by Rhianna H. Edwards
Drawing upon official government records, local diaries, journals, and account books, as well as newspaper articles and other material Indifference and Remissness traces the evolution of English-language education in New Brunswick’s parishes of Sackville and Cumberland/Westmorland. The study begins in 1755, after the expulsion of the Acadians, and concludes with the passage of the New Brunswick Common Schools Act in 1871 which provided tuition-free education to all school-aged children. Section one of the study follows a chronological approach to illustrate that in the province’s early days the provision of schooling and schools was the responsibility of parents and interested community members, but that, beginning in 1803, that responsibility was gradually — very gradually — accepted by the provincial government. Education legislation, passed successively through the next six decades, provided more and more money to hire teachers while at the same time prescribing increasingly strict rules to govern the qualifications of teachers and the standardization of the curriculum. Using these provincial education acts as context, the effect they had on the teachers, curriculum, and school facilities on the Isthmus is examined in detail. Section two takes a closer look at certain components of the educational system to explore topics such as the provincial training and model school (later, Normal School), local parish school lands, and schoolhouses and their furnishings and equipment, to name a few. The book ends with “eyewitness” accounts from several people who were schooled locally between the 1840s and the 1870s, and who add a different dimension to the tale through their stories.
Coil bound, 256 pages, published 2023
