Recensions / Book Reviews

Recensions / Book Reviews
Beyond Liberation and Excellence: Reconstructing the Public Discourse on
Education
By David E. Purpel & Svi Shapiro
Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1995. xxiv+224 pages. ISBN 0-7872-1110-9
(pbk.)
REVIEWED BY JERROLD R. COOMBS, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
This work is primarily hortatory rather than analytical. Convinced that American
society is in a profound and dangerous crisis, Purpel and Shapiro issue a plea for
educators to assume a role of leadership in transforming American schools and
society. The crisis they identify has a number of aspects, including the possibility
of economic collapse, the imminence of ecological disaster, and the prevalence
of violence. In their view, current educational policies and practices exacerbate
the crisis because they legitimate inexcusable injustices, and reinforce the
competitive, materialistic, and uncaring attitudes that have been instrumental in
producing it.
The authors claim that although American society requires major structural
change to respond to this crisis, prominent proposals for educational reform are
banal and timid. Moreover, educators by and large have not challenged the moral
and economic presuppositions of the various proposals for reform. If education
is to help resolve the crisis rather than deepen it, argue Purpel and Shapiro,
professional educators need to foster a new sort of public discourse concerning
our broad social and cultural values and priorities, and their relation to our
educational goals and policies. They must persuade the public to accept a
different vision of educational purposes than that which is now dominant.
To aid educators in participating in public debate, Purpel and Shapiro suggest
the kind of discourse and reform agenda educators should adopt. Although
avowedly sympathetic to the work of critical theorists and advocates of critical
pedagogy, the authors contend that the discourse of the Left is too restrictive. To
the critical theorist’s discourse on social justice, liberation, and participatory
democracy, they want to add discourse on caring, compassion, community,
responsibility, peace, and joy. Such a discourse, they argue, would enable
persons to put forth a new vision of America’s possibilities as a society without
privileging any one group.
The agenda for reform offered by Purpel and Shapiro is represented as being
merely illustrative of the direction that reform strategies might take. They regard
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the concerns that shape the educational agenda in the U.S.A. at present as a good
starting point, but suggest that educators give a “transformative twist” to them.
Concern with teaching basics, for example, should be reconceptualized to include
preparing students for active participation in civic life. The long-range objective
of the reform agenda is an education directed at promoting community, justice,
compassion, and meaning, rather than one promoting competition, achievement,
and domination.
Although it is easy to agree with Purpel and Shapiro’s view that both
education and society should be reformed to be more just, compassionate, and
caring, I wonder about the efficacy of their approach. The likelihood of their
galvanizing educators to action would appear to be dependent upon their
convincing educators of the existence of the crisis they have identified. Many
educators, as the authors acknowledge, perceive no such crisis. Because the
authors have not produced any arguments to substantiate their claims about a
crisis that are not already common currency among educators, it seems unlikely
these non-believers will be converted.
However, even educators who are unconvinced of the existence of a crisis may
agree with the authors’ view that they should take a more active role in the
public debate about educational purposes. What is not clear is whether they are
equipped to play the role Purpel and Shapiro assign them, namely determining
the nature and scope of the issues and framing important questions, rather than
simply offering technical advice. There is little reason to suppose that the
training and experience of educators typically provides them with a particularly
good grasp of issues relating to social policy and the aims of public education.
Thus they would appear to have no special authority to determine the scope of
issues or to determine how they should be framed.
Assuming educators can acquire the critical acumen and understanding
necessary for playing the role Purpel and Shapiro assign them, why should they
adopt the proposed agenda? The authors give essentially two reasons. First, they
argue that the proposed agenda is based on persons’ real needs and concerns, that
is, economic security, opportunity, self-esteem, the sense of community life
bound by moral commitment, and a sense of personal meaning. Granted that
these are genuine needs, and that their agenda succeeds in reflecting them, this
is nonetheless a fairly weak argument. Depending upon how these needs are
prioritized and what additional assumptions are made about the efficacy of
various social institutions, any number of different and conflicting agendas may
be thought to reflect them. The authors aver that their agenda is antithetical to
capitalism, for example, but defenders of capitalism may well argue that it offers
the best hope of securing these genuine needs. Thus this argument is unlikely to
be persuasive to educators firmly wedded to capitalism.
The second arm of their argument is that their agenda, with its emphasis on
renewing a concern for community, justice, compassion, and meaning, is rooted
in Americans’ oldest, most revered traditions and aspirations. That these do
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represent cherished aspirations seems to me incontestable, but it is also incontestable that economic success is a cherished aspiration, and this aspiration seems
to be the primary motivation for the system of schooling Purpel and Shapiro
want to reform. What they are seeking, then, is not the replacement of weakly
held values with ones that are more deeply rooted. Rather, they seek a reordering
of priorities for public education and social policy. Simply showing that compassion and concern for community are cherished values does not permit one to
conclude that these should take precedence over economic success as values to
be realized through public schooling. So once again educators are given no
compelling reason for adopting the Purpel-Shapiro agenda for reform.
La recherche en éducation comme source de changement
Par Jacques Chevrier
Montréal: Les Éditions Logiques, 1994. 271 pages. ISBN 2-89381-241-4
RECENSÉ PAR ROLAND OUELLET, UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL
L’intention première de cette publication, comme on l’annonce à juste titre dans
l’introduction, est de “montrer comment la recherche en éducation peut être
source de changement, non seulement sur le plan de l’apprentissage, mais aussi
sur les plans de la politique, de l’administration, de l’intervention (enseignement
ou formation) et de l’activité même de recherche” (p. 11). Les textes qui sont
présentés dans ce collectif sont tirés d’un colloque tenu en mai 1993 à l’Université du Québec à Hull, colloque qui voulait amener les participants à réfléchir sur
l’impact social de la recherche en éducation.
