as the resources that were allotted for rural schools.

Within rural communities in Canada specifically in the mid twentieth century we see that the communities alone had impacts on the learning experience of children. Often rural communities were farming towns where many incomes of families came from the land.  Children often missed school in order to help their families with work, later on in their academic careers some children dropped out in order to join the workforce before finishing their high school diploma. When we look at the account of William Bruneau a young man who grew up in Frontier Saskatchewan. He recalls his personal experience with learning and some of its hinderances. “Sending me away to school was out of the question, partly because Dad needed my help on the tractor” [2] The need for families to have their kids working in order to make ends meat was to crucial that education tended to take a back seat. These small rural communities had other impacts on the education of the youth in these towns. Often children would have to commute from the outskirts of the communities. “It drew children by school bus from five to ninety kilometers away.” [3] Longer commutes made for longer harder days for the children. They usually would get home and still have to go out and work with their parents or help inside the house. Mike Corbett believed that though education was taking off in the mid twentieth century rural communities were behind the curve. “If education came to be firmly established in much of Canada as early as the first decades of the twentieth century, community social and economic conditions did not readily permit schooling to penetrate community life in marginal places”[4] The need and desire for the children to join the workforce played a significant role on the number of drop outs within these rural communities. Often children would be given jobs with in the work force that payed good wage and did not require a high school diploma. The problem here was that when the main resources in these communities died out people were left with an uncompleted education.

Often when you think of the education system you think of the teachers, they tend to go hand in hand. Teachers within these rural communities played a role on the impact of children’s learning experiences. “The teachers were generally very young women with little understanding of the rural communities in which they were living” [5] With the teachers being young and lacking experience as well as being away from a life they were accustomed to it made their ability to teacher harder, this had a negative impact on not only them but also on their students. The teachers in these areas also saw low pay which gave them a lack of motivation to stay in these communities. So often there would be a high turn over rate of staff within the schools of these small town Canadian communities. William Bruneau accounts many times throughout his learning experience where teachers would leave the school. “Every year it got harder to persuade teachers to stay at Frontier Public School” [6] “the last knowledgeable chemistry teacher left for better job prospects.” [7] His entire time at school he saw teachers coming and going and found it hard to connect and develop positive learning experiences with these teachers.

Teachers who worked at rural schools often found that they lacked the resources and training needed, especially in the 1930’s within Alberta when a new curriculum was being placed in all the schools.

“There is evidence in a variety of primary source material that teachers,
even teachers in rural, one-room, multigraded schools, attempted to
implement the program as they understood it. For example, teachers’
and students’ memoirs and reminiscences indicate at least some
rural teachers sought resources that would help teach through a
project approach.” [8]

These teachers lacked the training and supplies needed to implement the new curriculum however this did not hold all of them back. Often Teachers in rural schools would use their own source of resources to supply the children with the tools needed to succeed rather then relying on the school board to provide materials needed. Some teachers recalled bringing stacks of magazines from home, another teacher called out to relatives to send books. These small examples show that though the teachers were faced with challenges that not all of them abandoned their goals to teach but instead got creative in how they would teach the children with what they had.  Teachers in these rural communities utilized what they had and often that was the nature and the outdoors that surrounded them. Often teachers would take kids outside to experience more hand on learning and develop experiments within the world around them.

“ Social studies took us outside building a pioneer log cabin, and
pioneer transportation had us build and float a raft. All were made with

pioneer tools — axe and bucksaw. Science class took us out on plenty

of nature finds to see wild orchids growing near the school as well as

acorns being gathered by squirrels in preparation for winter. She had the

ability to make every lesson come alive with her curiosity that she shared

and passed on to us, her students. We all came away doing well in math

because of her love of the subject and the fun projects

she would create to make it real life experience for us.” [9]

This example shows us that though rural schools lacked the funding needed to provide in class hands on experience teachers were able to be creative and have freedom with their lessons and the outdoors often enabled the children’s learning experience. The children and teachers did see hindrances within the rural schools on an academic level. “Given the erratic nature of rural schooling, students were generally not reading or writing at the grade level typical for their age, Teachers had to assess their students’ grade levels and often focused on literacy and numeracy

Lessons” [10] So though teachers had some areas that gave them freedom there were factors that hindered the children’s learning experiences. This shows that the small rural schools specifically the teachers employed at these schools and the amount of resources they had to work with did have an impact on children’s educational experience. Some areas gave teachers freedom which enabled a positive learning experience while poor harsh working conditions had a negative impact on the children who attended rural schools across Canada.

