Frontier College has evolved over its 100+ year history to meet the changing needs of marginalized groups in Canada. It was founded to provide basic education to immigrant workers in remote logging and mining camps. Now it focuses on literacy programs for at-risk groups like the homeless, inmates, and struggling students. Through dedicated volunteers and innovative approaches like its student-centered philosophy, Frontier College continues striving to achieve its mission of providing literacy opportunities to all and nurturing lifelong learning.

1. Frontier College –
Serving Whom?
Meeting the Challenges of Evolving
Canadian Frontiers
By:
Carla Ralph, Noriko Sakamoto and Mike Windsor

2. Beginnings
“Education must be obtainable on the farm, in the bush, on
the railway, and in the mine. We must educate the whole
family wherever their work is, wherever they earn their
living; teaching them how to earn and at the same time how
to grow physically, intellectually, and spiritually.... This is the
real education. This is the place of a true university."
Alfred Fitzpatrick, University in Overalls, 1920

3. Alfred Fitzpatrick, Founder
• Nova Scotia immigrant farmer’s
son
• Queen's University graduate and
Presbyterian minister
• Influenced by Dewey's ideas on
life-long learning and the
education-democracy connection.
• Founded Reading Camp
Association, 1899 (later named
Frontier College).
• Goal – to integrate immigrants in
camps into vision of a Canadian
citizen
• Advocated for university
extension programs

4. Laborer-Teacher (LT)
• Main staple of
program-work all
day – teach at
night
• University
Volunteers to set Norman Bethune (LT):
Attracted to physical
example and challenges and service
provide guidance ideals, Bethune applies to
Toronto’s Reading Camp
• Appeal to needs of Association to work as a
new immigrants to LT in an Ontario lumber
encourage camp for 10 hours a day,
6 days a week and provide
participation 1-2 hours of evening
schooling.

5. High Ideals at the Start
“It is high time the great resources of
nature should be used not to make the few
rich, but to make the many wise” – Alfred
Fitzpatrick (Walter, Spring 2003, p. 5)
View a video clip at:
http://www.histori.ca/minutes/qt/10188/031_e_lo.mov

6. • Frontier College was based on idea
that basic adult education could
redeem an individual
• Through redemption the person
would be a better person and more
productive in society
• Education was for all society levels
• Canada needs participation of all to
function properly and continue
current values

7. Early Struggles
• Started as Reading Rooms in Camps
• Had trouble finding sponsors and funding –
needed to resort to volunteers
• Distrusted by labor organizations – wanted
assimilation of workers into society
• Distrusted by employers who did not want
employees distracted by learning

8. Solutions
• Fought labor unrest with refusal to
participate – offer alternatives
• Gained trust of employers through
hard working laborer-teachers
• Gained trust of workers by
addressing immediate concerns while
work alongside them – respect
greatly valued

9. Canadianization
“If these men are to be turned into safe,
sane and useful citizens it is obviously the
duty of some organization to undertake the
work of teaching them our language and our
laws, and so to educate them that they will
take an intelligent interest in Canadian
affairs”
Frontier College appeal for funding (Walter,
Spring 2003, p.9)

10. Questioning Original Motives
• Frontier College was highly focussed
on developing Canadians according to
Fitzpatrick’s own ideals
• Immigrants were sorted by their
place of origin and rated according to
work habits and personal traits
• Women were largely ignored – not
seen as having any place within the
work camps

11. Contextual Analysis
“Frontier College has survived depression
and war, government cutbacks and
government competition, an ever-changing
definition of work, and the shifting frontiers
of need from the labour camps of black flies
and long hours to the urban frontiers of
grinding poverty and hopelessness” (original
emphasis) (Morrison, 1999)

12. Time of Transitions
• As labour camps faded, FC shifted its
vision to include immigrant farm workers,
and the urban poor.
• The FC’s ‘frontier’ shifted from actual
camps outside of mainstream society to
the ‘new frontiers’ faced by recent
immigrants and those rejected by society.

13. Philosophy Transition
Frontier College - Our Mission
Frontier College is a Canada-wide, volunteer-based, literacy
organization. We teach people to read and write and we nurture
an environment favorable to lifelong learning. Since 1899, we have
been reaching out to people wherever they are and responding to
their particular learning needs. We believe in literacy as a right
and we work to achieve literacy for all.
(Frontier College Website)

14. Initial Philosophy
Although there were elements of
self-direction, FC practiced a
Liberal philosophy approach
evidenced by:
• Male dominated LTs of British
descent.
• Teacher-directed curriculum.
• Canadianization of immigrants.

