Articles
Adult Education on the Newfoundland Coast:
Adventure and Opportunity for Women in the 1930s and 1940s 1
" When a comprehensive economic history of Newfoundland comes to be written, its unsung heroines may well prove to be the working women. " 2
1 THE WOMEN WHO ARE AT the heart of this article were indeed unsung heroines of Newfoundland. They were primarily educated outport women who travelled throughout coastal communities in Newfoundland to implement a unique system of adult education in the 1930s, one that internationally known adult educator Albert Mansbridge was delighted to describe as "indigenous to Newfoundland." 3Although many of them left no historical records, they were central to the reconstructive efforts of the 1930s and 1940s under Newfoundland’s Commission of Government. This paper explores the contributions of Elsie Farwell, Jessie Mifflen, and Sara Coady to adult education in Newfoundland, focusing on their role in teaching basic literacy and in providing home support and social service. 4 Attention is given to how the various aspects of the chosen model of adult education fit into their available career and life patterns, offering alternatives to early marriage, nursing, and school teaching.
2 Historian Linda Kealey has wondered why the history of women in education in Newfoundland has been neglected when forays into areas such as women’s struggle for the vote and participation in the law have been far better documented. 5 Exceptions include the work of Katherine McManus, 6 James Overton, 7 and Phillip McCann. 8 Clearly, much is unique about the experience of women adult educators in Newfoundland — the opportunities afforded them were affected both by their gender and by their participation in the Newfoundland Adult Education Association (NAEA). The NAEA was a membership-based organization formed in 1929 to increase basic literacy and thereby rebuild the economy. 9 By education and career choices, the adult educators employed by this organization were distinct from schoolteachers, and they were pioneers in establishing a new profession for women in Newfoundland. 10
3 Existing adult education histories show the early twentieth century was a time of foment and increased social movement/community development activity in Canada. 11 In the Atlantic region, the Antigonish Movement in Nova Scotia was the standard bearer of the time, creating massive educational and development activity including study clubs, reading circles, literacy programs, library growth, and large-scale co-operative movements. 12 Clearly change was in the air, and adult educators took up the challenge to use education as a means of socio-economic progress. Within the Antigonish Movement, women played a key role, hosting radio programs, editing a co-operative newspaper, running study clubs, and championing arts and crafts. Many of the same activities were occurring simultaneously in Newfoundland, under the aegis of the Newfoundland Adult Education Association, which mostly employed women as teachers. These women have not been studied with any great intensity, save for the extensive historiography on Florence O’Neill by Katherine McManus. 13 Arguably, part of the struggle has been the lack of archival material and the absence of scholars primarily interested in adult education in this province.
THE NEWFOUNDLAND ADULT EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
4 Thanks to funding by the Carnegie Corporation, the NAEA was formed in 1929, some three years after the first American association. 14 This funding was part of an extensive philanthropic endeavour that extended to the nearby provinces of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The NAEA was the first adult education association in what is now Canada, and its formation was coincident with a Carnegie-funded tour by Albert Mansbridge, then president of the UK Workers Education Association (WEA) and founder of the World Association for Adult Education (WAAE). Mansbridge was a friend and colleague of the Memorial University College president, British-born John Paton, who saw the need to foster literacy in the general population.
5 The NAEA was operative in the years between the founding of Memorial University College in 1925 and the establishment of the island’s first university, Memorial University of Newfoundland, in 1950. 15 Its inception was key to building capacity and addressing widespread social, educational, and economic issues in a place that was bankrupt for many of these years. 16 The Carnegie Corporation had helped to establish the College and it was also generous in funding the NAEA’s early activities. 17 By 1926, Carnegie had already given $5,000 to set up travelling libraries, part of a pattern of funding that Carnegie had established in the Maritimes region. 18 The request to Carnegie for funding libraries and assisting in adult education in Newfoundland came from the superintendents of education, who were representatives of the principal denominations — Anglican, Roman Catholic, United Church — though the NAEA itself had no religious affiliation and did not offer an overt religious curriculum. 19 The first president of the Association was William W. Blackall (1864-1943), a member of the board of trustees of Memorial University College and Anglican Superintendent of Education. 20
6 The NAEA was championed by a group of influential men who had been instrumental in forming Memorial University College, namely Vincent Burke 21 (Roman Catholic Superintendent of Education), John Paton (first president of Memorial University College), and others such as Levi Curtis (1858-1942, United Church Superintendent of Education) and William W. Blackall. Complete with its own constitution and newsletters, the Association was to become an official part of government in 1936 when Burke was appointed Director of Adult Education, ensuring the Association’s solvency. 22 Shortly after its inception in 1929 the NAEA 23 offered a number of programs in rural areas of the province to promote adult literacy. 24 Though founded by men, the NAEA was staffed mainly by women, who were mostly Protestant, and it had an amazing cadre of influential and upper-middle-class women on its governing board. The first executive of the NAEA in cluded Margaret Mulcahy Burke, wife of Vincent Burke; Violet Cherrington, principal of the distinguished Bishop Spencer College; May Goodridge, a prominent citizen; Elizabeth G. Howley, daughter of noted geographer and author James Howley and niece of the historian and Roman Catholic bishop of St. John’s, Michael Howley; and Rhoda Sainsbury, principal of the Salvation Army College for Officers and later, Newfoundland’s first social worker. May Goodridge, Violet Cherrington and Margaret Mulcahy Burke were also very active in other volunteer organizations and in the suffragette movement. 25 Male board members included Alex Mews, assistant auditor general, Eric Holden, a prominent businessman, and J.G. Higgins, a lawyer.
