The Alberta Teachers’ Association

For Alberta, the 1920s was a decade of political agitation and ongoing attempts at various sorts of social reform. The federal Progressive Party, founded in 1919, was in its prime as an agent for agrarian reform. The Progressive Party entered parliament before eventually joining with the older Conservative Party in 1942.

The period after the Great War was characterized by a degree of unrest, which led to the unseating of the Alberta Liberals. Wartime agricultural prosperity gave way to economic hard times. Fortunately, the downturn proved short-lived. After the 1921 election, the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) formed the government of the province, and Herbert Greenfield became premier. The political platform of the UFA focused on rural and agricultural values.

The oil and gas reserves discovered earlier in Turner Valley, south of Calgary, were developed during the 1920s. With very little refining, the oil from Turner Valley fueled the automobiles of the time (Chalmers 1967).

In 1924, Alberta responded to prohibition by inaugurating a system of government-controlled alcohol sales.

In many ways, the 1920s in Alberta were notable for the modest changes in public education. Few, if any, monumental events came to light, though some teachers were prepared to be militant. In April 1921, a strike occurred in an Edmonton high school (Chalmers 1967, 77).

During the 1920s, the Alberta Teachers’ Alliance occasionally blacklisted certain school boards that proved hard headed in their dealings with teachers. The practice involved publishing a notice in the public press to the effect that teachers considering employment with specific school boards should first communicate with the Alliance. Trustees did not enjoy being blacklisted (Chalmers 1968, 30–31).

Some aspects of Alberta’s turbulent social atmosphere during the 1920s are apparent in the educational vision of the United Farm Women of Alberta (UFWA), whose efforts were directed at promoting social reform (Wilson 1979). Although related to the social movement from which the UFA developed, the UFWA saw its purpose as educational rather than political. This group used committees, conventions, pamphlets and libraries to educate its members and to improve society. Some members directed their attention to rural education, striving to ensure that rural pupils received an education comparable to that of their urban counterparts. The movement also laid the groundwork for some of the progressive education initiatives undertaken in Alberta in the 1930s (Wilson 1979).

The UFA was pragmatic in its efforts to improve education during the 1920s. Although the government attempted to change and improve schooling, success was meager. Some small four-by-four school districts were merged but, because the mergers were voluntary, few of the desired consolidations occurred.

The elementary and high school curricula underwent some changes in 1922 (Chalmers 1967). Although rounds of public consultation accompanied the changes, the committees that actually prepared recommendations for the department were made up of educational professionals. By the 1920s, the improvement of rural education was becoming a cause, but most Albertans still needed to be convinced of its urgency. In 1924, G W Gorman, the chief inspector of schools for Alberta, reported on the weaknesses of the prevailing schooling practices in that decade. He made a case for equality of opportunity so that children from rural areas would have the chance to get a good education (Jonason 1955).

Although amendments to the School Act in 1926 established a board of reference to deal with disputes between school boards and teachers, the board of reference had no power to enforce its decisions (Chalmers 1968, 61). Security of tenure and ongoing contracts for teachers were still aspirations.

Minister of Education Perren Baker introduced the Baker Bill twice—in 1928 and again in 1930—in an effort to move toward the formation of school divisions (Chalmers 1967). The proposed legislation was withdrawn when it failed to gain backing even among UFA supporters. School trustees in particular looked upon the proposed legislation as an undue restriction on their local autonomy. Resistance to the proposed improvements to school organization stemmed from the predominantly local farm values of the time.

Alberta’s geographic expanses presented challenges to public schooling. One innovative response to the challenge involved establishing a correspondence school, an initiative that Baker heartily supported. The Alberta Correspondence School was created in 1923 in an effort to meet the educational needs of students isolated in areas of the province where no school district was yet formed (Alberta Distance Learning Centre 1998).

In 1919, Alberta attempted to improve its normal schools (Chalmers 1967). School inspectors and normal-school instructors, whose roles often overlapped, concluded that the four-month period of preparation was no longer adequate. According to the new agreement, grade 11 became the minimum entrance requirement for normal school, and the course of studies was lengthened to eight months. This arrangement remained in effect until World War II. However, an exception occurred in 1920/21, when emergency short-courses of 12 weeks’ duration were used to prepare teachers.

Edmonton gained two important facilities during this period (Coutts and Walker 1964). First, the Edmonton Normal School (ENS) opened in 1919, although its existence was precarious. Because of the province’s limited finances, ENS was closed in 1923, reopening in 1928 in King Edward School. Second, the School of Education opened at the University of Alberta in 1929. One immediate justification for establishing the school was to improve opportunities for educating high school teachers. The first professors of education were selected from the Faculty of Arts and Science. The first director of the school was M E LaZerte, who later became the first dean of the Faculty of Education (Chalmers 1978).

Summary

The 1920s in Alberta were marked by practical attempts to improve public schooling by forming larger school districts in rural areas. However, the time was not ripe for much change. The province’s population still lived mostly on farms and in small towns. Alberta's social atmosphere, dominated by rural and farm values, did not allow for major modifications to the educational status quo. There were, nevertheless, revisions to the elementary and secondary programs of studies. The province established a correspondence school to serve students in unorganized areas of the province and attempted to improve the quality of teacher preparation in its normal schools. Generally, throughout this decade, the promise of schooling remained vested in innumerable one-room schoolhouses planted across a vast rural landscape. Consensus for undertaking major improvement initiatives would wait for the next decade and other political leaders.