Comme toute publication de ce genre, il faut s’attendre à des contributions
inégales, compte tenu que les communications ne répondent pas toujours et
nécessairement à un plan d’ensemble préalablement très défini et que chaque
présentateur possède une assez bonne latitude quant au contenu de sa communication. À ce sujet, on doit admettre qu’en général, la plupart des textes présentés
ici sont de qualibre équivalent et nous offrent des propos relativement consistants
et convergents.
La présente publication fait habilement la démonstration que l’impact social
de la recherche constitue une problématique complexe, renvoyant à la fois à la
question de la pertinence et de l’utilité de la recherche, mais aussi aux cadres
conceptuels utilisés, aux mécanismes de diffusion de la recherche, aux préjugés
et attentes que chercheurs et praticiens entretiennent les uns envers les autres,
aux rigidités des institutions de recherche et des organismes subventionnaires, à
la “turbulence” ou au dérangement qu’entraîment inévitablement dans un milieu
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donné la recherche qui y est menée (avec toutes les questions d’éthique que cela
soulève), aux changements que vivent les chercheurs eux-mêmes dans leurs
propres conceptions et façons de faire. On y montre aussi que l’impact social de
la recherche en éducation n’est pas sans limites, que plusieurs éléments y font
obstacle mais que diverses stratégies s’offrent aux chercheurs soucieux de mettre
en évidence la pertinence sociale, les répercussions pratiques et les contributions
directes des résultats de leur recherche. Enfin, des exemples concrets de recherches sont présentés pour illustrer comment certains changements sociaux ont été
l’aboutissement de diverses démarches de recherche.
On a choisi de diviser les présentations en deux sections. La première regroupant les contributions à la réflexion théorique alors que la seconde se voulait
“pratique,” axée sur le vécu de la recherche et destinée à illustrer les stratégies
proposées dans la section théorique. Cette division ne me semble pas toujours
pertinente dans la mesure où certains textes de la seconde partie présentent des
réflexions d’ordre théorique très articulées tout en établissant des ponts étroits
avec la pratique. Par ailleurs, on retrouve aussi, dans cette deuxième partie,
certains textes à saveur plutôt anecdotique, montrant que l’activité de recherche,
probablement comme toute activité humaine, ne se déroule pas toujours comme
prévu. Je note aussi au passage que la plupart des changements sociaux, qui sont
crédités au compte des recherches d’intervention figurant dans la deuxième
partie, reposent le plus souvent sur les impressions des chercheurs, leurs appréciations personnelles ou les perceptions des participants. L’espace manque ici
pour ouvrir un débat sur la question, mais on peut au moins soulever la question
de savoir jusqu’à quel point ces changements se sont effectivement produits. Que
des acteurs aient pris conscience de ceci ou cela, ou aient pris en charge tel ou
tel processus demeurent des phénomènes fort complexes qui ne sauraient être pris
pour acquis seulement parce qu’on l’affirme.
D’autre part, il faut souligner que si, dans l’ensemble, la plupart des textes
s’efforcent d’utiliser le style analytique, basé sur l’argumentation, la démonstration ou encore l’examen de la preuve, dans certains cas, le discours est plutôt
d’ordre normatif (du style “on devrait faire ceci, on devrait faire cela”). C’est
peut-être là un aspect qui finit par agacer le lecteur. Une autre remarque tient
aussi à la nature des recherches qui sont présentées dans la seconde partie. La
recherche-action est très nettement privilégiée et cela se comprend aisément
compte tenu de la thématique du colloque et des reproches dont font habituellement l’objet les recherches théoriques, fondamentales et même, à la rigueur, les
recherches quantitatives. Il aurait été intéressant que des partisans de ce type de
recherche puissent aussi exposer leurs points de vue sur la question, dans la
mesure où l’on peut considérer que la diffusion des résultats d’une recherche
et la discussion sur sa pertinence font partie intégrante de tout processus de
recherche.
Enfin, soulignons qu’un seul représentant du monde scolaire a fait connaître
son point de vue sur l’impact de la recherche en éducation; il reste qu’il aurait
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été tout à fait pertinent que les intervenants qui participent activement aux
différents processus des recherches collaboratives aient été invités, eux aussi, à
faire part de leurs réflexions. N’est-il pas paradoxal que sur les 22 auteurs que
compte cette publication, on en retrouve 19 issus du monde universitaire et aucun
de ceux du groupe des intervenants scolaires (enseignants, formateurs), que l’on
considère par ailleurs comme des “acteurs directs” dans le processus même des
recherches qui ont été menées (qu’elles soient de nature interactive, évaluative,
collaborative, recherche-action ou autre)? Une prise de parole de leur part aurait
sans doute permis de rapprocher davantage la recherche et la pratique, comme
le souhaitait cette publication dans l’un de ses objectifs (p. 16).
En conclusion, j’estime que cette publication pose des questions fondamentales
à tous ceux que la recherche en éducation intéresse: chercheurs, praticiens,
gestionnaires, politiciens. Le débat sur le changement provoqué par la recherche
en éducation est lancé et cette publication a le mérite de nous fournir une
réflexion articulée sur le sujet.
Historical Perspectives on Educational Policy in Canada: Issues, Debates and
Case Studies
Edited by Eric W. Ricker & B. Anne Wood
Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1995. xvii+298 pages. ISBN 1-55130-045-1
(pbk.)
