Chapter 4: Categorizing the Data -- Early 20th century documents -- 1929 and 1935 Alberta

4.1c Early 20th century documents

1929 and 1935 Alberta

   Two Albertan early 20^th century documents covering education policy development are available at canadianeducationalpolicystudies.ca. These documents date to the years 1929 and 1935 respectively. Both Albertan documents address rural conditions and concerns. The development of education policy in Alberta tracks to the Northwest Territories Act of 1875 with School Act formation for Alberta occurring in 1905. Post-1905 policy productions such as the two discussed here respond to limitations imposed by the drought, the great depression and World War One. The 1935 Baker document provides a practical summary of the school system in Alberta as it developed from Alberta’s formation out of the Northwest Territories. A particular interesting passage showing how the jurisdictions were arranged after 1905 is likely one of very few sources (publicly accessible and not hidden in legislative hansards or governmental archives) explaining the transition in public education policy when the province of Alberta was formed in 1905. These two simple documents are likely overlooked by provincial scholars nowadays when vital public education policy history is explained. What the documents do is provide a link between two systems -- Northwest Territories and Alberta – contributing essential information toward the Canadian overview and picture. The legislation of the Northwest Territories prior to 1905 would be construed by the ignorant to have contained little sophistication, where in fact the Northwest Territories was borrowed for the new province. It reads as follows:

   When on the first day of September, 1905, the Province of Alberta was formed, it was not called upon to create a school system. It already had within its boundaries 602 organized school districts; and by the Alberta Act, the School Ordinances of The North-West Territories became the school law of the new province. That law provided for the organization of local school districts, the election of boards of trustees, and the organization of a Department of Education under a Minister of the Crown; and it prescribed the powers and the functions of each.

   To the Minister was assigned the power to create new school districts, to alter existing boundaries, to arrange for the training and certification of teachers, for the inspection of schools, and for the examination and promotion of pupils, and to prescribe courses of study and text books.

   The school boards were given authority to erect school buildings, to borrow money through the issue of their debentures, to levy and collect taxes, to engage teachers, and, subject to the powers vested in the Minister, generally to manage the school and administer the affairs of the district. [CanEdPolDoc1935Alberta, Part 1]

   When I was writing the history of education policy in the Northwest Territories in a Master’s thesis entitled “Education Policy in the Northwest Territories, an analysis of the decentralization years,” I did not know of this document. It was not clear how the Canadian West gained its education legislation. At the time of writing I was not familiar with Ronald Manzer’s 1994 book “Public Schools and Political Ideas,” where Manzer writes that Ryerson’s model was disseminated to the Canadian West through the Council of Public Instruction to the western provinces. This is fundamental information that would ideally be easily referred to in a graduate level survey course covering the development of Canadian public education policy.  Lack of access to a Canadian public education policy history is addressed in this dissertation since not too many public education academics currently know where the Canadian public education policy history may be found. The analysis is anticipated as theoretical but the foundations to such comparative are discovered through facts provided through reports such as the Albertan examples covered here. The 1935 Alberta document contains explicit detail on the impact of the great depression and the missing tax base required to support prairie rural schools during these years.