7 The NAEA began with a Field Secretary, Mrs. Elsie May Farwell, and six field staff. 26 An early professional photograph published in the Newfoundland Quarterly shows six bright, enthusiastic and well-groomed women gathered around Elsie: 27
8 Jessie Mifflen, Bertha Northover, Kathleen Thompson, 28 Ida Parsons, 29 Laura Cantwell and Mary Maddock. 30 Of these, not a great deal is known, save for Jessie Mifflen (never married) and Elsie Farwell (widowed). By 1947, only one of the original group was directly involved in adult education, 31 some, like Kathleen Thompson having resigned in 1936, and others, such as Elsie Farwell and Ida Parsons, having died, Ida tragically in a boarding-house fire in Harbour Grace where she was teaching an adult school. The only men involved in its early stages seem to have been the teachers of navigation, such as Leo English. They were called special lecturers and were paid more generously than the women, even those holding university degrees or diplomas such as Mary Maddock, Jessie Mifflen, and Elsie Farwell. In 1937, for instance, the navigation teachers received $900 and the regular teachers received $600 — there is no distinction for those with university degrees. 32 By 1942, male teachers had been hired, and the situation for women had not improved much, though there was financial recognition of educational qualifications. Annual salaries in 1942 were $1,000 for the Field Secretary; $900 for the Assistant Field Secretary; $700 for women with degrees; $600 for women without degrees; $900 for men without degrees; and $1,500 for the male teachers of navigation. One of these, Leo English, received a "Special Living Allowance" of $250 per year. 33
9 The wages were gendered, as was the women’s actual decision to be involved in education. Phillip McCann has commented on women’s key role in both the fishery and in education, noting that women were heavily employed in education in part because their labour was cheap. 34 In many ways, attitudes and conditions for the NAEA teachers had not changed a great deal since the nineteenth century. For example, in the grading system used to classify teachers, as detailed in the Education Act of 1876, "females are not required to pass examinations in Algebra.... They shall however be required to be able to give instruction in domestic economy, needlework, knitting, and netting." 35 By 1901, 59 per cent of teachers were female and presumably they were not expected to know or teach "male" curriculum to children. 36 McCann observes that it was not coincidental that the curriculum being taught and the expectations of female teachers in the nineteenth century were also gendered and that "female teachers were to find themselves subject to the adverse effects of patriarchalism." 37 This tradition from the nineteenth century continued through to the NAEA activities in the 1930s. The NAEA female teachers taught a curriculum strong on household science and literature: "Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, History, Geography, Art, Classical Languages, Modern Languages, Instrumental Music, Community Singing, Household Management, Cooking, Sewing Knitting, Weaving." 38 As noted above, navigation also was taught, but by men. One wonders how such a basic program, weak on science and advanced mathematics, might have limited the students’ futures.
10 The original plan of the NAEA was to use 14 activities to teach: study circles, reading and books, evening classes, day classes, correspondence lessons, prisoners’ classes, radio and broadcasting, lectures, working men’s clubs, women’s clubs, finance, music, arts and crafts, and physical exercise. 39 Although it did in fact employ elements of many of these activities, the NAEA adopted a model of teaching, the Opportunity School method, which was quite gendered. 40 This method included the night schools and home visits during the day to teach women, alone or in groups, basic literacy. Often they focused on household science such as food preparation, child care, and mother’s health, and formed clubs to learn skills like weaving. So seriously did Carnegie and the NAEA take this particular model that they invited its main proponent, Miss Wil Lou Gray, State Supervisor of Adult Schools in South Carolina and her secretary, Miss Erin Kohn, to Newfoundland in 1930. 41 Teaching by day and then conducting evening schools by night had long been a practice in Newfoundland’s education system, 42 but home visits to do group or individual teaching brought a new dimension to the work. Women were chosen to do the home visits since they were seen to have an affinity with the mothers. At the end of the eight-week session, when most of the program was finished, a male teacher arrived to teach navigation. In a nod to their unique nature, Burke called the Opportunity Schools "home day schools." These schools were very successful. 43 From 1931 to 1937 alone, adult classes were "held in 203 centres, with an enrolment of over 10,000 students." 44 Often they conducted night classes in the regular school facilities or in church premises. These arrangements were facilitated by the positioning of the NAEA within the Department of Education.
THREE PIONEERING WOMEN EDUCATORS
11 Though no doubt all the women in the NAEA had stories to tell, three are chosen for profiling here. Of these three, two — Elsie Farwell and Jessie Mifflen — were among the original seven who pioneered adult education. Their lives parallel the growth of adult education in Newfoundland and as such are of particular historical significance. Fortunately, both women left papers and documents that could be examined for historical purposes. The third woman chosen, Sara Coady, joined the NAEA a little later but she, too, left a collection of papers that could be mined for data.