REVIEWED BY BRIAN TITLEY, UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE
This anthology contains 16 papers and commentaries selected from those (49 in
all) presented at the fourth biennial conference of the Canadian History of
Education Association in Halifax in October 1986. The editors attribute the nineyear hiatus between the conference and publication to “funding and technical
problems,” although they admit that preparation of the manuscript “proceeded
rather spasmodically over a number of years.” In fact, four of the papers featured
here have already appeared in other publications. And, in order to avoid further
delays, the editors did not ask contributors to revise their work.
Given these considerations, a reader might well expect a collection of tired
and dated material. But it is quite the opposite. Historical Perspectives contains
many pieces of enduring value — significant because of depth of research and
originality of conception. Indeed, the value of such pieces has become even more
apparent with the passing of time because the very issues they explicate continue
to trouble educators.
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Although the Halifax conference welcomed American, Australian, and British
scholars, only works by Canadians on mainly Canadian topics were chosen for
this book, the exception being Harold Silver’s keynote address. The conference
theme, educational policy, provides a unifying leitmotif to the book. In his
important introductory essay Eric Ricker surveys the major schools of interpretation that have shaped the writing of Canadian education history. Ricker also
examines the role played by historians in formulating educational policy and
concludes that decision makers have rarely consulted them or appreciated their
perspective. Harold Silver picks up this theme in “Policy Problems in Time.” In
arguing that history is under-used as a component of policy analysis, he asks
some probing questions about policy in the past with which historians should
grapple. His useful article suggests expanded research and teaching possibilities
for historians, especially for those who find themselves in reorganized “educational policy” departments.
At first glance, the section devoted to the 1984 polemic The Great Brain
Robbery may seem like old hat. In truth, it provides the liveliest reading in this
volume. The issues at stake — the nature and quality of higher education — are
as relevant as ever a decade later as budget cuts and the so-called “new realities”
force us to make difficult decisions. Although Jack Granatstein makes a spirited
defence of the book he co-wrote (and scores some telling points in doing so), he
is forced to admit that many of the allegations in Robbery were based on casual
observation rather than on empirical evidence. Paul Axelrod accuses Granatstein
and his collaborators of “romancing the past,” as nostalgic conservatives are
wont to do. He maintains that the past was far from the ideal it is imagined to
be, and that professors have always railed bitterly at a perceived mediocrity. In
a thoughtful and balancing commentary, Michael Cross takes Granatstein to task
for his elitist vision and challenges Axelrod to explore more fully the nature and
causes of the nostalgic conservatism he identifies.
In the next section Bruce Curtis examines the historical evolution of classroom
discipline, and Bob Gidney and Wyn Millar explore the idea of merit and its
connection with written examinations. Curtis, in his review of major British
books on education from 1580 to 1800, discovers that the advocacy of corporal
punishment declined over time, while “moral and emotional discipline” was
increasingly favoured. This change in the educational sphere, he suggests,
parallelled a development in the public sphere from overt to more subtle means
of control, a transformation accompanying the establishment of bourgeois
hegemony. The rise of the bourgeoisie is also a key element in the thesis put
forward by Gidney and Millar. The professional middle classes, they contend,
who owed their advancement to credentials and expertise, championed meritocratic examinations over patronage as criteria for access to status positions
because it served their own interests. Conceptually, these articles are among the
most interesting in the collection; the themes the authors develop deserve a much
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fuller treatment than the limitations of a conference paper allow. Even so, and
in spite of their obvious significance, at times I found myself wondering why
two articles based almost exclusively on British sources were included in a book
on Canadian education.
A section on church and state contains two essays which show the narrowminded and arrogant side of some Protestant educational endeavours. Réal
Boulianne focuses on the efforts of the Church of England to promote schools
under its own auspices in early 19th-century Lower Canada. He contends that the
church failed to achieve its objectives — to become the established church, to
proselytize Catholics, and to combat the influence of Methodism. And, on a
somewhat whiggish note, he berates the church for delaying the creation of a
modern school system. Michael Owen looks at Presbyterian missions to immigrant communities in early 20th-century Cape Breton, missions inspired by fear
that such communities posed a threat to the Canadian way of life. He notes that,
in spite of enormous evangelical and educational efforts, few immigrants actually
joined the church. Other less tangible measures of success, he admits, are hard
to find.
Reform policies are the concern of the next section. Played out against the
backdrop of the early 19th-century struggle for responsible government, William
Hamilton’s chapter shows how denominational rivalry and intransigence ensured
that higher education in Nova Scotia emerged in the fragmented form it retained
until recent attempts were made to rationalize it. James Love, after surveying the
agitation for free schools in each jurisdiction in the Canadas and the Maritimes,
claims, inter alia, that free schools only came into being with the advent of
reform administrations and an extended franchise which allowed the majority to
pass on the costs of education to the wealthy. A plausible idea, to be sure, but
no evidence is offered for it in the chapter.
Twentieth-century topics are presented by John Lyons and Nancy Sheehan in
the next section. Lyons’ chapter is, in effect, an historical tour d’horizon of
teachers’ work and status in Saskatchewan. An important point he makes along
the way is that university-based teacher education programs have done little to
advance the profession because they emphasize instructional strategies at the
expense of critical thinking. There is food for thought — and debate — here. I
must confess that the references to quilt-making and barn-raising in the title of
this piece still perplex me. Sheehan’s chapter on the effects of World War I on
educational policy is intriguing. The unbridled warmongering propaganda in the
schools and the none-too-subtle pressure on male teachers and senior students to
offer themselves up as cannon fodder are disturbing, if fascinating, to read about.
Sheehan asks if the war precipitated any fundamental changes to education in its
aftermath and concludes that it did not. The conflict ended on a note of selfcongratulation with officials praising the schools for their contribution. Why
would such a successful system need to change? This study could be profitably
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expanded in several directions: to French Canada, to the Second World War, and
to anti-war sentiment.
