A Sectarian Solution: An Examination of the Development of Newfoundland's Denominational Education System, 1836-1934
Date
2020-01-24
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Abstract
In 1836, the newly created Newfoundland representative assembly, at the behest of Governor Sir Henry Prescott, passed its first Education Act. This Act, which has been misunderstood as creating a nondenominational system of public education, marked the beginning of a complex church-state partnership for school provision that lasted until 1997. This thesis examines the development of that partnership and how it shaped public education in Newfoundland during colonial independence, 1832-1934. Churches at this time were figuring out their relationships to emerging nation states and struggling with their relationships to new state-run public-school systems. Further, changing social norms connected to the rise of secularism challenged the place of churches in society. The 1836 grant set up for clergy from multiple denominations to serve on local boards, which until the mid-1870s had almost complete autonomy over their schools and curriculum matters. The first forty years saw a tumultuous process of some denominations pushing others out of local boards (Catholics gained separate boards after being pushed out of interdenominational boards by Evangelical Protestants in 1843) and others fighting to stay together in a charged process of sorting out what schools were meant to be and who should run them, which culminated in the 1874 decision to divide education between the Protestants, resulting in three separate education systems Anglican, Methodist, Catholic as well as independent Presbyterian and Congregationalist schools. The post-1874 system was administered by the newly created denominational superintendents. These men governed their systems until the post-independence period and worked to standardize the colony’s schools by grading teachers and centralizing administration in St. John’s. In the 1890s an Irish Christian Brother was successful, with the support of the superintendents, in proposing the creation of an interdenominational body to bring higher education to Newfoundland. The Anglican and Catholic superintendents embraced this idea of interdenominational cooperation and over the course of the twentieth century continued to work together in order to preserve church power and create a church shaped vision for educational development to further the progress of Newfoundland as a colonial nation. Ultimately, the Anglicans and Catholics were successful. Even with the creation of a government Department of Education in 1920 they were able to ensure an interdenominational council, run by the superintendents, retained the power to run the system. Their interdenominational governance paradigm endured past the collapse of responsible government in 1934. The significance of the development of denominational education and its endurance in Newfoundland lies in the system’s conservative character, which maintained a formal role for churches in shaping colonial society. Churches playing a role in building public education systems was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, nor was controversy over pushing churches out of education, but Newfoundland, especially given the emergence of interdenominational cooperation, was unique because of its multiple publicly funded denominational systems. Scholarship of Newfoundland educational history has seen the system’s sectarian character as inherently negative. This has led scholars to miss how sectarianism worked to stabilize the system through the acknowledgement of the religious mosaic of Newfoundland and creation of denominational pluralism. The endurance of denominational education was facilitated by churches and church-educationalists crafting of a shared nationalist discourse that created a limited ecumenicism, which shored up churches’ traditional role in shaping society and social institutions.
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Keywords
Newfoundland, Church History, British Empire History, Schools
Citation
Ralph, R. F. (2020). A Sectarian Solution: An Examination of the Development of Newfoundland's Denominational Education System, 1836-1934 (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.