Elsie Farwell
12 Elsie Farwell, the first Field Secretary of the NAEA, was born Elsie May Payne in Fogo on the northeast coast of Newfoundland on May 27, 1884. 45 She was educated at the Church of England school in Fogo and at the Teacher’s Training Academy in St. John’s. Elsie taught in the regular school system from 1901 to 1918 in a number of coastal communities as geographically diverse as Lamaline on the Burin Peninsula; Channel (Port aux Basques); Herring Neck near Twillingate on New World Island; and Happy Adventure near Eastport. 46 Married to Richard Farwell of Eastport in 1921, she was widowed within three years when Richard (aged 32) drowned crossing a pond in winter. Her marriage at 37 was late by the standards of the day, as was her decision, following Richard’s death, to attend the University of Toronto at the age of 39. She was at the university from 1923 to 1925, and graduated with a diploma in social science. It is unknown whether Elsie was from a prosperous rural family, had relatives to stay with in Toronto, or had saved enough from her years of teaching to help finance this study. Graduation was quite an achievement for a woman in this time, especially for one who was 41 years old. It took quite a while for educational levels of teachers in Newfoundland to improve. By 1949 only "57 of the country’s 2,375 teachers had degrees." 47 In her marriage, educational, and professional choices Elsie was an anomaly for her time. Yet, we have minimal personal information about her, which makes it difficult to know if she saw herself as a trailblazer.
13 Elsie Farwell was no stranger to hard work and teaching when she was hired by the Newfoundland Adult Education Association to direct the other six field staff and to begin an innovative adult education program of Opportunity Schools. One of her first tasks was to attend a summer school at Clemson College, in South Carolina, directed by Miss Wil Lou Gray. The NAEA had been encouraged by the Carnegie Corporation to send her to Clemson College in 1931 and she willingly travelled to attend. 48 Having lived and studied in both St. John’s and Toronto, Elsie likely welcomed the challenge and saw it as a continuation of her already extensive studies. In January 1932, following summer school at Clemson, Elsie was charged with giving the six teachers she employed a "special and intensive course of training" in the methods she had learned. Under Elsie’s direction, in 1931-32 these six women started their work in a variety of remote places such as Upper Island Cove, Carbonear North and South, and Botwood. The NAEA also had experimental schools in areas such as St. John’s, Bell Island, and Goulds. 49
14 By the time of her hiring, Elsie was a woman in her late forties, well educated, and clearly very dedicated. She is said to have "organized night schools in fifty five communities for 3500 students" 50 Her educational efforts and leadership were not unrewarded. In fact, she received the King’s Jubilee medal for her work in adult education. 51 She was considered significant enough a citizen to be listed in the 1937 Who’s Who of Newfoundland, one of only four women including Lady Walwyn, wife of the Governor. 52 These distinctions indicate the regard in which she and the position of Field Secretary of the first Opportunity Schools were held. Yet, her male contemporaries were destined for much higher honours. Leo English, who taught navigation, received the Order of the British Empire, as did Vincent Burke. Clearly, the bar for women was much higher in this time period, in effect reinscribing gender boundaries.
15 Elsie Farwell held a distinguished position that would not have been open to her in the school system. She attended conferences and she wrote articles for the Bulletin of the World Association of Adult Education (now the International Council for Adult Education or ICAE). 53 Her work included not only administering the adult schools but also convening a yearly conference and providing training for the teachers. She also published her own Bulletin of the NAEA, modelled in part on the WAAE Bulletin, and she ran a very successful organization. Along with being a good administrator, Elsie could show a lighthearted and even whimsical side. In describing the home visits, she said, "It would not surprise me if someone found poetry in our knitting needles these days. It is just beautiful to feel the power coming from our combined clubs of women all over the country." 54
16 Elsie shared a great deal in common with the other women in the NAEA and it seems that they were quite friendly with each other. In her correspondence with Elizabeth (Liza) Northover, adult education teacher in the Goulds, who was leaving the Association to get married in Petite Forte, Elsie wrote an endearing letter, beginning with how she "felt the pang of coming separation." A charming tone to the December 1938 letter shows a depth of friendship with Elizabeth that was to continue in the ensuing years. 55 In acknowledging the resignation, Elsie said, "Now will you always come to me, as you have been doing, if at any time in your life you feel you need the human touch." She was a compassionate and caring woman who shared friendship with the women she supervised.
17 Mrs. Farwell, as she was invariably referred to, perhaps in deference to her widowed status, died at the age of 60. In a somewhat flowery obituary in the Newfoundland Quarterly, Leo English said that sorrow "tinged and pervaded her life." 56 Perhaps he was alluding to her widowed status or even mental depression, since we know that Elsie had taken a year of "rest" in 1936 after her first five years as Field Secretary. 57 The romantic way in which he describes her suggests that his own view of women in leadership, in this case a well-established woman, is somewhat stereotypic. Elsie returned to her post after that leave and held it until her death in 1944. Of her personal life after having been widowed we know little except that she lived at the YWCA and spent summers at home in Fogo. She was buried beside her husband in Eastport. 58
18 Elsie chose a path that other women of her generation did not choose or have open to them. Her social class would have been a step above that of the many out-port women who went to work as domestics in St. John’s, and it also would have been higher than that of the working-class St. John’s women who went to work in retail until they married. A senior administrative position for an outport woman was unique at the time. 59 She and her contemporaries in the NAEA did not belong to the upperclass of St. John’s, such as suffragettes Armine Gosling (wife of the mayor of the city) and Adelaide Browning (wife of a prosperous merchant). 60 They also had little in common with Roman Catholic women who could enter religious orders and become school principals and teachers.