The final chapter in the book is J. D. Wilson’s piece on rural schooling in
British Columbia in the 1920s. Wilson offers an engaging portrait of school and
society from the teachers’ point of view — and a bleak and discouraging one it
is for the most part. He notes that most of these young professionals did not
intend to stay in their communities for very long and that historians must interpret their often negative remarks in this light. This is an excellent approach to
social history and Canadians will learn much about our past as scholars pursue
it even more.
I readily admit to serious suspicions that the theme of educational policy is
simply a flag of convenience to hang on this volume. But it would not be the
first time that an anthology lacked a coherent unifying principle. The strength of
the entire collection lies in the individual contributions rather than in whatever
glue binds them together. The generally first-rate scholarship is a tribute to the
vibrancy and relevance of historical research on education in Canada.
Les cheminements scolaires et l’insertion professionnelle des étudiants de
l’université: perspectives théoriques et méthodologiques
Sous la direction de Claude Trottier, Madeleine Perron et Miala Diambomba
Sainte-Foy: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995. 225 pages.
ISBN 2-7637-7388-5
RECENSÉ PAR YVON BOUCHARD, UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À RIMOUSKI
Cet ouvrage rassemble la pensée de huit chercheurs autour de travaux présentés
lors d’un atelier portant sur les cheminements scolaires et l’insertion professionnelle des diplômés universitaires. Les divers textes sont précédés d’une
introduction faisant valoir l’émergence et la constitution du champ de recherche
sur l’insertion professionnelle et une conclusion tentant de recadrer les apports
divers par une nouvelle lecture de la réalité à l’aide de ces travaux et de quelques
écrits plus récents qui permettent de cerner de nouvelles pistes de recherche. Les
textes retenus s’intéressent à trois objets: un premier porte sur les perspectives
théoriques en sociologie et en économie de l’éducation; le second traite de
diverses perspectives d’analyse de la relation formation-emploi; tandis que le
dernier concerne les enjeux théoriques sous-jacents à des choix d’ordre méthodologique.
Comme c’est occasionnellement le cas pour des livres qui donnent suite à des
ateliers ou à des colloques, la qualité des textes réunis s’avère inégale et le temps
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écoulé entre les productions et la publication se révèle plus long qu’il ne serait
souhaitable. On est ici en présence de travaux dits théoriques ou méthodologiques. En fait, outre l’introduction, l’ouvrage débute par deux excellents textes
rédigés respectivement par Claude Trottier et Miala Diambomba qui tentent de
présenter les diverses approches relatives à la notion d’insertion professionnelle,
d’une part à partir de l’émergence et de la constitution du champ de recherche
lui-même selon des perspectives émanant de la sociologie de l’éducation et,
d’autre part, selon les développements récents et les nouvelles orientations qui
pointent relativement à la façon de constituer le champ, si bien sûr il existe.
Cette dernière tentative aborde le domaine surtout selon des perspectives économiques. À eux seuls, ces deux textes méritent l’attention qui doit être portée au
livre. On y trouve en peu de pages l’essentiel de l’évolution de ce secteur de
recherche tel qu’il se pose pour les chercheurs qui y investissent en faisant bien
ressortir les perspectives qui s’opposent et les difficultés reliées à la définition
du champ lui-même.
Les quatre articles qui s’insèrent entre le positionnement théorique et les
interrogations méthodologiques confrontent des problématiques particulières qui
touchent de près ou de loin au thème du livre sans fournir un matériel qu’on
souhaiterait plus développé et plus directement pertinent à l’avancement de la
connaissance dans le domaine de l’insertion professionnelle des étudiants universitaires. Le texte de Jean Vincens présente une perspective d’analyse systémique
qui vise les étudiants universitaires aussi bien que ceux d’autres ordres d’enseignement. L’idée que l’auteur soulève en parlant de système d’insertion professionnelle est appuyée par un discours où pensée formelle et idées reçues
cohabitent mais l’ensemble peut être retenu pour replacer un questionnement
relativement aux comportements de divers acteurs impliqués dans la relation.
L’analyse de Pierre Doray sur le point de vue des entreprises en regard de
l’insertion professionnelle des universitaires est fort pertinente pour compléter le
tour d’horizon souhaité par l’ouvrage. Toutefois, son contenu est probablement
trop vaste (quatre sujets différents et importants sont abordés de front) pour être
traité en quelques pages et ainsi nourrir la connaissance sur le plan théorique ou
méthodologique. Il est surprenant de voir par ailleurs un texte de nature polémique (rédigé par Gilles Paquet) inséré dans cet ouvrage. En fait, les idées
avancées sont fort pertinentes pour questionner le champ mais le ton et le style
employés pour le faire étonnent. L’auteur présente une pensée qui se démarque
de celle des autres autant sur le plan du contenu que sur celui de la démarche.
L’appel qui est fait à une révision des paradigmes de référence pour aborder
l’étude des cheminements professionnels et de l’insertion est tout à fait louable
et mériterait certes plus d’extension mais tel qu’inséré et développé, le plaidoyer
paraît un peu caduc. Le dernier document de ce groupe (Clément Lemelin) offre
une présentation pointue mais rigoureuse et soignée de la rentabilité des études
universitaires selon une perspective économique traditionnelle qui intéressera
sûrement celles et ceux qui partagent ce type de démarche.
