A Sectarian Solution: An Examination of the Development of Newfoundland's Denominational Education System, 1836-1934

• Main Author: Ralph, Rebecca Faye
• Other Authors: Marshall, David B., Spangler, Jewel L., Stortz, Paul J., Stapleton, Tim J., Winchester, Ian, Blake, Raymond B.
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Arts 2020
• Subjects: Newfoundland; Church History; British Empire History; Schools; Education; Religion; History
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1880/111569; https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/37515

In 1836, the newly created Newfoundland representative assembly, at the behest of Governor Sir Henry Prescott, passed its first Education Act. This Act, which has been misunderstood as creating a nondenominational system of public education, marked the beginning of a complex church-state partnership for school provision that lasted until 1997. This thesis examines the development of that partnership and how it shaped public education in Newfoundland during colonial independence, 1832-1934. Churches at this time were figuring out their relationships to emerging nation states and struggling with their relationships to new state-run public-school systems. Further, changing social norms connected to the rise of secularism challenged the place of churches in society. The 1836 grant set up for clergy from multiple denominations to serve on local boards, which until the mid-1870s had almost complete autonomy over their schools and curriculum matters. The first forty years saw a tumultuous process of some denominations pushing others out of local boards (Catholics gained separate boards after being pushed out of interdenominational boards by Evangelical Protestants in 1843) and others fighting to stay together in a charged process of sorting out what schools were meant to be and who should run them, which culminated in the 1874 decision to divide education between the Protestants, resulting in three separate education systems Anglican, Methodist, Catholic as well as independent Presbyterian and Congregationalist schools. The post-1874 system was administered by the newly created denominational superintendents. These men governed their systems until the post-independence period and worked to standardize the colony’s schools by grading teachers and centralizing administration in St. John’s. In the 1890s an Irish Christian Brother was successful, with the support of the superintendents, in proposing the creation of an interdenominational body to bring higher education to Newfoundland. The Anglican and Catholic ...