19 Elsie was an intelligent outport woman who had many assets but few options. As a relatively well-educated teacher she might have been expected to teach children for a few years and then leave teaching for marriage, and it seems she did that until she was widowed. Elsie’s social positioning and her chance employment with a new initiative in adult education made a rewarding career possible for her. Adult education work and the Opportunity Schools were not just a job — or an interlude — for Elsie and her peers; they provided a career with opportunity for advancement and for further education. Elsie continued teaching and administering but with adults, an option that few women of her time would have had. Whereas most of the provincial-level positions in education at this time were held by men such as Vincent Burke, this one position of Field Secretary was held by a woman, marking a major occupational victory in the 1930s and 1940s. Elsie appears to have been most able for the challenges of her position.
Jessie Mifflen
20 Jessie Beaumont Mifflen, the second of the original six field workers, was a cause célèbre in the adult education world, known in local and national circles as a successful writer, leader in adult education and most especially as a pioneer in establishing the library system in Newfoundland. She was born in 1906 in Bonavista and educated at the Methodist College and Memorial University College, after which she taught for two years. She left Newfoundland to get her BA at Mount Allison University and when she returned she was hired by the NAEA to teach adult education using the Opportunity School method. In later years she earned a Bachelor of Library Science at the University of Toronto Library School, as well as studied at Columbia University in New York City. 61
21 Jessie’s early career in adult education included years spent in outport Newfoundland teaching at night and doing home visits during the day. Field Secretary Elsie Farwell’s report for 1935 shows that Jessie had her hands full "with home groups three miles in one direction, four miles in another, and a mile and a half in a third." 62 An Evening Telegram article when she was named "Woman of the Week" in 1947 said that "for the first four years [1932-36] ... she travelled all over the island, covering the north coast down to the Straits of Belle Isle, and along the south coast, spending two months in one settlement, two months in another." 63 The excitement and the busyness of it all appealed to her, especially since it did not involve teaching children in one place all year long. In her own words she was "not dying to be a teacher" and, in fact, she had entered the teaching profession because "there seemed to be no alternative when I was ready to earn my living." 64 Of those early years teaching children in rural Newfoundland, Jessie said she was soon disillusioned. Indeed, living in rural Newfoundland was quite a shock since her home-town of Bonavista was very large by comparison. In later years she admitted, "I never did get to enjoy the actual classroom teaching." 65 One suspects that this was true for many of the adult education teachers who had started out teaching children.
22 Of her adult education career, Jessie was much more positive. She liked it so much, "it isn’t work at all. It’s a pleasure." 66 After graduating from Mount Allison University she had been waiting for seven months for "something to turn up" when she had an offer to be a field worker with the NAEA. Her own recollections of those days include a fond remembrance of a public performance to mark the end of the term, which "was always enjoyed by both the performers and the audience." 67 She felt more successful in this career than she had as a schoolteacher. Indeed, her own descriptions of these Opportunity Schools make the experience sound somewhat adventurous. In describing the rigour of her travels, she noted that sometimes she went by train but more often by the coastal steamer. 68 Like the other adult educators, she sometimes taught in communities with a religion different from her own, which caused local gossip; she reports finding the residents’ surprise somewhat amusing. In looking back on her years in adult education Jessie reflected, "Wherever it happened to be I enjoyed the work in its infinite variety." 69
23 Jessie wanted her work to be interesting and varied. Proof of her need for variety is shown in her decision to join the RCAF in the latter years of World War II, presumably for excitement, though that experience turned out to be "deadly dull. All I did was count nuts and bolts and airplane parts." 70 Jessie was somewhat relieved to be called home to succeed Elsie Farwell as Field Secretary in 1944. Jessie had held that position for a year in 1936 when Elsie was on sick leave so she probably looked forward to taking a position with which she was familiar. She had much more responsibility in the new position but "it was an interesting and challenging [position].... It also involved much more travelling which made it even more interesting. I remained happily in that job for some three to four years roaming around the out-ports preaching the gospel of education." 71
24 Even in the 1940s a woman in a leadership role was somewhat suspect. When she went to communities to hold meetings it "raised a few eyebrows where people were used to addressing a chairman not chairwoman." 72 Her groundbreaking work as a woman in a senior civil servant position, along with her later leadership work in libraries, earned her the distinction of being "outspoken on the rights of women." 73
25 Jessie’s work in adult education set the basis for her later career in the library system where she spent more than 20 years (1949-72) helping to establish in excess of 50 libraries. When she retired as director of the regional library system it included 75 libraries. Her leadership did not stop with her paid work. Jessie gave generously of her time, serving as president of the Atlantic Provinces Library Association and vice-president of the Canadian Library Association. Not surprisingly, her honours were legion: honorary doctor of laws from Mount Allison University and Memorial University; second winner of the Canadian Library Association’s Outstanding Service Award; member of the Order of Canada; and honorary membership in the Newfoundland Teachers Association. 74
26 Jessie’s educational career in rural Newfoundland is presented in a humorous way in her own publications of later years, including Be You a Library Missionary, Miss? (1981); Journey to Yesterday in the Out-harbours of Newfoundland (1983); and a Collection of Memories (1989). 75 These offer a gentle view of Newfoundland and are written in a folksy style common to Newfoundland writing of the time. Notably, she also co-wrote and published with some established male academics and authors a collection titled A Yaffle of Yarns (1985). Others involved in this work included Otto Tucker, Professor of Education at Memorial University; Ted Russell, a well-known writer and teacher; Cyril Poole, principal of the Sir Wilfred Grenfell College (of Memorial University) in Corner Brook; and George Earle, a canon of the Anglican Church, former principal of Queen’s Theological College, and sometime television actor. 76 She was in very fine company indeed, and it speaks to both her confidence and the esteem in which she was held that she would be part of this writing collective.