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Les deux derniers textes retenus en fin d’ouvrage s’intéressent directement aux
perspectives méthodologiques soulevées par les études sur l’insertion professionnelle. Il s’agit probablement de l’aspect le plus faiblement développé dans ce
livre et qui laisse le plus le lecteur sur son appétit. Ni l’une ni l’autre des
perspectives présentées ne réussissent à nous convaincre de l’utilité et de la
pertinence de ces modes d’approche. La dichotomie quantitatif-qualitatif utilisée
pour aborder le sujet se comprend sur le plan d’une description des pratiques
dans le domaine. Par ailleurs, une argumentation plus fouillée des rapports entre
ces deux modes d’appropriation et d’analyse de données constitue certainement
une lacune que les textes utilisés pour décrire les perspectives méthodologiques
ne comblent pas.
Ce livre s’adresse indéniablement à des universitaires étudiants ou chercheurs
qui y trouveront sûrement un matériel fécond pour documenter plus avant un
champ de recherche encore trop peu investi par la littérature. Il s’avérera d’une
utilité limitée cependant pour les autres clientèles potentielles compte tenu de ses
intérêts plus théoriques que pragmatiques et des relations encore trop mal comprises et peu clarifiées par les chercheurs concernant les relations entre l’école
et le monde de l’emploi.
Sans enlever ses qualités à l’ouvrage, on doit convenir par ailleurs que les
références utilisées par les auteurs pour appuyer leurs écrits datent de quelques
années, ce qui se comprend par le temps encouru depuis la tenue de l’atelier à
l’origine de cette production et la publication officielle. Il faut ajouter aussi que
la présence de chercheurs de continents différents qui présentent des perspectives
propres aux pratiques de leurs milieux respectifs et aux modes d’organisations
locales sera d’une utilité limitée pour celles et ceux qui ne sont pas familiers
avec ces enjeux particuliers.
The Fifth Language: Learning a Living in the Computer Age
By Robert K. Logan
Toronto: Stoddart, 1995. 352 pages. ISBN 0-7737-2907-0 (hc.)
REVIEWED BY WILLIAM HIGGINSON, QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY
The American writer Edward Abbey once noted that, “In all of nature there is
no sound more pleasing than that of a hungry animal at its feed. Unless you are
the food.” In his new book, Robert Logan paints a positive picture of the recent
evolution and future prospects of the information technology “beast” and its very
healthy appetites. He does not dwell on the nature of its dietary preferences.
Early in his career at the University of Toronto, Logan became interested in
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the work of Marshall McLuhan and his colleagues at the Centre for Culture and
Technology. Logan has now emerged as one of the most active contemporary
members of what he calls “The Toronto School of Communications.” One of his
major tasks in The Fifth Language is to make a case for regarding recent innovations in digital technology, particularly the evolution of the Internet, as consistent
with the views that McLuhan articulated some three decades ago.
Logan is not the first to make this connection. Every month, on its masthead — the journal’s most sober page — Wired lists its “patron saint,” Marshall
McLuhan, complete with tiny photo and topical epigram (the offering in the
April 1996 issue reads, “Under electric technology, the entire business of man
becomes learning and knowing”). McLuhan has never been an easy thinker to
unravel and Logan’s exegesis of the origins and implications of his ideas is
exceptionally good. Certainly the netheads at Wired could learn a thing or two.
Their most recent efforts at bringing McLuhan to the infobahn masses, two
articles in the January 1996 issue, attracted caustic comments in letters to the
editor: “Not interesting. Not entertaining. Not informative”; “glib comments . . .
reveal shoddy research . . . a lamentable excuse for not reading his important
works.” Logan’s second chapter, “The Innis-McLuhan Communications Revolution: The Method in the Madness of Marshall McLuhan,” is, in contrast, both
interesting and informative.
The Fifth Language is an exceptionally ambitious work. Logan tackles in his
chapters themes that would require a series of monographs from more timid
scholars. Within the space of 150 pages, for example, he discusses “The Evolution of Language,” “The History of Education and Social Class,” and “Education,
Work and Computing.” In many ways, this broad-brush approach works well.
Logan’s ideas, like those of his mentor, are sweeping and panoramic. His title,
for example, is derived from his view that, “computing . . . represents a new
form of language . . . a system for both communications and informatics . . . part
of an evolutionary chain of languages which also includes speech, writing,
mathematics, and science” (p. 63).
Nevertheless, the reader is left with a great many gaps to fill. Logan’s efforts
at providing “minute particulars” are generally not compelling. It may well be
the case that the job description of individuals who used to be called secretaries
is now more accurately captured by the term “personal assistant.” It is also true
that these individuals find themselves called upon, on an ongoing basis, to do a
great deal of new learning. The vital question for the future, however, is whether
there will be any jobs of this sort, not what label to attach to them. Furthermore,
the “researcher visits the classroom” component of the “spreadsheet software”
section of the appendix on “The Computer as the Ideal Classroom Toolkit” (“a
lesson which lasted an hour and a half . . . we then played ‘spreadsheet bingo’
. . . the field trial was a success in that the pupils learned many things in a short
time” [pp. 316–317]) seems unlikely to convince the doubtful teacher of Logan’s
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claim that software of this sort is the key to a new and exciting approach to the
teaching and learning of science.
The rather distanced tone of The Fifth Language is not just a function of its
exceptionally broad range. It also reflects a conscious decision on the part of the
“Toronto School” to “articulate the patterns of change that occur as new media
create innovation and push out older forms without expressing a particular point
of view or making a moral judgment” (p. 25). Whether such a stance is actually
possible, let alone desirable, in a book on the future of education seems moot.
Be that as it may, readers owe Logan a vote of thanks for his unusual and
provocative book. Canadian students would be well served if their teachers were
to address seriously the many challenges offered by this stimulating and important piece of scholarship.
Private Readings in Public: Schooling the Literary Imagination
By Dennis J. Sumara
New York: Peter Lang, 1996. xv+305 pages. ISBN 0-8204-3028-5 (pbk.)
