Throughout Canada the end of the Second World War signalled the beginning of an era of significant changes to Canadian culture . The thousands of men and women who had voluntarily , or through conscription , gone across the seas to halt the tyranny that threatened the free world came home to a land that was poised for monumental changes to the lifestyle of its citizens .
Six-Week Wonders by Paul E . Boisvert
Paul Boisvert ( right ) with PEIRTA ’ s James MacAulay
Throughout Canada the end of the Second World War signalled the beginning of an era of significant changes to Canadian culture . The thousands of men and women who had voluntarily , or through conscription , gone across the seas to halt the tyranny that threatened the free world came home to a land that was poised for monumental changes to the lifestyle of its citizens .
By 1950 , the wave of change being experienced in Alberta began to present a challenge to its education system , a challenge that by 1954 had developed into a teacher-shortage crisis , especially in rural small towns and the many one-room schools scattered throughout Alberta . The centralization of schools seemed to compound rather than alleviate the teacher shortage . The wave of post-war children beginning school created a dramatic demand for more classroom space and more teachers for these classrooms . Because of the fact that post-war Britain itself faced a shortage of 35,000 teachers , there was no immigration of teachers to meet the growing Canadian needs such as had happened after World War I .
To understand how this crisis evolved , we must remember that attracting teachers to work in rural one-room schools had been a challenge from the very onset of the settling of the West and that the practice of allowing persons with no teacher training to ‘ teach ’ was not a practical solution to the problem . As well , during the war years , the rural population of Alberta grew less than two percent . Consequently , while a shortage of teachers did exist , it was not at a level of crisis . Many of the women in Alberta who left teaching when they married and began their families came back into the teaching force while their husbands were away at war . Another factor was that the teacher-training programs that had been carried out since 1906 , in three Normal School settings would be affected by the University of Alberta ’ s fledging Faculty of Education ( created in 1942 ) which , by 1945 , was the sole teacher training facility in Alberta . It was barely able to satisfy the teacher needs for the cities of Edmonton and Calgary and other urban communities , never mind the needs of rural Alberta . What was to be done about this situation ?
10 News & Views Spring 2013