27 Jessie died in St. John’s, on April 1, 1994, at the age of 87, having lived a very long and distinguished life. 77 Adult education had offered her a career possibility unlike that of a classroom teacher of children. It offered adventure and challenge, and served as a springboard to even greater career success in advancing adult education through the library system. She is distinguished among the three women described here in her career achievements, likely because she was younger than the other women and her working life extended into the 1970s, when opportunities for women expanded. There may also have been mentors in her career that made it possible for her to far exceed the expectations of a woman born in Bonavista in 1906. Plus, even after retiring from her second "major" career in the library system, she wrote and published a great deal.
Sara Coady
28 Sara Coady was born at Fox Cove on the Burin Peninsula in the first decade of the twentieth century. 78 Although a later addition to the NAEA staff than the original seven women, she also had a distinguished career in adult education, and her life story evidences many of the same choices and opportunities. Sara was trained as a schoolteacher and began her teaching career in 1922 in Tors Cove. Soon after, she served as a principal, and by the time she was hired by the NAEA in 1935 she was well established as a professional teacher. In 1936 she attended the summer school at Clemson College and was appointed Acting Assistant Field Secretary. 79 Indeed Sara’s files contain a play by Erin Kohn from Clemson that she used in her classes. She became Acting Field Secretary with the sudden death of Elsie Farwell in 1944, a death that seemed to have troubled her deeply:
28 Sara’s years in adult education were busy, and like her colleagues in the NAEA, her work involved extensive travel and teaching in many remote villages. Her files contain reports on Opportunity Schools she had taught in Joe Batt’s Arm and Tilting (Fogo Island), Corbin, Rushoon, and Salmonier (Burin region), Chapel’s Cove and Holyrood (Conception Bay), Springdale and Poole’s Island, St. John’s, Trepassey, and Argentia. In later years she seems to have taken a teaching position at the Waterford Hospital, St. John’s, where she met and married Humbert Giovannetti, a widower and staff dentist, in the mid-1960s. 81
29 The depth of Sara’s concern for her adult education work is reflected in her musings on education and what it demanded of the teacher, especially in a time of war. Describing what is needed to teach in a city context, she says in her 1939-40 report to Dr. Burke:
29 Although energetic and innovative, Sara was challenged at times by a few difficult students. In her reports, she notes she has taught "youth not unknown to the criminal court," an indication that she had some adult troublemakers in her class, which was presumably all male. She was challenged, too, by the fact that some of her students were slow learners, although they worked hard for her: there were some who were "genuine plodders, who having put their hand to the plough, had not the slightest intention of looking backward." 83 Overall, Sara had a sense that "every day we felt we were helping some man to live a better and fuller life." 84 This sense of hope and of being involved in work that helped people live richer and fuller lives was common to these adult educators, and suggests that they saw themselves as being part of something bigger.
30 Faced with any form of adversity, Sara’s tendency was to persevere. Along with her adult schools on Fogo Island, she saw the need to set up a club specifically for the women and girls on Saturday evening. When there was no longer a church-sponsored adult education program in St. John’s, she set up a school there in 1937. Her efforts were applauded. Mrs. Farwell singled her out for special mention in a report in 1935:
31 Along with being a teacher, Sara seems to have supported extracurricular activities. While teaching at the US naval base in Argentia during and after World War II, she encouraged the publishing of a school newspaper in which both the Newfoundland and American students contribute articles and poems. The paper was called the Mirror and the society that sponsored it had a full executive, including a president, vice-president, and secretary. 86 Obviously, she was innovative.
32 A large part of the curriculum Sara Coady taught had to do with civics and hygiene, not surprising since she had training in these areas. Her papers include a guide for going to an interview, which had a section specially designed for women. Readers were told to "make sure the seams of your hose are straight" and to "take a bath, brush your teeth, and attend to your personal hygiene." Other guides told them to "wash your hair every three weeks." Yet, Sara seemed to have employed music, plays, and literature to stimulate the students’ imagination. She thought her job was in part to foster well-being. She noted that the students "enjoyed the music side of the programme very much, and although we had but a few moments each day to devote to this very important branch of our work, yet we feel that much joy and harmony was brought into many hearts." 87 Her files contain a number of plays and poems used to teach, including a jaunty version of "The Night before Christmas," dated 1959, that jests about being released from the local sanatorium. These days of teaching and her students meant a great deal to her.
33 Sara’s papers reveal a life that was both rich and broad. She kept news items and bulletins from the World Association for Adult Education, which no doubt served as an inspiration for her student newspaper in Argentia. Her private papers reference the Scandinavian folk schools and credit unions, as well as the National Film Society of Canada, a voluntary organization founded in 1935, which had a role in the establishment of the National Film Board several years later and encouraged film appreciation and the value of film in education, especially in adult education. 88 She held onto class lists from a night school in Branch in 1940-41, in which she and Jessie Mifflen taught 58 students, and she kept a handwritten thank-you note from those students.
