Chapter 5: Literature Review -- Manzer's "Public Schools and Political Ideas"

5e

Manzer's "Public Schools and Political Ideas"

   Public education policy is “provincial” in Canada and in many cases researchers pursue case studies that have the potential through their findings to change policy at the board and ministry level for the better, and this focus is highly valued in the interests of perfecting public education in social democracies. Indeed, it is the case, that public education policy analysis is considered frivolous as well as the private domain of aged men with a lot of institutional power. But these aged men often have less access to perspective as they have settled into their provinces and are well salaried and imprisoned within their provincial paradigms.  The ‘big picture’ easily stops at the provincial level since the production of public education policy documents is ongoing and the wheels of politics always turn providing material for analysis (except perhaps in Alberta). Also, policy analysts in universities work within an educational system that is in many respects ‘public’ and ‘political’ and so they are not free to ask policy questions about national conceptualizations. It is probably also not worth the time and trouble. Because we have also seen that accessing the linear histories of the 13 Canadian systems in order to construct a comparative that reveals the ‘big picture’, requires quite a bit of document sorting as well as access to the public education policy commission reports and other documents. In order to overcome this limitation I elected, as described, to transcribe the public education policy documents and create an overarching compendium that would provide one-stop access. I have not found anything resembling my collection in any searches and further, I have not found the title of this dissertation used in any prior literature. And of course, this dissertation does not finalize any overview since I was not able to complete some of the linear provincial 20^th histories. Additionally the post-secondary royal commissions haven’t been specifically included. 

   Manzer’s book was interesting to me because it constitutes a ‘literature review’ in this area of research. There seemed to be virtually nothing else available to refer to when it came to obtaining a political overview of Canadian public education. Manzer’s 1994 book puts in a very important foundation. There was a point during my studies where a professor in Educational Policy Studies, University of Alberta was asked to review the manuscript for Manzer’s 2004 book having never seen nor read Manzer’s 1994 book. This was around 2002, a substantial eight years after the publication of Manzer’s 1994 “Public Schools and Political Ideas: Canadian Educational Policy in Historical Perspective.” This is the state of affairs in Canada. In many cases the academic products of the various provinces covering public education policy analysis do not travel beyond provincial boundaries. Of course, since that critical window of time (1994 to 2002) however, technological advances have made the possibility of access to public education policy products of other provinces and territories much greater and exposure to them much more likely. Another aspect I noticed was a public education policy professor friend of mine grabbing up Manzer’s book as soon as it emerged into awareness in the department (again circa 2002). There is a hunger in public education policy studies departments for an overview on public education policy in Canada, a need to conceptualize a ‘big picture’ and there is very little devoted to this. Manzer’s book is incredibly important for putting in place a treatment. This ‘big picture’ focus cannot be found in journal articles because no foundations are built yet to facilitate production of smaller articles, because the overview requires a solid treatment first and as such far exceed journal article limitations. (As I have mentioned earlier in this dissertation there is any number of treatments explaining how the Canadian public education system is organized. These treatments provide the skeleton, but assessments on what makes up the ‘body’ is little dealt with. This body is described and represented in the ‘hidden’ layer, through the commission reports and other inquiries and reports. Satisfying the need for analysis of the ‘big picture’ in Canada for the 20^th century is essential. It is also elemental. No progress can be made without an historical overview.

   It is rather a challenge without the minimum of a Master’s in education policy to have any kind of handle with which to analyze the work of Ronald Manzer. With his obtuse pedantic style of writing and his obscure model for analysis, Ronald Manzer’s book is pretty much uncontested. Therefore, an alternative interpretation to Manzer’s analysis of Canadian public education policy development in the 20^th century is required.  It was not possible to take on this challenge without engaging intensely with the Canadianapublci education policy data set -- the commission reports of the 20^th century. I couldn’t have gained any expertise with which to critically examine Manzer’s model for analysis without reading through the 20^th century public education policy commissions and reports and without studying alternative theory.

    In terms of his positioning, Manzer is a political scientist and organizes his book using a model with roots in a type of analysis particular to that academic tradition. I would add that Manzer’s perspective is very much traditional in approach and this may be a considered in part a generational feature. It would seem that as a consequence of his perspective and as a consequence of his interest in public education policy history and the related area of “public policy” study, that Manzer organizes Canadian educational policy in historical perspective (per his book’s title) and directs the first overview of Canadian public education policy reviewing policy from its roots in 19^th century central Canada. He was completing this review just toward the end of the 20^th publishing in 1994. This type of ‘big picture’ treatment confuses professors working within faculties of education for the reasons I have outlined in previous paragraphs and sections. Access to the necessary documents to produce the analysis is one big consideration. As a political scientist and a historian, Manzer has read and engaged intellectually in a range of historical materials and some commission reports. He is particularly knowledgeable about 19^th century and early 20^th Canadian public education history. This history and how he organizes it is one of the most important contributions Manzer makes to Canadian public education policy understanding. 

