Monday, April 22, 2013

Chapter 4: Categorizing the Data -- Late 20th Century Documents -- Ontario's 1987 Radwanski Report


4.4c

Categorizing the Data -- Late 20th Century Documents -- Ontario's 1987 Radwanski Report



   In 1985 David Peterson was elected as provincial premier to the first Liberal government in Ontario in 42 years and by 1987 a review of public education (a “policy study”) in the province was proposed to proceed under George Radwanski.  George Radwanski was a writer and a journalist and not directly linked with education policy in any way. He comments on this within the report and contends that his arms-length involvement with education bureaucracy permits greater objectivity in terms of recommending change in a time of economic uncertainty. This report is referred to as the "Radwanski Report" and is rather well known amongst education policy scholars and experts in Ontario. It is a policy document famous for deviating from public education policy tradition. Why it was construed to deviate is the question. In hind sight it seems that the legitimacy of the report was in question because it was more a 'one-man show' than any previous provincial production, that it was therefore a product of urgency (i.e. crisis) and that an immediate quick-fix was sought via the recommendations made by Radwanski when he had finished assessing the situation. What it deals with mainly is the matter of “drop out” which was at a high of 30% according to research at the time. This same number for drop-out is also cited in British Columbia’s 1988 Sullivan Report. The concern the Radwanski Report raised amongst public education policy analysts was the agenda buried within it.  The Radwanski Report was using drop-out statistics as a vehicle for that agenda. This can be interpreted by comparing this Ontario document against British Columbia’s Sullivan Report. It is a little like comparing apples and grapes perhaps as British Columbia's Sullivan Report is a royal commission while the Radwanski Report is "Legislative."  In the Sullivan Report, however, drop-out was a sub-section.  The matter of public funding of education, of addressing unemployment and recession, as well as of adjusting liberal ideology to the situation were of increasing significance given the economic climate. In order for the Ontario Liberals to stay in power (by 1990 the NDP were in power) a readjustment of the liberal ideology of opportunity and upward mobility through education would have be adjusted for the 30% of drop-outs as well as the unemployed. To secure this group to the liberal ideology, education policy would have to be reframed under what was called the “Common Curriculum.” The Common Curriculum shifts the focus from the middle class to the working class, the unemployed, students and thus the perception of opportunity through education. It is necessary to rejuvenate a belief in liberal ideology through reasserting public education as most interested in providing hope for the future through a public education system that includes rather than alienates. The Radwanski Report makes arguments toward such a reframing of Ontario’s education system. The hidden agenda working behind this policy shift was twofold: 1) the recession was deep enough that extensive cuts in education funding were necessary and the Common Curriculum facilitated that through the positive aspects of countering high rates of drop out and facilitating what research says (this research is cited in the Sullivan Report) is preferable to streaming students into special, regular and advanced streams of learning. 2) the depth of the recession created huge numbers of unemployed and this group combined with the high numbers of drop-out students had the potential to create political instability. It was necessary to adjust policy in some way to address the possibility of rising volatility. Keeping drop-outs in school and addressing the economic situation through education via a political instrument was construed as politically expedient. 
   In the intellectual education policy community the Radwanski Report was interpreted as inadequate and a bit of an insult to the tradition of commissions of inquiry into public education in Ontario, such tradition tracking back to substantial foundations with the 1950s Hope Commission. This objection can be quite clearly understood relative to the depth and thoroughness of British Columbia’s Sullivan Report which was a very incisive treatment of education policy in that province building on a history of royal commissions that set an enviable precedence. British Columbia’s 20th century public education policy production is precise and the 1988 document reviews the clear trail in chapter seven. The Sullivan Report acknowledges the tradition and thoroughly reviews all the relevant aspects concerning public education in nine chapters. In Ontario, however, a knee-jerk response had caused a report that was more interested in politics and ideology than the provincial tradition of non-partisan royal commissions on education. A crisis response permitted the Radwanski Report to enter the domain of public education policy reports in Ontario. The greatness of the Radwanski Report is its contribution to the fundamentals required in critique of public education policy in critical theory.  It is a report that helps us to see very clearly how public education plays a role in sustaining ideology, mediating the crisis tendencies in capital accumulation. The ideology that public education fosters, the liberal ideology of opportunity and upward mobility doesn’t function as well during an economic recessions or crisis, and ideological positioning must be shifted to cater to the disaffected unemployed, the students and/or high school dropouts, shifted to create a sense of stability. Perhaps the Radwanski Report was also considered the most cost-effective way to address crisis in impending cutbacks in public education funding. Ontario was in such a deep recession, with the manufacturing sector quickly sinking, that a full-scale royal commission on education was considered expensive. By 1994, however, Ontario was back on track with a response that responsibly closed a century of public education policy production beginning from the post-war point of 1945 and the Hope Commission. 

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