34 Sara seems to have felt deeply about the circumstance of her students and of the value of her work. In a report on a community centre in St. Johns from 1939-40 she related the great distances people walked to go to school, including a 61-year-old man from the Lower Battery who walked several hours each day to go to the classes. Her concern for the truly poor and unlearned was strong enough that she begged Vincent Burke to "get in touch with more pure illiterates, such men as these are shy, self-conscious, and quite naturally, are not quick to come forward." 89 Sara continued her career in adult education for many years, working more and more in St. John’s and after a time as a staff teacher in the Waterford Hospital. Clearly, adult education was her life’s work, and she saw herself mainly as a helper of the disadvantaged. Her career path shows she believed people, male and female, to be equally capable.
GENDER AND THE NAEA ADULT EDUCATION EFFORTS
35 The adult education efforts of the NAEA seem to have been effective not only for the teachers who were hired but for the students they taught, especially the women in rural Newfoundland. Certain elements of the NAEA strategy and mode of working appear to have been appealing to women such as Jessie Mifflen, Sara Coady, and Elsie Farwell. Some of these distinctive elements are highlighted here.
The Opportunity School Model
36 The Opportunity School model, designed to build on relationships and to involve the whole family, furnished the female educators with new ideas and skills. 90 For women like Jessie and Sara, the model and their positioning within it provided an opportunity in a very constrained social and economic environment to experience teaching in a unique way, as well as to benefit from education and travel. As shown in Jessie’s recollections, it provided them with a viable alternative to teaching children in an isolated setting for a full year, as well as helped them push the boundaries of women’s work to include the new profession of adult education.
37 The Opportunity School model allowed women to help women. Visiting the home and teaching women in groups allowed the teachers a more personal kind of relationship with their adult pupils while it gave greater educational access to women at home. Blackall’s initial description of the Opportunity School model makes clear that it was conceived as an innovative approach to teaching literacy, for it took women’s needs into account. 91 He boasted that during home schools the teacher can reach the women who cannot attend — "the teacher goes to them" and provides instruction on "the management of the home, the management of the children, and the management of the mother’s health." 92 When one considers twenty-first-century efforts to focus on women to improve maternal child health in developing countries, such a focus in Newfoundland in the Depression years seems to be well ahead of its time. As well, an effort to recognize and accommodate women’s multiple roles and responsibilities in the home and the barrier these presented to educational access also seems prescient. In 1935 alone, these adult educators made 3,040 home visits and taught 630 people in evening classes. 93
38 The Opportunity School model included women’s clubs in the home whereby the "teacher becomes the leader or director of a group rather than a teacher" as they learned in groups to read and write, or to weave, for example. 94 In addition, a household science teacher was provided to teach cooking, nutrition, and balance. 95 Given the reality of many women’s lives at the time, this kind of in-house teaching was likely welcomed. Yet, it must be said that there was a somewhat paternalistic tone to the plans for both the women’s clubs and the home visits. Women’s work in the home was viewed as so dull that it needed to be brightened up. 96 In commenting on the need for women’s clubs, the inaugural pamphlet on the NAEA had this to say:
38 The "good, sensible active woman" descriptor hints at some of the stereotypes of what a female leader or teacher might look or act like. Yet, the very fact that these classes, groups, and visits provided access to women students was no doubt pleasing to the female teachers such as Sara, Elsie and Jessie. They could use this opportunity to be part of the amelioration of troubling home circumstances, especially during the Great Depression.
39 Along with the clubs and the home visits, on occasion the NAEA had female-only classes, such as one they hosted at the Church of England cathedral, which was described as the "outstanding event of our year." 98 Another was "a special class for women [which] was established in the Synod Building, St Johns. Many of the girls who attended this ... were girls from the outports." 99 The tradition of separating girls and boys already had been established by religious groups, Protestant and Catholic, in Newfoundland. As well, the upper-class supporters of "The Girls’ Department of the King George the Fifth Institute" operated a residence for outport girls working as domestics in the city. This started as a home for Labrador girls who came to St. John’s as helpers on the schooners, and it soon broadened to be a home for out-port girls. Lady Davidson, wife of the Governor, Mrs. W.C. Job, and Mrs. Armine Gosling, along with Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, set up the residence and initiated the weekly literacy classes for girls. 100 Having separate classes for NAEA students, then, was an accepted practice and it likely allowed some flexibility in the curriculum and an opportunity for the women involved, either as teachers or learners, to be freer in discussion and in content focus.
Feminized and Gendered Work
40 Of course, these adult education teachers were not free of the constraints of their sex. Some evidence suggests that "classic" feminine traits constituted competence or effectiveness in their jobs. In correspondence from 1940 with the Secretary for Education, the Field Secretary, Elsie Farwell, describes the work of Miss Marion Christian who had been in Isle Valen, Placentia Bay, noting that Marion has the "personality, tact and sympathy so much needed in a world which brings the teachers very near to the daily lives of people" and she has "keen interest in everything pertaining to their [students’] welfare." Thus, the model of teaching was one of personality, and the feminization of this role is reflected in language like "tact and sympathy," 101 very stereotypic feminine qualities. 102 So ingrained were these expectations and beliefs about women that the teachers themselves perpetuated them.