   Manzer sets up his model for analysis at the beginning stating his preference for interpreting from public policies the ‘political ideas’ of significance. He writes that the process involves, “the construction of a set of relevant definitions of what political ideas might mean. This involves constructing typologies of the various political theories, beliefs, doctrines, or principles that might provide the substantive meanings of political ideas to be found in institutions and policies. Next, careful study of specific institutional arrangements and policy designs is needed in order to determine which of the relevant sets of meanings of political ideas fit best.” (p. 7) 

   For my research I specifically identify commission reports and other governmental inquiries of importance for examination. Then I apply a theory against them. Manzer organizes a policy model first setting up a simple dichotomy between “liberalism” and “communitarianism.” The conflict posed by such a dichotomy is fairly muted, dispensing with the key essential contradiction outlined by Habermas -- that existing between capital accumulation and public policy making. Manzer concludes in chapter three that, “public education can be situated in the context of greater public debates between liberals and communitarians…” (p. 50) Manzer proposes a Canadian model defined by categories of within a range of liberalism – political liberalism, economic liberalism, and ethical liberalism. Manzer considers public education policy development through a focus on the liberal ideological side of his model. His intention? -- “I shall endeavour to show the changing ideological foundations of educational policy designs, not only in order to interpret the history educational policies in Canada, but also to understand the changing political meanings of public education in Canada.” Since analysis of public education policy is political, one way of creating a coherent system is to smooth the lines dividing the categories of conservative, liberal and socialist under a total overarching ideological category of small ‘l’ liberal. It is, however, in relation to classical liberalism and the exploitation of workers and the class system, that socialism primarily responds. To my mind the category of “communitarianism” identifies the human being as essentially social, but isn’t concerned with any political aspect to this. I don’t know that such a dichotomy for analysis can be convincing in Manzer’s model when considered against a category for liberalism described by Manzer as ‘economic’. Conservative positions traditionally embrace classical liberalism. Manzer’s proposed trichotomy for analyzing Canadian public education policy models on the political categories that Canadians understand. Manzer’s “political liberalism” compares to big ‘L’ liberal ideology in Canada. “Economic liberalism” compares to big ‘C’ conservative ideology in Canada (particularly since the emergence of reform in the late 1980s). And “ethical liberalism” compares to social democratic values expressed in Canada’s NDP party. Manzer’s analysis mutes all actual political differences.

   In deference to Manzer I have no academic background in political science. My undergrad background is in English literature and humanities. I earned a B.Ed specializing in the teaching of high school English. For my M.Ed. I began to study public education policy focusing in my Master’s thesis on public education policy and legislation. Due to my undergrad discipline influences I tend to see the commission reports of the 20^th century as a type of “literature.” To this I wish to apply what in sociology calls “hermeneutics.” Text interpretation to reveal biases, assumptions, ideology. Further, I see the commission reports of the 20^th century as offering a wonderful opportunity to do ‘policy archeology’ this in the spirit of the sociologist Michel Foucault. To my mind hermeneutics, rather than building a model as an aspect of the research, is the challenge. The theory I apply is already developed. The academic challenge at the PhD level is to understand and apply such theory. My influences are developed out of pursuing study in critical theory reading Marx and interpretations of Marx by such philosophers, sociologists and interpreters as Callincos, Held, Giddens and Habermas. 

   Manzer traces the roots of English-language Canadian public education policy history and its changes to the influences of John Locke, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, T. H. Green and John Dewey. He writes that the French-language influences on French-language Canadian public education policy trace to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Baron de Montesquieu, Joseph de Maistre, and Alexis de Tocqueville. He thinks that Canadian public education policy in the two strands integrates these influences. The influence of philosophy on Manzer’s thinking in this book, however, is miminal. I’m still not clear on why this is except that Manzer’s real interest lies in explaining and analyzing educational politics and the details of power in Canadian public education governance. What we have in Canada is a “liberal democracy” modeled on the constitutional monarchial system and closely mirroring UK practice. The legal model in Quebec is based on the French civil rather than the British common law system, but the economic system is Western and capitalistic and this influences public education policy nationally. Irving Abella taught me that Canadian confederation was economically driven in order to counter American tariffs and protect Upper and Lower Canadian businessmen. What brought Upper and Lower Canada together to form a confederation benefited Quebec and Ontario and shifted Quebec out of a feudal system. Traditionally, the influence of religion on thinking has been countered with studies in philosophy. A good example of this, I think, is how the great philosopher Hegel left Catholicism to study philosophy and invent his pyramid of knowledge with Absolute Spirit rather than God at its apex. In Quebec, philosophy was the alternative to Catholic perspectives and these influences derive from European thinking and not solely from French thinkers only. Because philosophy was so important in Quebec as a consequence of the influence of Catholicism, the European foundations to those fields that influence education, sociology and psychology are integrated into Quebec public policy in the 20^th century and are therefore also Canadian. 

