WAGNER: When socialism had a foothold in Alberta’s public schools

During the first half of the twentieth century, one of the central figures in Alberta’s education system saw the public schools as venues for promoting socialism to children. He believed a new and better society could be created by implanting socialist doctrine in the minds of the province’s students. This man’s name was Hubert Charles Newland.And, as a powerful bureaucrat in the mid-1930s, Newland used his influence to advance and promote Alberta’s adoption of Progressive Education, an American educational program largely based on the philosophy of left-wing educator John Dewey.This was no ordinary change in the curriculum. For some advocates, like Newland, it involved an attempt to create a new society.Newland’s extensive influence over public education in Alberta is recounted by Patricia Elaine Oviatt in her 1970 University of Alberta Masters of Education thesis entitled “The Educational Contributions of H.C. Newland.”He was born and raised in Ontario but attended the Regina Normal School in Saskatchewan to obtain his teaching credentials. He later earned a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1910, several degrees from the University of Alberta, and in 1932 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.Besides his educational accomplishments, Newland was one of the founders of the Alberta Teachers’ Alliance — now known as the Alberta Teachers’ Association — of which he was president (1920-1922) and the founder and first editor of the ATA Magazine.After spending a number of years helping to build the ATA, he went on to an influential career in Alberta’s Department of Education.Newland became a high school inspector in 1933. He was promoted to Chief Inspector of Schools in January 1935, and then later the same year to Supervisor of Schools, one of the top positions in the Department of Education.And, as a powerful bureaucrat in the mid-1930s, Newland used his influence to advance and promote Alberta’s adoption of Progressive Education, an American educational program largely based on the philosophy of left-wing educator John Dewey.This was no ordinary change in the curriculum. For some advocates, like Newland, it involved an attempt to create a new society.As Oviatt writes, Newland considered the new curriculum to be “the means with which to transform society. In short, he believed the school a valid agent for bringing about a ‘new and better social order.’”In this view, Newland was following American educational theorist George S. Counts who saw the public schools as a tool to “reconstruct” society along socialist lines.Oviatt writes, “Newland aligned himself with American educators of the reconstructionist group, and particularly with George Counts, whose treatise on the role of teachers in shaping a new society forcefully reiterated much of what Newland had expounded during the early years of the A.T.A. With Counts, Newland believed that teachers should play a definite role in directing the schools toward helping to bring about a new social order.”One of George Counts’ best-known books was his 1932 title, Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order? Counts’ answer to that question was an emphatic “Yes!” He believed the public schools were the key to transforming society.Counts wrote that “The growth of science and technology has carried us into a new age where ignorance must be replaced by knowledge, competition by cooperation, trust in providence by careful planning, and private capitalism by some form of socialized economy.”Counts was the thinker with whom Newland most closely identified, so it is not surprising that, as Oviatt notes, Newland believed “political democracy was meaningless without economic democracy which, in his terms, meant a socialized economy.”Indeed, “Newland’s conception of democracy rang heavily of socialism.”For Newland, who was one of Alberta’s top Department of Education officials, the “Progressive” curricular overhaul was meant to be revolutionary.Oviatt writes, “In effect, the new curriculum represented, for Newland, a fundamental change in the function of the school. No longer was it to be primarily a disseminator of facts. Rather, it was to be an agent of social change, actively engaged in the reconstruction of the social order along the lines of Newland’s purer ‘democracy.’”In 1944, R. E. Ansley became minister of education. Ansley was anti-socialist and Newland’s views were well known, making their relationship difficult.Perhaps because of that, Newland resigned from his position in 1945 and moved to Saskatchewan to take a position in the Department of Education there. In 1944 that province had elected the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF.) Thus, Newland could work for a government much more compatible with his own ideology. He died in 1948.However, Newland spent most of his adult life influencing Alberta’s public education system in one capacity or another. From helping to form the ATA early in the century through to implementing the new curriculum in the 1930s and 1940s, Newland was a key player.Although Newland was finally stopped in 1945, it is notable that a high level government official right here in Alberta spent so many years promoting the idea that public education should be used to create a socialist society.Could there be people in the public schools of Alberta advancing a similar agenda today? .This is what the Western Standard is up againstThe Trudeau government is funding lies and propaganda by directly subsidizing the mainstream media. They do this to entrench the powerful Eastern, woke and corrupt interests that dominate the political, social and economic institutions in Canada. Federal authorities are constantly trying to censor us and stop us from publishing the stories that they don’t want you to read. Ottawa may weaponize our taxes and police against us, but we’ve got a powerful ally on our side.You. 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WAGNER: When socialism had a foothold in Alberta’s public schools

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