A Letter from Quesnel: The Teacher in History, and Other Fables

Abstract

LATE in May, 1808, a quarter century before Hardy Ivy built his settler's cabin hereabouts, Simon Fraser and his North West Company voyageurs discovered River, a Fraser River tributary of central B.C., named after explorer-clerk Jules Maurice Quesnel. But unlike Atlanta whose founding dates (Terminus, 1837, Marthasville, 1843, Atlanta, 1845) roughly parallel Quesnel's discovery, gold strike, and early settlement phases, latter town is taking its time to grow-population, say, 6,000 as compared with Greater Atlanta's one and one half-million. Just same, it enjoys a good school system, administered at time of writing by an aggressive board and a persuasive superintendent. Now, same day that Vincent Lannie pressed me for title of my talk, I had perused for first time School Board's Open Letter to All Faculties of Education in of British Columbia. This is mysterious from Quesnel which doubtless has been puzzling you. So permit me to cite a passage or two in order to venture a reasonably legitimate transition to my subtitle-the teacher in history, and other fables. The letter starts by recognizing faculties' sincere intentions to produce good but alleging their annual failure to do so. It goes on to distinguish between today's university-trained novice and yesterday's normal school product. The former, it concedes, appears academically more alert. The latter, though, proved more competent in management skills, exercising discipline, classroom housekeeping, the orderly use of supplies, and settling down of classes to quiet learning. There followed proposition that faculty indifference to producing teachers who can control classrooms of this Province might well result in removal of teacher education from their authority. (1) Of course, teacher as control agent is scarcely a novel concept. Seeing