REVIEWED BY TREVOR J. GAMBELL, UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN
Dennis Sumara’s book is as vast, looming, and promising as the prairie sky. It
begins where most books on reader-response theory and pedagogy end, with
classroom and student response and with the role of the teacher in that response.
Sumara criticizes current reading and response theory and practice because
they situate the literary experience in classrooms, engendering what he calls a
“schooled” response that ignores the lived or out-of-classroom experiences of not
just students but also their teachers. His thesis is that reading, curriculum, and
the lives of those who experience them are inextricable. Any understanding of
literary response should embrace the lived experiences of readers as well as the
created or recreated experiences contained in the text. Because each literary
experience is different, the unfolding of the process is a matter of “laying down
a path, while walking,” to quote the title of Sumara’s sixth chapter.
Sumara’s book is a series of interpretations that have helped him to understand
the specificity of the event of shared reading in public schools. He relies on
various classroom and shared reading experiences, his own and those of others,
to bring together vistas of both theory and situated practice to provide a panorama of literary understanding. The research and interpretations presented in this
book are informed by the author’s reading of hermeneutics, literary theory,
curriculum theory, and postmodernism. Each chapter is meant to show the
evolution of the author’s thinking as supported by various reading and research
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475
experiences. Those experiences include reading Katherine Paterson’s novel
Bridge to Teribithia with his Grade 7 students; a teacher’s reading of William
Bell’s Forbidden City to her high school class and the students’ responses to that
novel; a teachers’ reading group, which included the author, who read and met
regularly to discuss Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient; and classroom
observations of high school literature classes led by teachers who made up the
reading group.
When I read Sumara’s intention for the book I wondered how he would draw
together these vastly different perspectives. To me as reader the exercise seemed
one of searching for a soaring hawk in the immense azure prairie sky. But the
author kept to his word; the book unfolds chapter by chapter, and the vision is
created window by hermeneutic window. The images and metaphors he invokes
to create a schooled literary imagination enable both the writer and the reader;
I came to realize at the end of Chapter 7 that the book offers the literate and
literary reader a means of interpreting the events of the literature classroom
rather than a way of teaching. The author takes for granted that readers know
reader-response theory and are critical of their own classroom practices.
Consequently, his book takes literature teachers well beyond reader-response
theory and practice; it is not for the uninitiated.
In Chapter 2, Sumara discusses various theories, descriptions, and definitions
of literature and reading literature — and through each of these theories explores
students’ readings of The Forbidden City. The next chapter takes the reader into
the realm of hermeneutics, where Sumara relies on Barthes, Gadamer, Iser,
Kristeva, Merleau-Ponty, Ong, and Sartre, to explore readers’ developing
relationship with Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Then, in Chapter 4, the
interpretive vista expands yet further when Sumara turns to evolutionary theory
to explain the interrelationships between organisms (people, readers) and their
environments (texts) through “structural coupling,” the ongoing dialectic between
living entities and their environment wherein each simultaneously determines the
other. At this point Sumara selects from human cognitive theory the concept of
“embodied action,” and takes from The English Patient the metaphor of
“unskinning,” which becomes a dominant theme in Sumara’s book. By
unskinning, teachers can encourage students, and undertake themselves, to peel
back the layers of meaning which hide private meanings in public forums such
as classrooms, and which impede response as lived experience.
The next two chapters explore how a world of understanding develops; in
Chapter 5 the author draws upon hermeneutic imagination to investigate the
group’s shared reading of The English Patient. He examines six hermeneutic
“windows” of understanding in both this and Chapter 6, the latter based on
experiences of students reading and responding to texts in school.
But it is the seventh and final chapter that allowed me to see the hawk in that
everlasting hermeneutic sky, for here Sumara describes his own lived experience,
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all those aspects of life and living that experientially make their way into and
through his writing and reading. He discovers why he reads fiction: “We don’t
just read to add new knowledge or experiences to our lives, we read in order to
find a location to re-interpret past experiences in relation to present and projected
experiences” (p. 239). Sumara discovers too the meaning of curriculum, “an
intertwining of mutually specifying relations among students, texts, teachers, and
contexts” (p. 242). Perhaps “re-discover” rather than “discover” is the right word,
because the sense of ongoing and relational interpretation is the wholistic basis
of Sumara’s literary imagination.
Private Readings in Public demands careful reading. It asks readers to step
beyond conventional literary theory and pedagogic orthodoxy, to reflect on their
own and their students’ responses to literary texts, and to explore the possibilities
of private readings and public readings in the schooled literature environment.
Sumara’s volume places English literature and literary theory and research at the
forefront of intertextual and hermeneutic enquiry.
Eduquer et punir: généalogie du discours psychologique
Par Eirick Prairat
Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, collection Forum de L’IFRAS, 1994.
300 pages. ISBN 2-86480-910-9
RECENSÉ PAR NATHALIE BÉLANGER, ÉTUDIANTE AU DOCTORAT EN SOCIOLOGIE DE
L’ÉDUCATION, UNIVERSITÉ PARIS V
Dans cet ouvrage composé de cinq parties, lesquelles sont sous-divisées en de
nombreux chapitres, Eirick Prairat retrace minutieusement les pratiques punitives
des petites écoles et collèges de France du 16e siècle au 19e siècle. Ce travail
tente de comprendre la césure qui s’opère dans l’administration de la punition
avec le siècle classique. La documentation, point fort de ce livre, permettra aux
chercheurs et aux enseignants d’y trouver un nombre impressionnant de citations
et d’exemples.
