Vanishing Schools, Threatened Communities: The Contested Schoolhouse in Maritime Canada 1850-2010

Exploring the phenomenon of school closures, this study highlights how traditional schoolhouses and neighborhood schools are disappearing at an alarming rate, making way for big-box schools that serve multiple communities and adhere to the logic of modernization, centralization, and uniformity. It focuses on Maritime Canada from 1850 until the present day and examines the rise of common schooling from one-room schoolhouses that encouraged local democratic control to the rise of super-sized schools governed by a vast bureaucracy that silences public participation. The relationship between school closures and a decline in community is clearly shown and the book encourages a return to the principles that formed the basis of the public education system in order to better serve the needs of children and their communities.