This study of the debates in Canada about a national education bureau offers an opportunity to explore how various participants grounded their position in constitutional, regional, and cultural identities to construct a definition of citizenship, and to align new or existing educational institutions in such a way as to configure "schooled subjectivities." Parliamentary members and educational and public associations relied heavily on notions of patriotism, progress, and nationalism to legitimize claims for national educational objectives, while opponents frequently cited constitutional, cultural, and regional differences in rebutting their arguments. How these reformers cast the role of education in society, and, more precisely, the role of the state in shaping national identity/identities through education underpins the central analysis of this study. Moreover, this study offers insights into why Canada is one of only two western industrial countries that do not have either a national ministry of education or a federal office of education.

L'étude des débats au Canada sur un bureau national de l'éducation permet d'examiner comment les divers participants ont basé leur position sur des identités constitutionnelles, régionales et culturelles pour formuler une définition de la citoyenneté et pour aligner les établissements d'enseignement nouveaux ou existants de façon à obtenir des « subjectivités scolarisées ». Les membres parlementaires ainsi que les associations du milieu de l'éducation et du milieu public ont compté énormément sur les notions de patriotisme, de progrès et de nationalisme pour sanctionner les demandes d'objectifs éducatifs nationaux tandis que les opposants ont cité fréquemment les différences constitutionnelles, culturelles et régionales pour critiquer leurs arguments. Cette étude porte sur la façon dont ces réformeurs ont établi le rôle de l'éducation dans la société et, plus précisément, le rôle de l'État pour former l'identité ou les identités nationale(s) par l'éducation. De plus, cette étude aide à comprendre pourquoi le Canada est un des deux seuls pays industrialisés de l'ouest à ne pas avoir un ministère national de l'éducation ou un bureau fédéral de l'éducation.

In 1919, the Ontario minister of Education boldly asserted that "the world today looks to the schools more than any other agency to heal and guard the past and to direct and stabilize progress in the future" (cited in Stamp 1982, 97). One year later, a member of the Canadian federal government declared in the House of Commons, "The task of Canadianizing the foreign-born is fundamentally and solely a question of education" (Meighen 1920). Given that, under the Canadian constitution, education falls within provincial jurisdiction, we might have expected the provincial minister of Education to trumpet calls for educational reform, but the second quotation-the ringing endorsement of the role of education in the "Canadianizing" of citizens, by a federal cabinet minister-signals a salient moment in Canadian educational, political, and cultural history.

This study of the debates in Canada about a national education bureau1 offers an opportunity to explore how various participants grounded their position in constitutional, regional, and cultural identities to construct a definition of what education was and to align new or existing institutions in such a way as to configure "schooled subjectivities."2 As we shall see, parliamentary members and educational and public associations relied heavily on notions of patriotism, progress, and nationalism to legitimize claims for national educational objectives; opponents frequently cited constitutional, cultural, and regional differences in rebutting their arguments. How these reformers cast the role of education in society, and, more precisely, the role of the state in shaping national identity/identities through education, underpins the central analysis of this study. Moreover, this study offers insights into why Canada is one of only two western industrial countries that do not have either a national ministry of education or a federal office of education.

By analyzing the debates over education, we can observe how political structures were subject to contestation and held multiple meanings. As American historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has claimed in her study of post-revolutionary debates over citizenship, to understand the links between politics and culture, scholars need to study not only the formal constitutions, but also "the constitution of new political subjects"; they "must move from political theory to cultural theory, from the history of political ideas to the history of political rhetoric" (1992, 848). As we shall see, a particular conflation of interests came together in the early twentieth century to promote a national identity in citizenship education programs across the country through the establishment of a National Bureau of Education.

Senator Rufus Pope, a Conservative, Protestant member of Parliament who represented the rural riding of Compton, Quebec (Parliamentary Guide 1919), set the tone of the debate when he introduced the first resolution on 30 April 1919, proposing "That there should be established in Canada a National Free Compulsory School System." Anticipating an adverse response, Pope attempted to mediate any counterattacks by issuing the proviso that he did not intend to trample "upon or affect the sensibilities of any particular people, class, nationality, religion or minority," despite the fact that he was "absolutely opposed to the recognition of minorities in any shape or form." Instead, in his prolonged speech, he explicitly claimed authority to speak for the entire nation. He characterized the lack of unity in the country by barkening to the divisive effect of the war when Quebec opposed the conscription of soldiers: "No man can travel throughout Canada without realizing that, in the first fifty years of our confederated life, we have failed to a great degree in creating that strong unanimity of sentiment which is so essential to the development of a country...." After 50 years, he declared, a great national cleavage existed and it was time to "consider the reasons why we have not succeeded in creating a more united Canada than we have at the present moment." In advancing his argument-which amounted to a blistering critique of education in Quebec-Pope sought to counteract his opponents' arguments by restructuring for himself a subject position as a native of Quebec, which he claimed allowed him the right to view things "without narrowness or prejudice one way or the other".

Not surprisingly Pope's nation-building enthusiasm was seen by French-Canadian members from Quebec as a ruse for anglophone Canadians to use schools to build a Canadian nation that threatened Quebec's distinctiveness. As Marcel Martel asserts in his study of French Canada, "A whole series of events caused the defining elites to question the foundations of the constitutional compromise that underlay the birth of the country." In Manitoba, for example, political authorities had ceased supporting denominational schools, and in 1890, discontinued the use of French in the courts and the legislature. As well, in 1905, the federal government did little to guarantee the rights of the Catholic minority in the constitutions of the newly created provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.