La question que se pose Eirick Prairat se formule de la façon suivante:
“Comment les formes d’assujettissements et les schémas de connaissance se
sont-ils appelés et impliqués au coeur de l’espace pédagogique?” Comment, pour
le dire autrement, la mutation “disciplinaro-pédagogique” des 16e et 17e siècles,
dont la principale caractéristique est cette mise en ordre de l’école, s’est-elle
opérée et quelles en sont les traces; comment la discipline qui avait comme
principale fonction d’extirper le mal est-elle devenue l’adjuvant certain de la
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477
pédagogie? Pour répondre à cette question, l’auteur recourt à toute la panoplie
des traités de pédagogie allant de celui de Rabelais à Maria Edgeworth, en
passant par ceux de Démia, Erasme, de Batencour, de La Salle. Il consulte aussi
des ouvrages littéraires qui permettent de mettre en relief, de nuancer, selon une
certaine trame historique, les préceptes disciplinaires annoncés dans les traités.
La vie de l’écolier telle que la relate Balzac ou Voltaire, dans certaines parties
de leurs oeuvres, nous conduira alors de l’autre côté du miroir, du point de vue
de l’enfant puni.
Le recensement des pratiques punitives que réalise Eirick Prairat ne se présente pas uniquement sous la forme de catégories “faites choses,” mais aussi
selon une “histoire faite corps.” On aura reconnu ici l’inspiration foucaldienne.
L’auteur cherche ainsi les pratiques que recouvrent les discours car, comme le
dit Paul Veyne en parlant de l’histoire selon Michel Foucault, les “mots nous
abusent, nous font croire à l’existence de choses, d’objets naturels, (. . .) alors
que ces choses ne sont que le corrélat des pratiques correspondantes.”1 C’est en
adoptant cet ancrage théorique que notre auteur identifie “les figures du corps
puni”: la punition-expiation, la punition-signe, la punition-exercice et la punitionbannissement. L’auteur s’intéresse à la nature de la punition d’autrefois et à ce
qui la légitimait. Il s’agit de comprendre les motifs coupables qui entraînent la
réprimande, les raisons profondes qui poussent à punir, par exemple, celui qui
“se gratasse pendant les prières” (p. 83)!
Il va sans dire que l’administration de la punition suivait tout un cérémonial:
la fustigation devait avoir lieu devant tous les autres élèves “pour l’exemple et
pour inspirer la terreur” (p. 101); le maître ne devait punir sous les feux de la
colère; quelques fois le châtiment devait être préalablement médité par l’élève
rebelle. Balzac verra dans ces préparatifs au châtiment un double supplice qui
assigne bel et bien à l’enfant un statut de dépendance et de soumission à l’égard
du maître. Par là, il est possible de soutenir l’hypothèse d’un recouvrement des
discours disciplinaire et pédagogique. La punition singulière devient une occasion
pour moraliser tout le groupe d’enfants.
On ne peut faire autrement que de s’arrêter plus longuement sur le trop bref
chapitre intitulé “Corps puni, corps épargné, corps rebelle” qui constitue, à mon
avis, une approche résolument nouvelle en ce qui concerne l’étude historique des
phénomènes disciplinaires. Aux pages 116 à 121, Prairat montre en effet que
l’élève peut donner un autre sens à la punition qu’on lui impose. Il peut toujours
s’évader avec la force de son imagination! Il peut aussi résister, alors la punition
n’a guère d’effet: “Les écoliers mis en cage tombaient sous l’oeil sévère du
préfet, espèce de censeur qui venait, à ses heures ou à l’improviste, d’un pas
léger, pour savoir si nous causions au lieu de faire nos pensums. Mais les
coquilles de noix semées dans les escaliers, ou la délicatesse de notre ouïe, nous
permettaient presque toujours de prévoir son arrivée,2 nous raconte Balzac. Quant
à Maxime Du Camp, il révèle que son premier souci après avoir été enfermé
était d’examiner attentivement la prison afin de reconnaître les moyens qu’elle
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offrait d’échapper à l’ennui. Il y reconnaissait assez vite quelque fente par
laquelle il pouvait communiquer avec un voisin de cellule. La punition pouvait
même quelques fois être considérée comme une conséquence inéluctable après
un doux moment d’azur. Les profondeurs du pire cachot scolaire ne sauraient,
dans pareil cas, faire oublier le moment d’évasion.
Il est donc tout à fait à propos de parler, comme le suggère Balzac, de “lutte
continuelle” pour décrire la relation éducative entre le maître et l’élève. Seule
une maîtrise des effets de pouvoir et de savoir permettra de moins punir et de
mieux punir. C’est en sériant les écoliers, en suspendant la parole, en créant un
régime de visibilité (le travail des officiers scolaires rapporteurs, par exemple)
que s’installera progressivement cette pédagogie de l’ordonnancement qui
préviendra, du même coup, les occasions de punir. Tout un savoir, que l’on
pourrait presque qualifier de pré-psychologique, se mettra en place. Avec de
Batencour, au 17e siècle, les nouveaux venus ne seront pas d’emblée intégrés à
la classe: il leurs est d’abord réservé un banc “commode de la vëue du maistre”
(commode de la vue du maître) à partir duquel ils pourront être observés (p.
240). Le maître cherche ainsi à établir un jugement sur chaque enfant. Des
enquêtes auprès des parents permettront même de s’enquérir des habitudes, des
humeurs et des moeurs du nouveau venu. Mieux connaître l’enfant pour moins
ou mieux le punir semble être le but fondamental de ce dispositif disciplinaropédagogique qui se met progressivement en place à partir du 16e siècle.
Alors commencent à s’accumuler ces discours à la frontière du bon sens et du
philosophique que le 20e siècle s’appropriera comme discours psychologiques.