    In terms of Manzer’s category of “economic liberalism” the influences he lists for English-language Canadian public education policy underlie the theory of classical liberalism, laissez-faire policy and the magic of the market. On the French Canadian side of things the influences diverge -- we have the impact of the French Revolution on the thinking of UK thinkers and economists of the 19^th century and a concomitant effect on Canadian policy development modeled on British colonialism in the 19^th century. 

   The model I propose to apply against the commission reports differs in great degree from Manzer’s. It is the ‘systems analytic’ and belongs to Marxist or critical theory. This theory critiques assumptions of liberal ideology and the exploitation inherent in capitalism. Manzer proposes a functional rather than conflict interpretation of the development of Canadian public education policy. The history certainly involves conflict particularly in the areas of language of instruction and power of religion in the public schools, but in overview Manzer’s analysis tends to a functional coherent interpretation. In developing his analysis out of the 19^th century central Canadian public education history, Manzer takes on an overview that is going to be fraught with problems when attached to the model he proposes. I am not interested in critiquing Manzer’s model further although this would be another research project. His theoretical framework is intended to be ‘neutral’ but there is a tension existing within the model because liberalism is ideological but Manzer refers to political ‘ideas’ to avoid writing from a stated theoretical position. He writes from an ideological positioning, but naming the positioning is the challenge. 

    The way Manzer organizes the history of Canadian public education policy with his model is in contrast to my analysis. This anticipates a future possibility of dialogue and debate around how we understand and interpret Canadian public education policy history. One of the problems with the current state of affairs in public education policy analysis is that there is no Canadian historical intellectual foundation from which to build a dialogue and discussion. Access to and familiarity with the commission reports of the 20^th century is a problem. I did read Manzer before beginning my work on the collation of the key public education policy documents of the 20^th century. I found his book impenetrable given my lack of familiarity at that time with the Canadian public education commission reports. With his model revealing an obtuse analytical relationship with conservative, liberal and socialist ideology, Manzer’s 1994 book is virtually inaccessible to the Master’s level student never mind the layman. With Manzer’s writing style and his erudition, it is difficult to critique Manzer without being familiar, at a minimum, with the commission reports of the 20^th century. 

  Manzer develops a model to explain Canadian public education policy and applies it to the history as he as constructed it using sources that could be described as more diverse than my sources. This is why he looks for a pattern in order to organize the information.  It is also why he develops his model as previously discussed, in order to relate the historical story as he understands it. Royal commission reports, however, are very thorough inquiries into previous history, present conditions – social, economic and even political – and are rich source of cultural as well as policy information. Given that conceptualizing Canadian public education policy through setting up linear and horizontal relationships, (i.e. contructing more of a ‘grid’ rather than isolated linear trajectories out of each province/territory from the 19^th century) is in its early stages, narrowing the range is necessary, but the view through the lens of commission reports supports a linear Canadian public education history similar to that described by Manzer. It could be said that the range of documents as I make them available enhances his historical treatment particularly as we include the 20^th century policy documents of the Canadian Territories. 

   Manzer narrows his data set by organizing it into three key Canadian public education categories defining public education in Canada and creating seminal public policy challenges – religion, language and secondary education. It is possible this categorization is appropriate to examine the policy of the 19^th century and he does this analysis wonderfully between chapters three and nine. Manzer sets up typologies for each area and organizes how we understand public education policy differences in the provinces in a logical methodical fashion. For example Manzer identifies Quebec and Newfoundland as systems differing from the rest of Canada in their development. The categories of liberalism Manzer propose in his model are better suited to analyzing early 20^th century and the 1960s documents. Economic and ethical liberalism play a greater role in the analysis and this is because the essential dichotomy revealed through conflict theory sets up ideology of liberalism and its overseer liberal capitalism as inherently in conflict with public policy. The way in which Manzer narrows the range of information is different from how I limit my range for the purposes of this research. He admits that he is not covering many aspects of public education policy in Canada, one of them being First Nations/Metis/Inuit education, but exclusion of certain areas of public education is necessary because he is describing Canadian public education policy from its roots in the 19^th century. I narrow my range to the 20^th century and set up as thorough a representation of Canadian public education policy documents as possible. I limit the ‘data set’ to royal and special commission policy reports and certain selected important other governmental inquiries. How this is achieved is set out in an earlier section. Finally I should say that Manzer’s analysis offers my work greater depth and provides a 19^th policy history explanation and analysis from which the 20^th century treatment greatly benefits.