Democracy’s Angels: The Work of Women Teachers
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by Kristina R. Llewellyn
McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2012 215 pp., $29.95 paperback
A double review with Schooling in Transition: Readings in Candian History of Education
University of Toronto Press,
Toronto, 2012
434 pp., illus., $49.95 paperback
Two admirable recent books explore the history of education and provide a window onto how Canada’s classrooms and schools have developed.
Schooling in Transition: Readings in Canadian History of Education is an excellent resource for both new and older educators. This edited collection pulls together twenty-four articles on the history of education in Canada from New France to the postwar period.
The collection explores not only the history of education in Canada from its earliest beginnings but also the evolution of how education has been viewed in this country and the vigorous debates that have accompanied changes.
Democracy’s Angels: The Work of Women Teachers, by historian Kristina R. Llewellyn, is an examination of female teachers following the Second World War. After the victories against Germany and Japan, and in the shadow of the Cold War, educators focused on the noble attributes of democracy. “In the 1940s and 1950s, Canada’s schools embraced democracy as their primary goal,” Llewellyn explains. But the women who were asked to provide this education faced many barriers of their own within a still male-dominated Canada. “An examination of women teachers in the postwar era illustrates how educational ‘democracy’ has too often failed to deliver on its promise of freedom, autonomy, and equality.”
Democracy’s Angels is an exceptional study in Canadian gender history. Read alongside Schooling in Transition, it provides valuable history for young teachers setting out on their new careers, or for anyone interested in understanding how our school system came to be.
— Joel Ralph (Read bio)
Joel Ralph is the director of programs for Canada's History Society.