The Educational Review

Devoted to Advanced Methods of Education and General Culture.
(Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada)

A Finding Aid to the Journal for the Years 1887-1912
(Volumes 1-25)

Compiled by: Robert E. Hawkes, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick
Edited by: Patricia Belier, Dorothy Bennett, Patricia Auld Johnson

Introduction

“The want of a periodical devoted to the interests of teachers and education in these Lower Provinces has long been felt”, wrote G.U. Hay in his announcement of the premier publication of the New Brunswick Journal of Education in June 1886.G.U. Hay, “Announcement”, Edited by G.U. Hay and W.S. Carter, the journal was launched by a joint stock company of Saint John, New Brunswick teachers with a view to fostering communication between teachers of the Atlantic provinces and to distribute educational literature.

The aims of the journal as outlined in the inaugural issue were to aid teachers with practical teaching suggestions and “to enter into the progressive spirit that marks the educational advancement of the present age, and to seize upon all new and practical methods adopted by experienced educators and lay them before its readers”.Ibid. The New Brunswick Journal of Education failed to meet the financial expectations of the company and in 1887 was renamed the Educational Review, maintaining the content and purpose of the original publication.See G.U. Hay, “The Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Educational Review”,

The Educational Review was established in New Brunswick during a transitional period in the province and in educational matters. The Common Schools Act was enacted by the New Brunswick legislature in 1871, establishing free, non-sectarian public schools supported primarily by mandatory land assessment. The Act represented a significant educational advance in the province and was complemented by other changes in the field of education that focussed on administrative efficiency and the standardization of texts, teaching methods, grading strategies and examination practices.

The pattern of educational development in New Brunswick followed closely the economic difficulties and the industrial depression that afflicted the province during the 1880s and 1890s. The pages of the early issues of the Educational Review reveal educators’ concerns over the closure of schools and the reduction in the salaries paid to local teachers. Its articles illustrate that educational discourse in New Brunswick was also shaped by Canadian and American influences. Articles on nature and the natural sciences are found in the very first issues of the journal, testifying to the recognition by the teaching profession that an emphasis on the new scientific age would be an important feature in the school curriculum.

Other discourses on schooling emerged and were disseminated throughout the Educational Review during the latter half of the 1890s and early 1900s. Questions of manual training and physical training were at the forefront of educational thought during this period as leading educators declared traditional teaching methods inadequate to train students for an industrial society. The later issues of the Educational Review reflected this shift in learning methods by printing instructional lessons to promote eye and hand work in the areas of wood working, raffia work and the household sciences.

The Educational Review contained articles, news and historical material relating to all three Maritime provinces. It continued to be a prominent voice of the region’s teaching profession for nearly a century (being discontinued in 1970) and is distinguished as being one of the oldest educational journals in Canada.

Dorothy Bennett