“Improvident and Profligate”

This article examines the politics and economics surrounding textbook provision in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan in the first decade of the twentieth century, a period in which debates around the publication and provision of textbooks raged in Canada. It focuses on the 1908 contract between the Saskatchewan Department of Education and the Morang Educational Company of Toronto involving the Alexandra Readers. Frederick Haultain, leader of the opposition Provincial Rights Party, used the contract as a club to beat James Calder, commissioner of education for the ruling Liberal government. Haultain claimed that the contract had been offered to Morang because he and John Cameron Saul, editor in chief of the company, had been “college chum[s].” He also claimed that the majority of the textbook selection committee actually had favoured the readers submitted by rival Toronto publisher the Canada Publishing Company. As a result of Haultain’s accusations in the Saskatchewan legislature, a royal commission was established to inquire into “the alleged ‘improvident and profligate’ Morang school book contract and the reasons why it was granted.” This study makes evident how controversial textbook provision has been and examines the political influences and commercial pressures that fuelled one such controversy

Club · Commission · Legislative assembly · Legislature · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Politics · Publishing · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Canadian Identity and History · Law · Political Theory and Influence

• Authorization of Textbooks for the Schools of Ontario 1846–1950

  Viola Elizabeth Parvin•Authorization of Textbooks for…•1965

  Add to list

• Official Knowledge

  M W Apple•Official Knowledge•2014

  Add to list