Learning, Curriculum and Life Politics: the selected works of Ivor F. Goodson
Long Waves of Educational Reform
In terms of time, his answer was to semester the school, design a 32-credit diploma and one-hour teaching periods. Students had an individualized timetable that required they take eight subjects per year and four per semester. In terms of space, Bond followed an ‘open plan’ concept, backed up by a resource centre as the hub and a large comfortable staff room. Bond also introduced differentiated staffing; augmented guidance resources to help students make choices; reduced the number of formal leaders compared to other high schools; hired a community relations coordinator, and structured interdisciplinary departments. To many among the educational and community representatives this was, not, however, the ‘grammar’ of a ‘real school’.
For Lord Byron then, this was a substantial conjuncture of change, where many of the established rules and practices of schooling were challenged, problemized and replaced.
The major quality of teaching at this time, as compared with the periods before and after, appears to have been the way teachers thought about their work mission. At this time, it seems to have represented far more than just any ordinary job undertaken for the salary that it bought in. Teachers came to the job with a sense of inspired vocation, a feeling that they were involved in a mission over and above normal everyday schooling. “The early years were inspiring. There was a lot of altruism. People came to work because they were doing something for humanity – ‘more than a job, it was a mission’.”
This kind of vision came with a sense of commitment that often affected the work/life balance in deleterious ways. Conjunctures of innovation and change make heavy demands – a full-tilt mission brings heavy-time commitments. The comments of teachers involved in the school at the time reflect the onerous aspects of teaching as a mission. As one said: “I was working long hours and barely saw my family”; and another: “the kind of relationships you build in that kind of pressure cooker situation were very difficult to repeat – a pressure cooker in that you shared so many things and the hours we were putting in and so on. There was very little time outside schools.”
Talisman Park Collegiate, unlike Lord Byron, but in common with Eastside, was a school with a history dating back to the early 20th Century. It was established in the small rural community of Kohler’s Landing outside Toronto in 1920. This period set up the basic grammar of schooling in Talisman Park as a firmly defined academic collegiate so, from the beginning and throughout, Talisman Park remained committed to a subject-centered pattern of teaching and learning. Changes in the 1960s built upon this solid base and the period 1967 - 1974 was an age of hope and optimism, a time of synergy when a youthful teacher cohort, innovative curriculum policy and humanistic principal leadership came together in an unparalleled burst of creativity.
The impact of many new teachers coming to the school in this period at the beginning of their careers led to a sense of transformation. These teachers describe the period as one of ‘massive change’ in education. They characterized Talisman Park as pedagogically ‘innovative’, professionally ‘challenging’ and personally ‘exciting’. The transformative reinvigoration of this demographic change with many new teachers, built upon the affluent economic climate and contemporary cultural belief in social progress and social justice. This was an era in the life of Talisman Park when cohort one teachers were brimming with optimism, clout and faith in education, proud and happy to be teachers, and confidant that they could achieve their life projects and missions. Their idealism, vigour and energy permeated the school’s culture.