41 There is no doubt that Burke saw adult education work as women’s work. According to him, they were engaged partly in teaching and partly in social service in that they visited homes, "among with which were found many social problems, some which were diagnosed and help given towards a solution." 103 When he described their work elsewhere Burke noted that they used first aid kits from the Public Health Department so that the "teachers were able, in places where no nurse or doctor was available, to administer to minor ills and accidents ... and in some cases, assisting in the work of inoculation." 104 In many ways, Burke’s leadership and his expectation of caring behaviour reinscribed class and gender roles for these women. It is instructive to think of what he does not say in his reports and writings: he does not refer to these women as leaders, as possible successors to him, or as deserving of positions like his own. It is also instructive to think of what the women themselves do not say: they do not indicate other career aspirations or show any resentment to the primarily male leadership. For them, adult education work appears to be a reprieve from what Jessie Mifflen described as the tedium of teaching children. Seemingly, they are caught in the confines of their own gender and class expectations.
42 The use of eight-week stints was a contributing factor in the adult school success and in the educators’ satisfaction with it. Jessie remembered that that she "enjoyed adult education much more [than school teaching] as we went from community to community and never stayed more than two months." 105 The language of the educators shows that to some degree they saw themselves as part of a larger effort to cure illiteracy, despondency, and poverty. In her 1935 annual report Elsie says that they are fighting "the fight with our most alarming peril, illiteracy" 106 and that they need to "slay the dragon in our midst" even if it means continuing on "the front line trenches" 107 to combat illiteracy. Apart from the use of fighting language, Elsie is quick to point out that this work is adventuresome: "the winter months for Field Secretary and teachers must continue to be venturesome, thrilling even dangerous, particularly with a winter like last. Any person reading this report with aspirations to do the work in either of these capacities should do so with body, mind and soul searchings before taking the final plunge." 108 Clearly, this was not just any job. For Elsie and her colleagues, it was a bona fide career made possible by the Opportunity School model. While the model had gender constraints, it also allowed great freedom and possibility for women at the time.
THE SUMMER SCHOOL OF 1938
43 One of the major achievements of the NAEA was its leadership in the summer school held in St. John’s in 1938. The school, almost totally funded by Carnegie, was a major undertaking for the NAEA. 109 Although it was proposed as a yearly event there is no evidence that it continued after the first year, possibly because of World War II and the need to concentrate on education on the American bases, such as at Argentia. 110 Mary Maddock, BA, who had been with the NAEA since its inception, was appointed principal and all the best-educated adult teachers were involved, including Mercedes Marshall, BA, and Eleanor Coady, BSc. 111 Such summer schools, also funded by Carnegie, were not uncommon in the United States as a way of bringing working-class women out of their home environments to give them a taste of middle-class life and liberal education (the curriculum was nursing, weaving, literature, etc.). 112 Most notable among these residential experiences was the American school at Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania, which hosted 1,700 women from 1921 to 1938 and is documented in a film titled The Women of Summer. The Bryn Mawr school was written about in the WAAE Bulletin that the NAEA staff members received. 113 Unlike the Newfoundland model (both the summer school and the Opportunity schools), which reinforced class and gender roles, the Bryn Mawr school was infused with critical perspectives on life and work.
44 The NAEA summer school was designed for women who had been students in the outport Opportunity Schools. 114 It was modelled on the Danish folk school, according to Dr. Burke, who makes repeated efforts in his writing to connect adult education activity in Newfoundland to larger international efforts in the field, of which he would have been aware from conferences, meetings, and Carnegie and WAAE linkages. 115 The women themselves likened it to the summer schools at Clemson College, which both Sara Coady and Elsie Farwell had attended. 116 Of the 15 chosen female attendees, nine were mothers, and of these, four were grandmothers. The students came from as far away as Lourdes and St. Alban’s to as close as Brigus, Bay de Verde, and Heart’s Delight, and they ranged in age from 17 to 66 years. 117 Although men attended the Opportunity Schools, this summer school was just for women and they were housed at the YWCA, where Mrs. Farwell lived. 118
45 Like the American summer schools, students at the NAEA summer school helped with the cooking and cleaning which gave them experience and training in household sciences. Tea, or supper, was served at five, and the students learned how to set the table, as well as how to cook vegetables. Though there was no running water and indoor plumbing at the YWCA, and no fridge, it seems to have been quite an enjoyable experience for both the teachers and the students. 119 One of the benefits, no doubt, was the attention they enjoyed from well-placed citizens and organizations such as the Rotary Club, which served them lunch. They were hosted by the former Prime Minister, Sir Richard Squires, and his wife, Lady Helena Squires, who had also been a politician. This adult education summer school was held in concert with the Cooperative and Jubilee Guilds summer schools and a teachers’ summer school run by educational leader Dr. Albert Hatcher. The NAEA plan for the summer school indicates that they were strategically linked so that they could take some classes with the Cooperative school. 120 Yet, despite the efforts to encourage economic co-operation, which was part of the Commission of Government’s plan, the summer school reports read like social diaries and it likely accomplished little more than teaching lessons in genteel living.
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46 In addition to inviting them to Government House, Lady Eileen Walwyn, wife of the Governor, also visited them at the YWCA; Lady Helena Squires gave a lecture on gardening to a conjoint group of adult education and Jubilee Guild students. 121 Each adult education student was asked to keep a diary and there was a room provided for writing, ensuring that they reinforced their literacy skills. 122 They had classes on subjects ranging from public speaking to philosophy, and even a class on weaving conducted by a Miss Isabelle Warren. Perhaps the highlight was having 13 of the women do a radio broadcast from the broadcasting room of the Newfoundland Hotel.