15. Philosophical Transition
As the college adapted to societal change, it
gradually shifted its philosophy to a Humanistic
approach evident by these mission statements:
• “We value innovation and encourage people to bring
us new ideas about learning.”
• “Students decide what they want to learn and how
they want to learn it. Tutors help them do this.”
• “Training others in setting up similar programs or in
developing their own.”

16. FC’s Student Centred
Individualized Learning (SCIL)
• The SCIL tutors students by incorporating
their life experience into learning
situations utilizing students’ strengths not
their deficiencies.
• The student, assisted by the tutor,
designs a curriculum based on what the
student wants to learn.

17. Common Philosophical Thread
• Since conception, moderate Radical
undertones have persisting.
• The social-economic disadvantaged have
been accepted and encouraged to
academically, socially, and economically
progress.
• The Radical dynamic has always been
within the confinements of the dominate
philosophy.

18. Socio-Economic Forces:
“Beating the Streets” and the Odds

19. “Now in its 98th year, the laborer-teacher
program is just one of the many efforts
undertaken by the 10,000 volunteers of the
Frontier College, Canada’s self-styled ‘university
in overalls.’ Among Frontier’s most prominent
programs are roughly 700 ‘reading circles’ that
encourage parents and children to work together
on literacy skills; Beat the Street, which focuses
on the homeless youth in downtown Toronto; and
the Prison Literacy Program, in which university
students work one-on-one with inmates of prisons
and jails.” (Kuitenbrouwer, 1997)

20. Corporate Sponsors
In 2004 Microsoft grants FC $104,000US
to close computer literacy gap – to prepare
people for work and to become good
employees:
“In taking part in the program like that,
they’re also learning how to attend a
program regularly and participate...To show
up, to call when they’re not coming..”
(Schick, 2004)

21. Other Projects
• Prison Literacy Initiative – Across Canada
• First Nations Education – keeping cultural identity
Reading Circles for Children and Families
• After School Programs and Homework Clubs
• Independent Learning for Adults with Disabilities
• Labrador Community Initiative
• Labourer-Teachers for migrant farm workers in
rural areas
• And much more

22. The Final Frontier
Has FC achieved its mission?

23. “We teach people to read and write …”
(Frontier College Mission)
• Generally, FC literacy programs have
demonstrated the ideals of authenticity,
self-direction, and empowerment.
• FC’s mandate attempts to make these
ideals available to those marginalized like
immigrants, inmates, or struggling inner
city school students.

24. “… and we nurture an environment
favorable to lifelong learning.”
(Frontier College Mission)
• As workers, citizens, or just people
attempting read a driver’s manual, people
need to be literate.
• Frontier College requires its LTs to get
acquainted with the students before
working with the students in designing
unique individualized learning plans.

25. “We believe literacy is a right and we
work to achieve literacy for all.”
(Frontier College Mission)
• In carrying out its mission, FC has
demonstrated since conception that has
lived up to its values in attempting to
empower people.
• As society continues to change, FC has
proven its ability and willingness to
successfully adapt.

26. References

27. • Basok, Tanya (2004). Post-national citizenship, social exclusion and migrants
rights: Mexican seasonal workers in Canada. Citizenship Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1,
pp. 47-67.
• Burnet, Jean (1981). Frontier college. Winter, Vol. 3 No. 1.
• Freeman, Matt (1994 -1995). Canadian group confronts distance and diversity.
Reading Today, Vol. 12, Issue 13.
• Frontier college (n.d.). Retrieved June 3, 2005, from
http://www.frontiercollege.ca
• Kuitenbrouwer, Peter (1997). The learning fields. Maclean’s Vol. 110, Issue 33.
• Morrison, James H. (1999). Black flies, hard work, low pay. Beaver, 00057517,
Vol. 79 Issue 5.
• Murphy, Matthew (2000). Authenticity, literacy and frontier college: a
philosophical report. Retrieved June 23, 2005, from Laurentian University
websitehttp://www.laurentian.ca/mahumanities/english/events/practicumcolloquium
/2004/reports2004_files/murphy_matt.htm
• Pearpoint, Jack & Forest, Marsha (1990). Beat the street: an urban literacy
program. Convergence Vol. 23, Issue 1.
• Walter, Pierre (2003). Adult literacy education on the Canadian frontier. Adult
Basic Education Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 3-18.
• Walter, Pierre (2003). Literacy, imagined nations and imperialism: frontier
college and the construction of British Canada, 1899-1933. Adult Education
Quarterly, Vol. 54, No.1, pp. 42-58.
• Welton, Michael R. (1991). Dangerous knowledge: Canadian workers’ education in
the decades of discord. Studies in the Education of Adults, Vol. 23, Issue 1.