If we take a look back further into the history of schools in Canada we can conclude further evidence that supports the uniqueness of rural schools. Sara Spikes research on the photographs of rural schools in early twentieth century Nova Scotia can elaborate on some of the challenges these rural schools had and how they operated[11]. Rural communities must run differently compared to their urban counterparts and therefor their schools where organized in a different manner. Rural communities have priorities within them that come before school. Through these pictures we can get a sense of what these rural schools were like; “how many students there were, what they wore, what their schools looked like” [12] Not only that but we can notice the lack of structure within these schools simply by how unorganized the photos are. Children standing in a bunch with the teacher generally off to the side, we can also conclude from this that generally a lot of the teachers were young females who accepted these jobs. Though the pictures studied were from an earlier time and we have to take into account that this was before organized class photos became a common part of the school system, we can still use this as a backbone to rural schools and how they have developed over time. We can see the similarities with rural schools in the early twentieth century compared to the mid twentieth century but not only that we can see where there have been improvements and changes made to the educational system.

Important parts of history are that of the personal accounts of the people who lived it. This enables you to create a more personal sense of the experience and how things ran. William Bruneau’s personal essay on his experience at a rural school allows us to dig deeper into what life was like for a student. He explains the challenges the schools faced with trying to keep teachers around. He explains the need his family had for him to stay in the small town in order to help on the farm. He explains the hardships fellow students had with having to commute long days on the bus to come to school each day. He explained how by his last year of school there was only him and one student left in his grade. His fellow classmates dropped out of school before the age of 16. All of these factors impacted this child’s learning experience in a negative way, and that is just one story.

If we look into the National Farm radio broadcast taken place in January 1964, we hear the stories and experiences of a few rural students from across Canada. From this radio broadcast we can see some of the issues that were evident at this time for rural students across Canada as well as their families. Issues arose with the financial cost of sending a child to post-secondary education. Issues such as, lack of information on the bursaries and scholarships available as well as a lack of information on the career opportunities out there for these students. There were issues with the fact that sending a rural student to university was more expensive then an urban student because a rural student would have to live away from home and therefor cost more money for living expenses. The students in the interview talked about how it was necessary that if you wanted to attend pot secondary you would need a summer job as well as have to work during the semesters at school. Another subject brought up in this broadcast was the concern with rural teachers. Students believed that there were some good and bad teachers. One student however believed that “Most of a majority of these teachers go to these city schools, and then the country schools seem to get what’s left over” [13] This shows that the students believed they were not getting a fare educational experience when it came to the teachers that were responsible for educating them.

With all the issues and concerns listed above there still needs to be more proof of the negative impact that rural schools have on the children attending them specifically their learning experiences. Mike Corbett’s research has evidence proving the negative results of a child’s education in rural areas around Nova Scotia.  This following table shows his results. [14] From this table we conclude that students who attended these rural schools around Nova Scotia had a more negative outcome with their learning experience. “My own research suggest that levels of formal schooling remain much lower in rural communities than Canadian and provincial averages.” [15]

His research showed that urban schools had a more regular attendance within the mid 1800’s and we didn’t see this start to improve for rural schools a whole century later. We also see that there has been bias towards urban schools throughout the history of education.