47 This method of residential teaching, bringing the women together to experience life away from their everyday cares, allowed the NAEA teachers to work with women in a concentrated time, to do as the experts in the WAAE Bulletin recommended, and to be in step with adult education efforts across the continent. This special residential school helped to solidify the identity of the women as adult educators and to allow them to participate in one of the finest educational experiments of the day. Yet, in its emphasis on class betterment and in its focus on feminine topics such as gardening and housework, it did not advance in any great way the equality of women. In some ways it reinforced class status and the stereotypic feminine traits of nurturing and care. That said, it was a short-lived moment in adult education history.
LOOSENING OF CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS CONSTRAINTS
48 The adult education movement led by the NAEA was distinct from contemporaneous movements like the Antigonish Movement in that it was not a Catholic or religious endeavour and was not led by groups of religious women. The large religious orders in Newfoundland at this time, the Mercy and Presentation sisters, focused on schooling and health care. The NAEA funding did not come from churches, and it was not connected to Newfoundland’s denominational school system. Women served as Field Secretary, staff, and leaders in this association, which was not often the case in the church-led school system. When one considers that in Newfoundland everything from settlement to marriage and schooling was identified with religious institutions, this non-denominationalism was quite remarkable. It allowed the female adult educators freedom from some of the constraints imposed on women in the day schools.
49 Yet, there is no doubt that for men like Blackall, who was the first president of the NAEA, adult education was a religious calling. 123 He approached it with religious zeal. "I exhort you to form a real brotherhood.... Like a gathering stream ... [t]his brotherhood shall grow bigger and bigger. Your name shall be legion, and you will constrain the government of Newfoundland to make a really generous annual grant." 124 This religious zeal is not reflected in the existing curriculum materials of the NAEA or in its correspondence.
50 When the summer school was held in 1938, the students and the teachers visited different churches, yet no clergy were invited to speak during the class. The organizers turned instead to government leaders for speeches and lectures. Like other NAEA activities, the adult education or literacy work of these female educators was not religiously oriented, there were no religious involved in the teaching or organizing, and the curriculum was not overtly religious. Burke and others likely made a deliberate effort to avoid church involvement. 125 Burke, Blackall, and Farwell may not have seen adult education as requiring religious oversight since adult education required different skills and personnel than denominational schools. Unlike the school system, which had been thoroughly denominational for the best part of a century, the NAEA did not have clerics or nuns on its governing board, though the denominational superintendents had been responsible for instigating it. 126 No doubt, Burke’s status as Superintendent of Roman Catholic schools would have helped him avoid interference in deciding which teachers taught where, which areas got schools, and what the curriculum was. 127 As it was, distance from the church allowed these female adult educators a certain degree of autonomy, which was not true of teachers in the school system. In addition, of course, adult education focused on people who already were fully socialized and who, from earlier schooling and life experience, had had the values of society, including religious values, inculcated in them.
51 The degree to which women like Jessie, Elsie, and Sarah thought about religious inspiration or vocation in their work is not known. Yet, they were aware that they were part of the reconstructive efforts in Newfoundland during the Commission of Government years. How deeply they considered this to be central to their participation is unclear. As Overton argues, adult education was an integral part of rebuilding, and these women were pleased to contribute to citizenship and to overall growth in prosperity. There is no indication, however, that they saw adult education as a moral mission to work with wayward men and woman in addressing their personal weakness. 128 After all, they were teaching the same kind of people they had grown up with in rural Newfoundland. They were conscious of making the world a better place, of providing needed services, and of improving the general lot of their students. Basically, they were educated single women from the outports who had tried regular school teaching and who saw adult education as a way to use a variety of skills and abilities, and to experience life apart from their families of origin. One can imagine that these educated women would have served as inspiration for each other and encouraged further education and training. They would have been a support for the women they educated in their homes, in evening schools, and in their summer school. Their view of their work is best represented in the words of the constitution of the NAEA: "the mission of adult education is to give knowledge for understanding and joy, to free judgment from prejudice, to strengthen faith, to foster good-fellowship and to let charity abound." 129
CONCLUSION
52 This movement in Newfoundland, and the experiment it represented, was unique in adult education history. For women in the first half of the twentieth century it allowed for freedom from the typical fields and occupations of nursing and teaching children, and it gave them scope for travel, challenge, and variety. The way in which the NAEA program was structured with a combination of day home visits, women’s clubs, and evening classes maximized women students’ opportunity to participate and to be taught by women. As an independent association and movement, the original NAEA had a short life, which seems to be the case of many similar associations in Canada at the time. Ironically, it precipitated its own demise by folding into government in 1936; yet, the NAEA did provide a reprieve and an opportunity for women, both teachers and students, in a depressed era. 130
53 The women of this adult education movement in the 1930s and 1940s experienced career growth and numerous challenges. They had occasion to travel around Newfoundland and to further their education in ways that other women of their generation did not. Elsie Farwell held a major provincial and administrative post during the Depression years; Jessie Mifflen had one of the most distinguished careers of Newfoundland women in the twentieth century, both in libraries and in adult education work; and Sara Coady was a successful adult education teacher and administrator. The educational processes used seemed to be conducive to teaching and learning for women at this time. These women were of the emerging middle class, positioned above poor outport domestics and beneath the rich and married socialites in St. John’s. Their capital was education and marital status (single or widowed), and they forged new ways of thinking about women’s work. Yet, questions remain about how the NAEA reinforced stereotypes and feminized notions of teaching. Further research needs to be done on women in this period in Newfoundland for us to understand more fully their situation and its implications for adult education.