55 Reviews — Recensions succession of college deans, men like Pakenham, Althouse, Lewis and Diltz, who by the nature of their role contributed importantly to the shaping of teacher training in the province and across the country. Among the various controversies that embroiled the college leaders in the late 1960's, and in which Phillips himself took a strong stand, was that concerning the proposed removal of the research and graduate activities of the college and their transfer to what was to become the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The principles lying behind Phillip's opposition to such a bifurcation of roles are very germane to present day discussions of the structure and functions of faculties of education. As a result of extensive and frequently frustrating perusal of college calendars and sundry other college and government records, Phillips provides the student of institutional history with an extensive set of appendices which contain information on staff, salaries, enrolments, budget, the School periodical, the agreement with the University of Toronto, the Library School, and general bibliography. The elusiveness of such information does not escape mention: . . . the reader must not expect strict accuracy and consistency in financial data that are published. Such characteristics could make an administrator vulnerable, whereas a little flexibility weakens the confidence of critics (p. 197). If Phillip's book has one over-riding theme, it is expressed in the final line of text: "The old days had passed away." (p. 195) Through this work we have a humane and balanced picture of what those days were. Alexander Gregor Department of Educational Administration and Foundations University of Manitoba Bernard Ostry, The Cultural Connection. Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1978. The author describes this work as a "tract" or an "essay". It is actually a compendium of facts and ideas concerning Canada's cultural experience set in historical perspective by a top-ranking civil servant. In his career, Bernard Ostry has run the gamut of direct involvement in government agencies and departments from the CBC and the Secretary of State Department to the sphere of the National Museums of Canada. At present, he is deputy minister in the Department of Communications where he is involved with the inevitable tug-of-war between the federal and provincial governments over control of various aspects of Canadian social and cultural development. The book is then a government official's eye-view, rather than that of someone actively engaged in that development. Ostry says it is an "essay on government and cultural policy in Canada". As such, it stresses the strong link between the active involvement of government in fostering a nation's culture and the furthering of national unity — an undeniably vital and topical issue for Canadians. Culture is defined in very broad terms - it is all things to all men, including "artistic and creative expression or expressive symbolism, mores, manners and customs, ethnicity, and the social behaviour of distinguishing groups". It is as "essential" and as "pervasive" as the air we breathe, and therefore is taken too much for granted and too often overlooked as an important aspect of our national life, at least by democratic governments. Communist 56 Reviews — Recensions governments, on the other hand, tend to use it as a manipulative tool to impose their own values and standards. Ostry feels that just as much harm can be done by the absence of awareness of "the cultural connection" as by over intervention in the lives of the people. "What is needed," he says, "is a wise husbandry and the will to give culture freedom and room to grow without directing it. And this requires conscious effort by governments and voters as well as by artists who, as custodians, stand in a special relationship to culture". It requires as well a conscious effort on the part of government to direct the enormous sums of money dedicated to cultural pursuit (almost a billion dollars a year in Canada) into orderly and rational channels. But Ostry's main theme is that "if we are to have a country at all", it is the federal government rather than provincial governments that must assume "a clear responsibility" and must "encourage the growth of . . . [our] missing sense of a common heritage and destiny. The federal task is to ensure we 'connect'." It must foster culture "as a source of national integrity". However, Ostry would not have the central government dictate policy in the arts: "The initiative for a policy of cultural development, for a policy that would organize federal, provincial, municipal, and private activities in culture into some sort of coherence, should come from the voluntary sector". He claims that in contrast to other parts of Canada, Quebec had no network of volunteer bodies which, on a large and small scale, brought cultural events to both large and small municipalities. It was not until "a new and highly educated self-confident generation had come to recognize the devastation wrought upon their language and the arts by lack of private and public patronage" that the Quebec government was prevailed upon to take more interest in fostering cultural activity. For the whole of Canada, the signal for government participation in this sphere was the calling of the Royal Commission on Arts, Letters and Sciences (1949), whose report provided "consciousness of the need to connect government and cultural policy, to connect the emerging cultures with one another . . . " Oddly enough Ostry points out, "for years the Department of National Defence was alone among federal departments in developing a conscious, consistent, and imaginative cultural policy and providing funds to make it work". He attributes this to the fact that there is a distinct connection between culture and morale, and that this was well understood in Canadian military circles. "If a man was to risk his life for his country, he needed to know what his country was and have some feeling for it". Blame is laid on Ottawa for not ensuring that "a sense of common history" was "imparted" to all Canadians. Instead, since Confederation "divisive myths have grown unchecked, including the myth that the provinces are in Confederation only on conditions, and that the consitution of Canada is a kind of treaty between nations which can be broken at will. Meanwhile the memory of the great events in which Canadians have taken part together as a community was allowed to fade". Ostry points out further that politicans consistently failed to recognize that the cultural issue in Canada is more complex and requires more attention as a continuing political problem than is the case in most other countries". What Ostry is saying here is of utmost importance to Canadians, at this critical stage in their national life. It should be taken to heart. He is telling us that there is a very real link between the fostering of patriotism or nationalism, and the fostering of culture. His solution to the problem of stimulating interest in cultural development is to 'go public' — to create opportunities for discussion, bring people together to 57 Reviews — Recensions talk about why and how "comprehensive national policy can be drawn up and transformed into action". Exactly what this would accomplish is not entirely clear, Public debate, organized conferences, seminars, and workshops too often serve little purpose other than to provide a forum for the windy, the opinionated, the radical, the zealot, the crank. They are notoriously unproductive, as a rule. What might save us all, and something to which Ostry alludes on several occasions, is for our politicans at the local, regional, provincial and federal levels to heed a warning voiced in 1975-76 by a group of OECD examiners about the devastating effects of our fragmented schooling on the quality of our national life. By and large, nations instill pride and loyalty into the populace through the educational system. In Canada we have no such thing as a national policy or system of education, as the OECD examiners found to their dismay, and decried several times in their report, a fact which did not endear them to the provincial authorities who, along with Ottawa, had agreed to this investigation of Canadian education. Instead of paying heed to the recommendation to move as quickly as possible towards adopting such a policy, the Council of Ministers of Education, for example, responded with petty indignation and insupportable rationales for why we needed no such thing as a national policy for education. Yet, in essence, that is exactly what Bernard Ostry is calling for in this treatise. He recognizes the supreme importance of instilling a sense of communal purpose, of pride in one's country — its achievements, whether they be artistic, technical, or scientific. Until the people of this country recognize and accept this fact, there is little hope for true national unity, and the nation will continue to suffer not merely a cultural disconnection, but mounting political, social, economic dislocation which breeds more regional disparity and impedes rather than fosters cultural advancement. Canadians have long prided themselves that, unlike their American neighbors, they have not subscribed to the 'melting pot' theory. Rather we pretend that we are a mosaic, when in reality we simply represent the ingredients of a mosaic with no cohesive element to truly bind us together. If we could persuade our politicians to work towards fostering a sense of national pride, to bury regional hatchets that only fragment us, to develop a genuinely Canadian sense of history within a nationally integrated educational system, the cultural connection for which Ostry so earnestly and eloquently pleads could well be an automatic by product. Without such unifying forces working on our children — from whatever native heritage they have sprung or to whatever cultural pursuits they may individually aspire — there can be no successful adoption of a national cultural policy. All the conferences, debates, informal get-togethers, or Royal Commissions in the world will only leave us exactly where we are — nationally and culturally disconnected. Gwendoline Pilkington The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education