Rural communities to this day remain a major part of Canada and its history. With those rural communities comes many struggles and a lack of support from its more developed and successful urban counterpart. The Canadian education system has gone through many changes and will continue to change. However, there are still concerns with the struggles rural schools have faced in the past and continue to face. From 1930-1960 across many rural communities in Canada we can conclude that the educational experience for the children had issues that prevented them from succeeding on the same levels as their urban counterparts. We see issues within the community and the lack of support they had for their children attending regular education. Instead children where expected to help on the farm and around the house to keep these families finically afloat. Children saw pressure to drop out and join the workforce earlier with opportunities that came through their small towns. The impact that the communities alone had on children’s learning experiences played a significant role in the lower performance rate seen by these students. We also saw a hindrance with the teachers who worked at these schools, often teachers where young and now living away from home, they made a low wage and lacked the resources and training needed to help the students at their schools succeed. The lack of funding forced teachers to reach out to family members or people of the towns to have supplies needed to give the children a helpful learning experience. Lack of training for these teachers on new curriculum often meant that they where unable to teach it in a way that did the new programs justice. Personal accounts from children who attended rural schools across Canada gave us a more personal touch on what their experience was like. Allowing us to picture there challenges better and see the positive and negative aspects of rural schools. With Mike Corbetts research we were able to see the numbers involved and have a better understanding of the true impact that rural schools had on the students. Specifically, there success on an educational level compared to those who attended Urban schools in neighboring areas. Through this we can conclude that attending a rural school in Canada during the period of 1930-1960 had a negative impact on the child’s learning experience with the Canadian educational system.

FOOTNOTES 

[1] Valarie Plessis, Definitions of Rural. Rural and Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletin. Vol. 3, No.3 (2001): 21-006.

[2] William Bruneau, “A Rural Secondary Education: Saskatchewan, 1958-1961” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation. 3.

[3] Bruneau, 2

[4] Mike Corbett, “A Protracted Struggle: Rural Resistance and Normalization in Canadian

Educational History,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 13,

48. 1 (2001): 19-48.

[5]R.S. Patterson, “The Implementation of Progressive Education in Canada, 1930–1945,”

in Essays on Canadian Education, eds. Nick Kach, Kas Mazurek, Robert S. Patterson and

Ivan DeFaveri (Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Limited, 1986), 79-96. 6.

[6] Bruneau, 1.

[7] Bruneau, 4.

[8] Patterson, 8.

[9] Patterson, 9.

[10] Ibid, 15.

[11] Sara Spike, “Picturing Rural Education: School Photographs and Contested Reform in Early Twentieth Century  Rural Nova Scotia,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation. Special Issue. Carleton University.

[12] Spike, 4.

[13]  “National Farm Radio Forum: Careers for rural teens” CBC.ca. CBC national archives. Broadcast publication date: January 13, 1964.

[14] Mike Corbett, “A Protracted Struggle: Rural Resistance and Normalization in Canadian

Educational History,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 13,

48. 1 (2001): 19-48. 24

[15] Corbett, 23.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Mike Corbett, “A Protracted Struggle: Rural Resistance and Normalization in Canadian

Educational History,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 13,

48. 1 (2001): 19-48.

“National Farm Radio Forum: Careers for rural teens” CBC.ca. CBC national archives. Broadcast
publication date: January 13, 1964.
http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/national-farm-radio-forum-careers-for-rural-teens

R.S. Patterson, “The Implementation of Progressive Education in Canada, 1930–1945,”

in Essays on Canadian Education, eds. Nick Kach, Kas Mazurek, Robert S. Patterson and

Ivan DeFaveri (Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Limited, 1986), 79-96.

Sara Spike, “Picturing Rural Education: School Photographs and Contested Reform in Early
Twentieth Century  Rural Nova Scotia,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire
de l’éducation. Special Issue. Carleton University.

Valerie du Plessis, Roland Beshiri and Ray D. Bollman, Statistics Canada, Heather Clemenson,
Rural Secretariat, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, “Definitions of Rural” Rural and
Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletin. Vol. 3, No.3 (2001): 21-006.

William Bruneau, “A Rural Secondary Education: Saskatchewan, 1958-1961” Historical Studies in
Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation.