Table Of ContentMeGILL-QUEEN'S PRESS
QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY
Idealism Transformed:
The Making of a Progressive Educator
John Harold Putman, inspector of Ottawa public schools between 1910 and
1937, was a leading progressive educator. At that time the progressive
education movement in Canada was composed of two major intellectual
strands, neo-Hegelian idealism and new liberalism. By tracing the thought
and practices of this eminent educator, Wood shows how the neo-Hegelian
philosophy of the late nineteenth century was transformed by its own
logic and social imperatives into what seems to be its opposite. Idealism,
ironically, ultimately comes to resemble pragmatism.
Elected to the Ottawa City Council in 1905, Putman allied himself with
progressive urban reformers seeking solutions to urban chaos, ward
patronage, and inefficient city government. As inspector of public schools,
he brought his reformist outlook to bear on providing for the discontented
adolescent in the school and on implementing an efficient school system.
Two schools established by Putman provided a diversified program for
the adolescent; they led, however, not to the self-realization of the in-
dividual but to social unification and streaming for vocational roles.
At the end of World War i the Ottawa public schools under Putman were
judged the most efficient and progressive of any in Canada. But following
the tenets of new liberalism and of urban school reformers in the United
States, Putman achieved this goal by creating more bureaucratic practices
and more formalized procedures, which again contradicted the idealist's
moral, humanistic intent.
In the postwar period Putman extended the efficiency principle to his
survey of schools in British Columbia and his campaigns for junior high
schools and county boards in Ontario. By the end of the 19308, the author
contends, the progressive educator had effectively transformed the use of
schooling for life adjustment, not for intellectual purposes.
B. Anne Wood is a member of the Department of Education, Dalhousie
University.
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Idealism Transformed
The Making of a
Progressive Educator
B. ANNE WOOD
McGill-Queen's University Press
Kingston and Montreal
> McGill-Queen's University Press 1985
ISBN 0-7735-0441-9
Legal deposit 3d quarter 1985
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation
of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Wood, B. Anne (Beatrice Anne), 1937-
Idealism transformed
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-0441-9
1. Putman, J. Harold (John Harold), 1866-1940.
2. Educators - Canada - Biography. 3. Educatipn -
Canada - History. 4. Education - Canada -
Philosophy - History. I. Title.
LA2325.P87W661985 37o'.92'4 085-098612-5
To Dad and to the memory of his sister, Jean
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Contents
Preface ix
1 Urban Progressive/Rural Conserver 3
2 A Creed of Practical Idealism 20
3 A School for Higher English and Applied Arts 44
4 "Tainting with a Big Brush" 61
5 American Models 86
6 An Efficient School System 106
7 Imperialism and Postwar Reconstruction 128
8 Putman-Weir Survey 148
9 Progressive School Reformer 169
Epilogue 192
Abbreviations 196
Notes 197
Index 221
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Preface
As early as 1848 North Americans were introduced to a new type of pedagogy
which allied freedom, in the form of play activities, with ideals of classical
liberalism. Friedrich Froebel's kindergarten practices were brought to the
United States by disappointed German liberals fleeing from their abortive
revolution. Although the first kindergartens were privately run and self-
activity was limited to elementary schooling, after the Civil War Froebelian
ideas of instruction began to influence the public schools, largely under the
direction of William T. Harris, superintendent of the St Louis public schools
and later United States commissioner of education (1889-1906).
Harris and John Watson, professor of philosophy at Queen's University,
were the foremost neo-Hegelian philosophers in North America. Both men
became leading spirits in the reconciliation of Protestant Christianity with the
methods and findings of modern science. Their major concern was to
conserve society's traditional values and sense of community and yet to
accept and help North Americans adapt to the developing industrial world.
Hegel's rationalistic philosophy allowed them to retain their religious beliefs,
which grounded their morality, and to participate actively in the liberal
campaigns for social reform. Through the common school movement,
neo-Hegelian idealism promised a potent instrument whereby all classes of
people could participate in a civilized life of order, self-discipline, civic
loyalty, and respect for private property. Faced with thousands of immigrant
children of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds all demanding an
education, Harris organized the graded school, moved the pupils along with
periodic examinations, and sought constantly to improve the system with
diligent economic measures and standardized procedures. He broadened the
curriculum to include the fine arts and an evolutionary view of history,
attempting thereby to lead students into higher stages of consciousness as well
as to indoctrinate them with a respect for social institutions and rational forms
of change. As a Hegelian, he believed that only by conformity to the laws of
