Where angels fear to tread

Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'etudes canadiennes Editor DENIS SMITH Redacteur Associate Editor RALPH HEINTZMAN Redacteur adjoint Editorial Board LEON DION Comite de redaction M. G. HURTIG W. L. MORTON W. F. W. NEVILLE PHILIP STRATFORD T. H. B. SYMONS W. E. TAYLOR MELVILLE H. WATKINS Advisory Board ANTHONY ADAMSON Comite consultatif CLAUDE T. BISSELL DONALD G. CREIGHTON KATHLEEN FENWICK DAVID M. HAYNE JOHN HIRSCH JEAN PALARDY CLAUDE RYAN B. D. SANDWELL RONALD J. THOM Where angels fear to tread "We have tried throughout to take the long-term view, and we have deliberately chosen a view as optimistic as we possibly could. Often the future is painted in darker hues. We believe, however, that given half a chance man's goodness and ingenuity will prove to be equal to the formidable difficulties ahead." Thus concludes the recent study, Towards 2000, prepared for submission to the Commission on Post-Secondary Education in Ontario by the research advisers to the Committee of Presidents of Ontario Universities.* The Report's "optimism " takes the rather too facile form of assuming an undisputed central role for the universities and colleges in an increasingly * Towards 2000 (McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1971). p. 168. rationalized and systematized "post-industrial " economy. It forsees the continuing expansion of the universities and colleges in the 1970s, a much closer co-ordination of their activities, and a more direct and clearcut association of their objectives with those of the state and the general community. Journal of Canadian Studies There are numerous attractive proposals in the Report, such as the provision of some general degree courses in arts and science at the community colleges; the suggestion for "citizens' sabbaticals" to permit adults to seek further education periodically throughout their lives; the recommendation for "educational credits" which could similarly be used to finance education at any period of life; the proposal for a University of Ontario 1 on the model of the British Open University; and the insistence that rigid and narrow rules of qualification for entry into advanced education should be loosened and broadened to open the system further to talent. But these specific recommendations, all of which can be defended on the individualist ground t~at they would encourage men freely to nurture their abilities and interests, are contained within a framework that is anything but humane and individualist. On the contrary, the Report takes for granted a society increasingly regimented, stratified according to tests of intellect and skill, and centralised: and it does so without asking what ends this society will serve. Meritocracy is upon us: in the authors' view: there is no purpose in questioning its implications , we must simply try to make it work. In the major research report produced on behalf of the Presidents of the universities of Ontario (Claude Bissell described it in his Foreword as "the largest and most comprehensive of all the studies done by the Research committee") it is surely a fatal flaw that the most basic questions about higher education and society are simply not faced. The Report's concentration on problems of organization, coordination and hierarchy involves an explicit acceptance of a social organization that is created by forces quite outside the educational system, to which this system is only called upon to respond in the role of servant and satellite. Whether the larger society is committed to humane or inhumane goals: whether or not technology renders an increasing proportion of the population superfluous in its progress, whether an open hierarchy can satisy those at the bottom of the ladder, whether a technocratic Canadian society serves its own or American ends: none of these questions arises in the Report. The fagade of bland liberal optimism cracks open in one section on 'The students of the future,' and in one sentence which leaves open "the question whether a system of post-secondary edu2 cation geared to a capitalist economy would be valid in either a welfare state (sic) or a socialist society." But the cracks are soon sealed and forgotten. The section on student discontents is sympathetic to the frustrations of the young, but out of tune with the remainder of the Report. The Juggernaut of technocracy trundles on in its...