Toute la pratique éducative s’en ressentira. Le maître devra savoir pardonner les
fautes, tolérer les défauts d’attention et punir la malice. Mais laissons la parole
à l’auteur pour finir:
Ce n’est pas une disposition éthique mais un savoir psychologique sur l’enfant qui commande cette nouvelle tolérance, et il a fallu ce savoir pour que la faute se différencie en
échec, erreur et autre inadvertance; pour que la faute volontaire et maligne cède du terrain
et que s’instaure une brisure dans l’histoire des discours éducatifs. Ce savoir disqualifie
dorénavant la punition, considérée davantage comme l’expédient d’un maître ignorant du
monde de l’enfance que comme le moyen adéquat d’une thérapie morale. (p. 269)
NOTES
1
P. Veyne, “Foucault révolutionne l’histoire,” dans Comment on écrit l’histoire (Paris: Seuil, 1978).
Dans le même ouvrage, Veyne décrit fort bien la méthode historique de Foucault:
Expliquer et expliciter l’histoire consiste à l’apercevoir d’abord tout entière, à rapporter les
prétendus objets naturels aux pratiques datées et rares qui les objectivisent et à expliquer ces
pratiques, non à partir d’un moteur unique, mais à partir de toutes les pratiques voisines sur
lesquelles elles s’ancrent. (p. 241)
L’historien est alors invité à défaire ces “prétendus objets naturels” qui vont de soi pour comprendre comment ils ont été objectivés.
2
L’auteur cite: Honoré de Balzac, Louis Lambert (Folio Gallimard, 1980), p. 69.
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Taking Stock: Canadian Studies in the Nineties
By David Cameron
Montreal: Association for Canadian Studies, 1996. xvii+238 pages.
ISBN 0-919363-34-2 (pbk.)
REVIEWED BY ROBERT M. STAMP, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
First, a declaration of interest. From 1980–1983, I coordinated the Canadian
Studies Program at the University of Calgary. At that time, all fledgling Canadian studies programs and their coordinators confronted a host of start-up
problems, mostly tactical in nature.
Should we have lobbied for majors or minors or honours programs? Disciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches? Dispersed programs scattered among several
departments in humanities and social sciences or centralized programs independent of discipline-oriented departments? How vigorously should we have
pushed multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary approaches? Separate academic
appointments, or faculty seconded part-time from history, literature, and political
science?
Fifteen years later, we have the aptly-titled Taking Stock: Canadian Studies
in the Nineties, a study commissioned by the Department of the Secretary of
State and written by David Cameron. Taking Stock is set against a rather depressing background of events. During the six-year gestation period between the
study’s commissioning and its publication, the Department of the Secretary of
State was itself transformed into the Department of Canadian Heritage, while
across the country Canadian studies programs faced the threat of elimination in
the latest round of savage cutbacks within the academic community.
Taking Stock concentrates on Canadian studies in Canadian universities,
documenting the numbers of courses in which Canadian content is “significant,”
“partial,” or “none”; counting course enrollees, graduate theses, and countryof-origin of faculty members (coming dangerously close to Jacques Parizeau’s
alleged comments on what constitutes a pure-wool Québécois); measuring
CanCon and CanCult in every conceivable manner. The report also examines
community colleges, key organizations in Canadian studies, government agencies,
archival activities, and print and non-print resources. It is a goodly catalogue.
Cameron clearly delineates the dilemma of Canadian studies:
Most people interviewed . . . believed that Canada is, if anything, less united, less capable
of forming a coherent national purpose and less willing to know and celebrate itself than
it was fifteen or twenty years ago . . . Yet most people also contended that Canadian
studies had made substantial strides during the same period. (p. 31)
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In other words, Canadian studies seems to have served neither a citizenship nor
a self-knowledge rationale. Canadian studies programs and personnel played little
significant role in the Canada 125 celebrations of 1992; both the structures and
the players seem to have fallen out of educational and intellectual fashion (p. 86).
The author is not short of proposals for improving the situation. Support only
the stronger Canadian studies programs and phase out the weaker ones; consider
axing interdisciplinary programs in favour of Canadian-content courses within
existing departments; enlist more student, corporate, and community support;
popularize Canadian studies through partnerships with agencies like the CRB
Foundation (and get even more of those delightful Heritage Minutes on television!).
Unfortunately, most of Cameron’s recommendations are tactical rather than
strategic in nature. He fails to take up the larger questions that could chart
Canadian studies through the next decade.
Why, for example, is there is more support for Canadian studies abroad than
at home — $4 million from the Department of External Affairs alone! The International Council for Canadian Studies (ICCS) thrives, with member societies in
some 15 foreign countries, while the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS)
limps along at home. Can Canadians learn something about themselves from
others? This study, however, never really confronts the “other.” North American
and international forces are simply defined as part of the American challenge.
(Note the use of the word “challenge,” not “opportunity.”) How might Canadian
studies programs address the North American Free Trade Agreement and the
global economy?
Other important strategic questions, and many additional tactical questions, are
left unanswered. What relationship should exist between the universality of
knowledge and the specificity of Canadian studies? In this land of Harold Innis
and Marshall McLuhan, how should Canadian studies programs use distance
education and the internet? What can Canadian studies learn from Women’s
studies and Native studies, and why do certain interdisciplinary programs thrive
and others falter? What relationship might exist between Canadian studies
programs in schools and those in universities?
Meanwhile, the University of Calgary’s Canadian Studies Program, now under
different and enlightened leadership, earns praise in this report for its “strong and
vigorous” approach, and is considered “one of the largest and most active programs in the country” (p. 82). Tell us about it. What is its secret?