Families Without Schools: Rurality, Correspondence Education, and the Promise of Schooling in Interwar Western Canada

Abstract

Using a collection of settler family letters to the Elementary Correspondence School (ECS) in British Columbia, the first provincial government–supported “schooling by mail” arrangement of its kind in Canada, I highlight the efforts of rural families to secure an education for their children in the period between the First and Second World Wars. The settler families who took advantage of correspondence schooling did so without the benefit of a professional teacher or a dedicated schoolhouse. This arrangement proved onerous for many settler families. In their letters to the ECS, adults and young people articulated the belief that the provincial government needed to do more to provide educational services for them. Families were acutely aware of their contributions to the prosperity of the province and, in return, they demanded schools for their children. Given the unique perspectives reflected through this collection of letters, my examination is situated in the interstices between rural schooling and correspondence schooling.

Distance Learning: Mindset, Motivation, and Adaptation in the Covid Era

“…One such stopgap correspondence program was the Elementary Correspondence School (ECS) of British Columbia, Canada, which provided remote instruction to young students in a province defined by a low population density and sometimes treacherous travel conditions. Gleason (2017) describes both the nature of this instruction-provided by a provincial board to some of Canada's most remote students-and the obstacles faced by students and their families. Aside from the obvious difficulties of learning without the physical presence of a teacher and the necessarily long wait times between assignment submission by post and assignment feedback (also by post), early correspondence programs suffered from a crisis of credibility.…”